Archive - September 2015

1
New Members of Peace Corps Sexual Assault Advisory Council
2
Review — Far Away in the Sky by David L. Koren (Nigeria 1965–66)
3
Review — The Unspoken by Christopher Conlon (Botswana 1988–90)
4
Review — Three Hundred Cups of Tea & The Toughest Job by Asifa Kanji & David Drury (Mali)
5
Losing a Piece of the Past – A Peace Corps Blog by Thomas O. Isom
6
What program was the first Peace Corps project?
7
Talking with Jonathan Weisman (Philippines 1988-90)
8
Making David Schickele’s (Nigeria) Peace Corps film “Give Me A Riddle”
9
Review — Love & Ordinary Creatures by Gwyn Hyman Rubio (Costa Rica 1971-73)
10
Novel Writing 101–Point of View # 2
11
Roland Merullo (Micronesia 1979-80) Reissue of The Italian Summer
12
Kevin Quigley (Thailand 1976-79 & CD Thailand 2013-15) New President of Marlboro College
13
Ellen Urbani (Guatemala 1991-93) In D.C. and Virginia This Week
14
Naming the Peace Corps
15
Norman Rockwell and the Peace Corps, Part Two

New Members of Peace Corps Sexual Assault Advisory Council

The Peace Corps Sexual Assault Advisory Council was mandated by Sec. 8 D. of the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection of 2011. Kate Puzey was a Volunteer in Benin. She was murdered. Her murder remains unsolved.  Kate Puzey was a teacher and she had complained to the Peace Corps Office that a Host National Teacher, with an association with the Peace Corps, was sexually exploiting her female students. She was murdered shortly after making this report.  It is widely believed that her murder was in retaliation for her report. This remains speculation because her murderers have not brought to justice. In the Congressional hearings as the bill was being considered, RPCV women testified about their experience as sexual assault victims during Peace Corps service. The legislation is designed to address this problem. Sexual exploitation of young women in host countries who want to get an education is not addressed by . . .

Read More

Review — Far Away in the Sky by David L. Koren (Nigeria 1965–66)

Far Away in the Sky: A Memoir of the Biafran Airlift by David L. Koren (Nigeria 1964–66) CreateSpace April 2012 332 pages $17.99 (paperback), $8.60 (Kindle) Reviewed by Don Schlenger (Ethiopia 1966–68) • David Koren was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Eastern Nigeria from January 1964 through December 1965. At the end of his two-year service, after a brief return to the States, he re-enlisted, or ‘extended’ his service, as it was called at the time, and returned to Nigeria in January 1966, during a coup led by army officers. Many of these officers, who were from the Igbo tribal group, were Christian and their  home was the eastern district of Nigeria, where Koren served as an English teacher. They overthrew the ruling Hausa leaders who were Muslim and mostly from northern Nigeria. In June and July 1966, another coup ousted the Igbo officers and led to the slaughter of . . .

Read More

Review — The Unspoken by Christopher Conlon (Botswana 1988–90)

The Unspoken: The Lost Novel by Christopher Conlon (Botswana 1988–90) CreateSpace January 2015 776 pages $25.95 (paperback), $7.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Tom Coyne (Morocco 1981–83) • What to say about a debut novel, unpublished until about a quarter century after it was written? First, The Unspoken: The Lost Novel was not really lost. Over a six-year period, author Christopher Conlon started this novel in college, continued writing it in Peace Corps (Botswana), and finished it in several other locales. Then, it languished on paper and floppy disks until this year. Second, Conlon was apparently loath to cut any bit of it. At 750+ pages, The Unspoken is a behemoth. Third, to use the author’s favored character description, this is a very glum story. Conlon is now an established writer — a winner of awards.* In his informative new introduction to the book, he observes: The Unspoken is a young man’s . . .

Read More

Review — Three Hundred Cups of Tea & The Toughest Job by Asifa Kanji & David Drury (Mali)

Three Hundred Cups of Tea and The Toughest Job: Riding the Peace Corps Rollercoaster in Mali, West Africa A Side-by-Side Memoir by Asifa Kanji and David Drury (both: Mali 2011–12; PCResponse Ghana 2012–13; PCResponse South Africa 2013) CreateSpace May, 2015 290 pages $14.95 (paperback), $5.99 (Kindle) .Reviewed by Wayne and Laurie Kessler (Ethiopia 1964–66) • I love bath time — the feel of cool water drizzling down my sweaty back is absolutely delicious. I don’t even dry myself. I let the breeze cool me down. It feels sooooo good. My village life is so simple, it is beautiful. Asifa Kanji expresses delight in this Peace Corps memoir. But it’s more than a memoir. It’s a splendid read with insights into Asifa and David’s views on life, and glimpses of their earlier adventures in East and South Africa, India, Eritrea, and Norway. These adventures provided a base for understanding and interpretation . . .

Read More

Losing a Piece of the Past – A Peace Corps Blog by Thomas O. Isom

Peace Corps writers bring their communities to life. From their unique perspective, they allow us to share  a moment in the lives of people we would never otherwise know or understand. Through the years, from letters written on tissue thin airmail papers, to film sent away to be developed, to journals that became books, to videos, Volunteers have sought to bring their world home. Today, blogs are the media of choice for Volunteers. The blogs are unofficial and Volunteers must adhere to guidelines established by Peace Corps. But the stories still say “Look what I see,” “Let me share what I have learned,” “Know these people as I do.” One such special blog is this written by Thomas O. Isom, Volunteer serving now in Mozambique.  Peace Corps has published it on its Passport Blog on the official Peace Corps web page.  Here is the link: http://passport.peacecorps.gov/2015/09/25/losing-a-piece-of-the-past/ It is also reprinted here. . . .

Read More

What program was the first Peace Corps project?

  If you ever run into any RPCV from Colombia One, the first thing he’ll say (they were all guys) before giving you their name is: “We were first.” Colombia One PCVs are obsessed with this fact and that they are not given their proper pecking order. Recently my friend Ron Schwarz (Colombia 1961-63), wrote this piece on why THEY were the first PCVs, not Ghana. I asked the Director of the Peace Corps to check on this obscure (but important) fact. She was nice enough to come back with this information and statement from the agency’s General Counsel Office and the  Office of Strategic Information, Research and Planning. Start dates for the early programs of the Peace Corps were corroborated and/or updated based on detailed research and analysis conducted by our Office of Strategic Information, Research and Planning on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps. . . .

Read More

Talking with Jonathan Weisman (Philippines 1988-90)

Jonathan Weisman (Philippines 1988-90) is the Washington based economic policy reporter for The New York Times.  He has also worked for the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal , and USA Today. Now he has written a novel, No. 4 Imperial Lane. • What was you college background and reasons for joining the Peace Corps? I went to Northwestern University with a year abroad at the University of Sussex, double majoring in journalism and history with a concentration in Africa and the Middle East. I was torn in those years between my love of old-fashioned newspaper writing and my interest in economic development. I actually had been thinking of the Peace Corps for years — I had a romantic vision of myself in an arid village in the Sahel struggling against the elements. But in the end, I applied more to use it as a tie breaker. My experience in the . . .

Read More

Making David Schickele’s (Nigeria) Peace Corps film “Give Me A Riddle”

  Give Me A Riddle by Roger Landrum (Nigeria 1961-63) First published on PeaceCorpsWriters.org in 2001 • A COUPLE OF YEARS AFTER WE SERVED together as PCVs in Nigeria, David Schickele asked me if I would be part of a film project he was proposing to the Peace Corps. The basic concept was to capture the adventure of crossing into another culture and the rewards gained from escaping the cocoon in which Americans living abroad typically enclose themselves. It is an experience common among many PCVs to one degree or another, and for the Peace Corps, this film could be used to recruit the next wave of Volunteers, focusing on its two mandated cross-cultural goals rather than the more commonly publicized development assistance goal. Our personal experiences in Africa had been a revelation to us in numerous ways, and David wanted to make a documentary providing Americans with a new perspective . . .

Read More

Review — Love & Ordinary Creatures by Gwyn Hyman Rubio (Costa Rica 1971-73)

Love & Ordinary Creatures Gwyn Hyman Rubio (Costa Rica 1971–73) Ashland Creek Press October 2014 306 pages $17.95 (paperback), $9.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Bob Arias (Colombia 1964–66) • “Caruso!” she calls out annoyed. A beautiful “love story” about two individuals that are strong in character, passionate, full of life, and sad at times . . .. Caruso is a parrot, a sulphur-crested cockatoo with a speck of humanness in his birdness heart. Clarissa McCarty is his owner, but Caruso sees her as a red-headed eclectus hen . . . “Claaa-risss-a,” he shouts to get her attention. They have each other as they are searching for affection from one another on this island off of North Carolina and far from his home of Australia. Caruso has developed a keen mind, and a vocabulary that can challenge any human . . . but he talks to himself and only briefly has words for us humans. Caruso loves the . . .

Read More

Novel Writing 101–Point of View # 2

Novel Writing 101 This short series of blogs will be on writing your novel. All of you who were smart enough to major in business or international affairs or science while in college now have a chance to take an on-line creative writing course. If you are thinking of writing a novel, here’s a quick course (for no credits) on how you might go about writing your book. Point of View Welcome back to Novel Writing 101 I want to talk about the Point of View for your Novel. “Point of view” is a term that refers to the relationships between the storyteller-you–the story, and the reader. A story can be told basically from three different points of view – first person, second person or third person. Many writers are inclined to have a narrator tells his or her own story in the first person. Think of J. D. Salinger’s . . .

Read More

Roland Merullo (Micronesia 1979-80) Reissue of The Italian Summer

AJAR Contemporaries a division of PFP Publications announces the reissue of Roland Merullo’s memoir/travelogue The Italian Summer: Golf, Food, and Family at Lake Como. First published in 2009, The Italian Summer has been called “a colorful, affectionate tour of Italian landscape and food” by Kirkus Magazine and “simply a wonderful read” byBookReporter, it is a charming narrative of a glorious summer of golfing, eating, and learning how to slow down and enjoy life. The best-selling author of Breakfast with Buddha, Golfing with God, Revere Beach Boulevard and others, combines two of his greatest passions – travel and golf – in this humorous and poignant look at Mediterranean life. Feeling a little burnt out by the frantic pace of life in the United States, Merullo decided to rent an Italian villa near the shore of Lake Como in a small town called Mezzegra. He arrived in Italy with his wife and two young daughters determined to . . .

Read More

Kevin Quigley (Thailand 1976-79 & CD Thailand 2013-15) New President of Marlboro College

Kevin Quigley is use to small organizations. He ran the NPCA that had less than 2,000 members; was CD of Thailand which has 90+ PCVs, and is now at Marlboro College in Vermont which has an enrollment of 200+ undergraduates. Kevin, who speaks fluent Thai,  became a Buddhist monk before returning home from his Peace Corps tour. His Thailand experience as a PCV and on the staff, plus his understanding and love of Buddhism, should help him recruit students from Asia. We wish him well. The following press release is from the college and was issued a few hours ago. Marlboro College welcomes new president Marlboro College: Kevin F.F. Quigley comes with wealth of experience Core value: Service ‘is a powerful foundation for a liberal arts education’ By Chris Mays Marlboro College’s newest president, Kevin F.F. Quigley, is welcomed during an inauguration ceremony. (Photo courtesy of Kelly Fletcher) MARLBORO: Marlboro . . .

Read More

Ellen Urbani (Guatemala 1991-93) In D.C. and Virginia This Week

Tuesday, Sept 15Thomas Balch Library, Reading/Discussion Subject: In addition to reading from Landfall, Ellen will be discussing her recent travels to New Orleans on the 10th anniversary of Katrina. Location: 208 W Market St, Leesburg, VA 20176 Time: 7 pm Wednesday, Sept 16Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe Reading/Discussion Subject: Listen to a bit of Landfall, talk about storms both public and personal, and then join Ellen for drinks afterwards at …. (you guessed it) … Afterwords Cafe. Location: 1517 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington D.C. 20036, just above DuPont Circle (Q Street Metro exit) Time: 6:30 pm

Read More

Naming the Peace Corps

THOSE OF US WHO follow the history of the Peace Corps agency know the term “peace corps” came to public attention during the 1960 presidential election. In one of JFK’s last major speeches before the November election he called for the creation of a “Peace Corps” to send volunteers to work at the grass roots level in the developing world. However, the question remains: who said (or wrote) “peace corps” for the very first time? Was it Kennedy? Was it his famous speech writer Ted Sorensen? Or Sarge himself? But – as in most situations – the famous term came about because of some young kid, usually a writer, working quietly away in some back office that dreams up the language. In this case the kid was a graduate student between degrees who was working for the late senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey. Today, fifty-four years after the establishment of the . . .

Read More

Norman Rockwell and the Peace Corps, Part Two

While in Ethiopia Rockwell traveled to other Peace Corps site. In doing so, in Dessie, he found the subject for a famous paintings that appeared in Look Magazine. This prominent Norman Rockwell painting is entitled, Peace Corps  Ethiopia. It shows Marc Clausen (Ethiopia 1962-64) working in a field with farmers Marc Clausen was an agriculture/teacher Volunteer. He had graduated from the University of Arizona as an Aggie major and went to Ethiopia to teach agriculture. He was, in my recollection of those years, the only Ethie I PCV involved with agriculture. In Dessie, he told me recently, he had a demonstration field of approximately one hector a few miles from town and he took his students there for their classwork. Rockwell arrived by plane near the town of Kombolcha where there was a grassy landing field. Kombolcha was in the valley below this mountainous provincial town, Dessie, capital of Wollo. Dessie then had . . .

Read More

Copyright © 2022. Peace Corps Worldwide.