2022 – Page 13 – Peace Corps Worldwide

On the Road Again by Bonnie Black (Gabon)

Aug 25 2022

On the Road Again The WOW Factor: Words of Wisdom from Wise Older Woman By Bonnie Black (Gabon 1996-98) Whenever I want to travel without leaving home, I turn to Paul Theroux. Right now I’m accompanying him on his nostalgic trip throughout Asia in his 2008 book Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, in which he retraces the epic journey he took in 1973 when he was in his early thirties, which became his first bestseller, The Great Railway Bazaar. I’ll admit it: I love traveling with this man this way. I love his sensibilities, his observations, his breadth, the sound of his voice on the page. I love the way he chooses to travel – down to earth, close to the real people – the way I, too, prefer to be. In an effort to remain a companionable traveling companion, I tend to agree with him and go along with everything he . . .

Peace Corps Volunteers Resume Service (Madagascar)

Aug 24 2022

Peace Corps Volunteers Resume Service Ambassador Pierangelo congratulated the Volunteers and thanked local Peace Corps staff August 19, 2022 The Peace Corps officially welcomed the return of two Volunteers who resumed their service in a swearing in ceremony Tuesday with U.S. Ambassador Claire A. Pierangelo and Peace Corps Country Director Brett Coleman. The Volunteers were among those who left the country in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.They returned to Antananarivo earlier this month and have spent the last two weeks refreshing their Malagasy language skills in preparation for service as middle and high school English teachers. An additional thirty new Volunteers will arrive in Madagascar later this month to teach English and work in agriculture Ambassador Pierangelo congratulated the Volunteers and thanked local Peace Corps staff. She highlighted the importance of the oath taken by each volunteer and noted it is the same oath taken by the . . .

Sign Up to Record Your Peace Corps Oral History

Aug 23 2022

Each person’s Peace Corps story is unique and valuable to help us understand who we are as individuals and how our individual experiences are integral parts of the 60-year Peace Corps legacy. The Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Oral History Archives Project (OHAP), an NPCA affiliate, preserves the Peace Corps experience by conducting in-depth oral history interviews of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), Evacuated Peace Corps Volunteers (EPCVs), Peace Corps staff and host country counterparts. RPCV interviews follow each person’s path, including their motivation to join the Peace Corps, what on-boarding and training was like, what they did during their Peace Corps service, what their cultural-cultural experiences were, and their reflections on the impact Peace Corps service had on them, the communities in which they served, and increasing Americans’ understanding of the world. Visit the OHAP website for more information and sign up here if you’d like to be interviewed . . .

KANSAS KALEIDOSCOPE — a novel by Mark G. Wentling (Honduras & Togo)

Aug 22 2022

Kansas Kaleidoscope by Mark G. Wentling (Honduras (1967-69) & Togo (1970-73) Wild Lark Books August 2022 186 pages $4.99 (Kindle); $19.99 (Hardcover) • A young boy’s life in mid-20th-century America persistently and unpredictably veers off course in this novel.In many ways, 11-year-old Marky is a typical kid in 1950s Kansas. He collects baseball cards like other boys his age, goes fishing and hunting with his father, and has a good shot at winning his town’s annual turtle race. But his family is not immune to hardships. Marky and his siblings, for example, rarely see their dad, Boyd, who works the graveyard shift at an aircraft plant 30 miles away. Their mother, Gerry, is a manic-depressive; Marky adores her but is perpetually worried about her oscillating moods. After two decades of marriage and six children, Marky’s parents engage in arguments that escalate in frequency and violence. Intense fights send Gerry . . .

2022 Winner of the Marian Haley Beil Award for the Best Book Review(s)

Aug 21 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 . . .

“Downsizing Books” by John Coyne (Ethopia)

Aug 21 2022

When I was growing up on a farm in Illinois all six of us kids (I was the youngest) waited for the Saturday Evening Post to arrive in Wednesday’s mail so we’d have stories to read over the weekend. After dinner, whichever of my three sisters was washing the dishes that night would prop a book up against the kitchen window so she could read as she scrubbed. Since my job was to dry, I couldn’t pull off that trick. But I loved books too, and before I learned to read, my oldest sister would read to me whatever Jane Austen or Brontē novel she had gotten from the village library. We read so many books, in fact, that soon my older siblings had gone through everything deemed “age appropriate” by the librarian, Mrs. Butterfield. So one day she refused to let my sister Eileen check out the book she’d chosen. My mother, . . .

2022 Winner of the Best Short Story Collection — A HUSBAND AND WIFE ARE ONE SATAN

Aug 19 2022

by Jeff Fearnside Kazakhstan 2002–04 I find a great deal of pleasure in reading fiction set in other cultures or countries, especially when the work demonstrates more than a superficial understanding of the place about which it is written. That was one motivation behind the anthology series I curated, Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet (Press 53 2016). It was also in that context that I first became aware of Jeff Fearnside’s work when his story set in Kazakhstan, “A Husband and Wife are One Satan,” was included in the first volume of that series. I recognized then that, having been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kazakhstan, Fearnside had the depth of knowledge of his chosen setting to bring the culture and his characters to life in both an informative and entertaining way. It was a joy, then, to discover that the story we published is the title . . .

2022 Award for Best Book for Young Adults — ADVENTURES OF MAYANA: FALLING OFF THE EDGE OF THE EARTH

Aug 18 2022

by David Perry Belize, 1985-87 The Adventures of Mayana: Falling Off the Edge of the Earth is the story of a 17-year Belizean girl named Mayana who finds herself on an adventure in a fantasyland of magic, monsters, and intrigue. She crosses over from her homeland of Belize to an alternate reality where the laws of nature and science are very different from what she learned. While she attempts to find her way back to Belize, she befriends a young man named Shifu who mysteriously appears, and speaks only in parables. He helps Mayana use her new-found magic powers to fight monsters and witches and to attempt to find her way home. Shifu also helps her to discover the meaning of life, how to understand why people are the way they are, and most of all how to understand herself. All during her journey, she relies on the recollections of . . .

2022 Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award Winner — I MISS THE RAIN IN AFRICA

Aug 17 2022

by Nancy Daniel Wesson (Uganda 2011-13) At a time when her friends were planning cushy retirements, Nancy Wesson instead walked away from a comfortable life and business to head out as a Peace Corps Volunteer in post-war Northern Uganda. She embraced wholeheartedly the grand adventure of living in a radically different culture, while turning old skills into wisdom. Returning home became a surreal experience in trying to reconcile a life that no longer “fits.” This becomes the catalyst for new revelations about family wounds, mystical experiences, and personal foibles. Nancy shows us the power of stepping into the void to reconfigure life and enter the wilderness of the uncharted territory of our own memories and psyche, to mine the gems hidden therein. Funny, heartbreaking, insightful and tender, I Miss the Rain in Africa is the story of honoring the self, discovering a new lens through which to view life, and finding . . .

Review — THE GECKO IN THE BATHTUB by Janina Fuller (Philippines)

Aug 17 2022

The Gecko in the Bathtub: Encounters with Marvelous Creatures by Janina Marie Fuller (Philippines 1978-80) with illustrations by Maggie Demorest Peace Corps Writers June 2022 178 pages $17.50 (paperback) Reviewed by Andy Amster (Philippines 1978-80) • The Gecko in the Bathtub, Janina Fuller’s collection of stories about her interactions with a wide variety of animals, in settings both mundane and exotic, is subtitled Encounters with Marvelous Creatures. And I must say that while reading these stories, I came to realize that I was having an encounter with a marvelous writer, one whose love of nature and respect for its ecosystems and their inhabitants artfully enlists the reader into “allyship” in that love and respect. From the moment I glanced at the “Table of Contents” before settling down to read this wonderful book, I knew I was putting myself in the hands of an assured and engaging writer. “So Much Alaska,” “Visit from . . .

Talking with Jerry Redfield (Ecuador) about WHILE I WAS OUT

Aug 17 2022

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 . . .

2022 Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award — MICHAEL GOLD: THE PEOPLE’S WRITER

Aug 16 2022

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 . . .

Review — THE COLOR OF THE ELEPHANT by Christine Herbert (Zambia)

Aug 15 2022

The Color of the Elephant: Memoir of a Muzungu Christine Herbert (Zambia 2004–06) GenZ Publishing January 2022 $15.99 (paperback), $5.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Rebecca M. Zornow (eSwatini 2011–13) • I visited the landlocked country of Zambia from the landlocked country of eSwatini, practically neighbors. As a Peace Corps Volunteer on leave, I wished for more than the cursory understanding of Zambian culture, even more than the quick mist of the thunderous Victoria Falls. But as a Volunteer from another country with much to see, I wouldn’t get that chance until reading Christine Herbert’s memoir, The Color of the Elephant. Christine arrives in Zambia in 2004 and quickly learns to eat nshima (cornmeal porridge) and wear citenge (sarong) but wonders throughout training if she’ll be enough to live up to the experience of two years making a difference in the remote countryside. On a trainee outing with an established Volunteer, Christine wonders, . . .

2022 Maria Thomas Fiction Award Winner — A THOUSAND POINTS OF LIGHT

Aug 15 2022

by MARC-VINCENT JACKSON (SENEGAL 1986–89) Beautiful and determined, an outcast Senegalese woman clings relentlessly to dreams of her beloved savior, a lost folklore hero, returning to her from across the ocean … Broken, but wise, a devoted griot painfully witnesses and faithfully tells her dogged plight, loving her from afar and mostly in vain … Committed American volunteers zealously navigate a developing, culturally rich African country, becoming intimately immersed, and sometimes, unwittingly entangled … Alienated and frustrated, one unsuspecting volunteer bitterly chronicles his uneasy experiences with unsparing criticism … A desperate journey, an unspoken heart, patriotic dedication, and a candid diary lyrically meld into a seamless mystical reality with surprising results. Inspired by his U.S. Peace Corps service during George H.W. Bush’s presidency, Marc-Vincent Jackson has written A Thousand Points of Light, an insightful debut novel that is an artfully written with an engaging tale of interwoven lives . . .

THE DELCO YEARS by Bill Owens (Jamaica)

Aug 12 2022

Bill Owens has written an irreverent, funny dystopian novel about a pandemic mitigated by drinking unpasteurized beer. Rich with illustrations by Italian Illustrator Francesca Cosanti, this book is a unique interactive experience. THE DELCO YEARS is the story of how a community of craft beer drinkers flourish and survive after a dystopian event. Hunting and gathering would be at Costco, Target, Home Depot, and CVS. Eventually, they would barter wine for salt, sugar, flour, and hay to feed the horses and cows. From the unhappy Bobby releasing the pandemic to the world in revenge for the televangelists’ sins to the various members of the Craft Beer community who thrive in Livermore Valley and beyond, THE DELCO YEARS is a darkly whimsical romp. See more at THE DELCO YEARS website here: delcoyears.com. The Delco Years: A Dystopian Novel Bill Owens (Jamaica 1964–66), Francesca Cosanti (Illustrator) Delco Years Publishing April 2022 $32.85 (paperback), $42.58 (hardcover) Bill Owens Biography Bill Owens was born on September 25, . . .

Archive - 2022