January 18, 2016 – Peace Corps Worldwide

I Was Raped in Burkina Faso

Jan 18 2016

Jezebel is a feminist blog. This piece by RPCV Yaara Zaslow was published on the site a few days ago. It is a profound and powerful account of what happened to her in Burkina Faso. It is also a sad story of what can happen to women in the Peace Corps. I’d served in Burkina Faso in West Africa with the United States Peace Corps. I was raped, and because I did everything “right” afterwards-I talked to the Peace Corps, talked to the Embassy, completed a rape kit-I didn’t understand the nausea that came over me whenever I did anything aside from hide in my bed. Soon after, I was evacuated from the country with a canvas backpack and a change of clothes. I stayed home, in Seattle, for three months, while the Peace Corps did a full investigation. In this investigation, the Peace Corps noted the three broken locks . . .

Peggy Anderson, 77, author of bestseller NURSE, died Sunday, January 17, 2016

Jan 18 2016

Peggy Anderson (Togo 1962-64) who wrote a national best-seller about the life of a big-city hospital nurse, died Sunday, January 17, 2017. Ms. Anderson, a former Inquirer writer and copy editor, was in Penn Medicine’s hospice unit in Center City. She had been diagnosed with lung cancer nearly seven years ago. It went into remission, but returned last year and spread, said Mary Walton, a longtime friend. In 1978, Ms. Anderson achieved great success with her book Nurse: The True Story of Mary Benjamin, R.N. Ms. Anderson, whose mother was a nurse, spent two months trying to find someone who would best serve as the focus of her book. That person turned out to be Mary Fish, who was a head nurse at Pennsylvania Hospital. Fish agreed, but was skeptical that readers would care. “This book isn’t going to go anywhere,” she recalled thinking at the time. “Nobody is going to . . .

Archive - January 18, 2016