Peace Corps writers

• “Maybe you and Mommy should hav thought a little more before you had us kids!!!” ~ Devon Martin, age 7 • The attempt to be a stay-at-island dad was, at first, a failed experiment. I blame biological evolution. My wife points to me losing the kids in a jungle on the side of a mountain. Someone once said, “In bringing up children, spend on them half as much money and twice as much time.” In an effort to do just that, we left our whirlwind workaholic world in Washington, D.C. with our two daughters, then ten and seven years old, and moved to Micronesia – specs of sand stretched across one million square-miles of water in the Western Pacific Ocean – where my wife accepted a position as the Peace Corps deputy director for the region. At long last, time was on our side. Be careful what you wish . . .

China’s Reform Generation Adapts to Life in the Middle Class Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) made an unexpectedly early return to the U.S. this past summer. In 2019, the New Yorker correspondent, who served with Peace Corps China 1996–98, moved to the city of Chengdu to teach — more than 20 years after he taught at Fuling Teachers College as a Volunteer. He was planning on a five-year sojourn with his wife and daughters. In May he learned that his contract for teaching nonfiction at Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute had not been renewed. What happened? The university emailed a statement to Reuters explaining that they had been unable to reach terms for renewing Hessler’s contract. Reuters also noted that in March, Hessler participated in the China Development Forum, “a high-profile government-run event, where he spoke on a panel on media perspectives of how the COVID-19 outbreak was handled in Wuhan.” And as Foreign Policy noted, the government of . . .

Described in autobiographical book by Peace Corps Volunteer Elana Hohl (Afghasnistan 1971-73) Holly Zachariah The Columbus Dispatch   There they were, two 21-year-old newlyweds and recent college graduates from the Midwest, staring out the windows as the chartered plane that carried them and 75 other Peace Corps volunteers into Afghanistan approached the airstrip of Kabul International Airport. The vast and barren land that Elana and Michael Hohl had been studying for hours from the sky suddenly gave way to a city below, and camels and donkeys came into clear view. As the plane bounced down onto the runway on that steaming July day in 1971, there wasn’t an ounce of trepidation in either of the Hohls’ hearts or minds. “We were excited,” Michael recalled recently as he and his wife of 51 years sat in the living room of their condominium in the Northland neighborhood, a cozy home where nearly every space . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Patricia Taylor Edmisten (Peru 1962-64)   What would happen if Jesus ran for president? Roland Merullo’s writing explores this provocative question (and others) by Mike Mastromatteo September 30, 2021 • A nasty bout of Covid-19 swept through the Merullo household in December 2020, making traditional Christmas celebrations a bit of a problem. The Merullo capofamiglia, the Massachusetts writer Roland Merullo, had some weary words of advice for me. “Don’t get Covid,” Merullo said by way of warning. “My wife and I were down for two full weeks and truly miserable. It’s a beast.” The experience may have ironically provided a moment of pause and reflection for Merullo before we spoke together over several weeks at the end of 2020 about his long and varied writing life. Since publishing his first work in 1991, Leaving Losapas, Merullo has written nearly two dozen novels, memoirs, travelogues and, not surprisingly, a . . .