Archive - 2022

Last week I wrote about the Arabs and Jews I met when researching my novel, The Hotel Shalom; about the dusty town of Nablus with its jobless, hopeful boys, and Elon Moreh, illegal but thriving, with neither side talking to the other but with enough violent remedies to go around. This week, I thought I’d say something about the Christians who are also everywhere in that part of the world, some born there – 47,000 Christians in Palestine, 177,000 in Israel, at last count – and some come from other parts of the world, especially evangelical America, to wait for the rapture like carrion eaters perched on barren branches above a battlefield. When I went to do my research I stayed in the “Palm Guest House” in East Jerusalem, just outside the Old City’s Damascus Gate – it’s my model for the Hotel Shalom – and in Christian guest houses inside the . . .

Peace Corps OIG receives Award for Excellence at the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency’s 25th Annual Awards Ceremony 10/5/2022 7:19 PM WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Peace Corps Office of Inspector General (OIG) received an Award for Excellence at the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency’s (CIGIE) 25th Annual Awards Ceremony held at the Ronald Reagan Building Amphitheatre on October 14th. Deb Haaland, the Secretary of the Interior, delivered this year’s keynote address. Each year, CIGIE’s Awards highlight the outstanding achievements of inspector general staff from across the federal government, including numerous examples of strong interagency cooperation among offices of inspector general to combat fraud, waste, and abuse in government programs and operations. CIGIE presented the Award for Excellence in Evaluations to a Peace Corps OIG team member, Erin Balch, for her “excellence in conducting a challenging evaluation for the  Review of the Facts . . .

SENIOR DEPUTY ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR A Senior Foreign Service Officer with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Peter Duffy (Kazakhstan) has twenty years’ experience designing and overseeing U.S. government economic development programs overseas. Most recently, he served as Mission Director for Afghanistan, overseeing one of the largest USG foreign assistance programs globally. From 2015-2019, he served as Mission Director of the USAID Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina. In that role, he led USAID’s efforts to promote the country’s increased Euro-Atlantic integration by fostering more effective and accountable institutions and advancing market-oriented economic reforms. He has also previously served in Ukraine, Kosovo, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan. Prior to joining the Foreign Service in 2003, Mr. Duffy served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kazakhstan. From 2019-2021, Mr. Duffy served on the faculty of the Department of National Security and Economic Policy at the National Defense University’s Eisenhower School. In this role, . . .

Disrupt and push back against capitalism and white supremacy. In this book, Tricia Hersey, aka The Nap Bishop, encourages us to connect to the liberating power of rest, daydreaming, and naps as a foundation for healing and justice. What would it be like to live in a well-rested world? Far too many of us have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic, damaging, and machine‑level pace –– feeding into the same engine that enslaved millions into brutal labor for its own relentless benefit. In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop, casts an illuminating light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted. Our worth does not reside in how much we produce, especially not for a system that exploits and . . .

  Randolph Hobler (Libya 1968-69) compendium of 440 alumni Peace Corps volunteers resides in the Mudd Library archives While Randolph Hobler (Princeton ’68) was working on his book, 101 Arabian Tales, about the experiences of 101 Peace Corps volunteers who served in Libya, it dawned on him that no such list exists of Princeton alumni. So he began researching. It took three years to complete, and now that list — plus a short Peace Corps film featuring Daniel Ritchie ’64’s service in Kenya — has found a home in the digital archives of the University’s Mudd Library (bit.ly/peace-corps-22). Hobler hopes the Princeton Peace Corps Compendium will be a chance for alumni to learn about the service of their fellow Princetonians. The approximately 250-page resource features 440 Tigers, from the classes of 1936 to 2021, who served in 97 countries. The list includes George Johnson ’59, the first alum to volunteer with the Peace . . .

RWANDA AND THE MOUNTAIN GORILLAS by Steve Kaffen (Russia)   Rwanda is one of Africa’s smallest and most densely populated countries, and one of its most diverse. Nicknamed “Land of A Thousand Hills,” Rwanda is blanketed with rolling farmland that produces some of Africa’s best coffee and tea. Volcanoes National Park is home to mountain gorillas in the higher elevations and golden monkeys down below, while the Nyungwe National Park rainforest contains playful black-and-white colobus monkeys and sources of both the Nile and Congo Rivers. Close encounters with the gorillas and monkeys on treks led by park rangers are among Africa’s exhilarating wildlife experiences. Throughout the country are memorials to the victims of the genocide in spring 1994, during which up to a million residents, largely of the Tutsi ethnic group, were massacred by ethnic Hutu extremists. Offsetting the trauma that still exists is the resilience of Rwanda’s warm and . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Dale Gilles (Liberia 1964-67)   Paul Theroux: ‘Writing is a blood sport. One does have differences with people’ by Rachel Cooke The Guardian 3 October 2022     The prolific novelist and travel writer is 81 but shows no signs of slowing down. He talks about adventure, criticism .  . .  and that memoir by his ex-wife.   In an ideal world — by which I mean one that lives up to my most energetic fantasies – Paul Theroux and I would be meeting in some far flung and exotic place: on an empty platform in a distant railway station, or under a date palm in a dried-up desert oasis. Both of us would have dust on our boots. One of us would be wearing a bad hat, or even a good one. Our conversation, which would unfold like an old map, would come with a . . .

  The Razor’s Edge: Embezzlement, Corruption and Development in Ethiopia: A Novel Robert  Gurevich (Thailand 1963–1965) Peace Corps Writers June 2022 $18.98 (paperback), $6.98 (Kindle) Reviewed by John Chromy (India 1963–65; PC CD/Eastern Caribbean 1977–79; Assoc Dir-PC/Washington 1979–1981) • The author, a veteran of numerous stints in countries around the world managing and overseeing a variety of development projects, takes us on a wild ride through one year as an NGO Project Director of a school and education upgrading program in three provinces of Ethiopia.   The setting The setting is in a country that has recently overthrown a 15-year, communist-inspired, military dictatorship, and hopes are high that the country can quickly move forward to rebuild the school system, address the poverty in the rural areas and prosper under the new found democracy. It seemed the wind was blowing in a very good direction indeed, and the U. S Government, through USAID . . .