Short Works about the Peace Corps Experience – Page 6

A letter from Kristi Davis (Ethiopia 1969–72)

Jan 30 2015

Kristi Davis was a TESL teacher in Debra Tabor, Ethiopia from 1969–70, and then a game warden at Lakes Shalla and Abiata from 1970 to 1972. Here is a letter she wrote to her parents from Debra Tabor Oct. 10, 1969 shortly after she arrived. • It’s more amazing here every day . . . the atmosphere, that is. I look out the window while I’m steaming plum pudding and see men riding by with capes flying back and scarves tied in back that look like white wigs, and I think I’m living in an early American time . . . or I can walk into the living room and it will be the old West with a large fireplace, skin rug, and kerosene lamp . . . or I can pull seeds out of cotton and become a pilgrim beginning to spin, or 1600 Salem and the witch scare when the wizard next door starts . . .

A Writer Writes: “Addicted to Chad” by Michael Varga (Chad)

Jun 11 2014

A Writer Writes Michael Varga (Chad 1977–79) is a retired American diplomat, who spent much of his career in the Middle East. The BBC broadcast his short story “There Are No Kangaroos In Egypt,” and four of his plays have been produced and one published (Payable Upon Return; Juniper Press, 1983). One of his essays was used by the Peace Corps as the introduction to a book, Uncommon Journeys: Peace Corps Adventures Across Cultures, published in 2004. Other stories, essays and poems of his have appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The South Bend Tribune, The Foreign Service Journal, Commonweal, Archer, Earthwise, The New Jersey Poetry Monthly, Notre Dame Magazine, The Scholastic, Cabin Fever, and Rider University Magazine. The Peace Corps has a slideshow on its website about his service in Chad, entitled “Africa Colors A Destiny.” This essay was first published in Literal Latte in 2011. • Addicted . . .

A Writer Writes: Three short essays by George Branson (Chad)

Jun 04 2014

A Writer Writes George Branson (Chad 1975-78) was a water well driller in country. Since then, and over the years, he has written several short pieces on his experiences in Africa. One of his African pieces won first prize at the Space Coast Writers Guild Conference in Coco Beach. His pieces are short and humorous, all non-fiction vignettes. He has also written a few fables/parables that draw on the animal characters in African folklore. Here are three of George’s essays. • CAMEROON VACATION In early ’77, when we had been drilling wells in Chad for The Peace Corps for well over a year, one of my fellow well drillers, Mark, and I decided to take our vacation in Cameroon, where it was a lot greener, a welcome change from the desert. We got a real kick out of Western Cameroon, the old English speaking part of the country. The people . . .

Development Is Down This Road

Oct 15 2013

by Abigail Calkins Aguirre (Cameroon 1987–1990) This essay won the 1992 Moritz Thomsen Award for Best Short Work about the Peace Corps Experience. • FEW RECOGNIZE ME without my trademark Suzuki. Now I have this red Yamaha DT they gave me to replace it. I’m still white, though, or so they keep insisting as I pass by the shouting voices trying to get me to stop to do a favor, chat, or taste the latest in palm wine. I know I have a bike, but how do you say “I’m not a taxi” in the local language? I’m late, I’m in a hurry, I’ve got to help a women’s group plant rows of plantains and pineapple in their community farm. This road could jostle my insides right out of me. My thighs are sore from being abused as non-stop shock absorbers. Yet, nothing beats a forestial commute: a time to . . .

“Broken English — a song by Greg Horn (New Guinea)

Oct 15 2013

by Greg Horn (New Guinea 1991–92) This song won the 1993 Moritz Thomsen Award for Best Short Work about the Peace Corps Experience • Now your friends have all gone and the parlor is empty ‘cept for me in this chair with a book full of words and your thoughts and your deeds, they all come back to claim you ’cause no one’s understood anything they just heard. So you try to explain in your broken English ’bout the rivers of pain that keep crossing your mind but they’re too wide to cross and they’re too deep to see through and I’m not really sure what you want me to find. Chorus But please, I don’t want to go and please, I just gotta know if I should put out the light when I get done for the night. There are times when you think that there’s nobody watching when . . .

The Ballroom

Oct 15 2013

by Christopher Conlon (Botswana 1988-90) This poem won the 1994 Moritz Thomsen Award for Best Short Work about the Peace Corps Experience. • Southern Africa, Kalahari Desert She is the perfect image of a rag doll I saw when I was a child, in a trash can, dirty, ripped abandoned: here in the Kalahari is that same doll, maybe five, eyes huge, legs white with desert dust. Ke Kopa madi, sir, ke kopa madi. Money: I shake my head no, no madi: try to move on. But she stares at me, suddenly transfixed. No longer begging. Her eyes wider than before. My sunglasses: I crouch down, she approaches me, nose to nose, tattered, filthy, she stares at me, at herself. Then her hand moves to her chin and she says Oh, in a tiny, surprised voice. She rubs away the dried spittle there. Then she turns and, whitened heels kicking . . .

Better Remember This

Oct 15 2013

by Meg Sullivan (Kenya 1992-94) This essay won the 1995 Moritz Thomsen Award for Best Short Work about the Peace Corps Experience. YOU’D BETTER REMEMBER THIS. Because people will ask you. Whether you want them to or not, they’ll ask you how Africa was. And though you won’t know where to start, you’re going to have to have something to tell them. A shrug of the shoulders and “Good” won’t be enough. So you’d better remember this. Open the parts of your mind you need, and work them over until you’ve got them just right. Then put what you know in a place the will be easy for you to get to. Deep, but not too deep. Just enough so that even though no one else can see it, you know it’s there, and you can see it and feel it, and you know it makes up part of who . . .

To Peel Potatoes

Oct 15 2013

by John P. Deever (Ukraine 1993–95) This essay won the 1996 Moritz Thomsen Award for Best Short Work about the Peace Corps Experience. • “LIFE’S TOO SHORT to peel potatoes,” a woman in my local supermarket announced, as she put a box of instant mashed potatoes into her cart. When I overheard her I nearly shrieked. After recently returning from my Peace Corps stint in Ukraine, I tend to get defensive about the potato in all its forms: sliced, scalloped, diced, chopped, grated, or julienned; then boiled, browned, french-fried, slow-fried, hand-mashed, baked or twice-baked — with an indulgent dollop of butter or sour cream, yes thank you. A large portion of my time in Ukraine was spent preparing what was, in the winter, nearly the only vegetable available. Minutes and hours added up to a string of days handling potatoes. I sized up the biggest, healthiest spuds in the market . . .

Innocence Melts Obstinacy

Oct 15 2013

by Leita Kaldi (Senegal 1993-96) This essay won the 1997 Moritz Thomsen Award for Best Short Work about the Peace Corps Experience • IN THE MARKETPLACE OF DAKAR, Senegal, amid the welter of vegetables, chickens, dried fish and shouting women, a small boy leans against a crumbling wall staring into space. His bare toes knead the sand; the rags he wears flop around his skinny frame. A gang of older boys push and shove their way past him, turning to jeer. The boy leaps into a ninja position, hands like scissors, knees bent on rigid legs. He must have studied the nearby movie poster where a ninja film had been showing. His eyes are fierce and belong to the world of warriors. The older boys laugh and walk on as the child glares after them balefully. His dirt-colored pants have two rips down the back. At the back of his . . .

White

Oct 15 2013

by Lynn Marshall (Mali 1997–99) This essay was the 1999 Moritz Thomsen Award winner. • YESTERDAY, I ATTENDED MY FIRST FUNERAL. I wore white and so did the corpse. The body was wrapped in a heavy, white cloth and placed under a mango tree, surrounded by dozens of old women with missing teeth, gray hair, and skin as dry as coconut shells. The old ladies wore mismatched swatches of bright print fabric. Over a hundred people had gathered in the concession, and sat cross-legged on long, colorful rectangular mats. They paid their respects by playing cards, smoking Marlboros and drinking tea. As I toured the concession, I felt hundreds of eyes on me. Trying to convince myself that I was not out of place, I casually made my way over to the body. A group of women standing guard over the body immediately surrounded me. One woman gestured that I . . .

Water

Oct 14 2013

by Rachel Schneller (Mali 1996-98) This essay was the 1998 Moritz Thomsen Award winner. • WHEN A WOMAN CARRIES WATER on her head, you see her neck bend outward behind her like a crossbow. Ten liters of water weighs twenty-two pounds, a fifth of a woman’s body weight, and I’ve seen women carry at least twenty liters in aluminum pots large enough to hold a television set. To get the water from the cement floor surrounding the outdoor hand pump to the top of your head, you need help from the other women. You and another woman grab the pot’s edges and lift it straight up between you. When you get it to head height, you duck underneath the pot and place it on the wad of rolled up cloth you always wear there when fetching water. This is the cushion between your skull and the metal pot full of . . .

Thirty Years Later

Oct 14 2013

by Barbara Carey (India 1966-68) This essay was originally published July 2001 on PeaceCorpsWriters.org, and received the Moritz Thomsen Award in 2002. • “I DON’T UNDERSTAND what is ‘first class’” about this train car, my husband said. I looked around at the dirty, rusty old car, with bent bars on the open window, red betel juice stains on the walls, and the single hard seat in the small cabin. I looked through the bars to the bustling train station, with hawkers, beggars, food and magazine stalls, travelers, crying children, hungry dogs, and all the noise that went along with the bustling activity in the humid Bombay afternoon. I could smell the pungent odor that is always present in India — a combination of rotting garbage, sweaty bodies, and smoke from dung fires. The sights, sounds and smells were coming back to me after thirty years of being away. I suddenly . . .

Second Time Around

Oct 14 2013

by Kathleen Coskran (Ethiopia 1965–67) The following essay was published in September, 2007 at PeaceCorpsWriters.org, and in 2008 received the Moritz Thomsen Award for Best Short Work about the Peace Corps Experience • I JOINED THE PEACE CORPS at 21 because I was restless for adventure and after two years in Ethiopia, discovered that true adventure lies in the relationships and routines of daily life. I was delighted to live in a tiny mud house with the tin roof, thought the sound of roosters in the morning and the whoop of the hyenas at night exotic, learned to prefer fiery food that made me sweat and cry, but the surprise was my students. I fell in love with them — 75 kids in an unlit classroom with mud walls and a tin roof, 75 kids who walked an hour or more to get to school, kids whose parents I never . . .

The Last Ride

Oct 14 2013

by Elise Annunziata (Senegal 1996–99) The following work was first published at PeaceCorpsWriters.org in November, 2002. In 2003 it was the winner of the Moritz Thomsen Award for Peace Corps Experience Award. • I HAD SAID SO OFTEN that leaving my Senegalese village, Keur Madiabel, would the most difficult part of my three-year Peace Corps service. Every time a farewell scene crept into my mind, I banished it quickly and vowed to think about it later. But, before I accepted the reality of my departure, “later” was looming over my head and it was time to drive — for the last time — from my village to the regional capital, with a fraction of my original possessions thrown into the backseat of a Peace Corps vehicle. o My last full day Most of the afternoon on my last day in Keur Madiabel, I spent talking with my adoptive family, Ousmane . . .

Maid in Morocco

Oct 14 2013

by Orin Hargraves (Morocco 1980–83) First published at PeaceCorpsWriters.org in March of 2006, this essay was the winner of the 2007 Moritz Thomsen Experience Award • I LEARNED A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO of the death Fatima Meskina, on January 9, 2006. I’m sure that no obituary appeared in any newspaper, and that her death and burial were modest and attended only by a few. But for me — and I expect for a handful of others — her death marked the passing of a legend: in the three years I spent in Morocco she was the most helpful, sometimes the most difficult, the most vivid, and for me personally the most influential person I met. Fatima worked as a maid for a succession of Volunteers in various programs in the middle Atlas town of Azrou. She signed on with Volunteer Jeanne Spoeri in 1977 and got passed down, like . . .