2023 – Page 16 – Peace Corps Worldwide

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 . . .

Review — WHITE CLOUD FREE by Peter Michael Johnson (Paraguay)

Jul 10 2023

White Cloud Free by Peter Michael Johnson (Paraguay 2002-04) V Press LC Publisher 160 pages July 2023 $11.99 (Kindle); $16.97 (Paperback) Reviewed by Stephen Foehr (Ethiopia 1965-66) • How many lives can a man live? An English major as a naïve Peace Corps beekeeper. A soft heart who befriends a 12-year-old village outcast. A fugitive on the run, with the boy, from a vengeful mob of farmers. An acolyte of St. Augustine. A sad-soul mate of a young Paraguayan transgender sex worker. A drug addict. A middle-aged washed-out depressive who suffers manic episodes. A seeker who wants a silent past. Author of White Cloud Free, a semi-autobiographical memoir. Memoir — a subjective collection of narratives, where the author remembers experiences, emotions, and events that are emotionally truthful, but not fact-checked — so the reader can’t tell where the author begins or ends as a character. In this, . . .

Ethiopia Professor Launches New Book & Remembers His Peace Corps Teachers

Jul 09 2023

Addis Ababa University Lifetime Professor launches a new book with great fanfare July 7, 2023 Professor Bahru Zewde, Lifetime Professor and the board member of Addis Ababa University (AAU), has launched his new autobiographical book entitled, ‘Hibir Hiwote’, in collaboration with the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Office of External Relations, Partnerships and Communications, Society of Friends of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies and History Department of AAU at the historic Ras Mekonnen Hall on July 6, 2023. Shimelis Bonsa (PhD), an associate professor and researcher of African modern and contemporary history as an associate professor at Stony Brook University in New York, stated that Professor Bahru’s autobiography is the first autobiographical essay written by a pioneering Ethiopian historian in the field of autobiographical writings. “According to my view and understanding, the key idea of the book is the great idea of unity, and it refers to his academic, social and . . .

Tim Hickey (Tanzania) leaves behind a great legacy in the world of track and field

Jul 08 2023

A note from George Brose (Tanzania 1965-67) “Tim Hickey passed away. He was a Tanzania Peace Corps (1965-67). A very respected track and field coach and taught 30 years in Philadelphia public schools. Probably responsible for over 40 inner city girls getting college scholarships. Tim was also director of the high school division of the Penn Relays for many years.” By Napoleon F. Kingcade For more than three decades, Tim Hickey was a nationally known figure in the world of track and field. He took the William Penn High girls track program and built them into a national powerhouse. Hickey died June 24 at the age of 80. Born and raised in Indiana, Hickey participated in track programs at Parker High School and Ball State University. After he graduated from college, he spent three years in the Peace Corps in South Africa, where he coached the Tanzanian . . .

Garrard Conley (Ukraine) — author of BOY ERASED winner of a Macdowell Fellowship

Jul 07 2023

Garrard Conley |Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Garrard Conley (Ukraine 2007-10) has been awarded a prestigious MacDowell Fellowship that he will engage in during two weeks in late September 2023. Adding his name to a list that includes one of his literary heroes, James Baldwin, Conley’s name can now be found among illustrious artists such as Willa Cather, Leonard Bernstein, and Nell Painter, all of whom are past recipients. Conley expressed his shock and gratitude at becoming a MacDowell Fellowship recipient saying, “I was so thrilled that I almost didn’t even have a reaction. I didn’t know what to do.” He started applying for this fellowship when he was 21 and had been applying every eligible year since “thinking, there’s no way I’ll ever get in, but I’m just going to do it.” The MacDowell Fellowship was established in 1907 by Marian and Edward MacDowell and was initially funded . . .

INDIA AND PEACE CORPS

Jul 06 2023

A Fortuitous Partnership that launched India’s Modern Poultry & Egg Production Industry by John Chromy (India 1963-65) INTRODUCTION Sometimes it seems the “stars align in their courses.” And so it happened in the 1960s when a series of factors came together. The Government of India was committed to improving life in its 600,000 villages through a nation-wide Community Development and Agriculture Extension program. India’s Health and Nutrition officials recognized the need to infuse protein into the diet of the majority of the people. There existed a kernel of awareness among the agricultural and animal husbandry officers that the techniques of modern poultry production (hybrid chicken strains, enclosed poultry houses, nutritious feed) might be adapted to the India setting and had the potential to produce protein rich eggs and meat on an enhanced scale. Within the Community Development and Agriculture Extension program there was a very limited number of . . .

Building the Transcaucasian Trail (Georgia)

Jul 05 2023

Building the Transcaucasian Trail in Khutsubani, Georgia “I taught English in a public school in a small village in Georgia. I also wrote and received a grant from USAID to build a library at the school and helped direct a nationwide environmental awareness project.” Paul Stephens (Georgia 2005-07) Paul Stephens remembers the first time he explored the Caucasus Mountains, a place he calls “one of the most biologically, culturally, and linguistically diverse regions in the world.” After his graduation from Wabash, Paul moved to Georgia in 2005 as a Peace Corps Volunteer. When he wasn’t teaching English, the Batesville, Indiana, native would lace up his boots, load up a backpack, and spend hours hiking — an activity he’s enjoyed since he was a kid. “I’ve always been an outdoorsman, curious about the world around me,” Paul said, recalling family trips to the Great Smoky Mountains he shared with his brother, . . .

2023 Winner of the Peace Corps Writers‘ Maria Thomas Award for Best Fiction

Jul 04 2023

The World Against Her Skin: A Son’s Novel John Thorndike (El Salvador 1967-68) The World Against Her Skin is an extraordinary work, written by a mature, highly published author. John Thorndike defines his book as a “Son’s Novel,” a hybrid memoir/novel or “biographical novel.” It is his endeavor to know his mother, as he openly states in his “Author’s Note, “I want to know everything about my mother,” especially the secrets that were kept from him as her son. He inhabits this woman character in order to know her. His are the height of literary goals; find truth through your imagination, cross boundaries through sympathy and empathy, and do it because you need to for survival. It beautifully flies in the face of current stricture to only write what you can know as determined by your gender, race, ethnicity, class and so on. Thorndike completely succeeds in capturing feelings that many . . .

Archive - 2023