2016 – Page 18 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Talking with Rob Schmitz (China), author of STREET OF ETERNAL HAPPINESS

May 12 2016

ROB SCHMITZ (China 1996-98) is the China correspondent for American Public Media’s Marketplace, the largest business news program in the U.S. with more than 12 million listeners a week. He has reported on a range of topics illustrating China’s role in the global economy, including trade, politics, the environment, education, and labor. In 2012, Schmitz exposed fabrications in Mike Daisey’s account of Apple’s Chinese supply chain on “This American Life,” and his report headlined that show’s much-discussed “Retraction” episode. 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. Click to hear His Rob’s “Marketplace” stories. We emailed each other over the course of a few weeks for this interview, and I was helped with questions from a press releases from Crown Publishing about Rob’s new book . . .

Do you want to earn your MFA ONLINE?

May 10 2016

I am currently talking to several colleges and universities about developing an online Creative Writing MFA for Peace Corps PCVs and RPCV Writers. This degree could be obtainable within a year of your service–or while you are still overseas–you would have a MFA degree, and, I hope, a book, either a memoir or a novel before you finish your tour. The time frame would be one or two years depending on your schedule. Are you interested? I am working with several non-profit accredited colleges that have MFA online programs so that you could obtain the degree while you are a PCV, or after your tour, wherever you are living in the world….if you have a computer handy. I would teach one of the writing courses, and other RPCV faculty would be involved, including several book editors I know. It would be friendly, ‘hands on,’ and approachable courses that focus on your . . .

Read This and Weep; PC/HQ and the Murder of Kate Puzey and other HQ Crimes

May 10 2016

Last January I wrote about Alan Toth (South Africa 2010-12) and his video project, Posh Corps. He wrote me, “Three years ago, I started working on the Posh Corps project. The idea was simple: to discuss the modern Peace Corps experience honestly. I wanted to cut through the mythology and the marketing, and capture the experience of volunteering in a rapidly changing world.” He has been doing that but recently he started to produce a series of Peace Corps reform podcasts. He recorded the interview with Kellie Greene in Washington D.C. at the end of February 2016. As Alan wrote me, “I spent the last few months tracking down documents and editing the podcasts. I’ve wanted to do stories about internal agency problems for some time. I do support Peace Corps, but I don’t support institutional incompetence. It seems clear that the agency has not focused on improving management for . . .

Lost Letter From Maria Thomas (Ethiopia)

May 08 2016

The Peace Corps Writers’ Maria Thomas Fiction Award is named after the novelist Maria Thomas [Roberta Worrick (Ethiopia 1971–73)] who was the author of a well-reviewed novel, Antonia Saw the Oryx First, and two collections of short stories — Come to Africa and Save Your Marriage and African Visas — all set in Africa. Roberta and Tom Worrick were married with a young son when they went to Ethiopia as a married couple with the Peace Corps. After their tour, they continued to live and work in Liberia and again to Ethiopia. This time Tom was working for US AID. In addition to her life as a wife, mother, and PCV, Roberta Worrick was a wonderful writer. Her stories appeared in Redbook, Story and The New Yorker. She was a Wallace E. Stegner Fellow and received an Overseas Press Club’s commendation for reportage in Harper’s. She was coming into her own as a literary figure when . . .

Tony D’Souza: Summer in Sarasota (Cote d’Ivoire)

May 06 2016

I’ve lived all over the world, and I’d never be able to explain to my foreign friends how important summer is to my American identity. Lots of them don’t even have summer. In West Africa where I was in the Peace Corps, the only seasons were hot and hotter. Central America was like that, too; and in far northern Japan, where I studied the Utari indigenous people, summer was a starving time when the sea ice melted and the seals and whales they hunted headed farther north, leaving them with nothing to eat. But when I was a child in Chicago, summer was a golden season. It meant release from school, from long underwear, from interminable evenings in front of the TV with the world outside dark and frozen and nothing else you dared to do. Summer was like someone had turned the lights back on and we were . . .

KINGDOMS IN THE AIR by Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean)

May 05 2016

From the Internet: Kingdoms in the Air: Dispatches from the Far Away brings together the very best of Bob Shacochis’s culture and travel essays in one live-wire collection that spans his global adventures and his life passions; from surfing, to his obsession with the South American dorado, to the time he went bushwhacking in Mozambique. In the titular essay “Kingdoms,” the longest work in the collection, Shacochis ventures to Nepal with his friend, the photographer Thomas Laird, who was the first foreigner to live in Nepal’s kingdom of Mustang as the forbidden Shangri-la prepared to open its borders to trekkers and trade. When the two men return a decade after Laird first lived there, Shacochis observes in brilliantly evocative prose both the current cultural and political landscape of the country, and the changes with which his friend has to reconcile. Replete with Shacochis’s signature swagger, humor, and crystalline wisdom, . . .

“The View from Birauta” by Don Messerschmidt (Nepal)

May 04 2016

When Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963-65) graduated from the University of Alaska/Fairbanks, cass of 1963, he was only vaguely aware of the Kingdom of Nepal. With a degree in education he thought he’d become a teacher in the Alaskan bush. But, by accepting an invitation to join the Peace Corps that summer, his life changed dramatically. By September he was in Nepal doing development work in the (then) remote central hills. Since 1963, Don has lived and worked in the Himalayas as a development advisor, anthropological researcher, teacher, and writer/editor. The epicenter of Nepal’s April 2015 Gorkha Earthquake was very near Don’s Peace Corps village. After the quake, he returned twice to help with the recovery work and documentation, under auspices of the all-volunteer non-profit Gorkha Foundation. As a member of the Board of Advisors, Don helps raise funds for rebuilding schools destroyed in the quake. Don can be contacted at . . .

Peace Corps Gap Year PCVs

May 03 2016

“The President and Mrs. Obama announced today that their daughter Malia will attend Harvard University in the fall of 2017 as a member of the Class of 2021,” the office of the first lady announced on Sunday. “Malia will take a gap year before beginning school.” Suddenly, the Gap Year is Hot! Those of us old enough to remember when there were No iphones and No Internet, will remember Peace Corps’ ATPs? No, an ATP wasn’t some sort of pain medication; it stood for Advance Training Programs and juniors in college applied early to the Peace Corps and spent the summer between their junior and senior high school year on a college campus somewhere in the States listening to boring lectures on their Country of Assignment before returning home for their senior year, and then off again the next summer to Peace Corps Training for real, often at the same . . .

A Writer Writes: “Peace Corps Reflections” by Bob Criso (Nigeria)

May 03 2016

In the Peace Corps Bob Criso (Nigeria 1966-67) was in southeastern Nigeria, the village of Ishiagu, and then in the Somalia 1966-67 in the village of Bulo Burte. After the Peace Corps he worked in mental health, and also at Princeton University as a psychotherapist for students and with a private office in Princeton. He retired seven years ago and currently lives in New York City where he reviews plays, take photos (four exhibits), and writes memoir articles. • Peace Corps Reflections Bob Criso There I was, back in the sixties, teaching English at a rural school in eastern Nigeria, raising chickens in a coop behind my house and hustling to promote sales of the beautiful pottery in the village of Ishiagu. It seemed like a great gig — a house of my own, a humongous book locker filled with classic and contemporary gems, motivated students, friendly colleagues and, in . . .

“The Nzeogwu I Knew” by Tim Carroll (Nigeria)

May 02 2016

Editor’s Note: In February 2015, Roger Landrum (01) 1961–63, in the email below, alerted the newsletter staff of what he believed to be an interesting story about a friendship that had developed in Nigeria in 1965 between Peace Corps Volunteer Tim Carroll and a young major in the Nigerian army. Jim. I recently read Achebe’s Biafra memoir, There Was a Country. It has a brief section on Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, one of the five military majors who led the coup that triggered the chain of events leading to the Biafran secession and the civil war. Achebe calls Nzeogwu “a mysterious figure.” Maybe not all that mysterious! There was a Nigeria PCV named Timothy Carroll posted in Kaduna who was friends with Nzeogwu. I’m trying to convince Carroll to write a piece for the FON newsletter called “The Nzeogwu I Knew.” I think Nigeria RPCVs would find this fascinating. It . . .

The Peace Corps retires its Master’s International Graduate School program after nearly 30 years

May 02 2016

Peace Corps Press Release WASHINGTON, D.C., April 28, 2016 – The Peace Corps will be retiring its Master’s International (MI) graduate school program after nearly three decades of fruitful partnerships with 96 graduate universities across the country. While students beginning an MI program by or before the fall of 2016 will still be able to apply to Peace Corps and serve as an MI student if selected, the Peace Corps will end its memoranda of agreement with MI university partners in September to focus resources on the agency’s Peace Corps Prep undergraduate program and Paul D. Coverdell Fellows graduate program. “We are incredibly grateful that this program laid the foundation for strong relationships with so many universities,” Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet said. “Although the Peace Corps has outgrown the goals of the Master’s International program, we’re looking forward to continuing our collaboration with our valued university partners knowing there are . . .

Time in you life for Peace Corps Response?

Apr 30 2016

The Peace Corps is always seeking RPCVs (and non-RPCVs) for Peace Corps Response. These are the basic requirements: An experienced professional A returned Peace Corps Volunteer A licensed physician or nurse Go to the Peace Corps Response Search openings View current opportunities or search on specific criteria to find opportunities that match your experience. Submit resume This is not an application, but HQ may reach out to you if they have a position that fits your skills and experience. If you would like to be considered for a specific assignment, you must apply directly to a posted position. The email is: pcresponse@peacecorps.gov Positions range from three months to one year in length and are designed to address development needs as identified by the host country. Volunteers provide targeted assistance in diverse assignments covering a range of projects, including food security, civil engineering, information systems, library science, and university level teaching. . . .

“Be a Literary Agent” article on AWP website by John Coyne (Ethiopia)

Apr 28 2016

CAREER ADVICE Be a Literary Agent John Coyne profiles six literary agents and offers suggestions for that career path for the Association of Writers & Writers Programs Website. April 2016 I called a novelist friend (Mary-Ann Tirone Smith Cameroon 1965-67) and asked her if she knew of any MFA graduates who were employed as literary agents and she replied, “MFA graduates are writers, not agents.” She was categorically right, but she wasn’t totally correct. Just as there are book and magazine editors who also write fiction, nonfiction, or poems, there are also literary agents with BAs in English and/or MFAs in writing. Some later change horses and become agents, putting their own literary knowledge into play when advising their clients. Others continue to write but work as agents for the sake of having a steadier income while finishing their next novel or waiting for the last one to be made . . .

The Office of the Inspector General of the Peace Corps reviews Health Services

Apr 27 2016

Tragically, Meghan Wolf’s ordeal is not the only story of Peace Corps Volunteers receiving indifferent and/or inadequate care. The illness and death of a Volunteer in Morocco prompted an investigation by the Office of the Inspector General of the Peace Corps. The OIG followed up with that 2009 report with this examination not only of the situation in Morocco but the overall status of Health Services within the Peace Corps. The final report was issued in March of this year, 2016. It is the most current evaluation of Peace Corps Health Services. From that report: “In 2009, the Office of Inspector General conducted an independent inquiry into the facts and circumstances related to the illness and death of a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco. As part of its inquiry, OIG reviewed the organization and care provided to Peace Corps Volunteers in Morocco…….This follow- up evaluation seeks to understand to what extent . . .

The Peace Corps Storytelling Contest

Apr 27 2016

Third Goal of the Peace Corps To promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. There’s something about the process of crafting personal stories to be told in front of an audience that brings you closer to yourself and to others. – Zach Matheson, Northern California Peace Corps Association This year we are proud to launch Peace Corps’ first-ever Storytelling Contest. Storytelling usually evokes images of huddling around a campfire or childhood bedtimes, but in recent years it has developed an exciting new image. The expansion of “Story Slams” is revitalizing the ancient tradition of storytelling to spread culture, ideas, and thought provoking experiences through spoken word. This summer, returned Peace Corps Volunteers will be invited to submit their stories in video form. Contest Theme: Building Bridges to Intercultural Understanding Humanize your host country by letting us get to know a special community member Share the moment . . .

Archive - 2016