Miscellany

In our tour of four provinces, the first ‘city’ we visited was Trinidad in the province of Sancti Spiritus, in central Cuba. Together with the nearby Valle de los Ingenios, it has been one of UNESCOs World Heritage sites since 1988. It is a cobbledstone town, a fairly well preserved Spanish colonial settlement of around 75,000.  The center of town is the Plaza Mayor, an open-air museum of Spanish Colonial architecture. Dominating the square, and the town of brightly painted buildings, is the beautiful Santisima Trinidad Cathedral and Convento de San Francisco. We arrived in Trinidad from our nearby hotel Ma Dolores with the last of the summer rains. This ancient town does not have anything like a drainage system and we were forced to hug the sides of buildings as we navigate the few square blocks up side streets to the historic plaza area. Nevertheless, wherever you go in . . .

On Sunday morning we drove for two hours to the Che Guevara Mausoleum and Monument in Santa Clara. Here are the remains of “Che” and twenty-nine others, including one woman, who were killed in 1967 during Guevara’s attempt to spur an armed uprising in Bolivia. There is also a bronze 22-foot statue of Che in this monument complex. Guevara, who was born in Argentina, was buried with full military honors in 1997 after his remains were discovered in Bolivia, exhumed, and returned to Cuba. There is also an eternal flame lit by Fidel Castro in Che’s memory. Our guide told us that Santa Clara was selected as the site for the mausoleum and monument as a way to remember Guevara’s troops taking the city on December 31, 1958, during the Battle of Santa Clara. It was the final battle of the Cuban Revolution. After this defeat, Batista fled into exile. What is particularly . . .

Last week the first NPCA trip to Cuba took place, an arrangement with Global Exchange, an organization that promotes people-to-people contact. This San Francisco travel group is one of only 12 ways in which the United States permitted to sponsored tours to the island. Twenty-five of us went on this trip, including Glenn Blumhorst, the President & CEO of the NPCA. In all 18 were RPCVs, one was a former HQ staff, there was a former PCV & Staff (me!), a current staff person, and four family/friends. Also the group had one 2015 COS RPCV (Nepal) and 2 RPCVs from the first PCVs to Samoa and Ethiopia. A second June trip to Cuba is now tentatively planned by the NPCA and in some ways we were the ‘experiment’. Let me say first that traveling with other RPCVs (if you have to go in a group) is the only way to visit . . .

One story that is told in the new book about the International Voluntary Services (IVS), The Fortunate Few IVS Volunteers: From Asia to the Andes, is from William Seraile (Ethiopia 1963-65). Here is a slightly edited version of what Bill had to say. Seraile had been a social science teacher in Mekelle, Ethiopia and he says “that experience had whetted my appetite for overseas adventures which is the reason I went to Vietnam.” He was 26 when he arrived in Can Tho and taught English at Phan Than Gian high school with a schedule that resembled a college professor’s light teaching load. The school had 3,000 students and was formerly a French fort and a World War II Japanese barracks. As the only American on the faculty, he recalls, his classes were very large. Before the Tet Offense, however, he had become disillusioned teaching English and thought he could better . . .

The Fortunate Few details some of the organization of the International Voluntary Services (IVS) and its links to the Peace Corps, but the majority of the 370 page book is spent telling the stories of individual volunteers and their tours. And they have, not unlike PCVs, stories to tell. In reading the book, I was particularly drawn to the stories of the PCVs who were also in IVS, and especially those volunteers who served in Ethiopia as PCVs. There were at least six such volunteers to IVS. One name in particular jumped out at me. Gary L. Daves (Ethiopia 1964-66), IVS/VN 67-73 (Captured in Hue, South Vietnam by the Viet Cong in 1968 and spent next 5 years in a Hanoi, North Vietnam prison. Now here was a story I had never heard. According to the accounts in The Fortunate Few, IVS’s involvement in Vietnam began in 1957. Noffsinger had . . .

A new book entitled The Fortunate Few IVS Volunteers From Asia to The Andes, written by Thierry J. Sagnier, novelist and former senior writer with the World Bank, has just been published. In the early chapters the author links the Peace Corps to this international volunteer organization. Created in 1953–eight years before the Peace Corps–International Voluntary Services (IVS) roots go back to the religious pacifism of Mennonites, Quakers, and Brethren organizations. Like the Peace Corps it had a small community of organizers, two in particular, Dr. Dale Clark and Dr. John Noffsinger. Clark was with the State Department and had aided the Arab Development Society setting up a dairy program in Jordan. He then went to the Mennonite and Brethrens with an idea: would they be interested in starting a voluntary organization using Marshall Plan funds to help other Middle-Eastern nations? After a series of meetings, the IVS was born . . .

Check out: http://www.kinkyfriedman.com/events/ Events Clilck the venue name to go to their website. Friday, Oct 2 Release of Kinky’s newest CD – The Loneliest Man I Ever Met and Cactus Records – In-store 2110 Portsmouth Street Houston, TX 713-526-9272 5:30pm performance/signing The Loneliest Man I Ever Met Tour Friday, Oct 9 Ashland Coffee And Tea 100 N. Railroad Ave. Ashland, VA 804-798-1702 Saturday, Oct 10 Robert E. Loup JCC 350 South Dahlia Street Denver, CO  80246 303-316-6351 Sunday, Oct 11 Club Cafe 56 South 12th St. Pittsburgh, PA 412-431-4950 Monday, Oct 12 The Hamilton Live 600 14th St NW Washington, DC 202-787-1000 Tuesday, Oct 13 Ram’s Head 33 West St. Annapolis, MD 410-268-4545 Wednesday, Oct 14 Stanhope House 45 Main Street Stanhope, NJ 973-347-7777 Thursday, Oct 15 Sellersville Theater 24 W Temple Avenue Sellersville, PA 215-257-5808 Friday, Oct 16 The Linda-WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio 318 Central Avenue Albany, NY 518-465-5233 Saturday, . . .

  Give Me A Riddle by Roger Landrum (Nigeria 1961-63) First published on PeaceCorpsWriters.org in 2001 • A COUPLE OF YEARS AFTER WE SERVED together as PCVs in Nigeria, David Schickele asked me if I would be part of a film project he was proposing to the Peace Corps. The basic concept was to capture the adventure of crossing into another culture and the rewards gained from escaping the cocoon in which Americans living abroad typically enclose themselves. It is an experience common among many PCVs to one degree or another, and for the Peace Corps, this film could be used to recruit the next wave of Volunteers, focusing on its two mandated cross-cultural goals rather than the more commonly publicized development assistance goal. Our personal experiences in Africa had been a revelation to us in numerous ways, and David wanted to make a documentary providing Americans with a new perspective . . .

THOSE OF US WHO follow the history of the Peace Corps agency know the term “peace corps” came to public attention during the 1960 presidential election. In one of JFK’s last major speeches before the November election he called for the creation of a “Peace Corps” to send volunteers to work at the grass roots level in the developing world. However, the question remains: who said (or wrote) “peace corps” for the very first time? Was it Kennedy? Was it his famous speech writer Ted Sorensen? Or Sarge himself? But – as in most situations – the famous term came about because of some young kid, usually a writer, working quietly away in some back office that dreams up the language. In this case the kid was a graduate student between degrees who was working for the late senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey. Today, fifty-four years after the establishment of the . . .

PEACE CORPS 22 CFR Part 305 RIN 0420-AA26 Eligibility and Standards for Peace Corps Volunteer Service AGENCY: Peace Corps. ACTION: Proposed rule. SUMMARY: This proposed regulation would restate and update the requirements for eligibility for Peace Corps Volunteer service, and the factors considered in the assessment and selection of eligible applicants for training and service. The requirements and factors for eligibility and selection were last published in 1984. A revision of the regulation is necessary to conform to changes in Federal laws and regulations, particularly with respect to those prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability, and to reflect policy changes made by the Peace Corps. DATES: Comments due on or before August 31, 2015. ADDRESSES: Address all comments to Anthony F. Marra, Associate General Counsel, Peace Corps, 1111 20th Street NW., Washington, DC 20526. Comments may also be sent electronically to the following email address: pcfr@ peacecorps.gov. FOR FURTHER . . .