January 4, 2022 – Peace Corps Worldwide

The Volunteer Who is One of the Most Thought-provoking Analysts of Our Time — George Packer (Togo)

Jan 04 2022

by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia, 1963-65) Since serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo, 1982-83, George Packer went on to write for The Atlantic Monthly where he wrote the article “We Are Living in a Failed State,” and two books: Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, and Last Best Hope: America in Decline and Renewal, both reviewed below. Taken together, the overriding themes constituted a refrain to Mark Twain’s famous comment: “the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”. Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century George Packer has a thoroughly beguiling style of writing in which the reader is being told a story rather than reading one, as with the opening line in Moby Dick: “Call me Ishmael.” With George in Our Man “you have heard that he [Holbrooke] is a monstrous egotist. It’s true. It’s even worse . . .

Review — THIS RED LAND by Arthur Dobrin (Kenya)

Jan 04 2022

This Red Land By Arthur Dobrin (Kenya 1965-67) Nsemia Inc. Publishers 340 pages January 2018 $9. 99 (Kindle); $12.40 (Paperback) Reviewed by Stephen Foehr (Ethiopia 1965-67) • A body falls from the sky and splats on a London street. The Kenyan passport associated with the dead man is an amateur fake. The name in the passport cannot be found in any Kenyan government database. A young boy living in a Kenyan market town drops out of school to attend the University of the Street. He joins tribal conflicts between the Maasi and the Kisii. A Black family in Brooklyn tries to improve their situation and smacks into the wall of housing discrimination. A young White girl, bright, ambitious, big plans for life, a firebrand for equality learned on the knee her fellow-traveler father is slapped down by the reality of capitalistic USA. A young Kenyan girl, bright, ambitious, big . . .

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