Peace Corps Worldwide – promoting Peace Corps writers since 1989

Author Interview—Lucinda Jackson (Palau)

Mar 20 2023

Interviewed by Heidi Eliason Lucinda Jackson–Palau 2016 Lucinda Jackson is the author of two memoirs: Just a Girl: Growing Up Female and Ambitious, about her struggles to succeed in the male-dominated work world, and Project Escape: Lessons for an Unscripted Life, an exploration of freedom after leaving a structured career. Jackson is a PhD scientist and global corporate executive who features on podcasts and radio and has published articles, book chapters, magazine columns, and patents. She is the founder of LJ Ventures, where she speaks and consults on energy, the environment, and empowering women in the workplace and in our Next Act. Connect with Jackson or find her books at: www.lucindajackson.com. Who or what inspires you to write? I get inspired by having something to say. I feel this burning concept or thought inside me and I just have to get it out! It is this need to express myself, to make sense of something, . . .

Tragic Deaths in the Peace Corps

Mar 19 2023

The murder of Peace Corps volunteer, Kate Puzey in 2009 “Puzey was murdered while working with the Peace Corps in Benin. She was concerned about inappropriate relationships a male working at her school was having with students. She reported it to the Peace Corps and they let the man she was concerned about know that she had reported him… Then she ended up murdered. The man and a couple of his supposed accomplices were held in prison without any real trial for a few years and then it was determined that they didn’t do it and then nothing. No one was held accountable.In May 2011, dozens of volunteers provided written testimony to Congress about problems with the Peace Corps’ handling of sexual violence, ranging from failures to train volunteers to mistreatment after assaults.In November 2011, President Barack Obama signed the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act, named after a volunteer killed . . .

Award goes to Jonathan Deenik (Cameroon, Nepal)

Mar 18 2023

Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research goes to RPCV Jonathan Deenik College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources University of Hawai’i at Manoa 17 March 2023 Jonathan Deenik received his BA in History and Art History (College of Wooster), and then joined the Peace Corps, where he served as a teacher and teacher trainer in a rural community in southern Cameroon (1985-87) and remote central Nepal (1987-91). He came to Hawaiʻi in 1992 and completed his MS and PhD degrees at UHM in Soil Science. Jonathan joined the Dept. of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences in 2003 with a three-way split (Extension, research and instruction). His work focuses on soil nutrient management and soil health across the spectrum of tropical agroecosystems. He works with farmers throughout the Hawaiian Islands and Micronesia. He enjoys collaborating with faculty from a range of disciplines with a history of large projects covering soils . . .

Remembering the Murder of PCV Deborah Gardner (Tonga)

Mar 17 2023

In the late Nineties, shortly after I had taken over the job of manager of the New York Recruitment Office for the Peace Corps, I got a call from a reporter at the New York Observer newspaper. I thought he was calling to ask me about the Peace Corps and to write an article about the agency. Well, in a way he was, but he started by asking if I knew anything about the murder of a young PCV woman in Tonga in 1975. The reporter’s name was Philip Weiss and he didn’t realize he had stumbled on an RPCV who was fascinated by the history of the Peace Corps and obsessively collected PCV stories. Phil Weiss was also obsessed, but by the murder of this PCV in Tonga. In 1978, when he was 22 and backpacking around the world, he had crashed with a Peace Corps Volunteer in Samoa named . . .

Peace Corps Early Days by Gregory Barnes (Sierra Leone)

Mar 17 2023

The Peace Corps: Early Years by Gregory A. Barnes (Sierra Leone 1961-63) Friends Press 252 pages February 2023 $6.00 (Kindle); $12.00 (Paperback) One of the most exciting developments in the United State of the 1960s was the founding of the Peace Corps: so ambitious, so popular, and so emblematic of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. Many thousands of Americans responded, volunteering to serve in the developing countries of the world, and Greg Barnes was among them—part of a group forever to be known as Sierra Leone One. Ultimately he worked as both volunteer and staffer from 1961 to 1966. Here are his memoirs of his time as volunteer in Sierra Leone and as staff member in both Nigeria and Washington. Titles of the initial chapters show some of the chaos reigning at the Peace Corps in its early days: Here We Are, So Take Us, a translation from “We’ve . . .

Some Early Peace Corps Books You Might Have Missed

Mar 16 2023

The Early Years of Peace Corps in Afghanistan: A Promising Time by Frances Hopkins Irwin and Will A. Irwin | Feb 13, 201 The Peace Corps: The Early Years by Charles Jones and Keith Jones | Feb 7, 2015 My Years in the Early Peace Corps: Nigeria, 1964-1965, Volume 1 by Sonja Goodwin | Sep 17, 2021 My Years in the Early Peace Corps: Ethiopia, 1965-1966, Volume 2 by Sonja Goodwin Eradicating Smallpox in Ethiopia: Peace Corps Volunteers’ Accounts of Their Adventures, Challenges and Achievements by James W. Skelton Jr. , Alan Schnur, et al. | Nov 26, 2019 I Miss the Rain in Africa: Peace Corps as a Third Act by Nancy Daniel Wesson | May 1, 2021 A Few Minor Adjustments: Two Years in Afghanistan: A Peace Corps Odyssey by Elana Hohl | May 6, 2021 Mariantonia: The Lifetime Journey of a Peace Corps Volunteer by Robert L. Forster | Sep 22, 2021 BUILDING COMMUNITY : ANSWERING KENNEDY’S CALL by HARLAN RUSSELL GREEN | May 16, 2022 Moon over Sasova: One American’s Experience Teaching in Post-Cold War . . .

A Cold War Tale That Ended Peacefully by George Brose (Tanzania)

Mar 15 2023

. . . or I’ll Show You My Country’s Nobel Laureate if You Show Me Yours by George Brose (Tanzania 1965-67) After my two years of Peace Corps service in Moshi, Tanzania and Loitokitok, Kenya, I was drafted into the US Army in April, 1968. We had been told in Peace Corps training that former Peace Corps Volunteers could not serve in intelligence units and likewise former intel specialists could not go into the Peace Corps for a number of years after leaving either service. It was supposedly federal law. After a year of training in German at the Army Language School in Arlington, VA, I was sent to Germany, but not yet assigned to a unit over there. When I got to Heidelberg I was told I would be sent to an intel unit on the East German border. When I heard that I politely told the . . .

Peace Corps Volunteers return to Armenia

Mar 14 2023

Peace Corps Volunteers return to Armenia by Siranush Ghazanchyan Last night, Peace Corps Armenia welcomed a new group of 16 American Peace Corps Volunteers to serve alongside the Armenian people in different regions of the country. This is the first group of Volunteers to arrive in Armenia since they were evacuated in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since that time, Peace Corps Armenia staff and former volunteers have continued to engage with schools and community groups through Virtual Service and training activities. “We are very excited to witness this historic return of Volunteers to Armenia,” said Peace Corps Armenia Country Director, Joanne Fairley. “I know that the Volunteers will bring great passion and energy to their projects, and I am sure they will form new partnerships and friendship with the Armenian people.” At the request of the government of Armenia, Volunteers will work in schools and community groups . . .

Once Again: Five Great Short Stories About the Peace Corps Experience

Mar 13 2023

Five Great Short Stories About the Peace Corps Experience The Mending Fields by Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975–76) I WAS ASSIGNED to the Island of Saint Kit in the West Indies. Once on an inter-island plane, I sat across the aisle from one of my new colleagues, an unfriendly, overserious young woman. She was twenty-four, twenty-five . . . we were all twenty-four, twenty-five. I didn’t know her much or like her. As the plane banked over the island, she pressed against the window, staring down at the landscape. I couldn’t see much of her face, just enough really to recognize an expression of pain. Below us spread an endless manicured lawn, bright green and lush of sugarcane, the island’s main source of income. Each field planted carefully to control erosion. Until that year, Saint Kit’s precious volcanic soil had been bleeding into the sea; somehow they had resolved . . .

“Troutman, NC resident among the first Peace Corps Volunteers to receive overseas assignment”

Mar 11 2023

By Taylor Jedrzejek Statesville Record and Landmark.com Amid all of her excitement over the opportunity to travel abroad, there was one nagging question that kept popping up in the mind of Randi Epstein: how exactly do I pack for a trip that lasts two years? But even with that burning question, nothing could be done to quell her excitement. After all, Epstein is one of the first volunteers to get a chance to travel oversees for service as the Peace Corps begins to restart it’s outreach programs following the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s super exciting,” Epstein said. “I think, as a volunteer, that it’s awesome to see the world opening up again and I know all of the volunteers are excited to be out on the ground helping the world again.” On March 14, Epstein, a resident of Troutman, will board a flight for the southeastern African nation of Zambia . . .

“Up Close with Peter Sage” . . . writing about the Peace Corps

Mar 10 2023

Observations and commentary on American politics and culture. Tuesday, March 7, 2023 Public Service, continued: The Peace Corps . . . Ask what you can do for your country. My wife Patti and I owe so much to our service in the Peace Corps. It inspired a lifetime of public service that began in Ethiopia during the late 1960s. — U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, a returned Peace Corps volunteer, Co-Chair of the Congressional Peace Corps Caucus. I have encountered dozens of returned Peace Corps volunteers over the years. They have something in common: An uncommon commitment to public service. They are a self-selected cohort. Some entered the Peace Corps in midlife or as retirees, but most entered the Peace Corps as a young person, typically after college and before settling into the burdens and joys of career, family, home, mortgage–those entanglements that Zorba in the movie Zorba the Greek called “the full . . .

The Volunteer Who Ran the Table on Foreign Service Appointments — Kathleen Stephens (South Korea)

Mar 09 2023

A Profile in Citizenship by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) • Kathleen Stephens holds a B.A. in East Asian studies from Prescott College and a M. A. from Harvard University. She also studied at the University of Hong Kong and Oxford University before becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Korea from 1975-77, where she taught in the Yesan Middle School. Of her Volunteer experience, Kathleen said: “this is where I learned the qualities I needed to be a diplomat; I learned how to endure hardships and convince others.” Thereafter, when joining the U. S. Foreign Service in 1978, through hard work she earned major agency appointments — all the way up to serving as Ambassador to South Korea under two different U. S. presidents, and charge’ d’ affairs to India. She was well equipped to meet these professional challenges, speaking fluent Korean, Serbo-Croation, and Chinese. Early on in her . . .

5 Paying Literary Magazines to Submit to in March 2023

Mar 09 2023

5 Paying Literary Magazines to Submit to in March 2023 These magazines pay for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry; they are a mix of literary and genre magazines. Not all of them are open through the month. Fantasy Magazine Fantasy is an award-winning fantasy and dark fantasy magazine, open for general submissions (i.e. submissions from all writers) for the first week of March. They’re open to submissions from BIPOC writers through 2023. All dates are subject to change. Reading period: 1-7 March 2023 for general submissions; BIPOC submissions open through 2023 Length: Up to 7,500 words for fiction, up to 6 poems Pay: $0.08/word for fiction, $40/poem Details here. (Also, Fusion Fragment will open for science fiction and SF-tinged literary fiction during 24th-31st March; send stories of 2,000-15,000 words; pay is 3.5 Canadian cents per word, up to CAD300. The submission portal will open during the reading period. And MetaStellar will be open for flash fiction submissions through March; they . . .

Charlie Clifford (Peru) — Creator of TUMI Luggage

Mar 08 2023

Charlie Clifford (Peru 1967-69) started TUMI in 1975, after working as a marketing director for an industrial equipment subsidiary of a large food retailer. It takes its name from a Peruvian icon known to Charlie from his Peace Corps days. Charlie says, “I was married in the Peace Corps. We had two terrific years in Peru, traveling throughout South America. I grew personally an enormous amount. I came back and worked in industrial marketing for about four years. Then I invested in a small entrepreneurial company and began covering the eastern region for sales for a company that was doing handcrafted products from South America. He left that after a year or two to found Tumi with a partner as an importer of leather bags from Colombia with a total investment of $10,000. TUMI’s innovative introduction of soft, ultra-functional, black-on-black ballistic nylon travel bags catapulted the company to its . . .

“Peace Corps future is up in the air” — February 15, 1962

Mar 07 2023

An editorial from the Norristown, Pennsylvania Times Herald February 15, 1962 WHEN THIS ADMINISTRATION entered office, one of its most novel proposals was for creation of the Peace Corps. The idea was, and is, that numbers of dedicated young people with particular talents and education would be sent to underdeveloped countries to aid them in becoming responsible nations. Members of the Corps would, so far as possible, live with the people, and accept a more or less comparable standard of living. The proposal was nonpartisan — and it was met with a nonpartisan response. Members of both parties greeted the plan with enthusiasm — and other members of both parties shook their heads in doubt. In any event, Congress approved, and the President appointed his brother-in-law, R. Sargent Shriver, to take over, on a non-paid basis. That happened about a year ago. Now numbers of Peace Corps young men and . . .