Author - John Coyne

Peace Corps’ Enigmatic Five-Year Rule: Updating the ‘In-Up-Out’ Myth by W.M. Evensen ( Peru 1964-66) Long ago I decided to make the cross-country trip to attend Peace Corps’ Fiftieth Birthday Party. I wanted to revisit the heroic beginnings, marvel at Peace Corps’ low-cost accomplishments, the indigenous leaders discovered, the NGOs invented. As it turned out, I found out some modern day things about the Peace Corps that left me bummed and bewildered. My trip to the 50th ended up shattering my most cherished Peace Corps belief: Sargent Shriver’s clever answer to bureaucratic Alzheimer’s, his legendary ‘In-Up-Out’ Five Year Rule, that limited staff to five years service. Because of Shriver’s trenchant ‘In-Up-Out’ Five Year Rule, bureaucratic careerism would not hamper the Peace Corps. Instead, the Agency would be re-born, again and again, by the hiring of newly returned PCVs – the ‘Up’ element: the best of the best – to run a . . .

[Here’s another account of ‘life in the real world’ from one of our farflung RPCV writers. This time it’s  Mike Meyer on the shores of Lake Como who is keeping in touch with the OWS movement and other forms of civil unrest via the International Herald Tribune– and how many of us, as one time or the other, could claim such a routine as our own?–The difference, however, is that  Meyer sums up his experience with vivid prose in a vivid villa.] I’M IN RESIDENCE FOR A MONTH at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, on Lake Como in northern Italy. The residency provides a bedroom, bath and studio in the Villa Serbelloni, a lemon-colored mansion once owned by a princess who was an heir to the Johnnie Walker fortune. Whiskey has yet to make an appearance, but other fellows have sworn they have seen the princess herself, late at night, wafting through the upstairs library where she died. . . .

Emily Balog, 26, a PCV in Paraguay was killed in a car wreck on Sunday, November 27, 2011, according to the Peace Corps. Balog, 26, who is from Burlington, North Carolina, arrived in Paraguay in June 2010 and was expected to COS next August. Balog helped a local women’s cooperative with better business practices, including marketing local goods and improving sales. She also helped create a photography competition for local youth in the community. She is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill in 2007 with a degree in journalism. As of today, more than 250 Americans serve in the Peace Corps in Paraguay.

Native Californian John Givens received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has published novels, non-fiction books, and short stories in the US, Japan and Europe. Givens studied art and language in Kyoto for four years. He worked extensively in Tokyo, San Francisco and New York, and took up residence in Ireland a few years ago. Givens currently lives out on the wet and windy Howth peninsula, and he teaches fiction writing in Dublin and wrote recently about the state of the Irish nation. • Dublin: Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei by John Givens (Korea 1967–69) ANYONE NOT LIVING ON MARS in a cave (without broadband) knows that the euro is in a parlous state. Shared by 17 of the 27 EU countries, the single currency is the glue that holds the whole rickety enterprise together. The absence of a monolithic fiscal authority has long . . .

[In our small attempt to keep everyone abreast of what is happening in cities around the world, via our farflung RPCVs,  Peter Hessler (China 1996-98), one of the recent 22 recipients of the $500,000 ‘genius awards’  given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and who is now living in Cairo, Egypt with his wife and their twin babies, emailed me this morning:] The fighting has been very, very localized, and now has been stopped for a few days.  Even on the square it’s been basically safe; you just didn’t want to go down the side streets where they were battling the police at the Ministry of Interior.   In my neighborhood, less than a mile and a half away, there was really no sign of it.  People were very friendly to me on the square — there have been some reports of foreigners getting harassed and attacked, but that wasn’t my experience.  But a . . .

[Taking a hint from  Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000-02, Madagascar 2002-03) about focusing on what’s happening in America (and around the world) I have emailed a few RPCV writers and asked them to drop me notes from their cities. Paul Eggers (Malaysia 1976-78)  in California commented the other day on the pepper-spray incident at U of Davis. And soon we’ll have reports from Dublin, Switzerland and Cairo. But first Tony D’Souza tells us what is happening in St. Louis, Missouri, where he is encamped for a few years as his wife earns her MFA and he cares for their two young children. Here’s Tony’s take on the gateway city.] St. Louis: Mutual Assured Destruction We’ve had 51 Occupy-related arrests so far here in St. Louis, daily protests outside Bank of America, union-led marches to the MLK Bridge, and the requisite forcible eviction of the tent encampment from the downtown city park. Covering it for the alternative weekly Riverfront . . .

Love and the Peace Corps By Nina Porzucki ⋅ November 22, 2011 ⋅ THERE’S AN EXPRESSION that was my mantra through college: “Peace Corps, the toughest job you’ll ever love.” The idea was that after graduation I would join the Peace Corps, and do the toughest job I’d ever love. In 2002, I arrived in Washington, DC for orientation to teach in Romania. I sat terrified in a conference room thinking about the next 27 months. The first thing I remember was a guy raising his hand and asking the Peace Corps official, “Is it true that 80 percent of volunteers come back married, engaged or in love?” I was floored. Here I was trying to imagine what Romania looked like and where I’d be living. I had never even considered love. Janice Sims was one of my fellow volunteers in Romania. It turns out she was just as surprised . . .

By ANGELA M. HILL and RANDY KREIDER–ABC NEWS Nov. 21, 2011 – President Obama signed the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act today, less than a year after an ABC News investigation into the murder of the 24-year-old volunteer in Africa. The act, which passed earlier this month in Congress, is designed to protect Peace Corps whistleblowers and improve the treatment of victims of violence and sexual assault. The law is named for 24-year-old Kate Puzey of Georgia, who was murdered in Benin in 2009 after telling superiors she believed a fellow Peace Corps employee was molesting female students. In an investigation that aired on “20/20,” ABC News told the story of Kate’s murder and examined what critics say has been a “blame-the-victim” culture within the Peace Corps when volunteers are assaulted or attempt to report problems. “It’s such a wonderful thing. We’re really, really happy this is happening,” . . .