Archive - June 24, 2024

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GARDENS OF PLENTY by Ron Arias (Peru)
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What Patrick Shea Has To Say About His Life and the Peace Corps (Georgia)
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WHEN CORONAVIRUS UNMAPPED THE PEACE CORPS JOURNEY by Jeffrey W. Aubuchon (Morocco)

GARDENS OF PLENTY by Ron Arias (Peru)

Kirkus review — BY RON ARIAS ‧ MARCH 18, 2024 An action-packed and historically rich novel with a compelling lead character. In Ron Arias’  (Peru 1963-64)  novel set in the 16th century, a teenage orphan signs up as a ship’s boy on the Mynion, a British trading ship headed for the West Indies. Joseph Fields is 13 years old in 1567, when he flees the orphanage where he’s lived since his parents and sister succumbed to the plague two years ago. His father was a scrivener, as was his father before him, and Joseph learned the skill at his dad’s knee. He gets a job on a trading ship and sails away from England with only three significant possessions: his mother’s wooden spoon, her comb for removing lice and nits, and his father’s penknife, which has a cryptic engraving on the handle. Each will prove to be invaluable on his dangerous journey. . . .

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What Patrick Shea Has To Say About His Life and the Peace Corps (Georgia)

  John interviews — Patrick Shea Patrick, why did you join the Peace Corps? I come from a deeply patriotic family that was in America before America was a country. If my die-hard republican uncle is to be believed, we have family that fought in the Revolutionary War. Myself, well, my father always called me a “conservative hippy.” I have done volunteer work since the seventh grade, and had over 300 hours of volunteer service before I even entered the Peace Corps. I believe everyone should serve their community, and my professors suggested the Peace Corps, as one was a RPCV herself. Where were you assigned? I was a G16 — the Eastern European country of Georgia in 2016-2017. How big was the group? This group was large, it was right around 60 volunteers. What was your assignment? I was an English teacher as I had been volunteering tutoring immigrants . . .

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WHEN CORONAVIRUS UNMAPPED THE PEACE CORPS JOURNEY by Jeffrey W. Aubuchon (Morocco)

  When Coronavirus Unmapped The Peace Corps Journey by Jeffrey W. Aubuchon (Morocco 2007-08) & Peace Corps Response Nepal 92252 Press 142 pages $2.99 (Kindle).$7.00 (Paperback)   On March 15, 2020, the U. S. government recalled the more than 7,300 Peace Corps Volunteers serving in the field, thereby halting active development projects around the globe and the person-to-person diplomacy that has defined the agency’s mission for 60 years. Volunteers returned home to a nation under biological attack from the novel coronavirus with shuttered businesses and skyrocketing unemployment. The newly-designated “Evacuated Peace Corps Volunteers” found themselves neglected by the country they served: unable to collect unemployment benefits, limited to two months of health insurance, and grieving their own disrupted dreams. This book details the unprecedented global evacuation of Volunteers from national headlines as well as village stories of abandoned projects and suspended friendships. Yet, the book also describes the ensuing advocacy . . .

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