October 16, 2020 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Washington Post — “Peace Corps turns 60 amid pandemic, looks to an uncertain future”

Oct 16 2020

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Barry Hillenbrand (Ethiopia 1963-65) Nina Boe, shown at a wedding, has been living in New York since her work as a Peace Corps volunteer was put on hold and she was ordered to evacuate North Macedonia because of the coronavirus pandemic. • by Carol Morello Washington Post Oct. 15, 2020 NINA BOE’S LIFE is as much in limbo now as it was the day in March when her work as a Peace Corps volunteer was put on hold and she was ordered to evacuate North Macedonia. She has been living in New York ever since, interviewing for jobs that have not materialized. She misses her friends in Skopje, North Macedonia’s capital, who became like family, and cries after they call to keep in touch. But she has been advised it could be mid-2021 before she is recalled, and she does not know if . . .

“A Peaceful Transfer of Power is No Longer a Given in U.S.” by Martin Benjamin (Ethiopia)

Oct 16 2020

by Martin Benjamin (Ethiopia 1962–64) San Francisco Chronicle October 15, 2020 Most Americans over the age of 65 remember where they were and what they were doing when they learned that President Kennedy had been assassinated. I was in the Peace Corps in Gondar, Ethiopia teaching 10th and 11th grade math and history. Late the night of November 22, 1963 a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer trudged up the hill from his house to ours shouting “Kennedy’s been shot.” Four of us then gathered round a shortwave radio and learned from the BBC World Service that the President had died. The next day news of the assassination spread among our students and colleagues. The students were very upset. Some were weeping. Their concern was not only for the President and his family, but also for the school’s twelve Peace Corps teachers and themselves. With Kennedy’s death, they believed we . . .

Archive - October 16, 2020