The Peace Corps

Introducing… The Museum that Celebrates Your Service! The Museum of the Peace Corps Experience (MPCE) debuts virtually in 2018 and will soon becomes brick and mortar in Washington, D.C.  Help us realize this dream! Imagine a museum designed to tell Peace Corps stories, displaying artifacts from all around the world . . .. A museum that connects people and increases global understanding . . .. A place which inspires young people to serve their communities at home and abroad . . .. A shrine to our common humanity, demonstrating that our connections are more fundamental than all the forces that divide us into separate cultures and nations. You can get involved from the very beginning of this new adventure!  Here’ s how — 1. Visit our new website! Learn more about the plans for developing the Museum. 2. Login to the Museum’s new website.  Click here to create a password and login. By logging in, you’ll be able to update your . . .

Thanks to ‘heads up’ about the following article  from Mark Wentling (Honduras 1967–69, Togo 1970–73; PC Staff: Togo, Gabon, Niger 1973–77) • Do Africans Want Peace Corps Volunteers? by Francis Tapon Contributor, Forbes Magazine Most tourists use the city of Tambacounda as a pitstop as they traverse Senegal. There’s little to see or do in town. There are even fewer touristic sites in the surrounding villages. Still, sometimes it’s the unpopular destinations that yield the most interesting stories. The United States Peace Corps operates in safe, poor African countries. It avoids dangerous regions. The Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) in Tambacounda invited me to celebrate the Fourth of July with them. We had no fireworks but we shared some hotdogs and Doritos under an American flag. I asked them, “Is the Peace Corps useful in Senegal?” One PVC said that they had trouble convincing locals to plant their own crops because they knew a . . .

  Richard (Dick) William Richter, 88, died on June 29, 2018 in Issaquah, WA. He is survived by Joan, his wife of 67 years, two sons, Dave (Jenni) and Rob, as well as granddaughter India and grandson Kai, and eight nieces and nephews. Earlier in his career, shortly after the Peace Corps was started, Dick was an evaluator, traveling to nine different countries, including Afghanistan. Subsequently, he became Deputy Director of the program in Kenya, where he lived for two years with his wife and two young sons, traveling throughout East Africa. This experience opened the world for the Richter family and launched a lifetime of traveling to distant lands. Dick, who was raised in New York City, next became an award-winning journalist, working for newspapers and television in New York and Washington, DC. After retiring from ABC News and WETA, he was appointed President of Radio Free Asia. Supported by . . .

LATEST LIST OF RPCV AMBASSADORS—7/3/2018 Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, U.S. Ambassador to Malta (2012-16); (PCV Oman 1980-82) Charles C. Adams Jr., U.S. Ambassador to Finland (2015); (PCV Kenya 1968-70) Frank Almaguer, U. S. Ambassador to Honduras (1999 to 2002) ; (PCV Belize 1967–69) & (PC/CD Honduras 1976-79) Michael R. Arietti, U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda (2005-2008); (PCV India 1969-71) Charles R. Baquet III, U.S. Ambassador to Republic of Djibouti (1991-94); (PCV Somalia 1965-67) Robert Blackwill, U. S. Ambassador to India (2001-03); (PCV Malawi 1964-66) Julia Chang Bloch, U.S. Ambassador to Nepal (1989-1993); (PCV Malaysia 1964-66) Parker Borg, U.S. Ambassador to Mail (1981-1984) & Iceland (1993-1996); (PCV Philippines 1961-63) Richard Boucher, Deputy Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2009-2013), (PCV Senegal 1973–75) Peter Burleigh, U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka (1995-1997); (PCV Nepal 1963-65) Katherine Hubay Canavan (formerly Peterson), U.S. Ambassador to Botswana (2005-2008); (PCV Zaire 1973-76) Johnnie Carson, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya (1999-2003) & Zimbabwe (1995-97) . . .

  Jennifer Mamola, an advocate for HJPCV and RPCV from Uganda 2012-2013, shares her story about mental and physical health struggles and solutions during and after Peace Corps. • My Health Struggles by Jennifer Mamola (Uganda 2012–13) 23 June 2018   Flexibility, one might argue, is a key quality for Peace Corps Volunteers. It starts with the application process, continues with packing up your life to leave for service, sees you through your first bout of illness, and follows you on your return home. We rightly value this trait. However, Volunteers shouldn’t be pressured to flex on our health. As a Volunteer and public servant, I want to believe that I’m an iron woman. However, I admit that I experienced mental health struggles during Peace Corps service. Later, I also experienced severe physical health issues. April 2018 was a significant month for me. It marked five years since I lost . . .

Parker Borg was a PCV with the initial group of Volunteers to the Philippines, 1961-63. While not from Yale, but Dartmouth, Class of ’61, Parker was nevertheless “pale and male.” What made him rare in the State Department was that he was an RPCV. He would be nominated by three separate Presidents for Ambassadorial positions: Mali, Burma, and Iceland, but never went to Burma because of Senate objection to Burma’s human rights problems. When first nominated to go to Mali in 1981, the Peace Corps Director, Loret Ruppe, was thrilled by the news. Finally, the State Department would have an RPCV Ambassador. It had taken the State Department twenty years to fulfill JFK’s hope for the Peace Corps, that someday RPCVs would fill the ranks of U.S. Ambassadors. (We all know how slow the government bureaucracy is. Peter McPherson (Peru 1965-66) was named the Director of AID also in 1981, making . . .

JFK’s call to the Peace Corps men and women “from every race and walk of life.” One woman who responded was Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where her mother was a secretary and her father an attorney, and where she had developed an international interest early. In her public high school, Hebrew was offered because of the large local Jewish population, so she decided to study the language. This interest led to participation in an international exchange program in Israel (1978-1979), while she was still in college. “I was too young to hear the President Kennedy’s speech, but as a young child I saw the commercials of young American men and women working in far off places training the trainer. The people in the commercials came in a variety of ethnicities and it was easy to imagine some of the Africans might even be African Americans helping others. The work . . .

RPCVs of the Columbia River Peace Corps Association in Portland, Oregon, began developing the Museum of the Peace Corps Experience many years ago. As with so many Peace Corps endeavors, it began as an idea and with persistence and hard work, it grew.  The Museum of the Peace Corps Experience is not an official project of the Peace Corps.  It is now, however, an affiliate member of the National Peace Corps Association and it is growing.  The Museum, initially, focused on presenting exhibits.  Now, it hopes to have a brick and motor place to welcome the public all the time.  Please click on their new website to learn more about the Museum of the Peace Corps Experience and donate, contribute and support this incredibly important project.  See the video of RPCV Pat Wand speaking at the 2018 Shriver Leadership Summit Here is the link and the Introduction from the webpage:https://www.museumofthepeacecorpsexperience.org/cpages/home . . .

From the advantage point of their Foreign Service, and their role as Ambassadors, these RPCVs have noticed how the Peace Corps has changed over the years. At one time the Peace Corps was an organization that prided itself on sending Volunteers to parts of the world where no one else in the U.S. would go. No longer. The new rules circumscribe the ability of Volunteers to serve anywhere there is a hint of danger. Today’s Peace Corps, says these Ambassadors, is increasingly risk averse. One Ambassador had a daughter serving in China. She was issued a cell phone so that she could call the office regularly, and risked termination if she didn’t. As he said, “This completely changes the nature of the Peace Corps Volunteer experience, and makes a Volunteer service less meaningful. It becomes like any other job. The slogan I used to think really encapsulated the PC experience, . . .

  Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley Ambassador to Malta (2012-16); (PCV Oman 1980-82)   The majority of the RPCV Ambassadors interviewed for this article said the Foreign Service was not something that they had considered before they saw the State Department in action during their Peace Corps service. But there were exceptions. Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-–Winstanley, who was in the Peace Corps in Oman (1980-82), did decide on diplomat service as a PCV when she had the opportunity to meet and make friends with some of the younger diplomats and heard firsthand about their work while she was still a Volunteer. That led directly to her taking the exam. • Ambassador Thomas N. Hull Ambassador to Sierra Leone (2004-2007); (PCV Sierra Leone 1968-70) Thomas N. Hull, Ambassador to Sierra Leone (2004-2007), a PCV in Sierra Leone (1968-70), said that reading The Ugly American got him interested in the Foreign Service. “More than JFK’s appeal . . .

  One of JFK’s most famous speeches was given in the old Cow Palace Auditorium in San Francisco, on November 2, 1960, six days before the presidential election. It was Kennedy’s last major address before the election. It was a speech of six single-spaced pages, less than 3000 words. Written by Ted Sorenson and JFK it was entitled, “Staffing A Foreign Policy For Peace.” In it Kennedy proposed a new government agency, “The Peace Corps” using that name for the very first time. And with the “Peace Corps” Kennedy  envisioned a way to change America’s diplomatic service. Kennedy began by demonstrating how ill-equipped our foreign service was, pointing out that the Lenin Institute for Political Warfare exported, each year, hundreds of agents to disrupt free institutions in the uncommitted world. Kennedy said, “A friend of mine visiting the Soviet Union last year met a young Russian couple studying Swahili and African . . .

  Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963–65) was born in the Tule Lake Japanese American Segregation Camp in northern California where her Caucasian parents went to work to try to make an intolerable situation tolerable for the people imprisoned there. Her father, a pacifist and an economist, active in the progressive Co-operative Movement, was responsible for working with the internees — Nisei, Kibei, and Issei — to set up the camp wide member operated co-op store system; her mother signed on to teach in the camp schools.   “My parents had gone there by choice to try to help people who were incarcerated.  And while they worked, I was lovingly cared for by an Issei husband and wife. This is not to say that there weren’t difficult personal repercussions on me and my family, but it’s taking me an entire book to try to come to terms with it.” Marnie is the author . . .

• A memorial service was held in Bolivar, Missouri on April 22nd for David Crozier and Larry Radley organized by the Missouri RPCV group. These PCVs were the first two Volunteers who gave their lives in service. April 22nd was the 56th anniversary of the day they died, April 22, 1962. Speaking at the event were Larry’s brother Gordan Radley (Malawi 1968-70), his sister, Elena Radley Rozenman (Colombia 1963-65), PCA president Glenn Blumhorst (Guatemala 1988-91), and others. You can see the service on this video.   Columbia, MO – On April 22, 2018 Returned Peace Corps Volunteers from around Missouri and the United States gathered in Bolivar, MO, at Dunnegan Memorial Park and Greenwood Cemetery to remember David Crozier. Crozier died in a plane accident on April 22, 1962, in Colombia, South America. With fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Larry Radley, who also perished, they were the first Peace Corps Volunteers worldwide to die in . . .

Thank you to Sara Thompson for forwarding this video of Representative Poe speaking on behalf of Peace Corps and Health Justice for Volunteers.

  Border Penance (short stories) Lawrence F. Lihosit ( (Honduras 1975–77) CreateSpace February 2018 (originally published in 2009) 128 pages $10.95 (paperback) Reviewed by David H. Greegor (Mexico 2007–11) • Earlier this year I reviewed Mr. Lihosit’s book, Americruise, which I found to be a fun and eventually engaging read once I came to understand his wacky humor.  Border Penance, a set of six serious short stories set in Mexico and Central America, was intended to be suspense-filled. I found them mildly interesting, but not suspenseful. Furthermore, the stories varied considerably in their coherence and quality. The first story, Holiday Obituary, was so confusing I had to read it twice and even then it didn’t seem to match the synopsis that Mr. Lihosit included. One of the problems that the author has is that he puts too much extraneous, unrelated detail into his stories so that the reader can’t follow the thread. . . .