Archive - 2014

1
Peace Corps and the NPCA have signed a MOU to Cooperate by focusing on Third Goal Activities
2
Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975-76) Wins Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction
3
Statistical Profile of Peace Corps Response Volunteers as of 9.30.13
4
Peace Corps vs Posh Corps
5
The Sexual Assault Advisory Council Issues Third Annual Report -Not easy to find on Peace Corps Website
6
John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) Featured on Examiner.com
7
How I Taught Myself to Write Fiction by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65)
8
Review: At Home on the Kazkh Steppe by Janet Givens (Kazakhstan 2004-06)
9
Free e-version of UNDER CHAD’S SPELL by Michael Varga (Chad)
10
Peter Hessler covers Cairo’s trash
11
Review: Letters from Yemen by Mary Lou Currier (Yemen 1991–94)
12
Review: When the Whistling Stopped by David J. Mather (1968–70)
13
The Peace Corps Announces Record-Breaking Application Numbers in 2014
14
Review: Rush of Shadows by Catherine Bell (Brazil 1966–68)
15
Review of John Coyne's (Ethiopia 1962-64) Child of Shadows

Peace Corps and the NPCA have signed a MOU to Cooperate by focusing on Third Goal Activities

The National Peace Corps Association is a membership association for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. It is not an official part of the Peace Corps. However, it has always advocated for the Peace Corps Community. Now the Peace Corps has established  a more formal relationship with the NPCA. This Memorandum of Understanding was signed during the NPCA’s annual gathering last June. Read the Memorandum of Understanding between the Peace Corps and the National Peace Corps Association by clicking MOU between Peace Corps and NPCA The following description of the activities is from that Memorandum of Understanding: “V. AREAS OF COOPERATION A.   Under this MOU, subject to certain limitations applicable to each party, the Peace Corps and NPCA intend to collaborate on areas of mutual interest that may include, but are not limited to, activities and initiatives that serve to educate the public on the Peace Corps and its mission, programs, and . . .

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Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975-76) Wins Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction

By Ron Charles September 24                                                                                                                                                       (Courtesy of Grove/Atlantic) “The Woman Who Lost Her Soul,” an epic about America’s unbridled military ambitions, has won this year’s Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction. In their announcement of the $10,000 award this morning, the judges said that novelist Bob Shacochis “creates an intricate portrait of the catastrophic events that have led to an endless cycle of vengeance and war between cultures.” This complex, demanding novel about a father-daughter pair of spies was a . . .

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Statistical Profile of Peace Corps Response Volunteers as of 9.30.13

In 2010, Peace Corps opened up the Peace Corps Volunteer Response Program to professionals who had never served in the Peace Corps.  Previously, the program had been designed to allow  only RPCVs to accept short term assignments with the Peace Corps to utilize the expertise they had gained through their Peace Corps service. Facts to note in this profile about the Peace Corps Response Program: 1) The total of Peace Corps Response applications for 2013 was 2631, actual applicants were 1506. There were 184 Peace Corps Response Volunteers, serving on September 30, 2013. Here is the chart showing these numbers: -2012 to April 2014, 14-0213_-_responsive_material_-_fy12_fy13_fy14- 2) It is very difficult to get detailed demographic data from Peace Corps. These statistics are already a year old.  It is not possible to know how many of the 1506 applicants documented in 2013 went on to serve in 2014. 3) My assumption is that the . . .

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Peace Corps vs Posh Corps

In the mail the other day I received a CD documentary film about the Peace Corps entitled, Posh Corps. The video was new to me, but it turned out that the documentary has been around for a year, and there have been several showings in California. I was out of the loop. The video focuses on Peace Corps Volunteers serving in South Africa in recent years. The disk also contains interviews with RPCVs who were in Asia, West Africa and Eastern Europe. Those interviews focus on the struggle that PCVs have in coming home. I see a lot of material produced by RPCVs, mostly books, but I was really impressed by what the director, producer and editor Alan Toth has achieved with this film. Alan was in South Africa from 2010-12. Today he works at a non-profit documentary production company in the San Francisco Bay area. Posh Corps is his . . .

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The Sexual Assault Advisory Council Issues Third Annual Report -Not easy to find on Peace Corps Website

The Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act of 2011 established a Sexual Assault Advisory Council charged with the responsibility of reviewing Peace Corps’ compliance with that law and issuing an annual report. Peace Corps announced the first report in a press release. Since then, the report has been posted without notice. It is not listed on the Peace Corps Home page under Agency Links, nor Agency Documents, nor Safety and Security. It can be found only by those who know to put the correct heading, “Sexual Assault Advisory Council”, in the search box.  Here is the direct link to that important report: http://files.peacecorps.gov/multimedia/pdf/policies/PCAC_Annual_Report.pdf The law, itself, is the work of a brave and brilliant group of RPCV women, First Response Action. These women were victims, themselves, of sexual assault, during service as was current Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet. First Response Action organized to call attention to Peace Corps . . .

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John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) Featured on Examiner.com

John Coyne talks about the reissue of Child of Shadows October 11, 201411:32 AM MST Best-selling author of The Legacy and Hobgoblin, John Coyne talks about the reissue of Child of Shadows, his spine tingling suspense/horror novel, available now, via Harvest Moon Press. http://johncoynebooks.com/child-of-shadows/ Harvest Moon Press Mr. Coyne graciously took time to answer questions about Child of Shadows, his inspiration genre blending in fiction, and what scares him the most. Your novel, Child of Shadows has been reissued with Harvest Moon Press, have you reread it? Was there anything you would have rewritten/changed? Rereading it was a special pleasure as (believe it or not) I had forgotten much of the plot, the twists and turns of the story, so that for me, it was like reading a new book, discovering an old friend. What is the first sentence of Child of Shadows? Detective Nick Kardatzke stepped carefully through the sewage water, the filth and . . .

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How I Taught Myself to Write Fiction by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65)

On October 6th, Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963–65) was featured on Lorrie Bodger’s site TheBookUnderHerBed.com discussing her first steps to becoming an award winning author. Among Marnie’ awards is the 1995 Peace Corps Writers Maria Thomas Fiction Award for her Peace Corps novel, Green Fires. • Guest post: A writer learns to write by Lorrie Bodger Marnie Mueller is the award-winning author of three novels: Green Fires, The Climate of the Country, and My Mother’s Island. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador in the early 1960s, a community organizer in El Barrio in NYC, and then a member of Mayor Lindsay’s administration, responsible for programming cultural events in all five boroughs. She left city government to become Development Director and later Program Director of WBAI-FM radio; after WBAI she ran her own business producing citywide events, concerts, benefits, and weddings. Today she’s a full-time writer (and MacDowell Colony Fellow), . . .

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Review: At Home on the Kazkh Steppe by Janet Givens (Kazakhstan 2004-06)

At Home on the Kazakh Steppe: A Peace Corps Memoir by Janet Givens (Kazakhstan 2004–06) Ant Press, August 2014; Birch Tree Book, 2015 208 pages $14.99 (paperback), $4.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993–96) • At 55, Janet Givens and her husband, Woody, join the Peace Corps and go to Kazakhstan. Woody had been a Professor of Speech Pathology at Temple University, and Janet was a Certified Gestalt Psychotherapist. Leaving their comfortable life, their children, their grandchildren and their beloved dog was heartbreaking, but they met the challenge wholeheartedly. Their first months with their host family brought the predictable culture shock, with emotional tensions that nearly shattered their marriage. While Woody expected respect in his university teaching position, as an expert in his field, Janet wanted the grass roots Peace Corps experience, without cell phones or lap tops, learning how to teach young people English in a baffling . . .

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Free e-version of UNDER CHAD’S SPELL by Michael Varga (Chad)

The Kindle edition of Under Chad’s Spell, a Peace Corps novel by Michael Varga (Chad 1977-79.), is available for free for a limited period of time at Amazon.com. The promotion will end without warning, so if you have an interest in having the Kindle edition of the book, now’s the time to download it. Under Chad’s Spell tells the story a group of Peace Corps Volunteers serving in Chad in the 1970s when civil war breaks out. To receive the Kindle version of Under Chad’s Spell from Amazon.com for no cost, click on the book cover or the bold book title.

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Peter Hessler covers Cairo’s trash

John Coyne writes: The New Yorker for October 13, 2014 has a great piece by Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) entitled, “Tales Of The Trash: A neighborhood garbageman explains modern Egypt.” It’s Peter’s Letter From Cairo. Peter writes, “Waste collectors like Sayyid Ahmed, known as zabaleen, work in an informal economy, but they provide a remarkable efficient recycling service and become experts on their neighborhood.” The article is available online at: NewYorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/tales-trash

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Review: Letters from Yemen by Mary Lou Currier (Yemen 1991–94)

Letters from Yemen (Peace Corps letters) by Mary Lou Currier (Yemen 1991–94) CreateSpace 158 pages June 2014 $21.00 (paperback) Reviewed by Darcy M. Meijer (Gabon 1982–84) • The older I get, the more I appreciate straightforward writing. And the more I travel, the more I understand the world. I have just finished reading Mary Lou Currier’s Letters from Yemen, a collection of 158 color photographs and letters written home during her Peace Corps service as a TEFL teacher from 1991 to 1994. I chose this book to review because I currently live in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. The Republic of Yemen is my neighbor to the south, with only the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia between us. Yemen also borders Oman and has coasts on the Red and Arabian Seas. Due to the uneasy situation in Yemen now, I doubt I will visit it, but I . . .

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Review: When the Whistling Stopped by David J. Mather (1968–70)

Chile Preserved When the Whistling Stopped (novel) by David J. Mather (Chile 1968–70) Peace Corps Writers 274 pages June 2014 $12.95 (paperback), $6.95 (Kindle) Reviewed by Richard M. Grimsrud (India 1965-67) • David Mather’s imaginative eco-thriller When the Whistling Stopped follows RPCV Tom Young back to his old Peace-Corps station outside Valdivia in southern Chile after three decades of dreaming about his mostly idyllic tour of duty there. Many of his old friends joyously welcome him back, but there is still a big hole in his heart for Maria Elena, the love of his life who was killed in a tragic accident just before they were to be married in a ramada on the beautiful plot of land Tom had bought for his retirement. But upon his return, Tom is saddened by more than his departed enamorada. The reforestation he had worked on as a Volunteer has come back to . . .

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The Peace Corps Announces Record-Breaking Application Numbers in 2014

In the fiscal year ending 9.30.2013, Peace Corps applications were at an all time low, at 10,091. The total of serving Volunteers on September 30, 2013 was 7209.  Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet announced an ambitious goal of doubling the number of application for fiscal year 2014, which ended this September 30, 2014. The Director streamlined the application process, and personally toured college campuses touting the value of Peace Corps service, as well as initiating a media campaign promoting Peace Corps. While not quite doubled, the effort has resulted in an  recent historic high number of applications at 17,336. The increase occurred despite the negative publicity associated with the New York Times article describing the medical care received by serving PCV Nick Castle (See: https://peacecorpsworldwide.org/trail-of-medical-missteps-in-a-peace-corps-death-–-nytimes-july-25-2014/) and the ongoing negotiations between the Peace Corps and the Office of the Peace Corps Inspector General over the implementation of the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act. . . .

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Review: Rush of Shadows by Catherine Bell (Brazil 1966–68)

Rush of Shadows (historical fiction) by Catherine Bell (Brazil 1966–68) Washington Writers Publishing House October 2014 384 pages $17.95 (paperback) Reviewed by Reilly Ridgell (Micronesia 1971–73) • Here’s Catherine Bell’s first sentence of her novel, Rush of Shadows: It was a beautiful country, though I hated and feared it, coming over the mountains with the wagon staggering on a gimpy wheel, black crags towering over the track, the sky blue and thick as a flatiron, and the vultures turning and turning on the hot wind, waiting for somebody to die. Wow. Now here was some finely crafted prose worthy to open a novel. Was the whole book to be this way? Well it was, and much of the many themes woven together in this story of the settling of northern California can be discerned in that first sentence. Especially the vultures. And as I read through the book I was . . .

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Review of John Coyne's (Ethiopia 1962-64) Child of Shadows

Child of Shadows by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) Seventh Window Publications, $6.99 (e-book) Reviewed by Bob Arias (Colombia 1964-66) Coyne drops us into the subterranean world that exists beneath New York City and a world of tunnels under the Lower Level of Grand Central Station. A world filled with rats, more and bigger rats, garbage, violence and young bodies. We find ourselves looking at a twelve year old boy that is found near a crime scene. The boy is bald with no eyebrows, not speaking…a living dead. The chief social worker, Melissa Vaughn thinks the boy’s name is Adam, and wants to help him re-connect with society. Little does Melissa know what she will encounter as she takes Adam away from New York City and deep into the Appalachian Mountains. You will encounter adventure with potters that throw, excitement in rural Appalachia, and murders….lots of them! Some well written love . . .

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