March 2016 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Telling the world our story: Time to support A TOWERING TASK: A PEACE CORPS DOCUMENTARY

Mar 30 2016

36 Hours Left To Help Help fund a once-in-a-generation documentary about the Peace Corps for wide release in 2017! We surpassed 435 donors in honor of Sargent Shriver and received an anonymous $5,000 donation! Now we’re over $77,000 closer to our $100,000 goal. It’s time we are able to capture 55 years worth of history, trials and triumphs told from these remarkable individuals all in A Towering Task: A Peace Corps Documentary. THANK YOU for Your Story of the Peace Corps! Many Peace Corps documentaries tell the story of a single volunteer and how their experience changes their life and the lives of others. Our documentary is a rallying call for the Peace Corps Community to UNITE and tell its story. The real version—not the echo chamber. Time is of the essence. Memories fade. The architects and pioneering volunteers of Peace Corps pass away. $5 $25? $50? $100? What’s Peace Corps worth . . .

Review — GAINING GROUND by Joan Velasquez (Bolivia)

Mar 30 2016

Gaining Ground: A Blueprint for Community-Based International Development by Joan Velásquez (Bolivia 1965–67) Beaver’s Pond Press 2014 $24.95 (paperback), $9.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Bob Arias (Colombia 1964–66, 2011–13) • This is an awesome “how to” book, not a novel with only love and excitement . . . but a beautiful and exciting manual on how to create and develop a non-profit agency in Bolivia from Mendota Heights, Minnesota, a distance of 4,623 miles. In 1965 Joan Velásquez, a Peace Corps Volunteer, is sent to Cochabamba, a remote community in the Andean mountains of Bolivia. There she meets her future husband and NGO partner Segundo and his family, the Velázquez clan . . . all Quechua speaking indigenous people of the Inca Empire. Joan discovers that the community may not have much, it is extremely poor, but it is rich in cultural values that have been handed down for generations . . . primarily that family members help one another during difficult times. . . .

RPCV Breast Cancer Research Update

Mar 30 2016

The three year RPCV Breast Cancer Research Study conducted by Baylor University is completed and evidently was unable to collect sufficient data. The study was examining the possibility that women who took chloroquine (Aralen) as an anti-malaria drug had a reduced risk of breast cancer over their lifetimes. Animal studies conducted at Baylor suggested that the drug may also reduce the breast cancer risk.The plan was to study a human female population that had taken chloroquine to determine if the population had a reduced risk of breast cancer. This was not an official Peace Corps study. Baylor could not access the medical records, the names and birth dates, or even the service assignments of Peace Corps Women. Instead, the study had to rely on self- reporting. The research group developed a comprehensive online questionnaire to gather this information. Respondent Driven Sampling was the method used to identify this population. Baylor entered . . .

Water by Rachel Schneller (Mali)

Mar 29 2016

With all this talk of toxic water in Flint, and elsewhere, I thought of one of the loveliest pieces of writing by an RPCV that we published years ago. If you didn’t read it then, here is Rachel’s short essay. • Water Rachel Schneller (Mali 1996–98) When a woman carries water on her head, you see her neck bend outward behind her like a crossbow. Ten liters of water weighs twenty-two pounds, a fifth of a woman’s body weight, and I’ve seen women carry at least twenty liters in aluminum pots large enough to hold a television set. To get the water from the cement floor surrounding the outdoor hand pump to the top of your head, you need help from the other women. You and another woman grab the pot’s edges and lift it straight up between you. When you get it to head height, you duck underneath the . . .

Sargent Shriver and Richard Lipez (Ethiopia) on the Peace Corps

Mar 28 2016

I spent the weekend going through files to find documents on the history of the Peace Corps that I might donate to American University and their collection of Peace Corps material. In the process I came across the address made by Sargent Shriver, first Director of the Peace Corps, at the One Hundred Sixty-fifth Annual Commencement of Georgetown University on June 8, 1964. I want to quote from the opening of Sarge’s talk as it focuses on two items that are important: one is on Ethiopia One PCVs in Ethiopia, and two is on Sarge’s vision of why the Peace Corps is important to all of us. • It is embarrassing for me today to confess that I remember only one quotatin from St. Ignatius. Fortunately it is only one word: “magis!“— “more.” The watchword of the Jesuit order has always been: Ad majorem Dei gloriam. But Ignatius was a man of action. . . .

David Mather (Chile) publishes CRESCENT BEACH

Mar 27 2016

About the suspense novel Crescent Beach just published by David Mather (Chile 1968–70): Cardboard-wrapped, forty-pound bales of marijuana called “square grouper” are flooding Florida’s Gulf Coast. Undercover State Trooper Rusty McMillan is sent into the fishing village of Crescent Beach to bust a key operator in the drug trade, and stem the area’s rampant smuggling. Expecting to deal with trailer trash, Rusty instead discovers the town is a hardworking community from an earlier era when life was simple and straightforward. He becomes immersed in the everyday life of shrimping, crabbing, and fishing, while at night he drinks beer, arm wrestles, and plays poker with the locals who become his friends. Rusty eventually gets the evidence he needs, but can he make the arrest? Either way he’s a traitor: to his job or to the community. But, before he can decide, the town is slammed by unexpected hurricane force winds and a . . .

Peace Corps mourns the loss of Volunteer Andrew Farr

Mar 27 2016

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 25, 2016 – Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet is saddened to confirm the death of Peace Corps volunteer Andrew Jennings Farr. Andrew, 25, passed away in an automobile accident in Mozambique on March 25, 2016. “Andrew was passionate about learning as much as possible from his Mozambican community members and dedicated to making a difference in the lives of others,” Director Hessler-Radelet said. “He was respected by his fellow teachers and a wonderful role model for his students. We are devastated by this tragic loss, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Farr family during this difficult time.” A native of Irmo, South Carolina, Andrew served as an education volunteer in Mozambique, where he taught secondary school physics in the village of Chitima, Tete Province. In his Peace Corps application, Andrew wrote that in order to adapt to the Mozambican culture, he planned to “simply listen, . . .

Wish Senator Wofford a Happy 90th Birthday – Shhhhhh… this part is a surprise

Mar 26 2016

While most people know Harris Wofford for his work on civil rights and his time as a U.S. Senator (D-PA), he is known best in the Peace Corps as a special assistant to President John F. Kennedy, close friend of Sargent Shriver, and a key person with Shriver in creating the Peace Corps. Harris will celebrate his 90th birthday on April 9 and the NPCA is preparing a proclamation from the Peace Corps community to honor to honor Senator Wofford on his birthday. The NPCA is inviting all RPCVs to send along letters, cards, and gifts which they will deliver to Harris along with the proclamation. Please send along anything you’d like to include to their office to arrive no later than Friday, April 8. Address cards,letters and gifts to: Senator Harris Wofford c/o National Peace Corps Association 1900 L Street NW, Suite 610 Washington, DC 20036

Paul Theroux (Malawi) On Donald Trump

Mar 25 2016

Why is Donald Trump popular? Travelling around America’s south for his most recent book Deep South, the writer Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) got some ideas. “It’s the gun show guys,” he says, sitting in his Hawaii home. “Virtually everything Donald Trump says, you can find on a gun show bumper sticker. Anti-Obama stuff, anti-Muslim stuff, anti-Mexican stuff, anti-immigrant stuff.” The 74-year-old warms to his theme. “Gun shows are about hating and distrusting the government … people who have been oppressed by a bad economy, by outsourcing. They have a lot of legitimate grievances and a lot of imagined grievances. There is this paranoid notion that Washington is trying to take their guns away, take their manhood away, take this symbol of independence away. They feel defeated. They hate the Republican party, too. They feel very isolated.” Alexander Bisley writing in The Guardian interviewed Theroux about his new book. Read the article . . .

Obama is waiting

Mar 25 2016

The current issue of The Atlantic has a long article by Nicholas Dames entitled “The New Fiction of Solitude” where, according to Dames, “For an influential group of writers, the purpose of novels is to bear witness to the spectacle of aloneness.” In this article, Dames refers to a long, long conversation that the novelist Marilynne Robinson had with President Obama last September which was published a few months ago in The New York Review of Books. That “conversation” touched on a number of topics, from troubled relationship between Christianity and democracy to the fragility of public institutions. Dames (as did others) wondered why Obama focused time and attention on a novelist, such as Robinson, and Dames linked the Obama conversation–some of you might remember–that took place at Hyannis Port in 1960 when JFK, then running for president, met with Norman Mailer, according to Dames, “in order to rouse the discouraged liberal elites who were . . .

Review — AFRICAN WITCH by Christopher West Davis (Kenya)

Mar 22 2016

African Witch: A Modern Tale of Magical Harm By Christopher West Davis (Kenya 1975-78) Create Spack February 2016 418 pages $16.95 (paper), $9.95 (Kindle) Reviewed by Peter Van Deekle (Iran 1968-70) • Christopher West Davis draws upon his Peace Corps service experience in Kenya (1975-78) for his recent novel (2016) African Witch: A Modern Tale of Magical Harm. His career as a journalist also helps to inform his detailed and insightful depiction of characters and place in this suspenseful story of young Americans living and working in modern-day Kenya. On one level Davis creates a story about Westerners new to Kikuyu ways, imposing upon their encounters with native people and their attendant perceptions, a distinctly Western attitude. On the other hand, this novel gains its energy and momentum from the author’s ability to maintain a dramatic tension among the characters and the events that surround and engulf them. Despite its material and . . .

“Sirens’ Sweet Song” by Gerald Karey

Mar 21 2016

• Sirens’ Sweet Song by Gerald Karey (Turkey 1965-67) • The Sirens, Homer tells us, enchant all who come near. Anyone who draws to close to their island and hears their singing will never be welcomed home again. The Sirens sit in a green field and warble to death men who try to join them, with the sweetness of their song, Homer says, or words to that effect. Odysseus sailing home from Troy after the Trojan War orders his crew to put wax in their ears so they cannot hear the Sirens. But he has himself lashed to his ship’s mast, so he may hear them. Their song is irresistible and Odysseus begs to be freed from his bonds so that he may join the Sirens. His pleas are ignored, or perhaps his crew simply cannot hear, and Odysseus is borne safely past on the waters of the wine-dark sea. . . .

Tom Hebert’s Peace Corps Settlement House

Mar 21 2016

The Peace Corps, as we know, has Three Goals, but the agency traditionally has only spent about 1% of their budget on the Third Goal of the Peace Corps act, i.e., that’s the RPCVs community. That given, Tom Hebert (Nigeria 1962–64) has come up with a great idea to help RPCVs, would-be PCVs, and the Peace Corps community-at-large with the “Peace Corps Settlement House” in Washington, D.C. The Peace Corps Agency, of course, will not support the effort. As the Peace Corps Director wrote Tom recently— I know how passionate you are about the community enrichment that is possible through the settlement house model. I know that you also realize that the leadership for a settlement house project must come from foundations, the NPCA/RPCV community, and committed others, because it is outside the authorities of the Peace Corps. So this is what Tom Hebert has in mind. If you are willing and can help . . .

Rob Schmitz (China) writes STREET OF ETERNAL HAPPINESS

Mar 18 2016

ROB SCHMITZ (China 1996-98) first arrived in China in 1996 as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Sichuan province. He is now the China correspondent for American Public Media’s “Marketplace,” the largest business news program in the U.S. In 2012, he exposed fabrications in Mike Daisey’s account of Apple’s Chinese supply chain on “This American Life.” The work was a finalist for the 2012 Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. He has won two national Edward R. Murrow Awards and an award from the Education Writers Association for his reporting on China. Schmitz maintains a blog — Chinopoly— and in May, his first book, Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road, will be published. • In an interview with Adam Minter, author of Junkyard Planet, on his blog Shanghai Scrap, Rob talks about how the Peace Corps lead him into journalism. Scrap: How does one go from Peace Corps volunteer to China Bureau . . .

Peter Hessler’s (China) Peace Corps memoir to be made into a movie

Mar 16 2016

Chinese Lu Chuan will direct and produce River Town, the Tristine Skyler adaptation of the memoir River Town: Two Years On The Yangtze, by New Yorker staff writer Peter Hessler. Jamie Gordon and Courtney Potts of Fugitive Films are producing. This Peace Corps memoir by Peter, his first book, will depict a celebrated American writer’s journey to China for the long-awaited Chinese publication of his memoir, triggering memories from 20 years earlier when he taught English literature as a PCV to Chinese college students while on the brink of a nation’s unprecedented change. Lu’s film credits include The Missing Gun, Kekexili: Mountain Patrol, City Of Life And Death and The Last Supper. He last directed Of The Ghostly Tribe, which grossed $106 million in mainland China within its first weeks of release. He is in postproduction on Born In China for Disney, which will be released this summer in China and April 2017 in the U.S. In addition to being a staff . . .

Archive - March 2016