May 29, 2012 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Allen Mondell (Sierra Leone 1963-65) New Documentary Film Focuses on Third Goal of The Peace Corps

May 29 2012

[Allen Mondell (Sierra Leone 1963-65) was a teacher overseas and is today a documentary film maker living in Texas who has since 1995 been planning to make a film about the Peace Corps. It has taken him 15 years but he never gave up on the idea and now he has his documentary film Waging Peace. It took him 27 months, or as he says, “a second tour” to tell our story. Allen has weaved together letters, journals, emails and blogs written by RPCVs into a film that profiles four Peace Corps Volunteers who are today still trying to make a difference by fulfilling the Third Goal. As he told me, “I wanted the people who watch this to know first that the Peace Corps still exists and that Volunteers are still serving around the world. I also wanted viewers to know that for a great many Volunteers those two . . .

Review of Kevin Lowther's The African American Odyssey of John Kizell

May 29 2012

The African American Odyssey of John Kizell: A South Carolina Slave Returns to Fight the Slave Trade in His African Homeland by Kevin G. Lowther (Sierra Leone 1963–65) The University of South Carolina Press $39.95 (hardcover) Kindle & Nook $15. 326 pages May 2011 Reviewed by Jeff Fearnside (Kazakhstan 2002–04) JOHN KIZELL LIVED A LIFE THAT could easily read as fiction. Born in West Africa in about 1760, he was falsely accused of witchcraft in his home village in order to dispose of him as a slave. He survived the infamous Middle Passage across the Atlantic (one in five of his fellow captives perished) and was purchased in Charleston, South Carolina, on the eve of the American Revolution. During the war, he took up arms as a loyalist, believing this the best path to freedom. In payment, he and a number of other black loyalists were evacuated by the British . . .

Archive - May 29, 2012