The Peace Corps

MY LIFE IN THE LAND OF THE ETERNAL SPRING: THE COFFEE PLANTATION BY Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971-73) Though I had lived and worked in Guatemala for seven years, it was a brief encounter with my young daughter, Michelle, on the San Francisco Miramar coffee plantation, perched on the side of the Volcano Atitlan that would determine my direction in life. It was a few days before Christmas, and I was strolling through the “Big House” when I came upon her in the living room. She stood, her feet planted on the orange tile floor, hugging her new Airedale puppy, Tiky, and gazing with wonder at the Christmas tree twinkling with colored lights and filled with handmade decorations. Below the tree, a number of brightly wrapped packages sat in contrast to the stark white walls. On the wall was a number of photographs of my wife’s family members It was . . .

  Dear Folks, As a matter of fact, Christmas was quite merry this year, even without snow. Friday, Phil, Mr. Rowat, Bernie, and I went out in search of a tree. What we were looking for was not a Eucalyptus tree or a false banana tree but for a more symmetric and Christmasy cedar, and sure enough down on the banks of the Gogeb River we found a prime candidate. We lost little time hacking it down with our stone-age ax but were startled when along came some village folks who wondered what we were up to. Phil being more quick-witted than the rest of us, and more fluent in the local dialect said we were taking it to help welcome the Provincial Governor who just happened to be coming for an annual visit the next day. Well, that made perfect sense all around, and we gleefully hauled off the . . .

An RPCV who went to Ethiopia with the first group in 1962 and is now living in a retirement community in DC. “I’m preparing to go to bed.  In comes Rahel, an Ethiopian nurse, to take my temperature and other vital measures.  While she’s here, she’s joined by Asnaku, Ethiopian, who has come to get out my PJS and reorder my clothes.  Then she is joined by Melat, the youngest of the Ethiopian caregivers, who not only helps Asnaku but also takes out my laundry for pick up overnight. Melat is a graduate of BarDahr University.  Great service.” A PCV story that has come full circle.

HUFFPOST PERSONAL I Joined A Far-Right Group Of Moms. What I Witnessed Was Frightening. Phoebe Cohen has walked many paths in life, including living in the Gobi Desert as a Peace Corps volunteer and working as a paramedic in several states. Cohen’s work has been featured in Graphic Medicine, Mutha Magazine and BorderX. She regularly posts on her website Merry Misandrist. Cohen is a part-time cartoonist, writer and nursing student. She has been known to go up to five hours without coffee. By  Phoebe Cohen (Mongolia 2005-07), Guest Writer   “There are about 20 of us. We are all maskless, all (apparently) white, mostly women and all on the younger side.” “Look out for the trigger words,” the woman says. She’s perched on a chair in front of the room. She’s well-dressed yet funky with elegant boots, a demure sweater and some colorful jewelry. “‘Equality,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘inclusion,’ ‘marginalization,’… These words . . .

First published on this site on Dec 22, 2020 My First Christmas in Africa by Mark Wentling by Mark Wentling (Honduras 1967-69 & Togo 1970-73) This holiday season has me reminiscing again about my first Christmas in Africa. As I stare blankly out the window I am transported back to 1970 and my humble room in the Adjakpo family compound in the village of Agu-Gadzapé, Togo. After three months of living there as a Peace Corps Volunteer and learning how to fit in where I would never really fit, the Christmas season was upon us and I began raising questions about what to do for Christmas. Everybody in our congested compound, which was always vibrantly alive with people doing their daily chores and what they had to do to survive the poverty that engulfed them so profoundly, liked the idea of doing something to celebrate Christmas. But, they all said . . .

  Here’s another look at Tanzania in the novel An African Season, written by Leonard Levitt (Tanzania 1963-65) that tells the better side of the Peace Corps in Africa. SARGENT SHRIVER WROTE about An African Season, The first book which truly conveys the flavor of Peace Corps work, the realities of it, the challenges, the frustrations . . .. An extraordinarily fine book. Levitt’s book is about his one year in rural Tanganyika, as the nation was called at the time. Levitt was a secondary school teacher in Ndumulu School in Mbeya, and his book is a wonderful look at Tanganyika in its last days of British colonial rule. The nation would become Tanzania in 1964 when Tanganyika joined with the island of Zanzibar. It is also worth reading for Levitt’s clear eye for details and telling incidents. Here are his first impressions on arriving in up-country Tanganyika. Levitt arrived late at night in . . .

by Tricia L. Nadolny, Donovan Slack, Nick Penzenstadler and Kizito Makoye Published in USA TODAY – 12/21/21 DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — An American Peace Corps employee in Tanzania in 2019 killed a mother of three and injured two others in a series of car crashes that began after he left a bar where he had been drinking and brought a sex worker back to his government-leased home. Witnesses pelted the man’s car with rocks and pursued on motorcycles as he fled the scenes of his crimes. The chaotic and deadly episode ended when he slammed into a pole and was detained by police. But within hours, Peace Corps and U.S. Embassy staff rushed the man onto a plane and out of the country. Tanzanian authorities were unable to charge him first, and the U.S. Department of Justice later declined to file criminal charges because of a lack of jurisdiction. The man . . .

John Garamendi (Ethiopia 1966-68) joins senators in calling for the inclusion of Peace Corps volunteers in student loan forgiveness By NICK SESTANOVICH December 20, 2021  With the U.S. Department of Education announcing further steps toward student loan forgiveness, Rep. John Garamendi, D-Solano, was one of the lead signatories in a letter calling upon the education secretary to include Peace Corps volunteers in these changes. Garamendi, co-chair of the Congressional Peace Corps Caucus and the only returned Peace Corps volunteer in the House of Representatives, joined Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, both Democrats from Maryland, in writing a bicameral letter to U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona in response to a new temporary waiver period for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program that was announced back in October. During this period, some borrowers will be allowed to receive credit toward student loan forgiveness for periods of public service that would . . .

First published on our site Dec 21, 2020 by Jeanne D’Haem (Somalia 1968-70)   On Christmas Eve my family gathered at my grandmother’s house on Jane Street in Detroit, Michigan. Her Christmas tree glittered with multicolored bubble lights. The uncles sat in the small living room, my aunts and grandmother tasted and talked in the kitchen. Cousins played with the wooden blocks and the Indian doll in the wooden toy box in the den. Sometimes there were new babies to hold. I was 22 the first time I could not attend, as I was a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Somalia, and  I wanted to at least send a Christmas gift to Grandma Carter. Newspaper cones of tea, alcohol for the tilly lamps, or the blue and green patterned cloth for sale in my village did not seem worth sending across two oceans. However, when my neighbor showed me what she . . .

First Volunteers to Ethiopia in 1962 sing Christmas carols for the Emperor   MERRY CHRISTMAS  

Hitch hiking Across America, a novel by Daniel Robinson (Venezuela 1966-68) Atmosphere Press 274 pages October 2021 $7.99 (Kindle); $18.99 (Paperback)         Nick is a nineteen-year-old college student at UC Berkeley who quits his Lake Tahoe summer job to see America and meet Americans, face-to-face, hitching rides from Tahoe to Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, New York City, and points in-between. He witnesses Jim Crow segregation in the South. He meets Yvonne, the daughter of a Palm Beach socialite. He learns something unexpected about his mother from his Aunt Rose’s family photo album. World War II vets pick him up and tell him about their war experience and how it affects their current lives. He meets Oliver, a civil rights activist in Mississippi, and Gina, an aspiring Olympic swimmer, and Lorena, an aging silent film star in Palm Springs. He consoles Rosa, a young Mexican woman who . . .

– By Michael Tashji, Santa Fe New Mexican Dec 12, 2021 – Clockwise from top left: Mary Jo Lundy was a Peace Corps volunteer from 1962-64 in Borneo. Angelina Catling was a volunteer from 2012-14 in Samoa, where she taught English literacy and worked in community development. Jennifer Day met her husband, Melvin Perez Martinez, while she was a Peace Corps volunteer from 1999-2001 in Honduras, where she taught environmental education. Jamie Torres taught English and HIV awareness in 2015-17 in Namibia. Photos: Jim Weber/The New Mexican – Children in Borneo in the 1960s were admitted into school when they were old enough to reach their arm over their head and touch the top of their ear. “If you were older than [5 or 6], it reaches farther, and if you were younger, it didn’t quite come that far,” said Mary Jo Lundy, 81. “There was no birth certificate.” The . . .

  Please note: This article was posted on the Peace Corps website on December 2nd.  They are accepting comments until Thursday, December 16th.  Please accept my apology for the late posting. Here is the link: https://www.peacecorps.gov/news/library/peace-corps-seeks-public-input-as-agency-develops-roadmap-to-strengthen-its-sexual-assault-risk-reduction-and-response-program/ Here is the notice: Peace Corps Seeks Public Input as Agency Develops Roadmap to Strengthen its Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Response Program December 2, 2021 Today, the Peace Corps announced the next phase of its work to strengthen the agency’s Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Response (SARRR) program. From December 2 to December 16, the public is invited to submit input and feedback about the Peace Corps’ efforts to enhance systems that support sexual assault risk mitigation and provide care to survivors. Following the release of the 2021 Sexual Assault Advisory Council (SAAC) report in November, Peace Corps leadership is conducting a comprehensive review of the recommendations outlined in the report and preparing . . .