Short Works about the Peace Corps Experience

“Beautiful Dysfunctionality”

Dec 18 2022

by Haley McLeod “The Cloudy Knight” (Cameroon 2013-15) • We call it “falling in love” for a reason. “Falling” because it is unexpected, perhaps with an entity previously unknown. “In” because you were previously “out.” The majority of us speak of “falling in love” within the context of loving a person, usually with a romantic, mushy-gushy sort of undertone. But let us focus less on the love, and more on the process of “falling in.” Have you ever encountered a place, a person, a culture – any entity, really – that is so foreign, so odd, that you could never imagine liking it, much less loving it? It is a journey of transformation: from unknowing, to knowing but hating, to accepting, to liking, to loving. And finally, you finish by embracing this entity in its entirety, with all of its flaws, and all of its beauty. This story is . . .

The Lion in the Gardens of the Guenet Hotel (Ethiopia)

Apr 11 2022

by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962–64) • In the final days of our in-country Peace Corps training in Ethiopia, we had a celebration dinner at the Guenet Hotel in the Populari section of the capital, Addis Ababa. The Guenet Hotel, even in 1962, was one of the older hotels in Addis Ababa. It wasn’t in the center of town, but south of Smuts Street and down the hill from Mexico Square, several miles from where we were housed in the dormitories of Haile Selassie I University. While out of the way, this small, two-story rambling hotel, nevertheless, had a two-lane, American-style bowling alley, tennis courts, and a most surprising of all, an African lion in its lush, tropical gardens. At that time in the Empire, no Ethiopian was allowed to keep a lion, the symbol of the Emperor, Haile Selassie, whose full title was “By the Conquering Lion . . .

“The Mad Man and Me at the Commercial School in Addis Ababa”

Apr 09 2022

by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) • We 275 PCVs, the first to be assigned to Ethiopia, arrived in-country in early September of 1962. Addis Ababa, the capital, was at an altitude of 7,726 feet. It has one of the finest climates to be found in the world. It was once a ramshackle city, which years before the travel writer John Gunther described as looking as if someone had tossed scraps of metal onto the slopes of Entoto mountain. I was assigned to live and teach in Addis, and lived my first year in a large stone house on Churchill Road, a main artery of the city that led uphill to the center of the city — the Piazza, with four other PCVs. That house, like most in Addis, had a tin roof and it was pleasant to wake early on school days during the rainy season and hear the heavy, . . .

An Orange for Christmas (Colombia)

Dec 23 2021

By Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) In December 1963, I was the only Volunteer in La Plata, a small village of some 3,000 residents, located in the foothills of the Andean mountains. Volunteers from an earlier group had all rotated home in November. Just a few days before Christmas, I came down with a gastrointestinal infection that laid me so low I could hardly get out of bed and stumble into the bathroom. I was also taking an eight-count, feeling sorry for myself as I had not developed a single project in my first five months. I was too weak even to leave the house and seek medical attention. Then, mysteriously, bowls of hot soup began appearing at my front door. When I opened it to see who was there, no one appeared! Somehow, a woman of very limited means who lived just down the street from my house, the mother . . .

RPCV book is one of New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of the Year — LAST BEST HOPE by George Packer (Togo)

Nov 22 2021

Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal by George Packer (Togo 1982-83) This slim but forceful treatise begins with patriotic despair: With inequality persisting in the United States across generations, Packer paints a picture of a deeply fractured America that he divides into four irreconcilable categories. The result, he believes, is that we are losing the art of self-government.

My Encounters with Emperor Haile Selassie by William Seraile (Ethiopia)

Sep 29 2021

By William Seraile (Ethiopia 1963-65) I was among about 140 Peace Corps volunteers, mainly in our early twenties and graduates of Ivy League colleges, small never heard of private schools, a few large public universities, and a small number of historic black colleges and universities, went to Ethiopia as the second group of PCV teachers in the fall of 1963. Most of us had to examine our atlases to find Ethiopia on the map. Only one of us had ever been to Africa — Haskell Ward (Ethiopia 1963-65) a graduate of Clark Atlanta University, who had spent a summer in Kenya with Operation Crossroads Africa, a model for the Peace Corps. We had two months of Peace Corps training at UCLA studying Ethiopian culture, history and Amharic, the Ethiopian language. Our Amharic instructors, all young graduate students studying in American universities initially assumed that I was one of . . .

“Round ’em Up and Move ’em Out!” by Jerry Redfield (Ecuador)

Aug 16 2021

This is a “slice of life” from a Peace Corps Volunteer that captures the adventures and frustrations of one newly arrived volunteer living in a new culture in southern Ecuador. It is from a “work in progress” entitled “While You Were Out”, by Jerry Redfield. Peace Corps Volunteers, Jerry, Joe Orr of Utah, and Doug Strauss from New York had arrived in a remote mountain top little village about two months earlier as their initial in-country assignment working on a school construction program. This covers the time between the end of that assignment and the transition to a new one. John Smith was the Peace Corps Area Representative, and Steve Caplin, the Peace Corps doctor assigned to the Area. Round ’em Up and Move ’em Out! by Jerry Redfield (Ecuador 1963-65) As November ended and the cold winds of December started to roll in, the time in our . . .

“Hitching a Ride to Tikal” by Alan Jackson (Belize)

Aug 14 2021

Alan and Keith were Peace Corps Volunteers in Belize, Central America, from 1976 to 1978. Alan was stationed in Belize City where he was assigned to the Fisheries Unit Laboratory, and boarded with a young Belizean family. Keith was posted to the Mopan Mayan village of San Antonio in Toledo District and advised a beekeeper and honey cooperative. Keith lived in a thatch hut without electricity or running water. • Hitching a Ride to Tikal By Alan Jackson Both Keith and I had to work the annual Agricultural and Trade Show on Saturday and Sunday, April 22 and 23, 1978, in Belmopan, Belize. The Ag Show is like a small county fair with dozens of thatched booths displaying the various goods and products of government and private industry. The British military usually had some of their weapons on display, too. The two-day fair also included food stalls, horse racing, . . .

A Writer Writes: Value of Life by Susan E. Greisen (Liberia)

Jul 20 2021

A Writer Writes Value of Life by Susan E. Greisen (Liberia 1971-73; Tonga 1973-74) Scaling a thirty-foot tree for palm nuts with bare feet, using a belt fashioned out of a vine, could lead to disaster. The men and boys who managed the task were quite skilled, and equipment failure was rare. But I cringed at the news when I learned of a farmer who had fallen out of a palm tree and sustained a severe injury. Peter, the health assistant from our small clinic, and I, a Peace Corps health volunteer, were summoned to his home. Walking thirty minutes to his village, we found Abdou lying flat in his round thatched hut. This soft-spoken father of four — ages two, three, five, and seven — had two wives, one pregnant. His supportive family was willing to do whatever was necessary to help him. After quickly assessing the . . .

“An Education of Sorts” by Keith Quatraro (Tanzania)

Jan 23 2021

At the age of 31, the Peace Corps lured me in with their soul-taunting mantra “Life is Calling.” Before I joined, I was comfortably numb with my lifestyle. I volunteered at an after-school tutoring center, helped with various writing projects at local schools, and tended bar full-time to support my fledgling teaching habit. The Peace Corps sent me to Tanzania and I couldn’t have been happier. After nine weeks of extensive in-country language and cultural training, my classmates and I were sent to live in different villages throughout Tanzania. I said goodbye to my gracious Tanzanian family who let me live and learn with them near the coastal town of Muheza. Still naïve, a tad idealistic, and quite culturally dumb, I set out for Matui, a waterless village in the center of Tanzania. Western culture and ideologies were only pondered and fantasized in Matui. Dazed and confused, frustrations and . . .

Time in a Bottle by Jamie Kirkpatrick (Tunisia)

Jan 22 2021

by Jamie Kirkpatrick (Tunisia 1970-72; APCD 1974-76) October 27, 2020 • It’s a sobering thought but I’ve reached the point in my life where I can count time in half centuries. To wit, it was fifty years ago almost to the day that I arrived in Tunisia. I was on my way to becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer: the first six weeks of my service had been spent in intensive language and cross-cultural training in America. For the next six weeks, I would be in total language immersion in my new host country. Did I mention that was fifty years ago? Sigh. Looking back, those fifty years have flown by. Four of them were spent in Tunisia, the first two in the Kasserine, a small town in the rugged mountains hard by the Algerian border and famous for a pivotal battle in World War II. Then there were two . . .

KARIN MCQUILLAN (Senegal) — “What I Learned in the Peace Corps in Africa: Trump Is Right”

Jan 02 2021

Note from the editor: Karin McQuillan is a novelist (one novel) who was a PCV in Senegal. (She ETed after a year. ) We published a few blog items about her back in January and February of 2018. This article has just been republished on-line by the American Conservatives. (They loved it.) Karin is a nice woman and a true believer in Trump and the Conservative element of our society. She is like our current (for two more weeks) Peace Corps Director Jody Olsen (Tunisia 1966-68) who, I’m told, is a great believer of President Trump and will follow him anywhere, do whatever he asks, so Jody may be back in the government if Trump rallies his base. Maybe as Secretary of State! (I’m told she even has a crush on him, but I don’t believe it.) Meanwhile, Right Wing RPCV Karin McQuillan is making her case that Trump is . . .

A Writer Writes — Reflections from a Simpler Time (Philippines)

Dec 25 2020

Reflections from a Simpler Time By Ted Dieffenbacher (Philippines 1967-69) The covid-19 pandemic has forced people all over the world to change — to simplify daily living, to isolate themselves from friends, favorite places, and gatherings that had always enriched their lives. What follows is an odd COVID comparison, about a time when I had to make a dramatic lifestyle change during my time in the Philippines as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) from 1967 to 1969. Single and 22 when I arrived in Santiago, Isabela, I was suddenly challenged to change not only my daily routine but also my way of thinking (and what language to think it in). Peace Corps gave each PCV a cardboard book locker — a few shelves in a sturdy cardboard box. Each had about 60 books in it, and because no two lockers had an identical selection, I was able every so often . . .

A Writer Writes — “A Season of Survivor Was Filmed on an Island Nicer Than Mine“ by Harry Seitz (Tonga)

Nov 21 2020

• I served in the Peace Corps in Tonga from 2014–2016. Some of the volunteers got sent to sites in the capital. They had electricity, running water, supermarkets, the works. A few of the others were sent to ’Eua, a large island close to the capital. Life was a little more difficult there, but they still had all of the basic amenities. The remainder and I were sent to Vava’u, the main island of which is relatively developed, but also much further away from the capital. I alone was sent to Ofu. While technically a part of Vava’u, it is an outer island. No roads, no restaurants, and very limited electricity. Ferries didn’t even run there. I had to hitch boat rides with my neighbors every other weekend to buy food on the main island of Vava’u. Lifuka (Survivor Island) Lifuka is a part of the Ha’apai group of islands. . . .

“Leaving Guatemala, Part 4: ‘A year in the land of eternal spring’ ”

Jun 23 2020

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Dan Campbell (El Salvador 1974-77) Nathaniel Smith (Guatemala 2019-2020) The Times-Independent Utah, June 18, 2020 A group of Peace Corps Volunteers watch the sunrise from the summit of the volcano Acatenango. Photos courtesy of Nathaniel Smith The van carried me away on the first leg of what would be a multi-stage journey from rural Guatemala to southern Utah. I gazed forlornly out the window as we wove through pine forest and out of the valley. My mind cycled through the list of things I had hoped to do in Guatemala over the next year. Though I planned to return someday, whether as a Peace Corps volunteer or not, this experience proved that even the best-laid plans go awry. That morning, when I still believed I would have the entire day, I made what I thought would be my final trip to the town’s thermal . . .