A Writer Writes: Apocalypse Then, Part I
Apocalypse Then by Bob Criso (Nigeria & Somalia 1966–68) • Part I Ishiagu: July, 1967 EAGER FOR NEWS OF THE WAR, I huddled with my students many evenings around a transistor radio and a kerosene lamp listening to Radio Enugu. Refugees were returning from the North with stories of Igbos being hacked into pieces, pregnant women being cut open and children screaming inside burning homes. There was a report on the radio about a train filled with bloody body parts that were sent down from the North “as a warning.” I was skeptical about that one until I saw a woman returning to the village carrying the head of a man. She said she had retrieved it from the train. Several weeks earlier, Ruth Olsen, the Nigeria Peace Corps Director in the East, had given me a van as part of an emergency evacuation plan. I was supposed to pick . . .
Read More
Can someone explain what the Peace Corps was thinking by leaving PCVs in-country under these conditions? My volunteer tour ended…