Reviewed by Patricia Taylor Edmisten (Peru 1962-64)

I prefer novels to short stories, but I loved this book. Arthur Powers’ love for Brazil and its people began with his Peace Corps service in Brazil in 1969.

Later Powers worked for the Catholic Church in the eastern Amazon region, where he organized subsistence farmers and rural worker unions. The author has received a Fellowship in Fiction from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, three annual awards for short fiction from the Catholic Press Association, and the 2012 Tuscany Press Novella Award for this book, A Hero for the People, his first collection of short stories

The book’s subtitle, Stories of the Brazilian Backlands, is fitting. All of the stories are located in Brazil’s backlands, although some take place more than one thousand miles away from the flat, dry land of the northeast, where cowboys known for their distinctively shaped leather hats, tend cattle that may be emaciated like the people during periods of drought. Other stories are located in the slums or favelas of Rio de Janeiro, that city’s “backlands,” on the mountainsides, where the people live back behind the wealth and glamour of Copacabana, Leblon, and Ipanema, and back in line for clean water, health care, and adequate nutrition. But they do live smack up against violent, drug-related crime. (With the World Cup fast- approaching in summer, 2014, Rio police are trying to make life safer for tourists, but soccer fans beware.)

I left Rio de Janeiro in 1969, the same year Powers arrived, having spent the previous year in Recife, in Brazil’s impoverished northeast. By then, I had finished my Peace Corps service in Peru and had taught a few years before returning to Latin America with my then husband who was working on his dissertation. We lived as poor students by U.S. standards, but lived well compared to those city dwellers who would wade into the vast mud flats to dig for clams and any other moving thing they could take home and eat. My son was born in a private hospital there because the doctor who owned it agreed to take our student health insurance. (I had checked out the public hospital, but it was two women to a bed.) Reading Powers’ stories set in the northeast and the sertâo, the dry backlands west of coastal cities and tropical turquoise beaches, I recalled the stoicism and resilience of the people, winnowed to muscle and bone covered by a thin layer of flesh, given the frequent droughts.

Powers’ simple, elegant prose invited me into the lives of the people. He writes with detail, empathy, and a deep knowledge of the Brazilian soul, deftly setting up each story and quickly building the arc. Each resolution is exquisitely rendered. Each story is memorable in its own right. Tears welled unexpectedly while reading some of the stories.

Thematically, many of the stories deal with land and the unjust taking of it from squatter families, most of whom had lived on it long enough to have earned title. When you’re barely surviving, however, you can’t hire a lawyer, and if you could, you’d never find one because they’re in the pocket of the powerful, as are the judges who are happy to do the dirty work of the crooks, even if it means the forced removal of the poor from their homes and land, leaving them no means of support.

My favorite tale was the title story, “A Hero for the People,” about the unassuming, Belgian Brother Michel who is transferred from his comfortable provincial house in Rio de Janeiro to the Barreira das Almas mission to help Father Gil, an aging priest, who, while still celebrating Mass, can no longer attend to the practical demands of parish life. He won’t leave his post, however, because the people need the sacraments, and it’s unlikely that another priest would be found to enter into the daily struggles of the poor in that community.

At first, Brother Michel feels useless, but soon after his arrival he does what he used to do in Rio-he visits the poor:

These were not the poor of the community movements and the unions, the poor who are struggling for the reign of God and justice on earth. These were the complaining poor, cramped into the rooms of old run-down mansions, one or two families to a room-the poor with aching backs and rheumatism and drunken husbands, who remembered a lost chance early in life, whose greatest dream of change was being offered a job by someone rich. To these people Brother Michel brought nothing but a willingness to listen-he had nothing else to bring-but it seemed to the people that peace rested for a moment around the hard wooden stool where he sat.

During his visits, Brother Michel listens to the stories of mothers who have lost babies because of disease and/or malnutrition.  He learns of the struggle of the poor to retain their land in the face of violence and even death if they don’t surrender. Having been an archivist in Rio, he soon becomes a full-time organizer of people, naively standing up to dangerous individuals, downplaying death threats, praying always that a hero for the people will arise, like the one he sees in his dreams who resembles the star of a Brazilian melodrama set in the 19^th century, during the time of slavery, “…a young nobleman, disguised in a mask and cape, sweeping out of the night to right wrongs, to avenge injustice….” Brother Michel’s dream evolves from the nobleman, to a woman riding out of the rainforest on a white horse, her armor glistening, and to a Moses figure: “Let my people live on their land…Let my people live….”

Brother Michel enlists the help of the Church lawyer in Rio who tells him that the best proof of land ownership the people have is to make improvements upon it, like building fences, wells, planting fruit trees, building schools. Above all, they must not leave their land. They must stand firm, even if the police burn their crops and houses.

The police did not make it by dawn. It was ten a.m., the sun high and hot, when the first truck in the convoy of seven vehicles rounded a bend in the dirt road to Agua Fria: seven drivers, three men in sports shirts and real policemen-and thirty more hangers-on with guns in their belts. The first truck slowed, then came to a halt, and one of the men in sunglasses, riding in the cab, swore under his breath. A hundred feet in front of them, barbed wire stretched across the road. Behind the barbed wire stood a hundred men, women, and children, and, this side of the barbed wire, three or four men, a dozen ladies holding rosary beads, a group of teenagers from town, and a damn little friar in a gray habit. Singing. All of them singing some damn church song. And the convoy motors turning off one by one, truck and jeep doors slamming, men climbing down from the trucks to look, the little man in the gray habit calling out to some of the police by name-”Good morning, Ivaldo; Good morning, Edivan,” thick glasses catching the sunlight above a ridiculous squat figure with a silly foreign accent.”

You can’t help but care for the protagonists in Powers’ stories, so from the beginning you have a stake in the outcome. They don’t know their own strengths, their own capacity to uplift the world. Powers elevates the humble and poor with his stories, and we are made better for having read them.

Patricia Taylor Edmisten is the author of Nicaragua Divided: La Prensa and the Chamorro Legacy; The Mourning of Angels, a novel inspired by her two years as a PCV in Peru; Wild Women with Tender Hearts; which won the 2007 Peace Corps Writers Award for Poetry, and her latest, A Longing for Wisdom: One Woman’s Conscience and her Church, about the need for reform in the Roman Catholic Church. She also wrote the introduction to, and translation of, The Autobiography of María Elena Moyano: The Life and Death of a Peruvian Activist. Patricia has worked as a United Nations consultant to women’s groups in Brazil and Peru. She currently lives in Pensacola, Florida and Montezuma, North Carolina.

Reviewed by Matt Losak (Lesotho 1985-88)

In Francis Koster’s Discovering the New America (The Optimistic Futurist, 2013), the author offers a volume chockablock with proven,  innovative ideas for solving common community problems like conserving water and homelessness and nationwide scourges such as obesity and criminal recidivism. Koster, an “optimistic futurist” by trade and thinking, is selling his badly needed brand of the Peace Corps can-do tonic for anyone who might slow their gate in front of his friendly wagon. Sadly, though, in today’s climate, where truth and reason are too often being burned at the stake, this catalogue of optimism might seem a little out of touch for the increasingly embittered and paranoid American audience.

I mean, I actually have relatives who still believe our current president is a radical Muslim plant born in Kenya and part of a general conspiracy to destroy American Christianity with socialized medicine. The only reason they have not moved to Canada is because they recently discovered that Canada has already been infected by a national health care “virus” of their own….These folks were once pretty reasonable. But Aunt M and Uncle G now have a listserve of eager followers who concur with their alarm and outrage: Global warming is a fiction. Big corporations are struggling because of greedy workers who deserve to see their jobs go to India and, of course, gay marriage is a “symptom” of a society about to slip into hell. It’s enough to make you want to hang your neighbors.

But don’t for a minute let the negativity get you down, says Koster. It’s an ancient tradition going as far back as Galileo for people to resist change and avoid reality even as scientific evidence of danger mounts on the horizon. All around us, he points out, are proven solutions to so many vexing problems. Alleviate hunger? Generate home-grown capital? Start a fish farm (Chapter 9). While China grows billions of dollars of fish each year, the U.S. only farms about $100 million. There’s lots of room to grow and the process is relatively clean and sustainable. Tired of the obesity problem? Urge local schools to connect with farmers’ markets and production (Chapter 16). Students learn about fruits and vegetable production, schools offer healthy, locally grown produce and the seeds of a healthier, greener future are planted. Losing millions wasting energy in poorly designed buildings? Demand new public buildings like schools and municipal offices use smarter, energy efficient designs to reduce energy use capturing solar energy and natural light (Chapter 31). Spending too much on prisons that make crime worse? Focus on children of convicts (Chapter 45). Research shows that upwards of 70% of children of incarcerated parents will themselves in the corrections system. Developing a special network of support, including mentors and programming, can help reduce that figure, help keep families together-a key tenet for reducing recidivism when prisoners are released-and lower the billions in prison costs! Stop smoking! (Chapter 46). End autism! (Chapter 52) Be happy…or at least don’t be sad (Chapter 59)

Alas, however, I am sad. Dr. Koster begins his upbeat, get-it-done volume with an exceptionally down beat factoid that has me contemplating spending my last dimes on a case of Balvenie and a crate of cigars. By 2030, the world’s population will have nearly quadrupled from 2.5 billion in1950 to 8.5 billion. Yet for some inconvenient reason, Dr. Koster does not provide a solution for a hugely overpopulating earth. Whatever good solutions he catalogs-and they are truly worth pursuing in the here and now-our human future plans to consume every last natural resource with billions of fires, lightbulbs (even more efficient ones) motors running endlessly on fossil fuels, forest and ocean devastation,  crime and war. As our climate horizon dims, so do our chances for peaceful, happy, healthy, coexistence.

Koster’s last chapter, “Pass the Torch”….(Chapter 64), is a fitting title for an RPCV author’s final words. Here, Koster gives his we-can-do-this pitch: train our next generation of civic leaders to take on our world of problem or the data and statistics warning of a population explosion coupled with global warming and so many other ills of the modern age may very well overtake us. He describes the efforts of a Fort Worth, Texas program to energize young citizens to tackle community problems through partnerships, mentoring, dynamic meetings and communications. The citizens grew engaged, developed “actionable” plans and followed through, all the while developing the kind of active citizenship that develops future leaders. That can’t be a bad thing.

So if you’re in the mood to do something constructive, this is a good book for you. Getting done what should and can be done has a way of lifting the fog and raising one’s spirits, like cleaning house or straightening one’s desk. My only fear here is that Koster may be providing fodder to those who tell us that the small steps will lead to giant steps forward. In my view, this avoids the detailing of dramatic and unpopular solutions for two of the biggest problems. He might consider a slight rewrite: Chapter 1, Have one kid and adopt six!, Chapter 2, Save the planet! Otherwise, it seems in the not too distant future, no other chapters will be necessary.

Matt Losak (Lesotho 1985-88) is the founder and Executive Director of the Montgomery County Renters Alliance in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Reviewed by Richard Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64)

Strange Stones is Peter Hessler’s fourth book that’s all or mostly about China, and it’s as fresh, meaty, and irresistible as the acclaimed three others, Country Driving, Oracle Bones , and his exemplary Peace Corps memoir, River Town .   The new book is a collection of eighteen pieces, most of which first appeared in The New Yorker, where Hessler is a staff writer now reporting from Cairo .

Having picked up some anti-Chinese sentiment in Thailand and Burma , I’ve never been all that eager to set foot in the Peoples Republic .   Their neighbors to the south tend to regard the Chinese as aggressive, exploitive and rude, and I’ve witnessed a good deal of this behavior.   I have more favorable second thoughts about the Chinese, though, whenever I read Hessler.   He tells story after story of decent, often sweet people struggling to do well and behave well in a place where the ground is often shifting under their feet.   One of his most unnerving observations is that the Chinese are in a lot of ways like Americans with their energy, optimism and faith in the future.   Their business practices resemble ours, too—in 1890.   If I ever take the plunge and visit China , I have a feeling that for better or worse I might feel right at home.

Which is not to say there isn’t plenty about China that’s strange as strange can be, including the industrialization of just about everything.   In a piece called “Chinese Barbizon” about a development area near the city of Lishui, tens of thousands of workers on assembly lines are cranking out not just manhole covers and bra-strap rings, but cityscapes of Venice.   Yes, Lishui is the source of hundreds of thousands of cheap paintings sold in Europe and North America .   A former art student named Chen Meizi specializes in scenes of Venice and can produce a pretty one in a couple of days.   Does she enjoy her work?   No, it’s just a factory job, but it beats the dreary life back in her home village.

The migration of hundreds of millions of Chinese from the poor countryside to less poor urban areas in search of a toehold in the modern world is China ’s story of our time, and Hessler does a masterful job of recording the particulars of this great social revolution.   Chen Meizi’s job is atypical, but her motives are like nearly everybody else’s: find a little stability, a little comfort, work hard and get ahead.   This isn’t easy; plant managers are often sadists or letches, and in OSHA-less China , industrial accidents are common.   But it’s worth playing the game in order to get a nice new pair of shoes or even, after a while, maybe a car.

Hessler writes with a sly wit, and his take on the new Age of the Automobile in China is revealing and often funny.   A frenzy of freeway building, Hessler reports, resulted when Condi Rice mentioned to a high official that as a child she came to love America on car trips with her family.   So family excursions were a great way to instill patriotism!   The exploding Chinese auto industry is succeeding largely by stealing designs from foreign companies.   An official who filched car plans from GM-Daewoo insisted to Hessler it was okay to do this.   The Chinese auto industry is young, he said, and young artists must copy the old masters before they can produce art on their own.   Calling this industrial espionage is just sour grapes.

Another revelation for some of us is how real Chinese patriotism is.   We read stories in The Times about dissidents, but Hessler reports that most Chinese seem to think their government is okay.   It’s partly that the government is making life better for most Chinese, but it’s also pride in Chinese history and a robust xenophobia.   In pieces on the Olympics and on basketball and the Yao Ming phenomenon, Hessler shows how little pleasure the Chinese get from sports and how it’s all about waving the red flag and winning, winning, winning.   Hessler seems to find this unfortunate and even creepy.   He may have missed NBC’s Amero-centric coverage of the Olympics and the American crowds shrieking USA !   USA ! It’s another area where we and the Chinese are oh-so-different and oh-so-alike.

Hessler also includes a couple of pieces on life in the American rural Southwest that are saddening in their depiction of poverty and isolation— though reassuring in the ways decent people look after one another, just as decent people do in rural China.   Hessler is such a keen and humane reporter, and I’ll be very eager to see what he has to show us in his first book on turbulent Egypt .

Richard Lipez is a former editorial writer at the Berkshire Eagle in Massachusetts .   He writes the Don Strachey private eye novels under the name Richard Stevenson.

Brooks writes that The Unwinding is “a gripping narrative of contemporary America” and goes onto say in his long, long review, that “the stories that do fill its pages are beautifully reported.”

Brooks major complaint is this: “Packer does an outstanding job with these stories, The Unwinding offers vivid snapshots of people who have experienced a loss of faith. As a way of understanding contemporary America, these examples are tantalizing. But they are also frustrating. The book is supposed to have social, economic and political implications, but there is no actual sociology, economics or political analysis in it.”

Summing up, Brooks writes,“Anybody who covers Washington and Wall Street knows there is an awesome amount of self-dealing in America’s power centers, most of it perfectly legal. But in what sense has this elite — which comes from the finest universities and is the most diverse and equal-opportunity elite in history-failed? This is the sort of question The Unwinding doesn’t help answer.”

David, hasn’t George done enough? Hasn’t George given us the raw meat to chew on! Now you go out and tell us what to do next. You’re an Elitist. A Conservative. A Talking Head. You must know best. Babble On! Write a book!

And then we can hope Packer goes out and sticks a pin in your balloon.

Reviewed by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993-95)

Molly Melching sat by the bedside of her dear old friend and mentor, Alaaji Mustaafa Njaay, who lay dying in his small hut in a Senegalese village.  He breathed with difficulty as he whispered to her., “You are trying to accomplish great things, but nothing is going to come easy for you.  …  Your work will be like electricity: it has a beginning, but no end. Continue to listen and learn from the people, and you will move forward together.”  After a long pause, he spoke again, calling her by her Senegalese name. “Sukkeyna Njaay, things will become even more difficult for you.  But always remember my words and never lose hope. Lu guddi gi yagg yagg, jent bi dina fenk.  However long the night, the sun will rise.”

Molly was born in Houston in 1949 and lived in several different places with her parents and her sister, Diane, as she was growing up.  She was a curious, exuberant child whom her mother did her best to keep under control, while imbuing her with a desire for education, above all.  She was not pleased when Molly moved to Senegal, feeling that her daughter was “wasting her life.”  Molly, on the other hand,felt that her mother’s desire to mold her was like handling wet soap: ” …eventually it slips and falls away.”

Molly’s forty-year journey to help Senegalese people began when she arrived in 1974. She felt a “…deep sense of belonging that made her weak with happiness– the feeling of being at home.” She studied French at the University of Dakar, and quickly learned Wolof. She  met fascinating intellectuals, such as the great film maker, Ousmane Sembène, and Wole Soyinka. Molly studied under Cheikh Anta Diop, an influential African thinker who believed that Africans always have had the inherent power to build empires, and to overthrow colonial rule,  as a result, in part, of their ancient Egyptian roots.

After Molly received her master’s certificate from the University of Dakar, then her master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she realized she wanted to share her education with people who had none. She went to the Peace Corps office in Dakar to see Jack Schafer, then director. She wished to collaborate with Peace Corps to set up a children’s learning center using national languages and creating books that would interest them. Schafer replied, “I’m not saying any of this is a bad idea, but maybe you don’t understand how the Peace Corps works.” To which Molly replied, “I know exactly how it works. But can’t we make it work a little differently this time?” And he did. He created a three-year individual placement for Molly sponsored through Senegal’s Ministry of Culture. Like any PCV, Molly received a stipend of $200 a month and a tiny apartment in the middle of the Sandaga market. There she founded Démb ak Te (Yesterday and Today) where she spent six years, first as a Peace Corps Volunteer, then with funding from the Spencer Foundation, teaching street children, as well as adults, in their native Wolof language.

Molly visited villages all over Senegal. She observed development programs that “taught down” instead of encouraging people to define their own needs and “develop up.” She saw many projects fail,because the supposed benefactors did not engage the villagers. She learned that “True social change -_ true development - seems possible only when you work with the people …” It was Cheikh Anta Diop who taught her the word Tostan, which literally means ” … the hatching of an egg, the breakthrough moment when the chick emerges from the shell.” Molly had her “tostan moment” when she visited a small village called Saam Njaay and thirty-six surrounding villages where everyone was illiterate. She imagined creating “… a holistic program that encompassed not just reading and writing but discussions on problem solving, skills to build confidence, and an understanding of health and hygiene.” She moved to Saam Njaay at the age of 32 and stayed there for three years in the village chief’s compound. Molly fit right into village life, living in a hut with no running water or electricity, eating around the bowl with others, participating in births, weddings and funerals among the people she loved.

In 1991, at the age of 41, Molly finally started her own organization, Tostan. Though she was filled with trepidation, she dared to implement her own ideas of teaching literacy that included dance, theater, song and storytelling. She received funding from UNICEF and hired twenty African staff members, believing that an African program could only be successful if it was run by Africans. She was the only American on the staff for the next fifteen years. Tostan was quartered in a house in Thiès where her daughter, Zoé (therein lies a story), Molly and several pets also lived.

I met Molly in 1993. I had joined Peace Corps in Senegal when I was 55 and was training for three months in Thies. Sitting in a cafe one evening, I noticed a tall woman with copper hair wearing a flowing caftan and scarf at a table with a lovely, young girl. I heard her speak English, then fluent Wolof to the waitress. There was a powerful presence about Molly that awed me. I  felt compelled to approach her. “Who are you?” I asked. She laughed, we introduced ourselves, sat together, and I began to learn about her fascinating work and life. She quickly taught me, a new PCV, the importance of listening and learning to local people whose culture I could not possibly understand, instead of judging and alienating them. Thus began our friendship, a gift I treasure more with every passing year, seeing Tostan become a world leader in development and the pursuit of human rights.

By 1994, Tostan was operating in 350 villages, reaching 15,000 participants in five national languages. Its three-year curriculum, with classes three times a week, centered around its Community Empowerment Program (CEP) that included six learning modules: problem-solving skills, health and hygiene, preventing child mortality caused by diarrhea or lack of vaccination, financial management of village projects, leadership and group dynamics, and feasibility studies for possible income-generating projects. Literacy, numeracy, and math were incorporated into all the modules.

In 1995, Tostan decided to do a new learning module specifically on women’s health. One of the subjects the women insisted on knowing more about was that of Female Genital Cutting. When one of the Tostan class facilitators teaching in Malicounda Bambara, presented the session on “the tradition,”the centuries old custom of female genital cutting, the women were shocked - one did not talk of such things. But Ndey encouraged them to speak about it. In their predominantly Muslim culture, where they had always thought it was a religious duty, they were surprised to learn from their imam that there was nothing in the Koran indicating the necessity of this practice. They were to learn other relevant information as Tostan facilitators introduced principles found in several Human Rights Instruments: the concepts that all humans should have rights to things like health, education, shelter, and freedom from violence and discrimination was a revelation to them.

In 1997, after long palavers about the disastrous health and emotional effects of FGC, the community members of Malicounda Bambara gathered in the public square and announced to 20 journalists that they had decided to stop the tradition. The men and religious leaders of the community who generally considered it to be “a woman’s thing,” also participated. Once they learned that it was not an Islamic commandment, they were quite amenable to abandoning it. The day of the village declaration Molly was very nervous about the potential impact of breaking with such an ingrained custom, and she especially worried that the women would be accused by other communities of betraying their culture by falling under the influence of westerners. But, as the drums in the village square beat louder, the women pulled Molly up to dance with them, and Molly “… chose at that moment to believe that what she was witnessing was not the end of anything. It was just the beginning.” One struggle at a time would define Tostan’s history.

In June 1998 Gerry Mackie, an Oxford University sociologist, read about Tostan’s program of community declarations to end FGC.  He had studied a similar horrific phenomenon in China, that of foot-binding.  Mackie sent Molly a copy of his article on the subject, predicting that, like foot-binding,   FGC would disappear within a generation.  Molly “went nuts.”  She and Gerry became friends and collaborators.

In 2002, Molly received the Sargent Shriver Award for Distinguished Humanitarian Service, which honors a Peace Corps Volunteer’s continued work on humanitarian causes. I watched her from the audience during that Peace Corps conference, and could see her exuberant expression, while listening to her humble acceptance speech, giving all credit for Tostan’s achievements to its staff and villagers themselves. Modest Molly insists that, even though she laid the egg, many others hatched it.

Tostan began to receive recognition from many sources. In 1999, it was awarded a University of Illinois Alumni Humanitarian Award, in 2005 from the Anna Lindh Award for Human Rights, in 2007 the UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize, and the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize in 2007. There was no way I could miss that last event in New York, where UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, gave the keynote address. There were many impressive guests of his ilk at the event. Molly’s excitement was audible in her acceptance speech, and she looked regal in her caftan, but I thought the best part was when she introduced Ourèye Sall, the former cutter, who had campaigned in Senegal to end FGC. Ourèye told the illustrious gathering that she had ” … cut many more girls than I can count. It is only when I got into the Tostan classes and started studying women’s health that I began to question this tradition.” Instead of walking off the stage, Molly and Ourèy danced, arms waving, skirts switching. So did I.

By 2002 Tostan began to expand into other African countries, when Molly re-evaluated its goals  to make democracy and human rights the foundation of the Community Empower Program. She realized that ” … in order for people to feel confident in their right to make changes, they had to first understand that they had a choice and a voice.”

By 2005 1,486 other villages had made public declarations to abandon FGC. I visited Molly that year and had the privilege of sitting in on a meeting of villagers in Tostan’s Dakar office. They discussed logistics of transporting people, even from the U.S., to attend their declaration. Molly spoke little, except to ask for assurance that all the people supported their plan, including men. I was delighted to hear one of the men comment, “You know, since Tostan has come to our village, our women have become more educated, and much more interesting.”

In 2005 Molly was invited by UNICEF to bring Tostan to Somalia. lmost all women in Somalia undergo pharaonic infibulation, meaning removal of external genitalia, and sewing the vaginal lips shut. If girls do not die, they suffer horribly throughout their lives from complications caused by sexual intercourse and childbirth. Though she had grave doubts about  visiting Somalia, where civil war was rife, and she was unfamiliar with the culture, she went. She had harrowing encounters there, and thought it would be very difficult for Tostan to go to Somalia, in view of logistics and the prevailing violence, but Molly could not refuse. Tostan is in operation today in Somalia where 62 communities have publicly declared abandonment of FGC and child/forced marriage, and 42 communities are currently taking part in the CEP.

To date, 6,466 communities have publicly declared abandonment of FGC and child/forced marriage in Senegal, The Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Somalia and Djibouti. (For a detailed analysis of Tostan’s projects, including solar power, mobile phones for literacy, peace and security, governance, environment, and the prison program, please see www.tostan.org.)

The ball is definitely rolling but, never one to rest on her laurels, Molly has a new passion: early childhood development in Africa. Tostan now has a new module to encourage parents who learned literacy through Tostan to help their infants and children to develop their minds.

Aimee Molloy has written Molly’s story just about perfectly.  She has captured her personality, her work and her impact on the world through Tostan. But this is not only the story of Molly Melching. It is about many fascinating people whose lives have been changed by Tostan, so many inspiring stories I cannot begin to touch upon in this review.  There are also many wonderful photos of Molly, her beautiful daughter, Zoé, dancing village women, even in Somalia, and a stunning portrait of Ourèye Sall.

Molly Melching’s journey is not over. However long the night, she will continue to work to achieve Tostan’s mission: Human dignity for all.  But at last the sun is rising to shine on hers and Tostan’s victories, just as Alaaji Mustaafa Njaay promised.

Leita Kaldi Davis worked for the United Nations and UNESCO, for Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Harvard University. She worked with Roma (Gypsies) for fifteen years, became a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal at the age of 55, then went to work for the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti for five years. She retired in Florida in 2002. She wrote a memoir of Senegal, Roller Skating in the Desert, and one on Haiti, In the Valley of Atibon (amazon.com).

Reviewed by Darcy Munson Meijer (in Gabon from 1982-1984.

Faded Gray by Jeffrey Vollmer is the only Peace Corps Worldwide book I’ve reviewed that involves a corrupt Peace Corps. This and the development of the main character make this work of fiction quite interesting. However, before Vollmer pens additional books, he should take a course in syntax and punctuation or pay an editor to help him with his stories.

Faded Gray follows Grayson Palmer, a PCV posted in Estonia, part of the “former Soviet Union’s wild east.” Palmer’s assignment is to author grant proposals for the Tartu Industrial Park and Science Incubator, or TIPSI. Grayson quickly learns that he can make additional money by writing grants for goods and services already funded. As he settles in, he comes to see this not as corruption but “trickle-down.”

Most of the other PCVs in Estonia are dysfunctional, unpleasant people. At one point Grayson asks himself whether anyone who enters the Corps today fits the ideal envisioned by JFK and Sargent Shriver. He befriends two other Volunteers, Ilene and Lloyd. Lloyd is supposedly an English teacher, but gives “lessons” to beautiful women in his sauna. He also grows and sells top-grade marijuana. Ilene and Grayson become lovers, but Grayson senses that, like Lloyd, there is more to her than meets the eye. The action picks up when Grayson meets a Turkish gangster and becomes dangerously involved with the Eurasian mob. After an exciting rescue scene, a shocking aspect of Peace Corps/Estonia is revealed, and Grayson must make a difficult choice.

This isn’t the Peace Corps that Harry Belafonte convinced me to join. Indeed, it’s not the agency that I worked for in Gabon in the early 80s. It’s a Corps whose cynical Volunteers serve themselves first. The late 90s Peace Corps in Faded Gray stimulates the Latvian economy by selling marijuana. “Or does the American government plant “volunteers” there to do these things? Either way, the Peace Corps is compromised.” From there, it’s a small step to training particular Volunteers to gather information for the U.S. government. Even in Grayson’s early training, volunteers “manipulate statistics into information the State Department compiles to justify its actions.”

Vollmer’s plot recalls questionable incidents in recent Peace Corps history in which its integrity was threatened, including the 2008 incident at the American embassy in Bolivia and President Bush’s proposal for more cooperation between the Peace Corps and the military. In a disturbing article in U.S. News and World Report from 12/12 - “How the Peace Corps Benefits Diplomatic Security” - RPCV Robert Nolan says that the Peace Corps could benefit diplomatic security by supplementing the activities of the State Department. He proposes increasing Peace Corps funding significantly, “with the aim of boosting volunteer activity specifically in the Middle East and North Africa.” Nolan’s agenda is nauseatingly transparent, and Vollmer is right to deal with this issue.

Vollmer does a fine job developing the main character. Grayson’s pre-Corps background informs his steady character, his mental and physical toughness. Knowing this solitary, intelligent man’s thoughts and feelings made me sympathize with his choices. It is not hard even for a man with integrity to slip into that gray area between right and wrong, especially when evil forces contrive against him, bending his strengths to their own use.

I enjoyed Vollmer’s Faded Gray. I was intrigued by this depiction of a corrupt Corps, and I appreciated Vollmer’s close-up look at modern Estonia. Vollmer creates suspense in Gray’s steady descent into the underworld and his collision with an evil truth. The mechanical and syntactic errors were very distracting, however. Vollmer needs to master his written English before settling down to write his next book.

Darcy Munson Meijer served in the Peace Corps as a TEFL in Gabon from 1982-1984. She currently teaches English at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates.

Reviewed by P. David Searles (Staff 1971-76)

Every American who has been to the Philippines will be captivated by the title of this book: ‘Hey Joe.‘  My guess is that this phrase is among the most remembered aspects of living in the country, especially for those who lived in the barrios.  All Filipinos - young, old, male, female, educated or not - used ‘Hey Joe’ to greet any and all Americans at every turn.  Once, needing to pass through a raucous demonstration to enter the American Embassy, dozens of Filipinos stopped what they were doing to hail me with ‘Hey Joe’ dozens of times, all with good humor and affection.  For Americans in the Philippines ‘Hey Joe’ is a perfect illustration of the meaning of ‘ubiquitous.’

Robert Nicholas uses both prose and poetry to tell the story of his two years in a remote rural setting as a Peace Corps Volunteer assigned to bring new methods of teaching mathematics to students and faculty at the regional high school.  One of the fascinating parts of the story is his passage from receiving greetings of ‘Hey Joe’ in the early days at his site to later being greeted as ‘Bob’ (from colleagues and friends) and ‘Mr. Nicholas’ (from students).  For him, this was a crucial first step in what became a productive and satisfying stay in the country.

One of the most satisfying elements of his PCV experience is the fact that, unlike many of the other education volunteers in the Philippines, his job was a real one:  He had the requisite skills, and the school system where he worked truly wanted him there.  (The problem of the ‘teacher-aide’ jobs, which the first PC/P Country Director later called ‘non-jobs,’ is amply covered in Answering Kennedy’s Call, which I reviewed earlier in this space).  Nicholas had majored in math in college and was specifically trained in the new methods of math pedagogy.  The school to which he was assigned had a long history of its graduates failing math in college.  His fellow teachers responded well to him and were eager to learn what he had to offer.  It is a textbook example of proper volunteer placement; I’m sure there are thousands of RPCVs who are envious.  Some years later he heard from his former school principal that her students now went on to college and did well in math.

The author enhances his stories and poems through the use of words from the local dialect sprinkled liberally throughout the book.  For many of us these words bring back the distinct pleasures and challenges of living in the Philippines.  Reading about Nicholas’ barkada is so much more satisfying than reading about his group of friends. And learning about his fancy new shirt made from piña fiber is far more interesting than learning about that shirt made from pineapple fiber.  For those with no knowledge of the various Filipino dialects there is a fine glossary in the back.

Nicholas’s use of poetry is effective, even for someone like me who is definitely ‘poetry challenged.’  Almost everyone who has lived in the Philippines has experienced an earthquake at least once.  Here is how the author tells of his experience with one:

Sleeping waking floor is shaking
               mosquito netting clinging
               slipping bed as earth is quaking
                              pens rolling light bulb swinging

Books are tipping candles tumbling
             desk is walking over floor
             world is rumbling hands are fumbling
                             concrete slab is trembling more
Get out get out Louie shouting . . .

Not only does this poem describe in a memorable fashion what it is like to wake to an earthquake, it also describes Nicholas’s living quarters and possessions, and introduces his friend Louie.  Even the unevenness of the margins adds to the weird sensations one feels in an earthquake.  Whenever Nicholas goes into the poetic mode the reader must relax and let the words and rhythm tell their story without the aid of punctuation, capital letters, and connecting phrases.  It takes some doing, but it is worth the effort.

For me the best parts of the book are those in which he describes the many unique features of the Filipino culture, some of which are readily brought to mind, others almost forgotten and needing his telling to bring them back.  Rice at every meal in the company of some pretty strange items on the plate, including the occasional dog; personal hygiene matters best left unmentioned; heat and humidity unlike anything we knew; holding hands with another man for long moments; hordes of children laughing, dancing and following you everywhere; the happiness amidst what we initially took to be desperate poverty; the damnable practice of ’surprise numbers at social events; a tropical paradise everywhere one looked; the instantaneous welcome given strangers, especially Americans; and, of course, the joy one finds in discovering commonalities even among people of different cultures.  All of this makes for a grand adventure, which Nicholas summarizes by saying “I arrived on the shores of Romblon with one set of beliefs and they were being uprooted and challenged.  I was changing - for the better.”

Near the very end of the book Nicholas writes again about Culture Shock.  He describes it as a two-edged sword - one that must be faced both coming and going.  The shock of entering another culture does not come as a surprise, although it is often tougher and more difficult to deal with than anticipated.  What is a surprise is finding one has to deal with it all over again on returning home.  After extolling the pleasures of small-town life in the Philippines where personal relationships are so very important, the author complains that he finds himself back in America “in a third floor walk-up in a small town where everyone was a stranger and most preferred to keep it that way.”  Every RPCV I have met makes the same comment:  Coming home can be tough, too.

Hey Joe is a remarkably upbeat book for the Peace Corps genre given the tendency for Peace Corps memoirs to dwell upon the admittedly real hardships that come with Peace Corps service.  The author does spend a few lines on illnesses, loneliness, and misadventures; but for the most part his story is one of success, accomplishment, and the gift of “a lifetime of warm memories.”  Perhaps it has a future as a recruiting tool?

P. David Searles served as the Country Director for the Peace Corps in the Philippines from 1971 to 1974, and spent the next two years at Peace Corps headquarters as Regional Director for NANEAP and as Deputy Director of the agency under John Dellenback.  His career has included periods in international business, government service and education.  Following the end of his business career in 1990 David earned a Ph. D. from the University of Kentucky (1993), and published two books: A College for Appalachia (1995) and The Peace Corps Experience (1997), both published by The University Press of Kentucky.

The one requirement is that the writers contact the Archives before sending anything to them.

The contact is:

Erica Bogese
Bender Library
American University
4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20016-8046

Erica’s contact information:
Phone (202) 885-3242
Email bogese@american.edu

The information you need to know about what material to send the Archives  is outlined below or you can go directly to: http://bender.library.american.edu/pcca/?page_id=16

Thank you Susan and Erica and everyone connected with this American University Peace Corps Archives project. This is a wonderful opportunity for the books by Peace Corps writers to have a permanent home (besides the Library of Congress ) where these memoirs will be a major source of information for future research about the Peace Corps, the world of Peace Corps Volunteers, and the countries where we served. The Peace Corps agency, of course, has not expressed any interest in housing these valuable books, the history of the organization since 1961. The NPCA also had never been interested in the written word from RPCVs.

But now we have three independent collections: The Library of Congress, Kennedy Library in Boston, and now American University in Washington, D.C.

John Coyne
Editor
www.peacecorpsworldwide.org

Donate

The Peace Corps Community Archives (PCCA) actively collects materials from former Peace Corps volunteers.  If you are interested in donating, please read our information below.

What does PCCA accept?

• Materials created and acquired by Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) during their service such as correspondence, diaries, film, photographs, reports, scrapbooks, and sound recordings (no limitations on format, date of service, or country)
• Organizational records of National Peace Corp Association member groups
• Oral histories and memoirs of RPCVs and host country nationals (Published materials will be added to American University Library’s circulating collection.)

What does PCCA not accept?

• Three dimensional artifacts
• Photocopies of materials
• Peace Corps publications not relevant to the country where you served
• Published materials about the Peace Corps in general
• Videos and other media about the Peace Corps in general

How do I donate to PCCA?

• Please send donation inquiries to archives@american.edu.
• Please secure permission from the University Archivist before submitting any materials.
• The physical transfer of collections can be done in person or by mail.  Digital materials should be sent on CD-RW or USB Flash Drive.  Inquiries are welcome about alternate methods. When copying your files, please ensure that materials you are submitting to PCCA are not read only so we can ensure their long term preservation.
• As part of the donation process, American University requires a deed of gift or copyright license agreement. These documents formalize the transfer of ownership and copyright for collections.  The Society of American Archivists has a helpful brochure that explains the purpose of the deed of gift.

Reviewed by Barbara E. Joe (Honduras 2000-03)

This slender volume is a delight, providing stories from the earliest days of Peace Corps Panama right up to 2013. First envisioned during a reunion of Panama RPCVs during the 50^th anniversary, the project grew as vignettes, poems, and letters written by those who served through the years were gathered together. They appear in chronological order, with a 20-year break beginning in 1971 when General Omar Torrijos ousted the Peace Corps amid rumors that volunteers were CIA spies.  After the signing of the treaty returning the canal to Panama, followed by Torrijos’ death in a plane crash and Manuel Noriega’s arrest, volunteers were invited back again.

Editor Cornett, also a contributor, obviously undertook her task as a labor of love, offering readers a historical panorama of Peace Corps’ evolution over the years. The variety of voices, 30 in all, adds a special richness. Each piece is engaging in its own right and several are quite compelling. Cornett calls the effort a “collective memoir” in which the whole ends up becoming greater than the sum of its parts. A number of contributors not only recount episodes from their Peace Corps experience, but also chronicle their return decades later, finding to their surprise that local people not only recognized and remembered them, but were still using practices they’d developed together many years before.  Talk about sustainability!

In 1962, one of the first volunteers to arrive was threatened by anti-American machete-wielding Panamanians, saved by villagers forming a human shield around her house, something fondly recalled by her and her protectors when she visited 45 years later.  Two volunteers who met and married while in service in 1967 had a baby in Panama, their service continuing uninterrupted while their daughter slept peacefully under a mosquito net. Years later, she traveled back with her parents to her birthplace, allowing them to proudly introduce local folks to their now grown up “Peace Corps baby.”  Another former volunteer recounts his marvel at the exploits of a blind fellow volunteer, undaunted by the challenges of working in their new environment (I’ve met both blind and deaf RPCVs). In 1968, a Peace Corps couple was arrested after a Panamanian coup, choosing to finish out their service in neighboring Colombia instead. Not only does the book show the Peace Corps’ evolution over the years, but also how their service helped shape the future careers of many volunteers, some of whom returned to Panama later to initiate long-term projects. 

A map of Panama opens each story, with a star indicating the geographical location of each writer’s site. A helpful initial map pinpointing the locations of all the contributions in numerical (and chronological) order is marred only by a misspelling of neighboring Colombia, also misspelled in the text, a pet peeve of Colombians and Colombia RPCVs alike. 

Former volunteers, regardless of geographical setting will recognize many common experiences, such as deciding what to do with trash, making the adjustment from “American” promptness and deadlines to more a mutable local time frame, living with an utter lack of privacy, and doing without such modern amenities as flush toilets and hot showers. These many stories evoked my nostalgia for the Peace Corps, arousing my serious thoughts of joining Peace Corps Response for another go-around.

This book holds special meaning for me, reminding me of my first visit to Panama as a young teenager, not returning until 2010, more than 60 years later, when Panama volunteers invited me to discuss my Honduras memoir on my way to my annual humanitarian visit to that country.  I was blown away by the many changes Panama had undergone in the interim and its relative modernity and development compared to Honduras. I met some enthusiastic former volunteers who had returned to start tourist-related businesses, beguiled by the opportunity to live with many of the comforts of home at a fraction of the cost in a lovely tropical setting-and Panama’s currency is the American dollar, another convenience.  They had fallen completely in love with Panama during their Peace Corps service.    

With this book, Panama volunteers have set an enviable example for the rest of us, pioneering a new way to chronicle the Peace Corps experience in any given country, beginning at the very beginning and extending right up to the present day. Bravo!

Barbara E. Joe (Honduras 2000-03) is a native of Boston, graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (BA, MA), and mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. From her century-old house on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, she works as a freelance writer, Spanish interpreter, and translator. She wrote an award-winning memoir, Triumph & Hope: Golden Years in the Peace Corps in Honduras, and has returned to Honduras nine times for ongoing humanitarian projects, most recently in February and March 2013. She is now finishing a book about her experiences in Cuba and other Latin American countries, beginning back in 1941 when she was only 3.

Andrew Oerke has lived many lives.  After suggesting, he told me,  the idea of the Peace Corps to Jerry Clark, Kennedy’s campaign manager in Wisconsin, he went on to become a Peace Corps Director in Africa and the Caribbean, and for many years president of a private and voluntary organization working in developing countries. Oerke worked and visited in more than 160 countries, is a Golden Gloves champ, football player, university professor and Poet-in-Residence, dean of administration at one of the largest community colleges, U.S. Korean War veteran, World Bank consultant, and consultant to the United Nations on the Gulf War, on financial services, and on the environment.

Mr. Oerke was also the first Director of the International Folk Festival on the Mall for the Smithsonian, and as Dean of Administration for the Medical Center of Miami-Dade Community College started one of the country’s first Wellness Institutes. He has also pioneered microfinance in more than 60 disadvantaged countries.  Mr. Oerke has studied at many universities in the US and abroad, and was the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship at the Freie Universität in Berlin, and scholarships at the University of Iowa writers’ workshop, where he studied under Mark Strand, and at Baylor University where he studied Wellerisms with Charles G. Smith.

Andrew Oerke’s work has appeared frequently in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, Mademoiselle, and in many other publications in the U.S., England, France, Germany, Lebanon, Malawi, Kenya, the Philippines, Jamaica, and Mexico.  He has published five books of poetry.  In 2003, he was given the award for literature by the UN Society of Writers and Artists.  He passed away in early May in Florida. The cause of death was purportedly complications from the flu, recurrent malaria, and a chronic heart condition.

This is a remembrance of Andy from one of his former PCVs.

In Memoriam:  Andrew Oerke

by Jack Allison, RPCV Malawi 1966-69

Known fondly as Andy during his service as Associate Director and on to Director of Peace Corps/Malawi in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Andrew Oerke was the consummate humanitarian.  After joining the Peace Corps in 1967 as a desk officer for Uganda and Tanzania, he had initially wanted to be a PCV in Africa; however, because he was married with children, he was eventually assigned to Malawi.  His final assignment with the Peace Corps was country director in Jamaica.

Andy received his education at Baylor University (BA, ‘52, MA ‘59), and remained fiercely loyal to and appreciative of Baylor for fostering his interest in poetry.  He also studied at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, as well as at the Freie Universitat in Berlin on a Fulbright.  His poetry was published in the New Yorker, Mademoiselle, and Poetry.  His most recent books were San Miguel Allende, and The African Stilldancer. After college Andy served as poet-in-residence at St. Andrew’s College in North Carolina.

Having been introduced to international community development in the Peace Corps, Andy served as president of Partnership for Productivity (PfP) beginning in 1976, and became a pioneer in microfinance.  In the late 1980s he became CEO of the Greater Caribbean Energy and Environment Foundation (GCEEF), and led that august entity with his long-time partner, Dr. Anitra Thorhaug who served as its president.  Their development work together in Haiti became legendary.

Andy’s contributions to the establishment and evolution of microfinance have been manifold.  His ‘generative model’ of microfinance shows considerable promise for developing countries.

The Peace Corps family, as well as all those he touched in so many countries, will definitely miss Andy’s eternally optimistic, giving, and supportive nature.  He was a gentle leader, a gifted poet, an enthusiastic spokesman, and a faithful friend.  What a fantastic legacy, and what an enduring, marvelous role model for us all!  He is indeed sorely missed…

Recently Andy Oerke was asked in an interview what was his greatest achievement.  He responded, “I think it’s that I have been able to fail.  My greatest accomplishment was trying to understand what life’s all about and transmitting it through poetry and action.  I couldn’t do this unless I was willing to fail.”

•

Dr. Jack Allison retired from clinical medicine four years ago after a 30-year career in academic emergency medicine. He responded to the victims of the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010, where he treated hundreds of quake victims. Prior to retirement, he served as Chief of Staff of the Charles George VA Medical Center in Asheville, North Carolina. Before that, Dr. Allison was Chief of Staff at the VAMC in Syracuse, New York, a position he had held since 1999.

Dr. Allison received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1966, and earned a Master of Public Health degree from the UNC School of Public Health in 1971. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer for three years in Malawi, Central Africa.