The Peace Corps

John Coyne will be one of the five published writers to lead panel discussions at the September RPCV Writing Workshop in Maryland. Read his short story below. Novelist, Short Story Writer, Poet, Editor Call Me by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) It was not easy keeping in touch. There were so many demands and hundreds of ways that I was requested. The telephone and mail certainly, but also telegrams, meetings, and midnight visits. At all hours the doorbell rang and I asked through the keyhole: who are you and what do you want? “My name is Michael. I’m a friend of Sherri’s. She said to see you. That you could help.” I unlocked the lock and opened the door. I have been robbed and mugged this way but what else could I do? I only wanted to help. I had one wall of filing cabinets: steel, cardboard, makeshift files in boxes. . . .

    Jeanne D’Haem will be one of the five published writers to lead panel discussions at the September RPCV Writing Workshop in Maryland. Read her Peace Corps essay below. — John Coyne   • Somali Moon By Jeanne D’Haem (Somalia 1968-70)   There was a night, fifty years ago, when people all over the world watched the sky.  They were not concerned with yet another tragedy of war or weather.  No one had blown up the world trade center or machine gunned hundreds of people at a park. On one special night in August 1969, they were watching the moon with wonder. Any baby boomer you know can tell you exactly what they were doing on August 20, 1969. Most will report they were watching the TV.  Riveted by a black and white, 15 inch screen.  There was plenty of parking in New York City and Grand Rapids; everyone . . .

    Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Dale Gilles (Liberia 1964-66) • Transport Secretary Elaine Chao could be in for a bumpy ride after The Wall Street Journal reported that she still owns stock in a road-paving company, more than a year after she promised to get rid of it. Chao’s holdings are in Vulcan Materials, which is the largest U.S. supplier of stone, sand, and gravel used in road-paving and building. The stock price has risen nearly 13 percent since April 2018, the month Chao said she would ditch the shares, meaning she’s gained more $40,000 since the promise was made. Shares valued at nearly $400,000 and were paid out to Chao in April 2018. They were given in compensation for her time on Vulcan’s board, before she was confirmed as secretary of transportation. Chao’s 2017 ethics agreement said she would receive a cash payout in April 2018 in exchange for . . .

Thanks to the ‘heads up’ of Marian Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64)     IN PUTIN’S FOOTSTEPS: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones St. Martin’s Press By Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Tayler (Morocco 1988-90) 320 pages February 19, 2019 $18.89 (hardback); $14.99 (Kindle); $24.60 (Audio CD)     From the Book Section of The New York Times Summer Travel Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Tayler’s fascinating account of their travels in 2017 between Kamchatka and Kaliningrad. In its pages, you’ll learn that you can see China quite clearly from Russia in the harbor city of Blagoveshchensk, six time zones east of Moscow and 500 yards across the Amur River from the Chinese city of Heihe. Ferries transport Chinese and Russian traders back and forth daily. Khrushcheva made that shuttle trip and does not recommend it — the pushing and shoving and rude border control brought her to . . .

Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991-93) will be one of the five published writers to lead panel discussions at the September RPCV Writing Workshop in Maryland. Read his Peace Corps short story below. — John Coyne     The Eye Man by Mark Brazaitis The eye man came to town with doctors and nurses who carried suitcases full of medicine and Bibles. They were accompanied by boys and girls who dressed up like daisies and frogs and sang religious songs in English in the park. The eye man wasn’t a doctor or nurse. And neither the doctors nor the nurses nor the boys and girls who dressed up like daisies and frogs knew, or would tell me, what he was. He was simply “the eye man.” He made eyes. I translated for the group of doctors and nurses during their two-day clinic in the Church of God, one of several Evangelical churches . . .

(Thanks to Beverly Hammons (Ecuador 71-73) for this video reference) Melinda Gates, wife of Bill Gates, has written a book, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World, on her life and work with women around the world.  She discusses the book and her experiences working in the Developing World.  Empowering women and girls is a continuing program focus for Peace Corps.  For so many RPCVs, especially women, Gates’ experience and the concerns of the women with whom she talked and worked, will seem very familiar. More than fifty years ago, as a Peace Corps Health Education Volunteer, I would give “charlas”, little talks about health to women in my rural community.  After the talk, I would always ask what would they like to know.  The question varied, but always the same concern.  As one woman said, so eloquently,:  “I want to keep the children I have, alive, . . .

    Reading though George Packer’s (Togo 1982-83) 590 page book: Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and The End of the American Century I came across two paragraphs on Holbrooke’s brief career working for the Peace Corps. On page 144 of his book, Packer writes how Holbrooke left his position with Kissinger and the State Department and decides to leave the country. George writes, “After working on staffs for five years, he [Holbrooke] also wanted to be in charge of something. That was impossible for an FSO-4, which he had just become, on the normal unimaginative embassy career path. So he looked into the Peace Corps, asked for a country program to run, and studied Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute….” He was given Morocco by Joe Blatchford, the Peace Corps Director, and he lasted one year (1970-71) on the job. Packer writes: There isn’t much to tell you about the . . .

About the book: Set in the 1990s, the novel is about Aiken Alexander, the scion of Scots-Irish settlers who came to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in the mid-18thCentury. An Army veteran, Aiken is estranged from his wife, Soon-hee, a young Korean woman he fell in love with when stationed in Seoul. While Aiken is struggling to provide for Henry, their four-year-old, Soon-hee’s erratic behavior creates greater tension and her practice of traditional Korean shamanism is at odds with the Alexander family’s Appalachian folkways. On top of that, Aiken’s cousins seek to solve a Turtle Valley mystery that threatens to pull the family apart. Pre-publication Buzz: Amy Hawes of Book Club Babble calls The Shaman of Turtle Valley a “perfect book club read.”  If you or someone you know is in a book club and might be interested in choosing the book for one of your reads, Clifford would love . . .

A young woman accuses a prominent local college athlete of rape. Convicted with the help of undisputable DNA evidence, the athlete swears his innocence and threatens both his lawyer and his accuser as he’s sent to prison. Not long after, there’s another rape and the DNA test shows that the same person committed both rapes―which is seemingly impossible since the man convicted of the first rape was in prison at the time. Phillip Margolin (Liberia 1966-68)         A groundbreaking revisionist history of the last days of the Vietnam War that reveals the acts of American heroism that saved more than one hundred thousand South Vietnamese from communist revenge. Thurston Clarke (Tunisia 1968)           Drawn by a fascination with Egypt’s rich history and culture, Peter Hessler moved with his wife and twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. He wanted to learn Arabic, explore Cairo’s . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Marian Haley Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64) Richard Holbrooke, and the End of the American Century by George Packer (Togo 1982-83) Reviewed by Walter Isaacson The New York Times May 9, 2019 Richard Holbrooke was a large man with gargantuan appetites — for food and women and movies and acclaim and, above all, diplomatic and undiplomatic maneuvering — appetites that struggled to feed an outsize ego that was matched only by his insecurities. As the last great freewheeling diplomat of the American Century, Holbrooke, with his turbocharged zeal and laughable lack of self-awareness, earned fervent admirers and fevered enemies, including a few longstanding colleagues who fell passionately and paradoxically into both camps. In fact, Holbrooke himself was caught in this duality of being his own most fervent admirer and worst enemy (although when someone once commented that he was his own worst enemy, a national security adviser . . .

      WASHINGTON – Peace Corps Director Jody Olsen (Tunisia 1966-68) and Montenegrin Deputy Prime Minister Zoran Pažin signed a historic agreement May 6 establishing a new Peace Corps program in Montenegro, the agency’s 142nd country of service. “Today’s signing is a testament to the close partnership between the United States and Montenegro,” said Olsen, who met with the deputy prime minister in the capital Podgorica. “And it is a testament to our commitment to a common vision of a brighter future for Montenegro and its neighbors in the Western Balkans.” Deputy Prime Minister Pažin said the Peace Corps program in Montenegro is another confirmation of the partnership, support and friendship of the U.S. Government and American people to Montenegro and its citizens. “We see the service of the U.S. Peace Corps volunteers in Montenegro as another opportunity for Montenegrin and U.S. citizens to enrich their lives and to . . .

 ‘The Buried’ Review: Digging Into a Revolution Journalist Peter Hessler moved to Cairo in the wake of Hosni Mubarak’s ouster and was a witness to Egypt’s recent political convulsions. ​By John Freeman Wall Street Journal May 7, 2019 6:41 p.m. ET Seen from afar, tectonic political shifts often look as if they consume a society. But have you ever been someplace in the middle of momentous political events and found everyone around you getting on with daily life? Few reporters seem better placed to fathom the complexities of this dynamic—ripples of disquiet permeating routine existence—than Peter Hessler (China 1996-98). For nearly a decade Mr. Hessler reported from China for the New Yorker, eventually writing four books about an ancient society undergoing great change. Having moved back to the U.S, he and his wife, Leslie Chang, a former China correspondent for this newspaper, decided that it was time for a change . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) A Touching Portrait of Martha Cooper, a Legendary Chronicler of Graffiti Martha: A Picture Story, is the first documentary that focuses on the life and career of one of the most important urban photographers of the past half-century. by Christopher Lee Inoa May 1, 2019 Martha Cooper with young child in the 1970s (photo by Dan Brinzac) Martha Cooper didn’t set out to become a legend when she started taking photos of the graffiti-covered subways cars that made their way from the Bronx to the rest of New York City in the 1970’s and 80’s. She definitely didn’t think she would be considered an icon when she and fellow photographer Henry Chalfant presented what would become Subway Art to publishers in NYC. After many rejections, and later poor sales when it finally did get published, Cooper then thought that part of her life was . . .

    I had the pleasure of attending a pre-publication event this Monday evening in New York City for Peter Hessler’s (China 1996-98) new book, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution, set in Egypt. Drawn by a fascination with Egypt’s rich history and culture, Peter Hessler moved with his wife and twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. He wanted to learn Arabic, explore Cairo’s neighborhoods, and visit the legendary archaeological digs of Upper Egypt. After his years of covering China for The New Yorker, friends warned him Egypt would be a much quieter place. But not long before he arrived, the Egyptian Arab Spring had begun, and now the country was in chaos. In the midst of the revolution, Hessler often traveled to digs at Amarna and Abydos, where locals live beside the tombs of kings and courtiers, a landscape that they call simply al-Madfuna: “the Buried.” He . . .

    MS 204 Volunteer Conduct Effective Date: December 1, 2017 Responsible Office: Safety and Security (OSS); Counseling and Outreach Unit (OHS/COU)Supersedes: 09/08/17; 02/09/17; 06/25/15; 10/31/14; 7/10/14; 8/19/11; 06/28/11; 03/18/11; 5/20/05; 11/26/03; 2/04/93; 5/04/83; MS 237, 4/30/73 (Note:  I have copied the following section on drug use.  The link is to the entire section on T/V conduct.) “3.5 Drug Use 3.5.1 General Policy Except as described in section 3.5.2 below regarding Voluntary Self-Referral, a V/T found to be involved with drugs in a manner not authorized by the Peace Corps for medical purposes, in any way in any country, will be administratively separated immediately pursuant to section 3.5.4. The Peace Corps enforces this strict policy not only because the cultivation, manufacture, and traffic in and use of drugs, including marijuana, is illegal in most countries; but also because drug involvement by V/Ts in any country could seriously jeopardize the entire . . .