Archive - August 2014

Peace Corps Worldwide interviewed  Gary Cornelius about his Peace Corps service and his new book, Dancing with Gogos: A Peace Corps Memoir [Peace Corps Writers, 2014]. • Gary, where and when did you serve in the Peace Corps? In South Africa, from January 2012 to April 2013. I was “med-sepped” after about 14 months because I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disorder. The symptoms were relatively minor, and still are, so I’ve not started medication. My only treatment thus far is participation in a monthly support group for “early onset” Parkinson’s people. . What was your Peace Corp project assignment? I was a health Volunteer and trained as part of a group of 36 — 30 women and 6 men. The official title was HIV Outreach Worker and we were all part of the Peace Corps South Africa Community HIV/AIDS Outreach Project, or CHOP. There were about 100 health Volunteers in . . .

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key Administration posts, among them: Carlos Torres, Nominee for Deputy Director, Peace Corps Carlos Torres is the Associate Director for Global Operations at the Peace Corps, a position he has held since 2013. He previously served as Regional Director for Inter-America and Pacific Region at the Peace Corps from 2010 to 2013. He was an independent consultant on international projects from 2000 to 2010. Mr. Torres founded CARANA Corporation in 1984 and served as its President and CEO until 2000. He was a private contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Costa Rica from 1983 to 1984, and from 1976 to 1983 he worked in the Financial Industries Section of Arthur D. Little, Inc. Mr. Torres received a B.S. from Babson College and an M.S.M. from the Arthur D. Little Management Education . . .

After graduating from Bowdoin College in Maine, David Mather served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in southern Chile from 1968 to 1970. Profoundly influenced by his two years living and working in the campo [countryside], he bought a small piece of land in the woods of New Hampshire where he carved out a simple homestead and has lived a mile off grid for over forty years. He ultimately began and ran a successful specialty lumber company, but being self-employed, he was able to continue to travel a great deal, primarily to Third World Countries. Ten years ago, he began to downsize his business and, with more free time, wrote One For The Road which was published through Peace Corps Writers in 2011 (OnefortheRoad-Mather.com). About a PCV in Chile who falls in love with both the campo and a campesina, it is a mix of fact and fiction, and has been . . .

On October 7, Christopher R. Hill (Cameroon 1974–76) will publish Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy (Simon & Schuster), a memoir of his years with the State Department. To quote the S&S website: Hill was on the front lines in the Balkans at the breakup of Yugoslavia. He takes us from one-on-one meetings with the dictator Milosevic, to Bosnia and Kosovo, to the Dayton conference, where a truce was brokered. Hill draws upon lessons learned as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon early on in his career and details his prodigious experience as a US ambassador. He was the first American Ambassador to Macedonia; Ambassador to Poland, where he also served in the depth of the cold war; Ambassador to South Korea and chief disarmament negotiator in North Korea; and Hillary Clinton’s hand-picked Ambassador to Iraq. The book can be preorder now at Amazon.com. Outpost: Life on the . . .

Dancing with Gogos is the story of one man’s effort to make a difference in a collection of Zulu villages in rural South Africa, while fulfilling a life-long dream of serving in the United States Peace Corps. It’s the story of learning a new language, of immersing oneself in a different culture, of leaving a love 15,000 kilometers behind and discovering the unexpected chance to find a new one half a world away. It’s the story of South Africa’s history of apartheid and the effects of that sorry legacy on tens of millions of black Africans who to this day struggle to leave behind 500 years of oppression. • Gary Cornelius was nearly 55 when he realized that he was weeks away from being the age at which Oregon public employees could retire early and get a modest pension, so the month he turned 55 he retired  — after a . . .

Long Ago And Far Away by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962–64) A Peace Corps Writers Book 342 pages July 2014 $18.00 (paperback); $9.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Kathleen Croskran (Ethiopia 1965–67) Long Ago and Far Away by John Coyne, an ambitious novel spanning time and place, connects the disparate worlds of Parker Bishop, a former CIA agent who retreated to safety and anonymity as a proprietor of a second hand book store in Westchester County, New York — thus masking his undercover past with respectability that included a beloved wife and two daughters. Bishop’s wife Sara has just died of cancer when the great love of his youth, the beautiful Irish McCann, reappears unexpectedly, first in the form of her travel guide to Ethiopia, and eventually in person. Irish also has cancer, but is not dying, not yet, not until she — and Parker Bishop — confront their murky history and forty-year-old . . .

A Writer Writes How I Was Bombed Out of Sri Lanka And Other Career Changes Sri Lanka: The author and his students (Spring 1998). I spent a year as a Peace Corps Volunteer teacher in Kandy, Sri Lanka. While there, a suicide bomber blew himself up close to my home, which led to the evacuation of the Volunteers from the country. Well, evacuation may be too strong a word, but a security officer flew over from Washington, DC to evaluate the situation and he determined that the best thing to do was send the Volunteers home. I returned home to New York in April 1998, after a three-day layover in Bangkok, just in time to re-enroll in the summer semester at Fordham University, from which I had taken a leave of absence to teach overseas. I only had one course left before having to take my comprehensive exams and graduating . . .

Peace Corps writer Leita Kaldi (Senegal 1993-96) wrote: I haven’t seen anything about Ismael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, who I was listening to while was driving. He was being interviewed on NPR last week about the Africa Summit in Washington DC. He had very astute things to say about American investment vs. exploitation in Africa. And then he added that the best foreign policy the U.S. ever had was Peace Corps! The first white person he’d ever seen appeared in his village and taught him English. I was so proud I nearly ran off the road. That would have been last Wednesday on, I think “The Take Away” or “The World.” I kind of expected it to be reported by somebody else, because we’re all such avid NPR listeners.

The Peace Corps Writers  Publisher’s Special Book Award recognizes outstanding publications from the Peace Corps community, and The Power of Latino Leadership: Culture, Inclusion, and Contribution by Juana Bordas (Chile 1964–66) is such a book. Recently Juana’s book also received The Nautilus Book Award that recognizes “better books for a better world.” The Nautilus Award was established in 1998 and is considered a “major” book award. CONGRATULATIONS to Juana Bordas for winning the  2014 Peace Corps Writers Publisher’s Special Award for the best book published in 2013.  Juana receives a small cash award, and a certificate. A long-time Latina leader, Juana is a founder of Denver’s Mi Casa Resource Center and was the first President of the National Hispana Leadership Institute. In 2009, she was named Colorado Unique Woman of the Year by the Denver Post and the Colorado Women’s Foundation. The book highlights Bordas’ own experiences and includes the voices of 9 . . .

In 1997, the first annual award for an outstanding poetry book by a Peace Corps writer was presented. • CONGRATULATIONS to Ben Berman (Zimbabwe 1998–2000) for winning the Peace Corps Writers 2014 Best Book of Poetry for his collection  Strange Borderlands published in 2013.  Ben will receive a small cash award and a certificate. John Coyne comments — As editor of Peace Corps Worldwide, several times a week I received books in the mail from RPCV writers — mostly I knew they are coming as I had been forewarned by the author. Then in early 2013 I received one via Amazon.com that came to me without notice — no fanfare, I hadn’t requested it. It was a collection of poems from a guy named Ben Berman. Never heard of him. The jacket cover with its bright colors suggested Africa. When I looked closer I saw that it was an image . . .

The Award for Best Book of Photography was first presented in 2009. • CONGRATULATIONS to Douglas Cruickshank (Uganda 2009–12) for winning the Peace Corps Writers 2014 Best Book of Photography for his photography and his essays for Somehow published in 2013.  Douglas will receive a small cash award and a certificate. Douglas Cruickshank has written journalism, travel stories, profiles, essays and opinion pieces for many magazines, newspapers and web sites and has worked in radio, television and film-making. He has been a photographer for more than four decades, a columnist and editor for Salon.com, and has edited numerous books. The following account, drawn from the introduction to Somehow: Living on Uganda Time, tells of how he came to join the Peace Corps, and his first impressions of Uganda. In early 2008 I started doing something. At first, I didn’t know exactly what I was doing or why I was doing . . .