July 2023 – Page 2 – Peace Corps Worldwide

THE SHOWGIRL AND THE WRITER by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador)

Jul 21 2023

The Showgirl and the Writer: A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) Peace Corps Writers 488 pages July 2023 $16.95 (Paperback) The Showgirl and the Writer, A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration, by Marnie Mueller, is a hybrid memoir/biography. It encompasses Mueller’s own story, beginning at her birth to Caucasian parents in the Tule Lake Japanese American High Security Camp in Northern California, and tells the tale of her long friendship with Mary Mon Toy, a Nisei performer who was incarcerated in the Minidoka Japanese American Camp in Idaho during WWII. The two met by chance in 1994. By then Mueller was a published author and Mary Mon Toy by necessity of old age, had retired from an unusually successful career on stage and television, for an Asian American actor of her time. After Ms. . . .

I Shall Not Want | by Andrea Elise (South Korea)

Jul 20 2023

I Shall Not Want Poems Andrea Elise (South Korea ) Create Space Publishing February 2015 46 pages $6.95 (Paperback) This is a collection of poems that express love, friendship, regret, loss, gratitude, vanity. It also includes a number of haikus and an essay about one day in the life of a young woman’s 2-year stint in the Peace Corps in South Korea in the late 1970’s. Andrea Elise was born in Sopron, Hungary and immigrated to the United States with her parents in 1956. She grew up in Amarillo, and attended Amarillo College before transferring to Duke University, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature. She spent two years in the Peace Corps in South Korea, then obtained a Master’s degree in Counseling from West Texas A&M University. Her interests include writing essays and poetry, partner dancing (East Coast swing or jitterbug), playing mandolin, hiking, working out and . . .

Dan Link: Naked and Afraid! (Nicaragua)

Jul 20 2023

Dan Link is a graduate of Webster Thomas High School, class of 2008. After completing his high school education, he pursued further studies at Monroe Community College in 2012. He later earned a bachelor’s degree in marine biology from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, showcasing his dedication and passion for the field. As a participant in the reality TV show “Naked and Afraid XL,” Dan Link displayed his survival expertise and skills in various challenging environments. His impressive background in marine biology and adventurous spirit added a unique and captivating dimension to his appearance on the show, earning him recognition and admiration from viewers. While he may not have a prominent online presence, Dan Link’s notable achievements and survival prowess continue to leave a lasting impact on those who follow his remarkable journey. Dan Link, a contestant on “Naked and Afraid XL,” boasts an impressive background as a . . .

2023 Winner of Peace Corps Writers’ Award for Best Travel Book

Jul 19 2023

My Saddest Pleasures: 50 Years on the Road: Part of the Yin and Yang of Travel Series Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971–73) This book is part of the author’s “Yin and Yang of Travel” series of ten essays, which was inspired by Paul Theroux’s (Malawi 1963–65) The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road Mr. Walker has spent over 50 years traveling in many countries around the world, first as a Peace Corps volunteer, and later as a professional fund raiser for various nonprofit organizations or NGOs. The book is an easy read. Walker writes in a conversational style, and it is only 63 pages. It is primarily a journal of his travels alone, with his family, and leading trips for donors to NGOs he worked for. His travel has been mostly off the beaten path rather than to popular tourist destinations. It is apparent he has learned . . .

Terrance Stevenson New Head of Sea.citi (Armenia)

Jul 19 2023

The new RPCCV leader of Sea.citi, a nonprofit that aims to engage Seattle tech workers with civic life Terrance Stevenson (Armenia 2012-14 & PC Staff 2015-19) is bringing his passion for peace-building, community development, and innovation to the Seattle tech industry. Stevenson this week was named director of Sea.citi, a nonprofit that launched in 2018 and aims to help tech workers engage with civic issues. It focuses on issues such as housing affordability, climate change, transportation infrastructure and digital equity. How did you end up landing this gig? Terrance Stevenson: I began my career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Armenia. Living and working in this beautiful, conflict-affected country — where I had to learn a new language and culture as a starting point for community service — sparked my passion for peacebuilding, community development, and innovation. I’ve been blessed to find career opportunities that bridge these passions and a city (Seattle) that . . .

The Volunteer Who Had a Professional Career of Leadership in Agriculture and Economic Development

Jul 18 2023

A Profile in Citizenship Emmy Simmons (Philippines 1962-64) • by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) Emmy Simmons grew up in a farming community of northern Wisconsin before serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines, 1962-64. There, it was just her luck to be assigned as an education Volunteer to a farming community near the “summer capital” of Baguio where the population grew rice for food and pineapples for cash. She found herself drawn to the issues of agriculture and economic development in a context different from that of northern Wisconsin. After Peace Corps, she earned a M. S. in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University. Emmy was able to build a career in food and agriculture in the following decades, from participating in a rural development research program at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria where she focused on families’ nutrition and women’s microenterprises to serving as the Assistant Administrator . . .

“The Bed on the Roof” by Bonnie Black (Gabon)

Jul 18 2023

(The following story is excerpted from the Mali memoir of Bonnie Black, How To Make An African Quilt: The Story of the Patchwork Project of Segon, Mali) By Bonnie Black (Gabon 1996-98) • One afternoon, on the way homefrom teaching a [patchwork quilting] class at Centre Benkady, I stopped at a metalworker’s atelier to ask whether he might make an iron ladder for me that could be attached securely to the front terrace of my house, allowing me to have access to the flat roof. The man, Mr. Dao, agreed, and within a few weeks the sturdy, narrow ladder was installed. Then, as if heaven-sent one Monday morning I saw on my way to the centreville marché, but not yet far from my home, a Malian family from an outlying village conveying on their donkey cart a new, hand-made traditional bed frame made of smooth sticks tied with cowhide . . .

2023 Winner of Peace Corps Writers’ Award for Best Poetry Book

Jul 17 2023

Ten Years A Poet Philip Fretz (Sierra Leone 1967–69) I have written poems and short stories since I can remember, years before word processing freed me from the perils of my illegible handwriting. Subsequent to retiring, I discovered first the Osher Life Long Learning program in Lewes, Delaware, and then the Renaissance Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. Both of these programs offered many opportunities to practice writing in many subject areas with encouragement from classmates and instructors. The selection of poems in this volume represent many that were spawned by participation in these programs. I’ve been awakened to notice the people I see in ordinary settings and events that occur in everyday life. They arouse my inspiration to record what I see and hear and translate those ideas into poetry and prose. Philip Fretz has lived in Philadelphia, southern Delaware, and in Baltimore, MD. He has been an active . . .

Another 1st for RPCV Morris Baker (Ethiopia)

Jul 17 2023

RPCVs in the news Dr. Morris Baker (Ethiopia 1966-68) McMurry University, in Abilene TX, is in the midst of celebrating its 100th anniversary. A 1963 graduate of the then McMurry College, Morris Baker (Ethiopia 1966-68) enrolled there in 1959. He was the first African American student to enroll and the first to earn an undergraduate degree at that institution. As a result of that event, in October he will be recognized as one of the McMurry 100. One-hundread alumni who brought a moment of historical significance to the university. As the first African American to graduate from McMurry he was a PCV in Ethiopia and then worked in for the agency before returning to his alma mater as a professor of psychology and taught from 1983 to 1994. Dr. Baker was also named a Distinguished Alumni 1987. He currently serves on the McMurry Board of Visitors. McMurry was founded in . . .

2023 Winner of the Peace Corps Writers’ Moritz Thomsen Award for Best Book about the Peace Corps Experience

Jul 16 2023

A Five Finger Feast Two Years in Kazakhstan, Lessons from the Peace Corps by Tim Suchsland (Kazakhstan 2007–09) author and illustrator • A Five Finger Feast is a collection of coming-of-age stories set to the backdrop of Kazakhstan, with the ups and the downs, the excitement and the thrill of living abroad as a young person and working in the Peace Corps. Tim Suchsland, a teacher and artist, takes the reader on a very interesting journey into a vast corner of the world that none of us has ever seen, of which we know virtually nothing, which borders on Russia’s infamous Siberia and yet is populated with very interesting people — Kazaks from many tribes, Armenians, Volga Germans and Russians — each with a story of how their people came to be in the village of Valenka, twenty miles from the Russian border and 840 miles (22 hours by road) from . . .

Peace Corps staff member made $258,000 after killing a woman

Jul 15 2023

July 14, 2023 Sweeping Peace Corps legislation headed to the U.S. Senate includes a provision allowing the agency’s director to suspend without pay any employee who engages in serious misconduct. The proposal follows a USA TODAY investigation that exposed for the first time a leading Peace Corps official who remained on the payroll for 18 months after he went on a reckless drunk driving spree that left a Tanzanian mother dead. That case was one of several troubling instances behind the provision in the new bill, which was approved by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week, according to Rep. John Garamendi (Ethiopia 1965-67), D-Calif. who introduced the bill in the House. “We noted that the director did not have sufficient administrative authority to deal with profoundly disturbing problems,” said Garamendi, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia. John Peterson, now 68, received more than $250,000 in salary and . . .

2023 Winner of Peace Corps Writers’ Award for Best Book for a Young Reader

Jul 14 2023

Kansas Kaleidoscope Mark G. Wentling Honduras (1967–69) & Togo (1970–73) 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 fleeing to a neighbor’s house only for Boyd to chase her down. With his older siblings out of the nest, Marky becomes the protector of his two . . .

2023 Winner of Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Book of Non-Fiction

Jul 12 2023

Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet by Michael Meyer (China 1995-97) The incredible story of Benjamin Franklin’s parting gift to the working-class people of Boston and Philadelphia — a deathbed wager that captures the Founder’s American Dream and his lessons for our current, conflicted age. Benjamin Franklin was not a gambling man. But at the end of his illustrious life, the Founder allowed himself a final wager on the survival of the United States: a gift of two thousand pounds to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent out to tradesmen over the next two centuries to jump-start their careers. Each loan would be repaid with interest over ten years. If all went according to Franklin’s inventive scheme, the accrued final payout in 1991 would be a windfall. In Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet, Michael Meyer traces the evolution of these twin funds as they age alongside America itself, bankrolling woodworkers and . . .

Film of RPCVs returning to Sierra Leone

Jul 12 2023

The Peace Corps Returns A Documentary film by Steve Kovacs and RoseAnn Rotandaro. In the summer of 2011 twenty Peace Corps Volunteers returned to Sierra Leone, West Africa. For most of them, it was the first time returning to the country since they had served in the 1960’s and 1970’s. They came to reconnect with their friends in Sierra Leone. It was an auspicious time for their trip. The nation was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary of independence from Great Britain. The year also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Peace Corp’s arrival in Sierra Leone. From 1961, and for a 30-year period, 3,500 the U.S. Peace Corps Volunteers served in Sierra Leone. Then, in 1991, a civil war broke out and ravaged this small nation for over eleven years. It claimed 50,000 lives and victimized more than 20,000 surviving citizens victims by amputating limbs and other acts . . .

Dennis McCarty (Guatemala) | THE QUEST TO END HUMAN TRAFFICING

Jul 11 2023

by Academic Minute 07/11/2023 Human trafficking is not just fought in the shadows. Dennis McCarty, Ph.D. (Guatemala 1973-75), a lecturer at the University at Albany says we all have a role to play. He worked for several criminal justice agencies before retiring as an Assistant Director at what was initially known as the New York State Office of Homeland Security. Professional honors include a Gubernatorial commendation for developing and coordinating the NYS Law Enforcement Counter-Terrorism Training Program following the attacks of 9/11. His volunteer work includes service with the Peace Corps in Guatemala, assisting residents of a shelter for domestic violence survivors, and helping vulnerable youths living on the streets of New York City. Academic honors include several teaching awards and the 2021 UAlbany Terra Award for helping the university earn national recognition as a Fair-Trade institution. The Quest to End Human Trafficking People often assume that only legislators and law . . .

Archive - July 2023