Archive - December 2018

1
Peace Corps Budget
2
Too Old to Be a Freshman in Congress? Donna Shalala Doesn’t Care (Iran)
3
Review — LIVING LIBERIA by Robert Cherry (Liberia)
4
PCV Writer ‘Cat Person’ bad date story and her date with fame (Kenya)
5
A Writer Writes — “The Overwhelming Question” by Tony Zurlo (Nigeria)
6
Is This What PCVs Think of Trump–The New Ugly American?
7
Nigeria’s First Peace Corps Staff (Part Three)
8
Merry Christmas, Peace Corps!
9
PEACE CORPS OPERATIONS PLAN IN THE ABSENCE OF CURRENT YEAR APPROPRIATIONS
10
CorpsAfrica Event Honoring Harris Wofford–Read About It Here!
11
Peace Corps Writers’ Wives
12
Review — TO SAVE AN EMPIRE by Allan R. Gall (Turkey)
13
Nigeria’s First Peace Corps Staff (Part Two)
14
Welcome to Wanzuzu PCVs!
15
Nigeria’s, First Peace Corps Staff

Too Old to Be a Freshman in Congress? Donna Shalala Doesn’t Care (Iran)

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Bea Hogan (Uzbekistan 1992-94)  Too Old to Be a Freshman in Congress? Donna Shalala Doesn’t Care By Emily Cochrane Washington Post, December 30, 2018 WASHINGTON — The Georgetown waterfront apartment where Donna Shalala has spent part of the last two decades is half sanctuary, half résumé. There is a signed photo of Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, walking with Ms. Shalala when both were in Bill Clinton’s cabinet. A gold coffee table is adorned with the visages of the kings of Persia, a reminder of her time in pre-revolutionary Iran as a Peace Corps volunteer. Against a bookshelf a set of golf clubs rests in a bag emblazoned with the trademark orange and green “U” from the University of Miami, the 17,000-student private institution where she was president until 2015. The shoulder bag left on a chair by the door with a different seal . . .

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Review — LIVING LIBERIA by Robert Cherry (Liberia)

  Living Liberia: Laughter, Love & Folly by Robert Cherry (Liberia1965–67) Living Liberia August 2017 $15.00 (paperback), $9.50 (Kindle) Reviewed by D.W. Jefferson (El Salvador 1974-76 and Costa Rica 1976-77). • Liberia is a fascinating little country. Founded by former slaves from the U.S., it is the oldest republic in Africa. This and much more I learned from reading Living Liberia by Robert Cherry. The primary narrative of this book tells the story of the author’s return visit to Liberia and his former Peace Corps site in 1982, 14 years after his service there from 1966-68. But it is also a memoir of his Peace Corps years serving as a teacher in an elementary school in the small, rural village of Kpaytuo. The author, a former journalist as well as a teacher, gives us a good deal of background about Liberian history along the way. Thus the book is a great resource . . .

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PCV Writer ‘Cat Person’ bad date story and her date with fame (Kenya)

  Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Dick Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64)   “Cat Person” writer Kristen Roupenian By Meredith Goldstein GLOBE STAFF DECEMBER 30, 2018 • Last December, writer Kristen Roupenian was sitting at Cultivate, a coffee shop in Michigan, with her girlfriend of a few months. It had been a big year for the Plymouth native, who’d finished her master of fine arts at the University of Michigan in April. Her short story “Cat Person ” had been accepted by The New Yorker (the dream of many aspiring fiction writers) and was now up on the magazine’s website. Just then Roupenian’s girlfriend, writer Callie Collins, checked her phone. Something strange was happening. “She used to work in publishing so she has more of a finger on the literary pulse than I do, and she looked up and was like, ‘Something is going on with your story.’ ’’ What was happening was that Roupenian’s . . .

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A Writer Writes — “The Overwhelming Question” by Tony Zurlo (Nigeria)

  The Overwhelming Question By Tony Zurlo (Nigeria 1963-65) • I grab the butt-ends of coffee spoons, roll up the bottoms of my trousers, drag my red wheel barrel along the shore, and dig for salt-washed shells tossed onto the sand; waves slap the shore, codes from lonely mermaids’ whispering. whistling winds from woods nearby wrinkles on the moon thirteen blackbirds observing. flashes from another world pillows of gray sky ancient gnarled oaks cast shadows. tear-drops squeezed from willow trees maelstrom of colors La Mer’s quarreling white caps Singing dolphins’ lure me out to dance. Leaves of grass float past effortlessly. Yes! the brain is wider than the sky and I dare disturb the universe, incite another Big Bang, hurl stars and spin the moon like a top; hunt white whales with Ahab in the South Pacific. • This poem originally appeared at andreazurlo.wixsite.com/andreazurlo/blog   Tony Zurlo (Nigeria 1963-65) is . . .

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Nigeria’s First Peace Corps Staff (Part Three)

The administrative pattern for the Peace Corps in Nigeria was filled out for the first year with the arrival of Jacques Wilmore in April, 1962. Wilmore was promptly posted to Enugu as Field Officer for the Eastern Region. With no prospect in sight for the office at Kaduna in the Northern Region, this post was, in effect, assigned to Robert Baker, the contract overseas representative for UCLA, known by Volunteers as COR. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Wilmore went to work in a men’s clothing store after graduating from high school and while waiting to turn 18 so he could join the Army. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps six months before the end of the war in 1945 and wound up a staff sergeant with an engineering battalion in the Philippines. Discharged just before Christmas, 1946, he returned home and entered Lincoln University where, in 1950, he obtained . . .

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PEACE CORPS OPERATIONS PLAN IN THE ABSENCE OF CURRENT YEAR APPROPRIATIONS

This plan is dated December 18, 2018. Here is the most important statement: “The agency has, therefore, determined that the Peace Corps is not required during a lapse in appropriated funding to take any action to evacuate Volunteers and return them to their homes of record. The Director has determined that all Peace Corps U.S. direct hire and FSN employees overseas are reasonably necessary for the protection of human life and property and, in particular, are required to ensure the health, safety and security of currently serving Volunteers.” Read the entire plan, here: https://files.peacecorps.gov/documents/open-government/Peace_Corps_Operations_Plan_in_the_Absence_of_Appropriations.pdf Everyone is urged to read the whole plan.  It would not be appropriate, in my opinion, to excerpt sections as the whole plan has to be considered in its entirety.  However, the above statement, again in my opinion, does answer the most important question about the immediate impact on serving Volunteers.

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CorpsAfrica Event Honoring Harris Wofford–Read About It Here!

Check out the Program for Monday, December 17, 2018 & Watch Video of CorpsAfrica Volunteers Program: https://issuu.com/corpsafrica/docs/harris_wofford_booklet_for_issuu Video: https://youtu.be/jLbzfRiz9os. More photos at: https://www.flickr.com/gp/68558103@N05/08S9 Liz Fanning (Morocco 1993-95) Founder & Director Cors Africa Read about the remarkable CorpsAfrica Volunteers in Morocco, Senegal, Malawi and Rwanda, and follow their adventure on the Volunteer blog, here. CFC #41180 Liz Fanning Mobile: (212) 831-5457 Email: lfanning@corpsafrica.org Skype: lizfanning Mailing address: P.O. Box 5414 – Washington, DC 20016 Website: www.corpsafrica.org

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Review — TO SAVE AN EMPIRE by Allan R. Gall (Turkey)

To Save an Empire: A Novel of Ottoman Allan R. Gall (Turkey 1962-64) Allan R. Gall – publisher 426 pages March, 2018 $14.99 (paperback), $7.99 (Kindle)   Reviewed by Robert E. Hamilton (Ethiopia 1965–67) • If, like me, you have been unfortunate enough not to have lived in Turkey for eight years, as Dr. Allan Gall did, then you may want to supplement your reading of To Save an Empire: A Novel of Ottoman History by watching the 36 video lectures of Ottoman history (Great Courses DVD) by Professor Kenneth W. Harl of Tulane University.  Or, read selected portions of Douglas Howard, The History of Turkey (second edition, 2016) and Thomas Maddan’s Istanbul (2016).  All three supplements were available to me through my local library.  These resources helped me understand the context of Gall’s novel, which only covers the seven-year period from 1876 to 1883. Why did Allan Gall focus . . .

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Nigeria’s First Peace Corps Staff (Part Two)

By the time John Todd arrived in November to conduct a school survey of the Eastern Region, the Michelmore incident was closed. Born in Austin, Texas, raised in Memphis, Tenn., Todd graduated from McKinley Technical High School in Washington, D.C. in 1940, just in time for the war. Trained in Texas as an aerial navigator, he flew 36 combat missions over Europe before he was sent back to Texas an athletic officer for the Central Flying Training Command, before he returned to Europe as squadron navigator for the 33rd Fighter Group (P-51s). He married his childhood sweetheart, Frances Atkinson of Washington. “The war was over. I was young with no particular plans. They were asking people to extend their terms of service so I just stayed in for another year—at Neubiberg air base outside Munich.” Later he would serve in Korea and when after that war, in 1956, he received . . .

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Nigeria’s, First Peace Corps Staff

William E. Hintz of Milwaukee, Wis., was the first overseas staffer ever hired by the Peace Corps. On April 17. 1961, Hintz received a telephone call from John Alexander, a former ICA colleague who was then Peace Corps Regional Director for Africa. Alexander wanted to know if Hintz could be in Nigeria four days hence to carry out a school survey. “Can I think it over?” Hintz asked. “Sure Alexander replied, “for about 30 seconds.” Hintz later reported that “I didn’t actually make it to Nigeria until the 28th of April. But I did the survey.” On May 26, Brent Ashabranner was designated Acting Representative in Nigeria, and Hintz became Acting Deputy Representative. On July 15, he returned to Milwaukee to wind up his affairs and to welcome an adopted daughter, Joy, a Korean orphan, obtained through the famed auspices of Oregon farmer Harry Holt. Four days later, at 10 . . .

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