Archive - July 5, 2016

In early 2014, Mario Machado was a RPCV recently returned from a two years plus Peace Corps assignment in Paraguay. Machado wrote a thoughtful essay published in the Huffington Post about the importance of relationships in development, The Privilege of Doing Development Work: Voluntourism and Its Limitations. There are provocative observations about “volunteerism”.  It is an important article for the RPCV community and beyond.  Read it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mario-machado/the-privilege-of-doing-de_b_4832836.html What do you think?

I heard recently from Jan Worth-Nelson (Tonga 1976-78) that she and Emile Hons (Tonga 1974-76) were interviewed by two UK freelance producers from Sky TV about the Deborah Gardner Peace Corps 1976 murder in Tonga. The documentary is part of a series called “Passport to Murder” produced for Discovery ID TV. Their segment is luridly titled “The Devil in Paradise.” It is scheduled to air on July 29, 2016. As Jan wrote me, “Its amazing how that brutal story keeps going and going and going. It affected me strongly to talk about it again and think about it again after 40 years. Jan Worth-Nelson is a writer and former writing professor at the University of Michigan–Flint. She has published in a wide variety of publications, from the Christian Science Monitor to Midwestern Gothic. Her “Beam, Arch, Pillar, Porch: a Love Story” appears in the new Happy Anyway: The Flint Anthology from Belt Publishing. Jan has an . . .