Archive - August 2022

  Dean W. Jefferson El Salvador 1974-76 and Costa Rica 1976-77     After Peace Corps Dean became interested in the computer software field and made it his profession. He worked first as a software engineer, and later taught programming and database management at a technical collage. Along the way he acquired a masters degree in adult education, and has worked as a Spanish language translator and interpreter. Dean is a long-time member of RPCVs of Wisconsin/Madison —  the people who publish the “Peace Corps International Calendar.” Dean Jefferson has been a stalwart book reviewer for Peace Corps Worldwide for a number of years, and we welcome him to our masthead. In addition, he has volunteered to help authors who will be publishing their books with the Peace Corps Writers imprint, and who are unable to find capable and independent proof readers and/or editors, to fine tune their final manuscripts . . .

Two Years That Changed America A Peace Corps Memoir   Jerry, what was your educational background, and did it help you as a PCV? My undergraduate education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison aided me somewhat, as I was a political science major with an emphasis on Latin American Studies. Along with three years of Spanish it gave me at least an understanding of, and foundation for, my Peace Corps experience. However, it did not prepare me for some of the many cultural and personal conditions I was to encounter.   Tell about your Peace Corps experience. I served in the Peace Corps in Ecuador on a School Construction and Community Development Program. Our group was designated Ecuador V, and served from July of 1963 to July of 1965. I served in three locations, Cangonamá, Catamayo, and Gonzanamá all in the southernmost province of the country, Loja. I spent most . . .

  by Patrick Chura (Lithuania 1992-94)   Counterintuitively, the hardest to write book reviews are for ones you most admire. And Patrick Chura’s biography, Michael Gold: The People’s Writer is one such book. Reading Chura’s text has been an intimate labor of love for me. In the very last pages of his story of the life of Michael Gold a sentence stood out to describe my deep attachment. “. . . (Michael) Gold managed the challenge of proving the existence of another America, and how difficult it made his life.” In writing of Michael Gold, an avowed and uncompromising Marxist, a man who has fallen out of the literary canon, out of the political history of America, despite his major contributions and successes, Chura has told the story of my parents and people like them, who dedicated their lives to making a better, more equitable nation, and suffered as a result of their . . .

Brazilian Odyssey By Stephen E. Murphy  (Regional Director, Inter-Americas Region, 2002-03) bookhouse publishing 246 pages 2022 $18.95 (Paperback)       Reviewed by Stephen Foehr (Ethiopia 1965-66) It’s a forever story, little guy armed with idealism takes on big, bad, and corrupt. This evergreen theme kindles, and rekindles, the flame of hope. We keep turning the pages to find out about Evil vs Good, the tag team Greed/Power against Humanity/Right. Can justice prevail? Is it possible that personal integrity need not be a sacrificial lamb on the altar of you lose, I win? Do the good guys have a fighting chance? The destruction of the Brazilian Amazon is a reoccurring headline of doom; the oxygen-giving rainforest decimated for profit; the indigenous peoples murdered for their land, their way of life transformed into poverty and cultural extermination. American professor Luke Shannon takes a group of students from Seattle University on a . . .

  By Concord Times 8 August 2022   Peace Corps Volunteers serve for two years and return to the US, but not Cindy Nofziger (Sierra Lierra 1984-86). After arriving in Sierra Leone from Maryland in 1984, her commitment to grassroots development in the West African nation continues to this day. Cindy has built 42 school buildings and three libraries and provided thousands of scholarships to children from low-income communities. In 2005 Cindy returned to Masanga, Northern Sierra Leone (the first time it was possible to do so since the end of the decade-long civil war), where she had worked as a volunteer at the district leprosy hospital. While there, she reconnected with John Sesay, an old friend from the ’80s. The war had rolled back all educational gains. Rural communities like Masanga were the worst hit. Schools were destroyed, or they just hadn’t been built. John asked Cindy to help . . .

Naming the Peace Corps by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962–64) THOSE OF US WHO follow the history of the Peace Corps agency know the term “peace corps” came to public attention during the 1960 presidential election. In one of JFK’s last major speeches before the November election he called for the creation of a “Peace Corps” to send volunteers to work at the grass roots level in the developing world. However, the question remains: who said (or wrote) “peace corps” for the very first time? Was it Kennedy? Was it his famous speech writer Ted Sorensen? Or Sarge himself? But — as in most situations — the famous term came about because of some young kid, usually a writer, working quietly away in some back office that dreams up the language. In this case the kid was a graduate student between degrees who was working for the late senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey. . . .