Peace Corps writers

J. Grigsby Crawford (Ecuador 2009-11) is the author of The Gringo: A Memoir, which tells the story of his two years as a PCV. He served in Peace Corps Ecuador’s Natural Resource Conservation program, and ultimately wrote a successful grant to help build a greenhouse at the local high school in his Amazonian community. But Grigsby writes: The Gringo tells a different Peace Corps tale than one is used to hearing. In Ecuador, Crawford was originally sent to the coast, where after just a few months he narrowly escaped an abduction attempt and was pulled out by security and forced to change sites. From there–as the synopsis of The Gringo states–he undertakes “a savage journey of danger, drugs, sex, and alarming illness.” It is a PCV story that is both tragic and sharply humorous.  The Gringo was published in December 2012 and, he says, “immediately met national attention,” getting excerpted in the Huffington Post and . . .

The Springs of Namje: A Ten-Year Journey from the Villages of Nepal to the Halls of Congress by Rajeev Goyal (Nepal 2001-03) Beacon Press $24.95 (hardcover), $13.72 (Kindle) 214 pages September 2012 Reviewed by Ken Hill (Turkey 1965-67) The jacket describes it as “A ten year journey from the villages of Nepal to the halls of Congress”.  But “The Springs of Namje” goes beyond that, unveiling a relationship of deep dedication by an RPCV to “his village”. And, it chronicles what might be the most effective single effort yet at providing a substantive increase in funding for the Peace Corps. This story transcends the more typical Peace Corps narrative. Since completing his PCV service in 2003, Rajeev has returned to Namje on 21 occasions – probably even again since the book was published.  His close relationship with the people and his involvement in their lives, economic and social development is extraordinary. . . .

We Never Knew Exactly Where: Dispatches from the Lost Country of Mali By Peter Chilson (Niger 1985-87) FP Group, $499 2013 The book can be purchased as a pdf on the Foreign Policy web site: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/ebooks/we_never_knew_exactly_where   Reviewed by Robert E. Hamilton (Ethiopia 1965-67) Edited by Susan B. Glasser with assistance from Margaret Slattery, Foreign Policy (the FP Group) and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting have launched a Borderlands project in which they will commission “leading writers to travel several of the world’s most impenetrable fault lines, the global gray zones where countries and people-and our own flawed ideas about them-meet.”  Peter Chilson’s eBook is the first in this series to be released.  It provides useful background as a travelogue although it is not, as Glasser claims, “a definitive account” of what has happened in Mali since the military coup of March 2012. The book does represent the Mali crisis . . .

Al Qaeda Country: Why Mali is Important Tuesday, January 29, 2013 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM George Washington University Lindner Family Commons, Room 602 1957 E Street NW Washington DC RSVP Click Here Peter Chilson, Associate Professor of English, Washington State University Introduction by David Rain, Associate Professor of Geography and International Affairs, GW Prizewinning author Peter Chilson is one of the few Westerners to travel to the Mali conflict zone. There he found a hazy dividing line between the demoralized remnants of the former regime in the south and the new statelet in the north – Azawad – formed when a rebellion by the country’s ethnic Tuareg minority as commandeered by jihadi fighters. In this inaugural lecture of the African Research and Policy Group of the Institute for Global and International Studies, Chilson will lay out the lines of conflicting interest in Mali as some of the world’s great . . .

LEITA KALDI (Senegal 1993-96) worked at the United Nations in New York, UNESCO in Paris, at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Harvard University. She then joined Peace Corps and went to Senegal and wrote a memoir about two years entitled, Roller Skating in the Desert. In 1997, she  became Administrator of Hospital Albert Schweitzer in Haiti and retired from the hospital in 2002. Leita has now written In the Valley of Atibon. It is her story of Haiti’s Artibonite Valley, where she went as a middle-aged white woman, and filled with good intentions had to deal with young revolutionaires and vagabonds who threatened her life, while also dealing with a hospital and community development program which she tried to manage. In Haiti Leita would delve into the mysteries of Voudou, and learns first-hand about the undercurrent of terror that drives rural Haitians. Also, she was inspired by Haitians . . .

In the Valley of Atibon By Leita Kaldi (Senegal 1993-96) A Peace Corps Writers Book, $20 257 pages 2012 Reviewed by Barbara E. Joe (Honduras 2000-03) In 2010, Leita Kaldi’s memoir of her Peace Corps service in Senegal, Roller Skating in the Desert, came out. Now she is back again, writing about her subsequent years, 1997-2002, as administrator of Hospital Albert Schweitzer located in Haiti’s Eden-like Artibonite Valley.  It was founded by Larimer Mellon and his wife Gwen who chose to devote their portion of the Mellon family fortune to building a hospital there honoring Dr. Schweitzer’s work in Africa. Author Kaldi , who had served as a business development volunteer in Senegal, returned to the States only briefly before, at age 58, undertaking her new duties in Haiti. As with many former Peace Corps volunteers, overseas service had gotten into her blood. She exemplifies how Peace Corps can open . . .

[Peter Tinti (Mali 2008-10) is a freelance journalist, writer and analyst based in Bamako, Mali. He writes and reports on issues pertaining to politics, culture and security in West Africa. He has lived and worked in the region since 2008, first as a PCV in Gao, northern Mali.] Thiss is from January 22, 2013 As Troops Advance in Mali, U.S. Begins Airlift By LYDIA POLGREEN, PETER TINTI and ALAN COWELL SÉGOU, Mali – Malian and French forces were reported to be in control of two important central Malian towns on Tuesday after the French Defense Ministry said they recaptured them on Monday, pushing back an advance by Islamist militants who have overrun the country’s northern half. At the same time, the United States military said on Tuesday that it had begun airlifting French troops and equipment from a base in southern France to Bamako, the capital of Mali, aboard giant . . .

Several times a week I get books in the mail from RPCV writers….mostly I know they are coming as I have been forewarned by the author. The other day I got one via Amazon.com that came to me without notice, no fanfare, I didn’t request it. It was a collection of poems from a guy named Ben Berman. I never heard of him. The jacket cover suggested Africa. When I looked closer I saw that it was an image entitled, The Unnamed by Petros of Harare, Zimbabwe. On the author page, sure enough there was black-and-white photo of young Ben Berman, and a short biographical paragraph saying that he grew up in Maine and served in Zimbabwe. Now, for some reason we don’t have many writers who were PCVs in Zimbabwe (is it because of the water?) Nor, for that matter, do we have many RPCV poets. This collection of poems . . .

            Sunday Morning July 2, 1961 The road home was flat. Miss Mary drove. The old hunter, watching The distant hills, Small breasts against the plains, Thought of Kenya, the rugged Mountains, where death was Close as brush, Gentler than the Slow defacing of flesh. He wrote of sin as no small town Methodist ever had, Carving his prose with a new King of tool; Honed in the woods of Michigan, Sharpened by a fascist war, And tempered for an old man of Cuba. Fragile as the light birds he Picked from the sky Decades and miles away, He no longer heard the call. Pencils now were hollow in his hands, The juice that flowed so ready Had yellowed in his veins. He was what Gertrude had proclaimed. Sunday he woke to our tragedy, Sought in the library of his exile His own Kilimanjaro. Feeling . . .

[Peter Tinti (Mali 2008-10) is a freelance journalist, writer and analyst splitting time between Bamako, Mali and Dakar, Senegal. He writes and reports on issues pertaining to politics, culture and security in West Africa and the Maghreb. He has lived and worked in the region since 2008, first as a PCV in Gao, northern Mali. He holds an MA in International Peace and Security from King’s College London as well as degrees in Political Science and Peace War & Defense from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Among other outlets, Tinti’s writing, reporting and analysis has appeared in Think Africa Press, World Politics Review, Christian Science Monitor, BBC, and Voice of America. This is from CS Monitor, published on January 13, 2013. With French airstrikes, has the war to retake northern Mali begun? Today’s expansion of the French air campaign beyond central Mali has left many wondering if . . .

The world news is full of stories of ‘what’s happening in Mali?’ from the French airstrikes, to the Islamist rebels taking over of Mali villages, to the US involvement, to the 3,300 soldiers from other West African nations who are now fighting alongside the Malian Army. The Op-Ed page of The New York Times this morning (January 15, 2013) has an essay entitled, “Why We Must Help Save Mali” written by Vicki Huddleston, the U.S. ambassador to Mail from 2002-2005, and a former deputy assistant secretary in the State and Defense Departments. Luckily for RPCVs we have our own expert, Peter Chilson (Niger 1985-87), who teaches creative writing at Washington State University and writes about West African, and lately about Mali. Here’s a  blurb for his new book on the nation. The book is entitled, We Never Know Exactly Where. “What happens when a country suddenly splits in two? In . . .

Somalia: Short Fiction by Martin R. Ganzglass (Somalia 1966-68) Peace Corps Writers,$7.99 (paperback); $2.99 (Kindle) 356 pages 2012 Reviewed by Baker H. Morrow (Somalia 1968-69) In this book of stories about Somalia set mostly in the sixties, Martin Ganzglass (Somalia 1966-68) works hard to give us a taste of the place: the names of the famous old hotels (the Croce del Sud and the Giuba in Mogadiscio), the nicknames that the Somalis love to hang about the necks of friend and enemy alike (Af-Chir/Mouse Mouth; Bashir Goray/the Ostrich), and gritty place descriptions (the Mad Mullah’s fort at Taleh in the North; the ruins of Mogadiscio in the nineties, the era of the warlords).  He succeeds in many ways.  His characters are Italian colonials, Peace Corps types, and local people caught up in the heady days of early independence after 1960.  The problem Mr. Ganzglass wrestles with in dealing with Somalia, a . . .

The February 2013 issue of Harper’s has long reviews (for Harper’s) of three totally disconnected books. The reviews were written by Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996-97). If nothing else the selection of books shows the width and depth of Bissell’s interests and knowledge. The guy is well read. Tom’s last book was Magic Hours, a collection of essays, published by McSweeny’s, published in 2012 and his name pops up from time to time in articles and reviews for other publications. The three books he reviews for Harper’s are A Jew Among Romans:The Life and Legacy of Flavius Josephus written by Frederic Raphael and published by Pantheon; Detroit: An American Autopsy by journalist Charlie LeDuff, published by Penguin Press; and a new collection of stories by George Saunders: Tenth of December (Random House). You can’t open a magazine today without stumbling over some reference or review of the short stories by George Saunders, a writer that Bissell’s ranks with the . . .

Acts of God While on Vacation by Richard Tillotson (Malaysia 1967-69) CreateSpace, $14.95 (paper) $4.00 (Kindle) 370 pages May 2011     Reviewed by Rosemary Casey (Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands – TTPI 1987-89) When asked to review Acts of God While on Vacation, I should have googled it to see what others said before I made a commitment. For example, others reported the book “disarmingly flip and fast-paced” (Honolulu Star-Bulletin), and the “diversity of spiritual belief systems makes this open-minded novel as entertaining as it is enlightening” (Publishers Weekly). So I opened up Paul Tillotson’s book anticipating a good read. Unfortunately, I found myself disappointed, and I had a hard time returning to the book once I put it down, making it an “obligation” to write the review rather than a task of enjoyment. I delayed my task, until one evening I asked myself why I was procrastinating . . .

Land of the Tuk-Tuk by Henry Pelifian (Thailand 1975-77) AuthorHouse, $19.95 280 pages February 2012 Reviewed by Robert Hamilton (Ethiopia 1965-67) Henry Pelifian’s Land of the Tuk-Tuk is a compilation of several different stories sharing the same book cover.  These include: 1.     the partial story of the fictional protagonist Jack Dakasian, Peace Corps Volunteer teacher in Bangkok, Thailand; 2.     the love story of Jack and his former student Amara Worathai, and Jack’s determination later to woo and marry her; 3.     the story of Jack in Isfahan, Iran, teaching helicopter repair in English to Iranian military mechanics in, it appears, 1979, and just prior to the revolution which swept the Shah from power and the return of the Muslim cleric Ali Khomeni; 4.     the story of the Armenian genocide and other atrocities inflicted upon Jack’s family in Turkey in the early 20th century and their migration to the U.S.; 5.     Jack’s outrage at . . .