Kristin Ruger, who served in Kazakhstan,  just received her Master’s Degree in Peace Studies and while it hasn’t (yet!) enabled her to get a job, it has helped her understand why “nations and people do the crazy things they do to each other.” Kristin currently lives, she writes, “with the woman of her dreams, whom she met while in the Peace Corps, and is currently searching for the ultimate brownie recipe.” Here is what Kristin has to say as she looks back at her Peace Corps career in Kazakhstan.

•

Kitchen Diplomacy

by Kristin Ruger (Kazahkstan 2005-07)

Very early into my Peace Corps training period in Kazakhstan, I got into the habit of walking through Qapshygay with my friend Greg. Qapshygay has seen better days.  Although it is a “recreation zone” due to its proximity to a huge man-made resevoir, the main industry of the area had closed since independence, and unemployment was extremely high. Poverty is part of everyday life, and so is the crime and violence that accompanies poverty. But kids in Qapshygay loved to talk to us, and would follow us around the town shouting questions at us. One day we met a girl named Aisul playing with her sister, surrounded by discarded, used syringes and broken alcohol bottles in a pretty depressing playground. She asked us all the normal questions kids ask us in their limited English, and we exhausted our limited Russian. We discussed school, teachers, America, family and Britney Spears before deciding to return her to her home. As we neared her house, her father was out front, and I was nervous, thinking he was upset because it was so late. I was shocked to find that he been waiting outside to invite us up to his house for tea. I looked at my watch- it was almost eleven at night, but he insisted, so up we went.  To my horror, he woke his very pregnant wife who lumbered to the kitchen and began putting out a feast that would feed fifteen or more people.Out came the family photo albums along with tea, coffee, salads, bread, soup, meats, candies and cakes. By the time we left, maybe three hours later, I had made friends with a local family, had some local food, and improved my Russian. This spontaneous offering of food would happen, again and again, throughout my time in Kazakhstan. People who seemed to have almost nothing would constantly shock me with their generosity and hospitality. Over the next two years I would drink gallons of tea and eat hundreds candies and cookies- partly because of the Islamic emphasis on hospitality, partly Soviet-inspired ideals of community, but mostly because of the curiosity that people have about Americans. I would explain for the 600th time that it IS possible to survive as a vegetarian and respond to their anger about the war in Iraq. And I would attempt to explain why a person with a University degree would volunteer to come to a foreign country without a (substantial) paycheck. Mostly, I would learn about their culture, their histories, and the stories of their families that would replace, in my mind, what the history books said about life “behind the Iron Curtain”. Yes, life in America is more comfortable- even lower-income Americans have a standard of living that most people around the world can only dream of. But when I think of those two years, I don’t think of having to wash my clothes in the bathtub, or the frequent power outages. I think instead of the kindness shown to me by unemployed, struggling strangers who wanted to share their culture and open their homes and their lives to me, even at eleven o’clock at night.

Michael Levy (China 2005-07) today is a teacher at the expensive and fancy St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire. His writing has appeared in Adbusters, In These Times, and the Forward and will be featured in an upcoming anthology of writing from Peace Corps Volunteers, Peace Corps at Fifty: Anniversary Story Collection.

I heard about his memoir of China entitled, Kosher Dog Meat and emailed him about his book. Here’s what he had to say.

Mike, where are you from?

I was born in Chicago, Illinois a few blocks from Wrigley Field.  My family moved to Philly shortly before my Bar Mitzvah, so I now have split loyalties.  A Cubs-Phillies playoff series is on my list of nightmares; I would be crushed either way. I went to college at Cornell, graduating in 1998. Ithaca is Gorges.

Why did you join the Peace Corps in the first place?

Ah. . .  a bit of a long story.  I was dating a lovely young lady and living in Philly, and asked if she wanted to marry me.  Her response, after a pause, was “Why would we do that?”  My response, after a pause, was “well. . .  maybe we could do Peace Corps together?”  With that as incentive, she agreed, so we flew off to Vegas and got married by an Elvis impersonator.  We started the Peace Corps paper work the next day, and headed to China six months later.

We did not ask for China.  For a while, it looked like we were heading to Romania to teach vampires.  But at the last minute, China opened, and we were extremely excited.  I feel lucky to have had the assignment, but would have happily served wherever I was needed.

Where were you in China?

In Guiyang, the capital city of China’s poorest province.  We lived about 30 minutes from the center of this second-tier Chinese city, a city that many Chinese hadn’t even heard of (though it was a city of some 3 million people).  My primary responsibility was teaching at the provincial university, a massive school of more than 40,000 students.  My secondary project was teaching English in a small village that was primarily inhabited by the Bouyi people, one of China’s 54 officially recognized ethnic minorities.

You were writing before you joined the Peace Corps?

I was not writing before joining the Peace Corps.  The memoir sort of fell out of the sky– I was blogging like a maniac, and a buddy of mine (David Sirota, an established writer) forwarded my blog to his agent, Will Lippincott.  Will liked what he read, contacted me, and asked if I was thinking of turning the work into a manuscript.  The idea had occurred to me, but in the same way the idea of becoming the Chicago Cubs center fielder occurred to me when I was playing catch with my brother in middle-school: it was a dream and not much more.

With Dave and Will’s encouragement, however, I began the long process of crafting a book pitch.  This took almost a year.  I am forever indebted to Dave for passing the blog along, and to my Will for believing in the project.  It takes a village, I suppose.

My friends in China would understand this process, which was based, in part, on what they call guanxi (or “connections”).  Guanxi determines everything in western China; talent and hard work are largely irrelevant.  If you know the right person, things go in your favor. If not. . .  well, better luck in your next life.  Publishing doesn’t seem quite this bad, but it’s hard not to be a bit cynical.

The book is still not finished.  The manuscript should be in near final form by year’s end.  It will be a year after that before it’s on the shelves.  The book and publishing world is opaque to me, and I’m leaning heavily on more experienced writers and friends in the field to guide me through the process.

What are you doing now?

After returning from China, I jumped right back into the classroom. I’m teaching Humanities at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire.  I’ve got educational whiplash:  I went from teaching the poorest kids on earth to the richest.  Writing and teaching at the same time is. . .  challenging.  I love both jobs, but I think I’m developing an ulcer.

What’s with this Jewish thing?

I’m what you might call a Jon Stewart Jew: it’s definitely a big part of who I am, but at the end of the day, religion is a source of humor for me.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be an “out” Jew in China.  I had no idea how the topic of religion would be received, and I was wary–as are all PCVs–of appearing to be anything like a missionary.

I figured religion wouldn’t come up at all, and I thought this was for the best.  Marx called religion the “opiate of the masses,” after all, and Chairman Mao labeled religion one of the “Four Olds,” a category meant for destruction.

But the Jewish holidays ended up being real sources of comfort for me while I was far from home, and my students and Chinese colleges were bizarrely fascinated by my religious practice.  Their fascination may have had something to do with the fact that shortly before I arrived at site, a book titled How To Make Money Like The Jews became a national best-seller.  A lot of my students would come to my office with dog-eared copies and ask me for my “secrets.”  I was, as far as I know, one of only two Jews in Guizhou Province (an area about the size of Missouri with a population larger than California’s), so I got to play Head Rabbi.  Judaism ended up at the heart of my experience.

Have you been to Israel?

Indeed, I have been to Israel.  I lived there for about a year after college, studying in a Yeshiva (which is something like a Jewish seminary, though it doesn’t necessarily end with any sort of degree or ordination).  I guess I’m a bit more than a Jon Stewart Jew.

There is no way to compare my feelings from Israel to my feelings from China.  In Israel, I felt spiritually at ease for the only time in my life. It felt like home. In China, I felt totally alien. Strangely enough, however, I think there are a lot of similarities between Jews and Chinese. Both cultures are laid-back, uninterested in etiquette, obsessed with food and wine, and based on filial piety. Jewish and Chinese grandmothers were cut from the same cloth, that’s for sure.

If you hadn’t been a Jew, but simply a westerner in China, would your experience been different? Would you have felt differently? Or did other (non Jews) have a different experience?

That’s a tough one to answer, since–obviously– I only experienced China as a Jew.  But I can tell you about a phrase introduced to me by Anne-Marie Brady, one of the world’s foremost Chine scholars. She writes about the Chinese phrase nei wai you bie (”treat outsiders and insiders differently”), describing it as a fundamental guide of Chinese interactions with foreigners. PCVs in China will all have stories about confronting this sentiment; at times, it seemed there was no way to crack through the polite exterior shell of our hosts.

Judaism helped me crack the shell. As a Jew, I was viewed as barely American; I was associated more with Einstein and Marx than with George Bush and Christian missionaries. I often saw skepticism melt away when a new friend or colleague learned I was Jewish.

Did you keep a kosher kitchen while you were a PCV?

In our home, we were vegetarian and “kosher style.” Nothing in Guizhou was Kosher with a capital “K”, but our house was close enough. Outside of the house, however, I was neck-deep in sinful and delicious food. I ate more pork in my two-plus years in China than generations of Levys–from my father back to Moses– have eaten, combined.

Is your wife Jewish?

Becca is not Jewish. Like 1.3 billion Chinese, she is an atheist. Besides that, she’s a WASP!

How was Becca’s tour (having to live with you!)

Without Becca, I would not have survived 3 days in China. I’m dead-serious about this: had she not been there, I would have been on a plane headed back to America within a fortnight. I get homesick easily, and I don’t do well with change. So why in God’s name did I join the Peace Corps? Well, the theory was that our marriage could help us do things we could never have done on our own. And the theory proved true. Didn’t John Lenin write “love is all you need”? He was right.

Did you travel much in-country?

Constantly! Almost all of my traveling was in the far west of China, off the beaten path.  I spent a grand total of 3 days in Beijing and Shanghai, and didn’t visit the Great Wall or the Terra Cotta warriors while in Peace Corps. Instead, I spent a lot of time visiting my students in their hometowns, or heading off to see other PCVs in action at their schools.  Of all the many gifts the Peace Corps experience gave to me, the relationships I developed were by far the most important.

Tell us a little more about the book. Is it a series of stories? Journals?

Kosher Dog Meat is a memoir, but it’s really not about me. It is my attempt to bring people right into the heart of China’s heartland. I lived in Guiyang which is geographically, politically, and economically right at the dead-center of this huge country. There’s a lot of reporting on China now, but it focuses on politics in Beijing, repression on Tibet, or business in Shanghai. The only insight we get into the lives of the billion people who don’t live in these places is ambulance chaser coverage of natural disasters or riots. My students in Guiyang are invisible to most Americans. This is a major oversight, because they are typical of the vast majority of the Chinese. . .  and if we don’t come to some sort of understanding of China, the 21st century will be decidedly unpleasant.

My boss at Guizhou University put it to me bluntly one night when he was slobbering drunk: “could I understand America if I only visited San Francisco and New York?” He was pissed off at me that I knew nothing about interior China, and only seemed to have read about the coast and Tibet. He ended up falling asleep on the table, but not before telling me I had “shit for brains.” Awesome.

Is this the beginning of a writing career for you? Do you have another book in mind? Peter Hessler will soon publish his third book on China.

I would love to write again in the future, but I my career is as an educator. I love being in the classroom. If I’m lucky enough to have an experience that once again compels me to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard, as the case may be), I will dive back in to the publishing world. Writing this book has been incredibly stressful, but I genuinely believe these stories need to be told. I feel like I owe it to my students.

Try to sum up what the Peace Corps experience has meant to you (and Becca) and how do you think you have changed because of the tour.

Wow, another tough question. Summing up my Peace Corps experience fills me with cliché. It changed my life; it opened my eyes; etc. All of this is true but not particularly interesting, so I’ll go with an anecdote: since returning to the US, I’ve been teaching at St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire. This is a school of almost unfathomable privilege.

One of the kids in my History elective-Modern China, of course-comes from the family that owns Montana. Another student’s father invented fruit. Or something like that.

It has been mind-boggling to go from teaching some of the poorest students on earth to some of the richest, and the transition has transformed me. Before the Peace Corps, I was a neurotic, type-A personality. I would get bent out of shape if my classes didn’t run exactly as I wanted them to, or if colleagues were late to meetings, or if I felt things were being done inefficiently. Now, three years later, I think I come across as someone who was raised in Santa Barbara, or born on a surf board. If a student doesn’t have her homework done; hey, at least she can afford to eat. I watch my colleagues stress out about things that I now try to keep in perspective. The classroom internet connection is running slowly; the yoga schedule is inconvenient; the dining hall ran out of avocados? A few years ago, these things really would have bothered me. Living in Western China helped me re-center my priorities.

Okay, last, but not least question, what RPCV writers have you read and like?

Pete Hessler has always been good, but his recent stuff has been simply breath-taking.  His work in the New Yorker is the best writing that magazine has to offer (and everything in the New Yorker is stellar). I also really enjoyed Josh Swiller’s memoir The Unheard.  I found I could relate to a lot of Swiller’s experiences (despite the obvious differences between being a deaf PCV in Zambia and a Jewish PCV in China. . .

Thanks, Mike, for your time. Now, go back to class!

Sometimes it takes time to publish the book about the Peace Corps experience that you have always wanted to write. Such is the case with Allen Fletcher’s (Senegal 1969-71) collection of stories that he first penned some 30  years ago. He wrote them, as many other RPCVs have done, as ”essentially a personal project” and now he has brought them out in a lovely edition.

The book that he produced, with wonderful photos, can be obtained directly from Allen. Email him at: afletcher@wpltd.com.

The book is entitled Heat, Sand, and Friends. It cost $15, plus $5 postage.

The preface begins (and shows that Allen can write): “From 1969-71, courtesy of the remarkable institution called the Peace Corps, my wife Nina and I lived in the Senegalese village of N’Dondol, about 100 miles inland and about ten miles off the main road that extends east from Dakar all the way  into Mali.”

Congratulations, Allen!

In 1994 the worst episode of genocide since the Holocaust of the Second World War ravaged the Central African country of Rwanda. Derick Burleson (Rwanda 1991-94)  taught at the National University during the two years leading up to the genocide. The poems in this collection entitled Ejo were published in 2000 by the University of Wisconsin Press. The poems explore the cataclysm in a variety of forms and voices through the culture, myths, and customs Derick absorbed during this time. “Ejo,” meaning “yesterday and tomorrow” in Kinyarwandan. .

In 2000, Derick won the University of Wisconsin Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. This awarded is given annually to the best book-length manuscript of original poetry submitted in an open competition. The award is administered by the University of Wisconsin-Madison English department, and the winner is chosen by a nationally recognized poet.

Bard College in New York on the Hudson River is inviting submissions for its annual Fiction Prize for young published writers (under 39 years or younger at the time of application.) The prize is worth $30,000, plus the winner receives an appointment as writer-in-residence at Bard College for one semester. The writer does not have to teach, but will give at least one public lecture and will meet informally with students.

To apply, RPCV writers should write a cover letter describing the project they plan to work on while at Bard and submit a C.V. along with three copies of the published book they feel best represents their work.

Applications for the 2010 prize must be received by July 15, 2009. For further information about the Bard Fiction Prize, call 845.758.7087, or visit www.bard.edu/bfp.

The 1995 recipient of the Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award presented by PEACE CORPS WRITERS for the best short description of life in the Peace Corps.

•

Better Remember This

by Meg Sullivan (Kenya 1992–94)

YOU’D BETTER REMEMBER THIS. Because people will ask you. Whether you want them to or not, they’ll ask you how Africa was. And though you won’t know where to start, you’re going to have to have something to tell them. A shrug of the shoulders and “Good” won’t be enough. So you’d better remember this. Open the parts of your mind you need, and work them over until you’ve got them just right. Then put what you know in a place the will be easy for you to get to. Deep, but not too deep. Just enough so that even though no one else can see it, you know it’s there, and you can see it and feel it, and you know it makes up part of who you are now, as well as who you were then, and it will be there for you when you need to speak of Africa.

Remember things like the clarity of the light of the Equator after a five o’clock rain shower, cold and temperamental as broken glass. The bark and thorns of an acacia tree, so long and sharp your own forehead feels sticky from commiseration with Jesus. Tell them of the sound you hear only in Africa. The rattle of a crate of empty soda bottles strapped to the back of a bicycle. Or, the moans of a very pregnant woman in a reed chair on the back of another bicycle as she’s pushed toward the maternity ward. The different sounds drums make. The light beats of the tightly stretched skins, and the louder, deeper sounds of the loose ones. Time beaten out to the movements of even the tiniest kids, fluid as the elephant grass in the breeze of the inland trade winds. The way you can hear the neighbor’s boy no matter where he is, always drumming on his empty water jug. The Max Roache of the bush. Tell them that just two days before, these same people had sung with such exalted majesty you thought God Himself had made his Second Coming right then to join in.

But don’t forget how the stillness can surprise you at times. The quiet of early morning when the children run to school. Their legs long and bony, feet splayed wide across, toes clutching the earth, guiding them down dirt tracks and paths. Picturing them stalking the hyena and leopard that come around here sometimes. For, though they run fast, they are silent . . . silent as a whisper.

Or as the women balancing pots on their heads, disappearing into the banana groves, green and yellow. Remember that, so you can tell them how the women who can balance full pots of water and carry them home from the river without using their hands or spilling a drop are ready for marriage. The little girls begin practicing as soon as they can walk. Tell them about one you know, a good friend of yours, who has progressed from a single matchbox, to a small basin, to these days, a tiny jerrican of her own. Burn her image into your brain like a brand, or the scars on the faces of the old people, and remember what she was like when she was two, since you won’t know her when she’s ten or eighteen, and everyone should have someone who remembers what they once were.

And when they ask you, you can tell the of the shambas dug in anticipation of the afternoon rain. Furrowed in the morning before it gets too hot. The earth rich and black. Heavy. Smelling of decay. And generation. Riding your bike past fields of maize and cassava, and cane so tall and sweet the bees hover around it for months before it’s cut. And, of course, the countless dirty-faced kids who come out of nowhere to watch you pass. Pointing, yelling, chasing you with shouts of Mzunguuuu! Like a password, or a war cry. Floating through the air to the next manyatta where the next group of kids does the same. Staring with big, big eyes as you pass. And you thinking Hey, kid. Didn’tyourmotherevertellyounottostaredon’t pointdon’tpickyournosedon’ttalktostrangers? Well, I’m telling you now.

Remember simple, unaffected pleasures. Teaching a grown woman how to ride a bike. And trying to teach another who was afraid of falling and so would never pick her feet up off the ground. The roar of a lion. The way flamingos dance together, in the scorching heat of a midday during the dry season. The innumerable cups of tea you didn’t want but couldn’t refuse. The ugali and sukuma you can’t believe you actually crave.

Explain that to them. As well as the days and night of frustration and lonely boredom when even crying seemed like too much effort. The hours from 5 to 7 that seemed to go on forever. And how you wished the sun would set so you could go to bed and sleep through the night and wake up in the morning one day closer to the end of all of it. Tell them about the harambees, and the weddings, and the funerals held under trees where the wails of the women were as deep and loud as those of the earth itself when the Rift Valley split open. The earth couldn’t possibly hurt more. Tell them about the ache at the base of your spine and down both sides of your neck after a long matatu ride. And the long, long delays at the sides of empty roads where the bus had broken down, and everyone was staring at you, and you tried to pretend you didn’t notice and it didn’t bother you. Sitting in the middle of all of it, rather bewildered. Watching and listening, and trying to get your bearings. Only to realize, once you finally thought you’d gotten the hang of things for good, that you just didn’t get it. Any of it. At all.

But you stayed for two years. And when they ask you why, you can tell them how your students begged you not to give up their class to another teacher. How your friends took you home to meet their families. How your neighbors were always so glad to see you safely returned from a safari. How profusely everyone thanked you for the little you’d done for them, forgetting that you’d all done it together.

Remember, so when they ask you, you can tell them these things. And tell them how you stood tall and looked those others in the face as you left. Although it hurt you and them both very much. But take the gift of their pain, and yours, for that is love. And feel it as it was there, then. As you turned and left. As they stood and watched you go.
And speak of how you thanked them.

Thanked them for teaching you how easy it is to laugh in so many languages. Thanked them for letting you in.

—

“Better Remember This” was previously published in Kenya Magazine.

The 1994 recipient of the Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award presented by PEACE CORPS WRITERS for the best short description of life in the Peace Corps.

•

The Ballroom

by Christopher Conlon (Botswana 1988-90)

Southern Africa, Kalahari Desert

She is the perfect image of a rag doll
I saw when I was a child, in a trash can,
dirty, ripped abandoned:
here in the Kalahari is that same
doll, maybe five, eyes huge, legs
white with desert dust.
Ke Kopa madi, sir, ke kopa madi.

Money: I shake my head no, no madi:
try to move on. But she stares at me,
suddenly transfixed.
No longer begging. Her eyes
wider than before.

My sunglasses:

I crouch down,
she approaches me, nose to nose,
tattered, filthy, she stares at me,
at herself.
Then her hand moves to her chin
and she says Oh, in a tiny,
surprised voice. She rubs away
the dried spittle there.

Then she turns and,
whitened heels kicking up dust
like marble, dances away,
dignified, satisfied,
a tiny queen
in an endless ballroom.

Elise Annunziata (Senegal 1996-99) was nice enough to alert me to another RPCV playwright, Rajiv Joseph (Senegal 1997-2000), who had served with her.  Rajiv’s play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo is currently running at the Kirk Douglas Theater in Los Angeles, and Charles McNulty writing in a LA Times review, says, “Bengal Tiger is no ordinary play. I’m tempted to call it the most original drama written so far about the Iraq war, but why sell the work short? The imagination behind it is way too thrillingly genre-busting to be confined within such a limiting category.”

The play came about because Rajiv read a small (200 words) newspaper article in September 2003 about an American soldier stationed in Baghdad who reportedly killed a Bengal tiger at the local zoo after the animal maimed a colleague who was trying to feed it. “When I read the article,” Rajiv says, “I was touched by the tiger’s death in a way I couldn’t locate. I thought it was a tragic thing, which was strange because there were far worse things going on at the time.”

From that he developed a play that focuses on the consequences of miscommunication and the persistence of traumatic memories. The play follows the relationship between a translator, a pair of American soldiers, and the ghost of the tiger that has been killed.

Born in Ohio-his father is an immigrant from India-Rajiv got a graduate degree at New York University, went to Senegal as a PCV, and later worked in the dot.com world before writing full time. He has had plays produced with small companies–Second State and Cherry Lane–both in New York. So far, most of his dramas have had Asian themes or characters. The Leopard and the Fox(2007), for example, was about the 1977 overthrow of Prime Minister Zulfikar Al Bhutto of Pakistan.

This play opened at the Lark Theatre in New York and has been performed elsewhere in the U.S. Joseph continues to rework and doctor the play even today.

This past October Bengal Tiger received a grant from the NEA as part of its New Play Development program. He has also won a Kesselring Fellowship for emerging dramatists and the Paula Vogel Award for new playwrights given by New York’s Vineyard Theatre.

In Los Angeles at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo will close on June 7. Right now it is in performance Tuesday through Friday, twice on Saturday, twice on Sunday.

Twin Towers, a play by Damian Wampler (Kyrgyzstan 1999-01) will premiere at The Planet Connections Theater Festivity on Friday, June 12^th through Sunday, June 28^th for six  performances only at the Robert Moss Theater at 440 Studios, 440 Lafayette, in New York’s East Village.

Set in the Bronx Twin Towers focuses on the lives of two best friends who have chosen very different life paths– Trevor and Jamal, the Twin Towers of the title, were once inseparable schoolyard buddies. Now, years later, Trevor has returned from Iraq a war hero, while Jamal has returned from years of overseas in the Peace Corps. The two clash as the fantasy of their childhood innocence fades to reveal the truth of their character.

Twin Towersis a coming of age story not only for two young men but for our country as well., It incorporates music, dance, a Brazilian dance-like martial art called Capoeira, and a primarily African American ensemble cast to enlighten and entertain viewers.

RPCV Damian Wampler was overseas for five years and many of his best friends from high school joined the military and are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. “When I came home, I realized that not only had my country changed, but I had changed. I had a greater understanding of who I was and what was right and wrong; an understanding that I had come to through my own personal journey.” Damian took his own story, and the stories of his friends, and layered it with the overarching drama of Bush based policies that have impacted us all.

An all African American cast was particularly difficult to find. “Damian infuses music and dance into almost every scene, creating a lyrical piece that is both realistic of an urban neighborhood and whimsical as the characters try to hold on to their childhoods,” says director Angela Astle, ”but finding actors who could sing, dance Tango and Capoeira was a challenge.”

Angela has a special connection to Peace Corps. “My sister and husband are both returned Peace Corps volunteers. I visited my sister when she as a Volunteer in the Gambia, so I have a sense of what Jamal, and Damian, have been through.”

Twin Towers  has nothing to do with the terrorist attacks on 9/11, “but the image of the Twin Towers is ultimately a allegory for the division in our society that arose out of the ashes of that day” says Damian. “Trevor and Jamal are on a search to find themselves.  They both escaped the ghetto, only to find that they still have to overcome their own fears. In a way, it has everything to do with 9/11, but on a deeply personal level.”

The play benefits the New York based non-profit ENACT, which uses professional teaching artists to inspire and education urban youth using drama therapy techniques.  The play’s liaison at ENACT is Suzanne Lee, also an RPCV. “ENACT shows that everyone has the power to make change in the world, as long as they recognize that the skills they have are valuable. It might take creativity, collaboration and patience, but everyone can do their part to improve the lives of others. ENACT uses actors, but everyone has a gift that they can bring to others or a story they can use to inspire change.”

SHOW TIMES: Friday, June 12, 5:30pm, Sunday, June 14, 9:0pm, Wednesday, June 17, 4:00pm, Thursday, June 18, 4:00pm, Friday, June 19, 7:30pm, Sunday, June 28, 1:00pm. 

Robert Moss Theater at 440 Studios
440 Lafayette, 3^rd floor

TICKETS: $18 adult 212 352-3101 or www.planetconnectionsfestivity.com
WEBSITE: www.twintowersplay.com

Triumph & Hope is reviewed by Bob Arias. Bob has had a long history with the Peace Corps, first as a PCV 1964-66, then at the Puerto Rico Training Center 1966-68; as an APCD in Colombia 1966-68; then Special Assistant to the Director, ACTION 1976-77, CD in Argentina-Uruguay, 1993-95, and finally as a consultant to the Peace Corps Safety and Security Office 2002-03.

Triumph & Hope: Golden Years With The Peace Corps in Honduras
by Barbara Joe (Honduras 2000–03)
BookSurge
December 2008
316 pages
$18.99
Best new non-fiction finalist, National Indie Excellence Awards

Reviewed by Bob Arias (Colombia 1964–66)

There’s more than triumph and hope going on here, this is a complete “journal” of life as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Central American country of Honduras!  Barbara believes she is telling you the story of her success and failures as a senior citizen in this lush banana country, when in reality she is describing what most Volunteers go through as they begin their first months “in-country,” and try to make it through the first year. Barbara stays three years. Surprisingly, as a child in 1941 she had gone  to Honduras with her family and the memories stayed with her!

Barbara Joe is an extremely gifted writer who paints the environment and people around her with colorful rainbow shades  — you feel as if you are in the room with her, or working with the children that come to see the lady from el Cuerpo de Paz.  I found it very difficult to put down Triumph & Hope, it drew me to the communities, her “vida social” and the changes that were going on in her new life in Honduras.  I began to see something very special and unique in the book . . . something about Barbara and how important everyday life is . . .  and how the loss of her son and adopted son play in her new home in a different part of the world — we become very proud of her.

Barbara Joe may be over sixty, but she has the spirit and curiosity of any new Peace Corps Volunteer regardless of her age . . . with that fire in her belly to make a difference in the lives of those around her in beautiful Honduras, nothing stops her from trying.  Some Volunteers spend their tour counting the days until they get to go home, while others really get involved in their communities, and like Barbara these are the Volunteers who adopt or are adopted by their new country, to become their “patria chica” or adopted homeland.  Volunteers will often refer to their country of service as their new adopted homeland, and find something in themselves that they did not know existed…the special feeling that causes them to love and respect their new community.  As Barbara says, “I now feel part Honduran!”

The delightful use of black and white photos to walk you through the communities of El Triunfo y La Esperanza are excellent, I found them useful as a reference and personal collection of her new family.  If you have ever attempted to keep a log during your travels, you know how difficult this becomes. Barbara seems to have found a way to use the photos as a means to keep events organized!  And keeping them in black and white makes them more personal as we read her journal.  I worry that some younger Volunteers may have never seen a black and white!

So where do I sign up?  I feel that Triumph & Hope by Barbara Joe is the best that I have read about our Peace Corps experience, but with a different twist, this is a “how-to” book for anyone thinking about becoming a Volunteer or Peace Corps staff member.  So much is put into Peace Corps Trainee and Staff training, but so little is given to the new recruits to read of what someone else has experienced.  Though Barbara Joe’s experience took place in Central America, a Volunteer in Africa or Asia will see the same events played out.  The cultures and languages may be different, but the message is the same, or as Barbara said, “I now feel part Honduran!”

This book should be made mandatory reading for  all new Peace Corps Volunteers and especially new Staff including any future Director.  Former Volunteers and Staff will find the photos and stories a clear picture of events as we tell our war stores with family and friends. Barbara brings it home for all of us!  At the beginning of Peace Corps, Volunteers were given “book-lockers” that had an excellent collection of books and reading material to see them through the two years as a Volunteer — I would have added Barbara Joe’s book to the reading material if they were still being provided.  Thanks, Barbara!

(available on Amazon.com)

Barbara’s book is a great read…Buy and read this book, no matter your age. –Ed O’Keefe, Federal Eye, Washington Post