John Coyne – Page 334 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Review: Mary E. Trimble's (The Gambia 1979-81) Tenderfoot

Mar 04 2010

Kathleen Coskran, writer and teacher, has appeared in several anthologies and her collection of short stories, The High Price of Everything, won a Minnesota Book Award as did Tanzania on Tuesday: Writing by American Women Abroad which she co-edited. She is the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and residencies including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Bush Artist’s Fellowship, and two grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board. • Tenderfoot by Mary E. Trimble (The Gambia 1979-81) Treble Heart Books, $13.50 289 Pages January 2010 Reviewed by Kathleen Coskran (Ethiopia 1965–67) Tenderfoot is set on a ranch in western Washington during the days leading up to the eruption of Mount St. Helens. Author Mary E. Trimble certainly knows the terrain and the language of ranching and riding, and the reader takes pleasure in learning how to saddle a horse, the unforeseen perils of crossing a muddy creek on . . .

Review of Kevin Daley's South Pacific Survivor

Mar 03 2010

Reviewer Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963-65) is an anthropologist, writer and magazine editor. Besides numerous articles in the academic and popular press, he has published five books including two biographies, Against the Current: The Life of Lain Singh Bangdel-Writer, Painter and Art Historian of Nepal (Orchid Press 2004), and Moran of Kathmandu: Priest, Educator and Ham Radio ‘Voice of the Himalayas’ (Orchid Press, 1997; rev. ed. in press, 2010). His next book, Discovering the Big Dogs of Tibet and the Himalayas (in press, 2010), combines memoir and essay. An anthology of his creative nonfiction is also forthcoming. Don writes from his home in Vancouver, Washington (near Portland, Oregon), when he’s not off trekking in the Himalayas. • South Pacific Survivor in Samoa by Kevin Daley (Samoa 1986–89) Boston: Novels Plus $16.95 435 pages January 2010 Reviewed by Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963-65) If you like intricately plotted political thrillers, in exotic cultural settings, this book . . .

Niger RPCVs Return to Africa To Make Documentary Film On Host Country And Themselves

Mar 02 2010

It begins this way: In the summer of 1966 a group of 65 Peace Corps Volunteers head for Africa and the heat-scorched desert of Niger. They stay for two years working in agriculture, digging wells and starting health clinics for women and their babies. In 2008 five of these RPCVs return to Niger to revisit the country, see our old friends and witness how their work has improved the lives of the people there. When they return to their host country, they also do a documentary film. You can see a short ten minute trailer of this film (now being finished as a full-length feature) at www.niger66.com. It is a wonderful treat. The film was produced and directed by Judy Irola (Niger 1966-68) who is an award winning cinematographer and a Full Professor at the University of Southern California. She also holds the Conrad Hall Chair in Cinematography (endowed by George Lucas . . .

Having Failed To Interest Anyone With My Last Quiz, Let Me Try Again!

Mar 02 2010

Okay, here are first lines from 10 Memoirs by RPCVs. I’ll make it easier and give you the names of the authors. You need only match the prose with the person. 1. The nicest thing anyone ever said to me came cloaked in an insult which, while essentially inaccurate, proved astute in its initial perceptiveness: “We all thought you’d fail.” 2. They took us in the Land Rover, Mike and me, with Kim Buck driving. We had planned to leave that morning, as it was a good four hours’ drive, although it was only about sixty miles from Mbeya. 3. A single lantern filled the room with flickering light, throwing Fanta’s shadow toward the door. The glow bronzed her tight cheekbone, her deflated breast, her moving stomach. 4. These were momentous times. Pope John died and the only clergyman with the guts to stare a television camera in the face . . .

And The Winner Is?…..Not

Mar 01 2010

Phil Damon (Ethiopia 1963-65) came close, but didn’t get all 10. He missed #6 and #8 Here is the correct list 1. Jack Kerouac, On the Road 2. John Knowles, A Separate Peace 3. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby 4. James Jones, From Here to Eternity 5. William Faulkner, Light in August 6. Hamilton Basso, Th View From Pompey Head 7. Irwin Shaw, The Eighty Yard Run 8. John O’Hara, You Can Always Tell Newark 9. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms 10. Frederick Exley, A Fan’s Notes

James H. McAuley (Honduras 1962-64)

Feb 28 2010

Monday, November 21 5:12 pm I AM JAMES H. McAULEY from Cleveland, Ohio. I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer from 6/62 to 6/65 in LaCeiba, Honduras with the Honduran National Social Welfare Agency. John F. Kennedy gave each of us as citizens of this (great) country and to each Peace Corps Volunteer a gift, his vision that people from around the world could interface with each other in a personal, human way for their mutual betterment. President Kennedy has given us an energetic, vibrant, living vision of hope that people who would dare to risk sharing divergent values and cultures could improve the human condition of all mankind by working to solve social/economic problems through relating to each other as other human beings. A vision of people of one country sharing with people of another country life’s joys and sorrows. A vision that people who stumble through language barriers . . .

Jay J. Levy & Sharon Levy (Brazil 1966–68)

Feb 28 2010

Monday, November 21 5:36 pm STEPPING OFF THE PLANE in Rio de Janeiro more than 20 years ago as newly trained Peace Corps Volunteers, most of us felt we were going to change things for the poor people of Brazil. After all, we had been trained in basic health skills and community development strategies. The formula for success was simple. All we had to do was make sure everyone boiled their water and sent their kids to school each day. And, of course, we would work to identify community leaders so that they could organize the poor to have a better life. Much, much later we would realize the formula for success was infinitely more complicated – that, in fact, the Brazilians had taught us much more about our own country than we had managed to teach them about overcoming poverty and powerless in theirs. After all, how could they . . .

Mary Jane Manning (Lesotho 1976–78)

Feb 28 2010

Monday, November 21 4:48 pm LESOTHO HIGH SCHOOL SEEMED to be a closely-knit community from 1976-1978. Girls with girls. Boys with boys. Clustered together in groups. They were happy and smiling mainly because they had each other’s support and friendship. For me they were a unique model of poverty of spirit . . . A distinguished feature of character well removed from the Greedy side of U.S. materialism and a learning experience I returned home with. A great many students, out of the two hundred and thirty assigned to my art classes, were capable & talented. It was exciting to work with them because their progress was remarkable. Toward the end of my two years teaching stay I could discern that some students began to realize their own potential for creating and discovering beauty. They were suddenly liberated from a suppressed feeling of being worthless. Some began to recognize proportion . . .

Letitia [Lettie] Morse Lladoc (Philippines 1964-66)

Feb 28 2010

Monday, November 21 5:00 pm IMAGINE, President Kennedy has been dead for two years, but it’s amazing how, here on the island of Leyte in the Philippines so many miles away from the United States, you visit barrio homes and there on the wall is President Kennedy’s picture. People here always want to talk about President Kennedy and it’s nice because they talk about him as if he was a close friend. I feel so honored to be part of his Peace Corps. I know years from now I’ll look back at my Peace Corps years as my best years. Jesse and I went walking in the park near the Tacloban capital today. He is becoming very special to me. How am I ever going to leave this place or him. POSTSCRIPT 1988 I didn’t leave Jesse! We’ve been married now for 22 years and have two wonderful children, Billy . . .

Neil G. Kotler (Ethiopia 1964-66)

Feb 28 2010

Monday, November 21 5:30 pm MAKING A CONTRIBUTION as a teacher in improving the lives of other human being, particularly young people — this was at the core of my Peace Corps experience in Ethiopia. I never felt better employed in my life as I had teaching Ethiopian history, at a time and place where few Ethiopians were studying their own history. The first semester I was asked to teach Greek and Roman history to 11th and 12th grade students. I was puzzled by this assignment. What in the world were my Eritrean students going to learn from the Greeks and Romans? Why weren’t my students studying Ethiopian and Eritrean history? When I proposed to teach Ethiopian history the following semester, the headmaster eyed me with amusement and asked what qualified me to teach national history. Eventually, the headmaster consented, and during the next year and a half I taught, . . .

Robert S. Kenison (Colombia 1963-65)

Feb 28 2010

Monday, November 21 8:03 pm WHAT THE PEACE CORPS DID for me was to change my life. That’s all. I was a member of Colombia Group XVI, Urban Community Development. We were in training at the Columbia University School of Social Work in New York City when President Kennedy was killed. Midway through our training, this wrenching event unsettled us all, but in a real way firmed the resolve to move forward in the host country. In 1963, I had just graduated from law school, an experience which had not done much to chisel an uncompromising New Hampshire political philosophy. Steven Vincent Benet has Daniel Webster describe the state of the nation in traditional Granite State terms: “rock-ribbed, firm, and indivisible.” That kind of stern, individualistic thinking underlay my thinking about political and social problems taking care of themselves through individual effort, just as hard-working tillage will produce fruit and . . .

Judith Kelly (Peru 1968-70)

Feb 28 2010

Monday, November 21 5:51 pm TWENTY YEARS AGO, in November, 1968, just as the world marked five years without the President who had created the Peace Corps, I met my future spouse, William Kelly, in Peace Corps training in Puerto Rico. Kennedy’s call to serve had brought us together, and bonded us for sixteen years. I want to speak of Bill today because to me he embodies the spirit of the Peace Corps – throughout his life, and right to the end. His final service – as Peace Corps Country Director for Paraguay – ended in a mysterious aircrash high in the Andes of Bolivia on January 1, 1985. He had been en route to Miami to orient a new group of Peace Corps trainees The Peace Corps gave us a great beginning – a two-year “honeymoon” in southern Peru – and we treasured that time through many hectic years. . . .

Jennifer Keller (Costa Rica 1985-87)

Feb 28 2010

Monday, November 21 5:45 pm 1st WEEK: One day before the day! I’m scared but excited. It’s all over and today we got our passport and ticket. Seems more real now and I feel sort of sad. This will all be so hard. Please write soon so I get mail soon there. 1st WEEK IN TRAINING IN COSTA RICA: I’ll describe a typical day: I wake up at 3:00 am with howling wolves (dogs) outside my window. (Did I tell you I got bit by a dog? I am now receiving rabies shots in the arm, which is really gross.) Then at 5 am the roosters start up. Damn things really do say cockle doodle doo. I can’t believe it. Then at 6:30 am the mother get up and “wakes” me, but I’ve been up for hours. I eat a huge breakfast of rice and beans and go to school . . .

Raymond Bud Keith (Panama 1965–67)

Feb 28 2010

Raymond Bud Keith (Panama 1965–67) Monday, November 21 4:54 pm LEARNING TO APPRECIATE the United States has become an ongoing residual benefit of the Peace Corps experience. After becoming totally blind at age eleven, I grew up in an urban environment with good sidewalks, good public transportation, and a society that respected the need for me to use a white cane. In Panama safety was always an issue. There were open manholes, drivers who would yell at me because they thought I was trying to hit them with my cane, pedestrians who thought I was an aggressive American because I wouldn’t walk around them on the sidewalk, and a society that didn’t believe that blind people could make it. I taught in a school for blind children where the only real benefit was the salaries paid to the poorly trained teachers and the money squandered by administrators. To live for . . .

Steven E. Keenan (Liberia 1963-65)

Feb 28 2010

Steven E. Keenan (Liberia 1963-65) Monday, November 21 4:27 pm PAUL, MY ROOMMATE, AND I were sitting outside the house having just finished supper. I had turned on the radio. We were listening to a music program being broadcast over Voice of America. The music suddenly stopped and we were told of the tragedy to President Kennedy. We heard this within 15 minutes of the shooting. I had been thinking how isolated and cut off we were out there, but not after this. The Liberian people were as shocked and saddened as we were. President Kennedy had a connection with the African people, which few Americans could understand. The Principal of the school and numerous Villagers have come by to give us their sympathy and ask us why? Why President Kenney? We have no answer to give them.

Author - John Coyne