Archive - March 2012

Our blogger Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon 1996–98) got some recent press in her home state of New Mexico. Bonnie, who earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University/Los Angeles in June 2007, was an honors graduate of Columbia University (BA, Literature/Writing, 1979), and then a writer and editor for nearly 30 years, and an educator — in the U.S. and overseas — for over 15 years. For ten years (from 1986 to 1996) she was a chef, caterer, and cooking instructor in Manhattan, during which time her freelance writing focused on food. In 1996, she joined the Peace Corps and served as a health and nutrition Volunteer in Gabon in central Africa. Her book, How to Cook a Crocodile: A Memoir with Recipes (Peace Corps Writers, 2010), recounts her experience teaching healthy cooking in Gabon. The following piece about Bonnie appeared online in The Taos News on Sunday, March 4, 2012. • Bonnie . . .

LAST WEEKEND I RECEIVED A PHONE CALL from Joan Corboy who was the wife of one of our APCDs back in Ethiopia in the early Sixties. She is now pushing 90, the mother of eight, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, and a wonderful woman. She called me to test her memory (it is, by the way, much better than mine!). Since I work at a Catholic college she wanted to know if I could get my hands on an article by Judge John T. Noonan, a Harvard educated lawyer, who had written a piece on contraception back in the mid-sixties. Joan, who is a faithful Catholic (Yes, Virginia, there are still some) was annoyed (to say the least) at all of Rick Santorum’s remarks on contraception, remembered the article, and wanted me to track it down for her. I had no idea who John T. Noonan, Jr. was, or about the article he had written on contraception. . . .

David Peterson del Mar recently published in the scholarly journal, African Identities (Vol. 9. N0 4, November 2011, 349-361) an article entitled “RERFLECTION At the heart of things: Peace Corps volunteers in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Peterson, who is not an RPCV, is an Assistant Professor at Portland State University for the Department of History and Extended Campus. He is the author of six books, including What Trouble I Have Seen: A History of Violence against Wives (Harvard University Press, 1996) and The American Family: From Obligation to Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).  He is currently researching American attitudes toward Africa since World War II for his next book which is tentatively entitled, Africa Existenial. His research for this new book that led him to RPCVs who served in Africa, and the writing that they have done over the years. He wrote me, “I very much enjoyed the research (on PCVs in Africa) — and hope that . . .

On this Peace Corps Birthday I thought I’d tell again one or two of the early stories about the agency.      A lot has been written, especially last year, about those days when the Peace Corps attracted the best and the brightest, or so they claimed. One document stated the agency’s  staff was composed of “skiers, mountain climbers, big-game hunters, prizefighters, football players, polo players and enough Ph.D.’s [30] to staff a liberal arts college.” There were 18 attorneys, of whom only four continue to work strictly as attorneys in the General Counsel’s office and the rest [including Sargent Shriver] did other jobs. Also, all of these employees were parents of some 272 children. In terms of staff and PCVs, the ratio was quite small. Figures from WWII showed 30 people were required to support every soldier in the front lines. After the war, peacetime ratio was one person in Washington to every four overseas. The Peace Corps was . . .