2020 – Page 13 – Peace Corps Worldwide

HUNTING TEDDY ROOSEVELT by James Ross (Congo)

Aug 06 2020

It’s 1909, and Teddy Roosevelt is not only hunting in Africa, he’s being hunted. The safari is a time of discovery, both personal and political. In Africa, Roosevelt encounters Sudanese slave traders, Belgian colonial atrocities, and German preparations for war. He reconnects with a childhood sweetheart, Maggie, now a globe-trotting newspaper reporter sent by William Randolph Hearst to chronicle safari adventures and uncover the former president’s future political plans. But James Pierpont Morgan, the most powerful private citizen of his era, wants Roosevelt out of politics permanently. Afraid that the trust-busting president’s return to power will be disastrous for American business, he plants a killer on the safari staff to arrange a fatal accident. Roosevelt narrowly escapes the killer’s traps while leading two hundred and sixty-four men on foot through the savannas, jungles, and semi-deserts of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Congo, and Sudan. Jimmy, quit telling tall tales!” was my . . .

Turkey & Tonga RPCVs launch “Get Out To Vote” videos in Flint, Michigan

Aug 05 2020

Two videos that aim to highlight human connectedness and Get Out the Vote have been produced by two RPCVs for East Village Magazine (EVM) in Flint, Michigan, and are available for viewing online now at the magazine’s website, eastvillagemagazine.org. The videos, both titled “Faces of Flint: A message from the anvil of America’s democracy,” feature 130 Flint residents photographed by Flint native, Kansas City photographer Dan White, in three days of shooting last November at the Flint Farmers’ Market and Berston Field House. Flint filmmaker Justin Brown was the editor for both videos.The narration for both videos was written by Ted Nelson (Turkey 1964-67) EVM editor at large and a participant in civil rights actions in Washington D.C in the Sixties. Nelson’s co-producer on the project was RPCV Jan Worth-Nelson (Tonga 1976-78). Asked about the significance of the “anvil” as a symbol of Flint, Nelson said, “We have been pounded on, and our . . .

Fourth Goal of the Peace Corps — Ethiopia

Aug 04 2020

by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962–64) • In the famous Mayflower Hotel meetings in early February 1961, Shriver’s Task Force established a Peace Corps with three goals. Today, 59 years later, former Volunteers have created a Fourth Goal. In many ways, this Goal is the most significant accomplishment of the Peace Corps. I think it is the greatest contribution made by RPCVs. We all know the Peace Corps is not about Volunteers. It is about the people we came to know, the children we taught, the people we helped, the villages where we lived. Returning home, we didn’t forget those lessons, friendships, or our connection to their country. More than a few Peace Corps Volunteers look back, go back, and give back to friends they left behind. It is estimated that since 1962 when the first Ethiopian Volunteers arrived in-country, as much as ten million dollars has been spent by . . .

Cheryl Sternman Rule (Eritrea) writes YOGURT CULTURE

Aug 03 2020

In Yogurt Culture: A Global Look at How to Make, Bake, Sip, and Chill the World’s Creamiest, Healthiest Food, award-winning food writer Cheryl Sternman Rule presents 115 flavorful recipes, taking yogurt farther than the breakfast table, lunchbox, or gym bag. Rule strips yogurt of its premixed accessories and brings it back to its pure, wholesome essence. In chapters like Flavor, Slurp, Dine, and Lick, she pairs yogurt not just with fruit but with meat, not just with sugar but with salt, not just with herbs but with fragrant spices whose provenance spans the globe. She provides foolproof, step-by-step instructions for how to make yogurt, Greek yogurt, and labneh at home, though all of her recipes can also be prepared with commercial yogurt. Rule explores yogurt from every angle, explaining how to read a label, visiting producers large and small, and gaining entry to the kitchens of cooks from around the . . .

Colin Rule (Eritrea) — “Separating the People from the Problem”

Aug 02 2020

This article from Harvard’s “The Practice,” shines a light on ODR and its evolution using Colin Rule’s career as a guide. In building ODR systems for the world’s largest online marketplace and for court systems across the country, Rule’s career offers a window through which to observe and understand the larger ODR movement—a movement that is all the more important as the world grapples with the continued impacts of COVID-19. Separating the People from the Problem The Rise of Online Dispute Resolution Colin Rule (Eritrea 1995–97) • When the Apple II was released in 1977, it was among the first computers marketed and mass-produced for businesses and individuals alike. Apple would later adopt the slogan “The computer for the rest of us,” hinting at its technology’s broad appeal among a nonexpert consumer base. It is fitting, then, that as a grade school student in 1980, Colin Rule first dabbled . . .

Dan Close (Ethiopia) brought water to Bekoji in 1966

Aug 01 2020

Water crisis in a town of Olympic champions by Dawit Tolesa Reporter Magazine August 2020 • Bekoji town, known for its Olympic gold medal winning athletes in Ethiopia, has played a pivotal role in athletics history that has dominated the world arena. Nevertheless, a town filled with remarkable talent, has been suffering from the lack of access to clean water for almost two decades. Nine Olympic gold medals have been won by athletes coming from Bekoji. Topping the remarkable feet achieved by athletes hailing from Bekoji include, Derartu Tulu, the first Ethiopian woman and the first black African to win an Olympic gold medal. She grew up tending cattle in the village. Bekoji is located in Oromia regional state, Arsi Zone, 220km from the capital, Addis Ababa. Currently, the year on year increase in population has exacerbated water shortages. For the purposes of water supply and sanitation project, . . .

The Peace Corps remembers Martin Luther King, Jr.

Jul 31 2020

A Timeless Reminder by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) • As I was watching the Memorial Services for John Lewis in Ebenezer Baptist Church, it reminded me of an April day in 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. I was on PC/W staff and Director, Jack Vaughn called me into his office. He nominated me to form a Committee and raise funds for, at the time, an indeterminate Memorial in Dr. King’s honor. While time now masks the amount of funds our Committee succeeded in raising, I do recall that we wanted the Memorial to represent something that was timeless in Dr. King’s life. That led us to purchase a Gold Brick and present it to Officials at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. They assured us that they would find a suitable site near the Podium for its placement. After that brief conversation, we lost personal contact with . . .

OWL OF THE EASTERN ICE by Jonathan Slaght (Russia) — a review

Jul 30 2020

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Steven Boyd Saum (Ukraine 1994-96) Owls of the Eastern Ice by Jonathan C Slaght review – an extraordinary quest Drinking ethanol and saving the world … an old-school, tautly strung adventure in pursuit of the largest species of owl review by Helen Macdonald, 22 July, The Guardian Jonathan Slaght has the best author photograph I’ve ever seen. Pale, bearded, dressed in black, he gazes at the camera with forbidding intensity. Behind him are snowy woods and running water. Arms crossed, hands deep in a pair of unwieldy leather gauntlets, he holds against his chest a huge owl. Its feathers are shaggy and wet, and from its mouth protrudes the tail end of a silver fish. There’s something puppet-like about this creature, like a living Jim Henson creation, but it also resembles a beast pulled straight from the pages of a medieval bestiary – . . .

RPCV(Togo) pet owner’s fight with CDC ends

Jul 29 2020

By Benjamin Cox on July 28, 2020 WLDS.com Audra Elam with her dog, Socrates, on her porch in western Africa before attending a local festival in 2019. (Ian Fingado) A Beardstown woman reunited with her dog today after a fight with the federal government over pet importation rules at the CDC. 27 year old Audra Elam (Togo 2019-20) of Beardstown reunited with Socrates after a month-long quarantine at The ARK at JFK Airport in New York. Elam’s journey with Socrates stirred public concern about how the government handles the importation of pets and possible policy changes on the issue with the CDC. The story of Elam and Socrates began in 2018 when Elam arrived in Togo, Africa, as a Peace Corps volunteer. A common practice in the Peace Corps program is that volunteers will inherit the house, furniture and even pets from previous volunteers in their host country. Such . . .

A Writer Writes: “The Even Keel of a Well Told Lie” by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay)

Jul 28 2020

by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978–80) The Oddville Press Summer 2020 NOBODY HITCHHIKED ANY MORE, not through this America so full of dread and bad history. That did not necessarily mean the thing could not be done. Thumb out. If a person were leaving Broadhope County in south Virginia headed toward a destination he was as yet unable to visualize, it could not hurt to try for a lift. Not on the highway, where police prowled, just a plain old country road. Thumb out. He put the odds at slim to none that somebody would stop and pick him up, this close to a dense wood of loblolly pines, under a gray sky in late October, a quarter mile from a broken-armed scarecrow in a field of corn- stalk stubble. Guilt by association. Slimmer still, those odds, that it would be a woman who stopped, but she did. He did . . .

IN EVERY HILL A BURIAL PLACE — Publishers Weekly talks with Peter H. Reid (Tanzania)

Jul 26 2020

by Lenny Picker Publishers Weekly Jul 24, 2020 In Every Hill a Burial Place: The Peace Corps Murder Trial in East Africa (Univ. of Kentucky, Sept.), [Peter] Reid revisits a 1966 murder in Tanzania that rocked the program. Both Peace Corps volunteers involved—Bill Kinsey, who was accused of murdering his wife, Peppy—were white. What role did race play in the investigation and trial? There was an interesting dynamic in Tanzania at the time. The country had recently thrown off the chains of European colonialism and was working hard to show its independence and the power of the African leadership. These factors played into the case. There were few African lawyers and even fewer judges. The defense attorneys, expert witnesses, and the judge were almost all white, and all had far more experience than the Africans on the prosecution side. I’m not sure the case demonstrates so much white privilege as the . . .

The profile of the first group to go to the Philippines in 1961

Jul 26 2020

PHILIPPINES Peace Corps Volunteers in the Philippines will assist in improving the quality of English spoken in rural areas and in raising teaching standards in both English and general science. They will help Filipino teachers of rural elementary schools teach their students to speak better English and increase understanding of scientific principles. Volunteers will be assigned as educational aides on Filipino teaching staffs in four minor regions. They will supplement, not replace, Filipino teachers. The Philippine Government is urging a general, rapid and comprehensive upgrading of education, especially in rural schools where teaching of English and science is not yet of sufficiently high standard to prepare pupils for technical study. In the Philippines, English is the language of technology, trade, commerce and culture, but during the last five decades the influence of local languages and dialects has so altered spoken English that it is fast becoming incomprehensible to outsiders. . . .

HYPOGRIF IN BUBBAVILLE by Grif Stockley (Colombia)

Jul 25 2020

Explaining Elaine by Rex Nelson Arkansas Democrat-Gazette • Grif Stockley was born into the cotton culture of the Mid-South. His father, Griffin Jasper Stockley Sr., owned a cotton plantation at Lake Cormorant in the Mississippi Delta when the younger Stockley was born in October 1944. The family later moved across the Mississippi River to Marianna, where the father committed suicide during the final stages of cancer. Grif Stockley was 17 when his father died. Stockley excelled in school, serving as president of the student body and enrolling at what’s now Rhodes College at Memphis following high school graduation in 1962. Stockley entered the Peace Corps in 1965 after completing his bachelor’s degree in three years. He worked in Colombia for two years before being drafted into the U.S. Army. After his two-year tour of duty, Stockley began law school at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. He went to . . .

“The Peace Corps’s presence in China was good for the US” by Reed Piercey (China)

Jul 23 2020

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Steven Saum (Ukraine 1994-96) by Reed Piercey (China 2019-2020) July 23, 2020 12:00 AM This month’s proposed State Department funding bill devotes less than two of its 326 pages to the Peace Corps. It does, however, contain a brief but significant provision: “None of the funds made available by this Act or prior Acts under this heading may be used to permanently close the United States-China Friendship Volunteer Program.” Never mind that the U.S.-China Friendship Volunteers, another name for the Peace Corps’s China program, has already been closed down. To anyone reading Tom Rogan’s recent opinion piece in the Washington Examiner, this sentence is made out to be an attempt by House Democrats to weaken American national security. In fact, the Peace Corps’s presence there advanced our country’s interests, values, and security in a number of crucial ways. As Peace Corps staff and volunteers have long known, . . .

EVERY HILL A BURIAL PLACE by Peter H. Reid (Tanzania)

Jul 23 2020

“Every Hill a Burial Place combines the suspense of a fictional legal thriller with a fascinating look at the early days of the Peace Corps in Africa.” —Phillip Margolin, New York Times bestselling author of A Reasonable Doubt and a former Peace Corps Volunteer (Liberia, 1965–1967) On March 28, 1966, Peace Corps personnel in Tanzania received word that volunteer Peppy Kinsey had fallen to her death while rock climbing during a picnic. Local authorities arrested Kinsey’s husband, Bill, and charged him with murder as witnesses came forward claiming to have seen the pair engaged in a struggle. The incident had the potential to be disastrous for both the Peace Corps and the newly independent nation of Tanzania. Because of the high stakes surrounding the trial, questions remain as to whether there was more behind the final “not guilty” verdict than was apparent on the surface. Peter H. Reid, . . .

Archive - 2020