November 2015 – Page 2 – Peace Corps Worldwide

REVIEW — Renewable by Eileen Flanagan (Botswana 1984-86)

Nov 21 2015

Renewable: One Woman’s Search for Simplicity, Faithfulness, and Hope Eileen Flanagan (Botswana 1984-86) She Writes Press March 2015 186 pages $16.95 (paperback), $9.95 (Kindle) Reviewed by Julie R. Dargis (Morocco 1984-87) • When Eileen Flanagan arrived in Botswana in 1984, “the same year that Apple introduced the Macintosh and Daryl Hannah starred in Splash with Tom Hanks,” global warming had yet to hit the global scene. Yet, that same year, as I arrived to my Peace Corps site in the south of Morocco, the population had been experiencing a severe drought. So much so, when the rains finally came with abandon, my students rejoiced for days. Twenty-five years later, as a result of global warming, Flanagan would be reporting similar news from her village in Botswana. Flanagan had entered the village of Bobonong atop a dusty road, rattling past round huts of mud and dung in a rusted-out Ford pickup . . .

RPCV Anita Datar killed in Mali Attack

Nov 21 2015

The Washington Post is reporting that the only American killed in the Mali terror attack was RPCV Anita Datar. Here is the link to read the Post report: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/anita-datar-was-the-only-american-killed-in-mali-she-was-there-to-help/2015/11/20/70e0b0aa-8fe6-11e5-ae1f-af46b7df8483_story.html From the report: “When she was in her early 20s, Anita Datar spent two years in Africa, serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal. She was on the continent again, this time in Mali, on Friday, when gunmen seized a luxury hotel and killed at least 20 people. Datar, a 41-year-old international development worker from Takoma Park, Md., is the only American known to have died in the attack.” Thanks to the National Peace Corps Association for posting this on their Facebook page, where I first read about it.

Peace Corps Volunteers and Staff Safe in Mali

Nov 20 2015

From Peace Corps Twitter– “All Peace Corps Mali Volunteers and Staff are safe and accounted for. PC Mali has eyes on all Volunteers (and/or direct voice contact with them). We are in communication with the Embassy and will keep Volunteers and Staff updated of the security situation in Bamako.” There is a Peace Corps contingent in Mali. From the Peace Corps website: http://www.peacecorps.gov/volunteer/learn/wherepc/africa/mali/ “There are 39 Peace Corps Volunteers in Mali working with their communities on projects in community economic development and health. During their service in Mali, Volunteers learn to speak local languages, including Bambara, French, Malinke, Minianka, and Senoufou. More than 2,645 Peace Corps Volunteers have served in Mali since the program was established in 1971.”

More on Peace Corps Fantasies–Women in the Agency

Nov 19 2015

Dr. Geidel spends a chapter on the role of women in the early days of the agency, i.e., the ’60s. In particular she singles out associate director and also deputy director of the agency, Warren Wiggins, author (with Bill Josephson) “A Towering Task,” quoting from his speeches and from his staff meetings. She picks up lines given in talk, and comments made by men around the senior staff meetings to make her point that the Peace Corps was sexist back in the ’60s. Geidel has done her homework. She has gone to the files stored in boxes at the Kennedy Library in Boston and those old files at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. She cannot be faulted for her research. However, it the way she spins, edited, and presents her findings that I find fault with. Having been around in the ’60s, having served with women in Ethiopia, . . .

What Is IN Peace Corps Fantasies? Chapter by Chapter

Nov 17 2015

Dr. Molly Geidel’s book has six chapters. The first three chapters explore how the 1960s Peace Corps “embodied a radicalized, gendered vision of modernity that linked economic integration to freedom, frontier masculinity, and global brotherhood.” (If you ever wondered why you hate academic writing, now you know.) Chapter 1 examines Peace Corps “architects’ deployment of the gendered anxieties and fantasies of postwar social science in the conception, formation, staffing, and early volunteer recruitment efforts of the agency.” The second chapter “attempts to understand how the Peace Corps inaugurated and codified new models for relating to racial and cultural others, using modernization doctrines to revise the romantic-racist vision of rebel masculinity that captured the popular imagination in the 1950s. The third chapter turns to the women in the 1960s Peace Corps, analyzing fictional texts about “Peace Corps girls” alongside memoirs and other nonfiction accounts by and about women volunteers. “Here I . . .

What Is Peace Corps Fantasies All About?

Nov 17 2015

Dr. Geidel entitled her Introduction, “The Seductive Culture of Development” taking the title from a line by Nanda Shrestha in his In the Name of Development, “Are we ever going to realize the deep wounds that the seductive culture of development leaves on us? If we ever do, what can we do to heal such wounds?” In 1962, Nanda Shrestha was in sixth-grade, Geidel tells us, quoting from Shrestha’s 1997 memoir, when the Peace Corps arrived in Nepal, bringing with them “fancy chairs, desks, and tables” to inaugurate the first U.S.,-run vocational schools in Nepal and bikas, the ideology of development.” Dr. Geidel goes onto write (on the first page of her Introduction) “bikas not only created needs it could not satisfy, but also manufactured new subjectivity and new, terrible understandings of the conditions in which he and his community live.” Shrestha’s identification of Peace Corps development ventures a source of . . .

New Academic Book Slams The Peace Corps

Nov 17 2015

We have recently received review copies of Molly Geidel new book on the Peace Corps published by the University of Minnesota Press. Within the next month or so we will be reviewing the book as well as interviewing the author. Molly Geidel is from southern Vermont. She received her BA from Brown, her masters from UMass in Boston, and her PhD from Boston University. This book is a revised version of her PhD dissertation. Dr. Geidel taught briefly at Harvard and Cornell and moved to the UK this fall where she is an assistant professor in American studies at the University of Manchester. Molly’s argues the case in her book that while in the “popular imagination of the United States to this day, it [Peace Corps] is a symbol of selfless altruism and the most successful program of John F. Kennedy’s presidency,”….in reality the “agency’s representative development ventures also legitimated . . .

Peace Corps Prep at Western Michigan University

Nov 16 2015

Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan has become one of three dozen colleges and universities around the nation–and one of only two in Michigan–to offer a Peace Corps Prep program that will build hands-on experience in the health work sector, develop leadership skills and focus on intercultural competence and service learning in healthcare settings as announced in Western News, for and about WMU faculty and staff. This Peace Corps Prep program, launched by the Peace Corps in 2007, will be offered as a minor open to students in any major at the University. WMU will be the first school in the nation to house such a program in its interdisciplinary health care program. Applications are being accepted now for the first semester in which the program will be offered. One goal of the program is to attract students from all seven degree-granting colleges at the University. The only other Michigan . . .

Peace Corps Times Looks at Women in Development

Nov 16 2015

Twice a year, Peace Corps publishes Peace Corps Times, an overview of current Peace Corps Volunteer activities around the world. The current issue, June 2015 to December 2015, focuses on “integrating and promoting gender equality in international development.” It is well written and worth reading. In a few weeks, Peace Corps will be publishing its Annual Performance and Accountability Report FY 2015. I find it interesting to compare the bureaucratic jargon of previous PAR reports with the clear writing of the current Peace Corps Times. Please note: The Media Library referenced in the magazine is a collection of photos. Email library@peacecorps.gov for assistance in finding historical text documents that are not currently online. Here is the link: http://files.peacecorps.gov/multimedia/pdf/media/PCTimes_2015_07.pdf

Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) Learning About Africa

Nov 15 2015

Former Associate Director of the Peace Corps, as well as a college president and Senator from Pennsylvania, Harris Wofford, tells how Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) once told him how he (Paul) read The Heart of Darkness and declared, “I want to go there!” Well, in Sunday, November 15, 2015 New York Times Book Review, Theroux in an interview responding to the question: If you had to name one book that made you who you are today, what would it be? has this reply: “Bring ’em Back Alive, by Frank Buck which I read when I was perhaps 10, made me want to leave home, go to Africa, and take risks in the bush. It’s a children’s book, not well written and probably full of whoppers, but it got my pulse racing. My life as a writer, as a man, began when I left home and spent the next six years . . .

New books by Peace Corps writers — October 2015

Nov 11 2015

To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com, click on the book cover, the bold book title, or the publishing format you would like — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance that will help support the site and the annual Peace Corps Writers awards. • Sierra Leone: Inside the War (History and Narratives) by James Higbie (Sierra Leone 1969–73) and Bernard S. Moigula Underdown October 2014 454 pages $9.99 (Kindle) • Mata Naveena (novel) by Will Michelet [Richard Michelet Grimsrud, Jr.] (India 1965–67) Peace Corps Writers September 2015 310 pages $12.00 (paperback) •

Jon Anderson (Gabon 1974-77) Two ‘Flash’ Stories

Nov 11 2015

Jon Anderson is a liberation ecologist intent on empowering the impoverished through expanding their bundle of rights over resources; making markets work better for the poor; and linking to technical solutions and problem-solving. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in school construction in Gabon (1974 – 77) and was a rural animation volunteer in Mali in 1977. He served with USAID, USDA, FAO, the MCC (Resident Country Director for Mali) and with the private sector in the US and Africa. He has taught at both Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. One of his favorite biological processes is fermentation. This process helps him write. Almost Perfect By Jon Anderson As soon as he awoke and went downstairs, he saw a young, grubby kid at the door. Here, kids replaced telephones – they seemed to be the most frequent means of . . .

Follow Up on the GAO Report on Post PC Service Disability Benefits

Nov 09 2015

Nancy Tongue and her Health Justice for Volunteers team have been working to establish adequate post service care for Volunteers who have service connected medical problems. The GAO has issued an analysis on the benefits afforded RPCVs vs the benefits of Govermemt contractors such as State Department and USAID. Here is the first reporting we did on the issue : https://peacecorpsworldwide.org/report-from-congress-on-post-service-disability-benefits/ Now, Jonathan Pearson, National Peace Corps Association Advocate, has summarized the report. Read his commentary at: http://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/2015/11/study-examines-peace-corps-workers-comp-program/ Health Justice for Volunteers has reviewed the report and issued a response. The response points out deficiency with the data in the report. Follow the link at the bottom of Jonathan’s report to read their response.

Happy Birthday, Sarge…100 Years….Your PCVs Are Still Working Around the World

Nov 09 2015

Sarge with Colombia I, Summer of 1961

Maureen Orth (Colombia 1964-66) Writes About the Virgin Mary in National Geographic Magazine

Nov 09 2015

In its December 2015 issue National Geographic carries a cover story by Maureen Orth (Colombia 1964-66) that calls the Virgin Mary, “the most powerful woman in the world”. Award-winning journalist Orth, also a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, has been wandering the world and telling unexpected stories since her days as a PCV. In this article, she has taken a journey through some of the most famous Marian apparitions (including the alleged apparitions of Medjugorje) while mixing the stories of those who benefit from such intercession of the Virgin Mary as well as the process followed by the Church to recognize the supernatural occurrences or not. At one point in the article, Orth also includes a brief reference to the role of Mary in Islam because, although it is little known in the Muslim world, there is also a reverence for whom they also considered the holiest woman: Mary. You can read the whole story here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/virgin-mary-text

Archive - November 2015