Archive - February 3, 2017

Thirty-eight US Peace Corps Trainees arrived in the country on Tuesday to begin their two years of service to the people of Guyana. A release from the US Embassy yesterday said that the 30th group of Peace Corps Volunteers to serve in Guyana have begun pre-service training on the Essequibo Coast, living with local host families and learning the Guyanese way of life. They are stationed in the villages of Suddie, Huist D’ieren, Queenstown, Windsor Castle, Capoey Lake, Lake Mainstay and Anna Regina. This US Embassy photo shows the Volunteers As health and education volunteers, they will engage in field practicums in local schools and health centres.  The group is expected to be officially sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers in early April, after which they will begin service throughout Guyana, the release said.

Brittany White (Peru 2015-17) is a Youth Development PCV in Northern Peru working with young people to help promote sexual health awareness as well helping to promote diversity and inclusion within the volunteer community. This item is from her own blog which she kindly agreed to let me republish. Thanks also to Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963-65) for giving me the “Heads Up” about Brittany’s piece. Thank You: From a Black Peace Corps Volunteer to a Black President On October 11,  2008, I woke up in the middle of the night to stand outside and wait for the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to speak. I had read all of his books, kept all the important newspaper clippings, obsessively watched CNN, and could tell you random facts like, “Did you know that Senator Obama is a two time Grammy winner?” I was 18, excited to be a first time participant in a . . .

Bob Stevenson (novel) by Richard Wiley (Korea 1967-69) Bellevue Literary Press, 2016 221 pages $16.99 (paperback) Reviewed by Ann Neelon (Senegal 1978-79) Up until reading Richard Wiley’s new novel Bob Stevenson, I had not given much thought to Robert Louis Stevenson since my sons, now in their early twenties, were in the first and third grades.  Alas, both, as I recall, proved equally determined to process through the Murray Elementary School auditorium brandishing Treasure Island in the “Books Alive” parade that serves in our system as a reasonable facsimile of a Halloween event.  (I live in a part of the country where enough evangelical Christians write off Halloween as devil worship that bona fide Halloween parties are not allowed in the schools).  I finally managed to talk one of them into dressing up as Robin Hood instead of Long John Silver, but it wasn’t easy. Suffice it to say that . . .