Archive - 2015

Those were the days my friend We thought they’d never end A lot gets lost over time and 50+ years of history is a long time for an agency. Reading this past weekend the long, and deadly prose written report: The Peace Corps A Comprehensive Agency Assessment– published in June 2010 by the agency–I realized how much of the original spirit of the Peace Corps has evaporated in five decades of service. This report written by six people, with lots of advisory committees, attempts to evaluate the agency, and make recommendations for the future. It was done at the suggestion of Peace Corps Director  Aaron Williams (2009-12) who said during his Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearings that his intention, once confirmed as director, was to “carry out an agency-wide assessment of the Peace Corps as a means of strengthening, reforming, and growing the agency.” Aaron said that “the agency-wide assessment . . .

While observing the Kazakh elections, 2005, Ken Hill is being observed.

Dr. Remington Lee Nevin is a consulting physician epidemiologist board certified in Public Health and General Preventive Medicine by the American Board of Preventive Medicine.  Dr. Nevin specializes in the evaluation of adverse reactions to antimalarial medications, particularly the neurotoxic quinoline derivative mefloquine (previously marketed in the United States as Lariam®). The above is from his website: http://www.remingtonnevin.com/site/home.html Dr. Nevin has written a letter to the Peace Corps Director urging that the policy regarding the use of mefloquine be changed to protect Volunteers from the medication’s adverse effects. His letter is signed by RPCVs who support the change.  Many of whom have suffered severe and potentially permanent damage from the drug. RPCV advocates, including members of “Health Justice for Volunteers, are urging RPCVs to write to Peace Corps Director Carrie Radelet-Hessler in support of Dr. Nevin’s recommendations, and also to contact their Congressional delegation with the same request.  Here is the link . . .

There was a Catholic secondary school for women a mile and a half or so from the Government teacher training college where Fanselow was teaching in 1962. Young Catholic women taught at the secondary school not as Peace Corps Volunteers, but as volunteers for a Catholic organization. John and the women would often get together on weekends after mass at the secondary school and sometimes went on walks later in the day. One afternoon they came upon the large pot used to cook stew for events in the village. John and the women teachers had food with them as well as forks, knives and spoons for their picnic, and they  thought it would be a good joke to give forks, etc. to the people in the village and hop into the pot. (John had remembered seeing an old Abbot and Costello movie with a similar scene.) Of course as soon . . .

The Peace Corps would give thousands of young Americans a chance to see at first hand the conditions in remote areas of the world. Sargent Shriver The Peace Corps is guilty of enthusiasm and a crusading spirit. But we’re not apologetic about it. Sargent Shriver Any idealist who tries to join the Peace Corps must realize he is not going to change the world overnight. Sargent Shriver In the Peace Corps, the volunteer must be a fully developed, mature person. He must not join to run abroad or escape problems. Sargent Shriver

Morris Baker’s white mule (that he named “LandRover”, because it was so sure footed) was one of several mules that he used to visit small villages in Gojjam Province while serving as a Leprosy Control PCV with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health.  This was his second year assignment in Ethiopia.  The man holding the reins is a leprosy patient. Morris Baker (Ethiopia 1966-68)

As Carrie says, “PCVs and RPVCs make friends everywhere  we go.”

John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) Send me your jpeg photo of you in your Peace Corps years on a camel, elephant, horse, donkey, mule, etc. and we’ll all vote on the most outrageous photo for an award to be given at the NPCA conference this coming June at Berkeley. (You don’t have to be there to win.) You’ll  win real $$$ and a prize! Send the jpeg photo with your name and country and years to me and I’ll post them on our site: www.peacecorpsworldwide.org. Winners will be selected by the votes sent in from the community of viewers. So send your own photo and vote for your favorite photo. Good luck! p.s. I’m on the one on the right in this photo taken by Mike McCaskey (Ethiopia 1965-67) and I’m not a candidate in the contest.

Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963-65) is in touch with the Gorkha Foundation that is working to get relief supplies and services to communities at the Nepal Earthuake epicenter. Here is a link to that site: April 28 2015 Friends, Many villagers in Nepal are under siege, struggling to survive from the earthquake and aftershocks that have struck the Himalayas. Most of the media and relief attention, so far, has been centered on Kathmandu Valley and Mt Everest… But it is now very clear that remote mountain communities at the epicenter – the Gorkha region, including both Gorkha and Lamjung Districts – have equally if not more serious issues. Whole villages have been devastated and recent and ongoing rains have triggered destructive landslides and threaten of more danger to health and habitation. The Director of a Nepalese NGO (non-governmental organization), The Gorkha Foundation (of which I am an advisory board member), is . . .