Archive - January 16, 2019

Jason Spindler (Peru 2005), founder and managing director of I-DEV International, died in the attack on the DusitD2 compound, an upmarket cluster of shops and hotel facilities in the capital of Nairobi, his company said. Jason, who was also in the attack on 9/11 joined the Peace Corps after that and was a PCV in Peru. His company had an office at a space for entrepreneurs called Metta located in the hotel complex. Colleagues confirmed Spindler was having a meal when the attack happened. He was the only American killed in the Nairobi attack. Photo: I-DEV International • CNN gave more information about Jason Spindler at:https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/16/us/kenya-american-jason-spindler-killed/index.html “Spindler was working in the World Trade Center 17 years ago when planes hit the towers, an I-DEV spokesman said. Spindler’s mother, Sarah Spindler, told NBC News on Tuesday night that her son “was trying to make positive change in the third world in . . .

When Peter Hessler graduated from Princeton, he went to England as a Rhodes Scholar. Finishing school, he decided in 1994 to travel home by way of China. On the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Beijing, via Mongolia, he observed traders carrying odd products, from speedometers to Mongolia and Russian-speaking clocks to China. He wrote an essay about his trip and sent a blind submission to The New York Times. They published his article. “It was a shock to me,” Peter recalls. “And it was first time I had been published in a newspaper.” His trip took six months, and Peter continued to write articles for publication. An essay about camping on the Great Wall of China appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer; he then wrote a humorous piece about eating ice cream in Vietnam. These short essays would be his first small steps into a publishing career. “My initial trip around the world taught . . .