March 8, 2024 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Interview with Peace Corps Director Carol Spahn

Mar 08 2024

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Dale Gilles (Liberia 1964-66) In this episode of ‘@ HydePark with Indeewari Amuwatte,’ Carol Spahn, the Director of Peace Corps, who is in Sri Lanka, to oversee the swearing in of 20 Peace Corps Volunteers from the United States, discuss the educational program that is set to be implemented in the country. The 25th group of Peace Corps volunteers to be posted there, are set to embark on a two-year service journey as English teachers in the Central and Uva provinces. The Director of the Peace Corps, Spahn said that Volunteers will work alongside their Sri Lankan counterparts, including English teachers and principals, to deliver English language instruction to Sri Lankan school children. Further, she also discusses the challenges and opportunities experienced by the Peace Corps while commending the support of the local authorities and added that the Peace Corps is willing to . . .

Review | BURMA SAHIB by Paul Theroux (Malawi)

Mar 08 2024

Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) Mariner Books February 2024 400 pages $14.99 (Kindle); $30.00 (Hardback); 1 Credit (Audio book) Reviewed by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971-73) • • • Here one of the more prolific, best-known Returned Peace Corps Volunteer authors reimagines one of English literature’s most controversial writers in his early, formative years. Theroux leads us on the journey of Eric Blair, a British Raj officer in Colonial Burma to his transformation to George Orwell, the anti-colonial writer. Blair set sail for India shortly after graduating from the same prestigious private school of Eton whose alumni included Boris Johnson and nineteen other British prime ministers. Despite his young age (19), he would oversee local policemen in Burma and deal with his fellow British’s racial and class politics while trying to learn new languages. His father, a middling official in Britain’s opium trade, had served in India, and . . .

Archive - March 8, 2024