The Peace Corps

  Breaking the mold: How Beyond Good is reinventing the chocolate business   Building a chocolate factory has been part of Tim McCollum’s  (Madagascar 1999-2011) plan since he founded Beyond Good, formerly Madécasse, in 2008. On its own that’s not an easy feat, but the location for the company’s first state-of-the-art production facility added another layer of difficulty. Beyond Good set up shop in Madagascar, where it sources rare, wonderfully fruity Criollo cacao directly from farmers. Though Africa — West Africa, in particular — supplies 70 percent of the world’s cocoa, the “statistical equivalent of 0 percent” of the world’s chocolate is produced there, McCollum says. There are several reasons for that, ranging from a lack of infrastructure, the need to ship and install manufacturing equipment, employee training, and ultimately, the distribution of profits. “They all add up to it being a very difficult proposition,” McCollum says. “But creating serious value . . .

    Guss, Felix, and Jim Upshaw founded the community of County Line in the 1870s in northwest Nacogdoches County, in deep East Texas.  As with hundreds of other relatively autonomous black communities created at that time, the Upshaws sought a safe place to raise their children and create a livelihood during Reconstruction and Jim Crow Texas. In the late 1980s photographer, Richard Orton visited County Line for the first time and became aware of a world he did not know existed as a white man.  He met some remarkable people there who changed his life. The more than 50 duotone photographs and text convey the contemporary experience of growing up in a “freedom colony.” Covering a period of twenty-five years, photographer Richard Orton juxtaposes his images with text from people who grew up in and have remained connected to their birthplace.  Thad Sitton’s foreword sets the community in historical . . .

  Strange Beauty of the World: Poems Bill Preston (Thailand 1977–80) Peace Corps Writers 148 pages August 2018 $14.00 (paperback), $9.99 (Kindle)   Reviewed by Peter V. Deekle (Iran 1968–70) Bill Preston (Thailand, 1977-1980) began his professional encounter with his native language, English, during his Peace Corps TEFL assignment, as did this reviewer. But Bill continued his formal engagement with English well beyond Peace Corps. This engagement has strengthened his expertise as a writer and poet. Strange Beauty of the World is a collection both personal and universal in its appeal, organized in broad sections of Bill’s experience and recollections. The universality of each poem enables the reader to find a unique voice and vision of the expressed sentiments and events. Regardless of style and form (mostly extended narrative forms, but a few, often playful, rhyming) the poems seem to this reviewer both appropriate to the themes and evocative of each subject’s meaning. . . .

  Mark Twain, Detective by Joseph Peter Theroux (Western Samoa 1975 – 78) Self Published 212 pages June 2020 $10.00 (paperback), $0.00 (Kindle)   Reviewed by Sue Hoyt Aiken (Ethiopia 1962-64)  • The author provides a look back to a period of history involving famous good guys and the famous not so good guys.  The Editors Note: Introductory is as interesting as the story itself leaving the reader eager to unearth more about Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson and the whole sugar-dominating force, the Speckles’ family. Their flamboyance is in stark contrast to the undercurrent of trafficking in human souls, opium and more. The mystery unfolds and plays out in Hawaii in the late 1800s when Twain sails to Hawaii to give a lecture. While a pandemic supposedly prevented him from coming ashore to deliver the lecture, materials later discovered would say otherwise. Did he join Lloyd Osborne, did he witness the Georgia . . .

  Woven: A Peace Corps Adventure Spun with Faith, Laughter, and Love Nancy Heil Knor (Belize 1989-91) Peace Corps Writers November 5, 2019 322 pages $12.95 (paperback)   • Talking with Nancy Heil Knor (Belize), author of Woven an interview by Marian Haley Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64) Nancy, where and when did you serve in the Peace Corps? I had the privilege of serving in the village of San Pedro Columbia in Belize, Central America, from 1989–1991. I loved it! The village is inhabited by K’ekchi Mayan families who are mostly subsistence farmers. When I lived there, the population was about 1,000 people; it was one of the larger Mayan villages in the southernmost district of Belize. What was your Peace Corps project assignment? Originally, I was sent to the village to teach the villagers how to plant carrots in order to increase their intake of Vitamin A. Vitamin A helps prevent vision . . .

  You Know You Want This: “Cat Person” and Other Stories by Kristen Roupenian (Kenya 2003-05) Gallery/Scout Press 240 pages January 2019 $10.99 (hardcover), $14.99 (paperback), $11.99 (Kindle) • “Cat Person’s” author’s bad-date story and her date with fame By Meredith Goldstein Boston Globe December 29, 2018, 7:13 p.m.    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 . . .

    Rowland Scherman was the Peace Corps’ first photographer beginning in 1961 traveling around the world documenting Volunteer’s lives and work. He was just beginning his career working for the Peace Corps as a photojournalist when the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) handed him an assignment in August of 1963: A civil rights march, they said. In Washington. Scherman didn’t realize that he’d been assigned to cover one of the most monumental events in U.S. history. But there was a catch: the photos wouldn’t belong to him, they would belong to USIA, whose purpose was to use media to help improve the United States’ image abroad. Nevertheless, he did his duty faithfully at the March on Washington on that hot August day, capturing the sandwich-makers and the children who arrived with their parents on school buses, as well as the celebrities who spoke from the podium. He shot from the top . . .

  THE PAUL COWAN NON-FICTION AWARD, first given 1990, was named to honor Paul Cowan, a Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Ecuador from 1966 to 1967. Cowan wrote ≈ about his time as a Volunteer in Latin America in the ’60s. A longtime activist and political writer for The Village Voice, Cowan died of leukemia in 1988.     Race across America: Eddie Gardner and the Great Bunion Derbies by Charles B. Kastner (Seychelles 1980-82) Syracuse University Press 360 pages December 2019 $75.00 (hard cover), $29.95 (paperback), $16.17 (Kindle)   On April 23, 1929, the second annual Transcontinental Foot Race across America, known as the Bunion Derby, was in its twenty-fifth day. Eddie “the Sheik” Gardner, an African American runner from Seattle, was leading the race across the Free Bridge over the Mississipi River. Along with the signature outfit that earned him his nick name white towel tied around his head, white shorts, and a . . .

  How Volunteers over 50 learned the news and are feeling about it now By David Jarmul (Moldova 2016-18) nextavenue.com August 14, 2020   To do something meaningful Kamana Mathur (Nepal), who’s in her early 60s, had just arrived at her Peace Corps post in Nepal shortly before the end of her training when she was told she needed to return home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first time in its history, the Peace Corps was evacuating its volunteers worldwide. “I was busy chatting with my host family,” Mathur recalled. “Then my colleague called and told me we had to leave. I said, ‘You know, I just sat down to lunch.’” Mathur had left her federal job in Hawaii, she said, “to reinvent myself to do something really meaningful at this point in my life.” During her Peace Corps training in the Himalayas, she’d studied the local language and culture, used . . .

  August 13, 2020 Walter Carrington, former United States Ambassador to Nigeria and Senegal, has died at the age of 90 according to a statement by his wife, Arese Carrington, “It is with a heavy and broken heart but with gratitude to God for his life of selfless humanity that I announce the passing of my beloved husband Walter Carrington, former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria and Senegal. Further announcements will be made shortly,” she said. According to her, Walter was a loving husband, father, grandfather, cousin, uncle, friend and in-law. “Ralph Waldo Emerson said . . .. It is not the length of life but the depth of life. Walter was fortunate, his life had both length and depth,” she said.   Carrington was born in 1930. He served as the US Ambassador to Senegal from 1980 to 1981. He was appointed by US President Bill Clinton in 1993 as . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Steven Boyd Saum (Ukraine 1994–96)   As the senior director of product at The Atlantic, I oversee the end-to-end story experience, from authoring tools and article page templates to reader-facing touchpoints across all platforms. Previously, as the head of product at HuffPost, I led strategic planning and oversaw the development roadmap for all of HuffPost’s digital products in the U.S. I grew the product team from one to four and coordinated with leaders throughout HuffPost’s newsroom, business, engineering and design teams to launch the brand’s first membership program, HuffPost Plus, and to deliver improvements to the reader experience on all platforms. Before HuffPost, as the mobile product manager for The Wall Street Journal, I oversaw feature development for our mobile apps, including virtual reality storytelling and a significant redesign of the iOS and Android apps that introduced personalized content in a dedicated “MyWSJ” section. . . .

from the Peace Corps   The Peace Corps welcomes Dr. Darlene Grant to her new role as senior advisor to Director Jody Olsen. In this role, Dr. Grant will work with agency leadership to increase and champion a diverse staff and volunteer corps. She will make recommendations aimed at increasing inclusiveness, removing barriers for underrepresented groups, and creating a more just and equitable Peace Corps. Dr. Grant’s path to the Peace Corps began after 18 years as a professor of social work at the University of Texas at Austin. There, she taught graduate and undergraduate courses in social justice, clinical practice, research methodology, and working with at-risk youth. She directed funded research projects focusing on juvenile probation, teen pregnancy prevention, and the domestic violence experiences of incarcerated women. Dr. Grant was named 2006 Social Worker of the Year by the National Association of Social Workers. In 2009, she took a . . .

  Australia is a country of superlatives, a land of “Wows.” Journey with explorer and author Steve Kaffen “Down Under,” through vast, geographically diverse, culturally rich, and extremely scenic Australia, the only country that is also a continent. Using 500 original photos accompanied by vivid descriptions and observations, the author captures in colorful detail the country’s naturally beautiful places, energetic cities with distinct personalities, thriving animal and sea life, historical sites, and multiple cultures including Aboriginal cultures dating back thousands of years. The coverage includes Sydney’s heralded New Year’s Eve celebration, the renowned Australia Zoo and its Wildlife Hospital, the Great Barrier Reef, the interior Outback, the Great Ocean Road, Australian Open tennis, and wine-tasting in South and Western Australia near Perth. Sufficiently detailed to plan a comprehensive visit to Australia’s far corners and deep interior, and lots of fun to read and enjoy. • Australia: Adventures and Encounters (Travel . . .