The Peace Corps

Come Celebrate the Life of Roger Landrum Roger Landrum, whom many of you have known and enjoyed for decades, passed away at home after a battle with cancer on Dec. 9, 2017. His friends will hold a much-deserved Memorial Service to celebrate his life with our words and his, as well as with music and his photographs. This celebration will be held on  Saturday, June 2, 2018, 12:00pm in Washington, DC. Please save the date. And let us know if you plan to attend. We will follow-up more specific information about location, after we receive your responses. We need to have a proper estimate of numbers of attendants (to confirm an appropriate venue), so please respond as soon as possible. Email: Richard Harrill at: rharrill@email.unc.edu Sincerely, Bill Currier, Richie Harrill, and Norma Brooks

The Peace Corps may do work around the world to reduce HIV stigma and discrimination, but, according to a report on Friday, it’s a different story if one of its volunteers tests positive. A Peace Corps volunteer who was stationed in Cambodia claims the federal government agency quarantined him in a hotel room and then terminated his service after he tested positive for HIV. Wrote Jorge Rivas in Splinter News I published the article  “Peace Corps accused of quarantining, then firing, PCV with HIV (Cambodia)” about PCV Romany Tin on March 12 on our site and then reached out to get his story of what happened in Cambodia and with the Peace Corps. — JCoyne • First off, Romany, where did you go to college? I attending California State University Long Beach and majored in Political Science and International Studies. I graduated in May of 2017 and departed to Peace Corps on July . . .

I first  published this item on June 1, 2009. A new publication from Quito, Ecuador, is out with a scholarly look at the writings of Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965–67). It is the online publication LiberArte, from the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito. Contributors to LiberArte are primarily professors and students at the university. The journal, first published in January, 2005, features articles on literature, film, and critical trends in Ecuador. Last year there was a conference on Thomsen’s writing held in Quito. If you are interested in any reports from that conference, contact Martin Vega (vegamart@gmail.com) Martin also welcomes comments and critiques of Thomsen from those who knew him. I asked Martin if he knew Moritz and he said he didn’t, but that Alvaro Aleman, who heads up their journal, did know Moritz and often visited him in Guayaquil and spoke with him at length about authors and books. After Thomsen’s death, Alvaro . . .

Peace Corps Volunteer Susan Traub was killed on the night she and her husband arrived as new Peace Corps Volunteers to Ethiopia. It was a  tragic death through absolutely no fault of her own and only because she turned left and not right when she stepped out of the Land Rover at the hotel on her first night in Addis Ababa. This story is about Susan, and it is also about her husband, Charles, who was also injured that night, but who went onto have an amazing life in all the years since, living through the death of his young wife, his own injury, and then a tour in Vietnam. Today he has emerged having had a successful career as a photographer, college professor, author of fifteen books, and a husband and a father. What happened in Ethiopia in September 1967, happened in the last days of my tour as . . .

In her book on the early days of the Peace Corps, (Come As You Are) Coates Redmon writes of Colmen, “He was one of Shriver’s foils who could, like Mankiewicz and Gelman, make Shriver laugh his great whooping laugh and cause him to make light of things in tense situations. Colmen was an obsessive punster and an instigator of mass guffawing at senior staff meetings. Like Mel Brooks, whom Colmen physically resembled, Colmen likes to see the group dynamic reach the brink of craziness. Like Brooks, Colmen likes to provoke “dangerous laughing.” On his first trip to Africa with Shriver, Colmen and a hand full of other HQ officials went to the royal palace of Emperor Haile Selassie and after Shriver’s official visit with the Emperor, Shriver and the small group were given a tour of the royal gardens. As they reached an outer corridor of the palace, a sort . . .

By Patricia A. Wand (Colombia 1963-65) Published in Peace Corps Writers & Readers, May 1997   “THE MESSAGE FROM ECUADOR TODAY IS: NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED.” So wrote Moritz Thomsen on June 29, 1990, and what he meant was that he was angry at me. He was angry because I nominated him for the Sargent Shriver Award; because I suggested his traveling to the U.S. when I knew of his frail health; and because I described his living conditions in my letter of nomination. But this all happened after I got to know him a bit. Let’s start much earlier than that; when I read is first book. Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle spoke to me and for me. Moritz Thomsen captured the essence of Latin American village culture as I too knew it. I saw in his village the same people, the same breadth of character, the . . .

Back in 1990, shortly before his death from cholera, I interviewed Moritz for then newsletter, Peace Corps Writers & Readers. Moritz who had been a PCV in Ecuador from 1965-67, had written three books, all about his time in Latin America. Many consider his book Living Poor the best written account of the Peace Corps experience. When he emailed me he was living at Casilla 362, Guayaquil, Educador Here is what Moritz wrote me, responding to one of my questions. Moritz, you are an example of a Peace Corps Volunteer who has never come home. From your books we know your “history” over these last twenty-five years or so, but is there another reason—perhaps a mystical reason—that has kept you in Latin America. No, no mystical reasons for staying in South America. In my younger years I was very often the kid who was the last to leave the party, . . .

Thanks to a ‘heads up’ from Alana DeJoseph (Mali 1992-94) Romany Tin has emailed me to say: “The splinternews article got it wrong and misinterpreted the them.us article. I wasn’t quaratined nor did I claimed to be. I said that the news of not being able to go back to Cambodia made me feel not wanting to leave the hotel room which I barely left. Them.us got it right (I interviewed with them), but splinternews (I didnt interview with them)” jcoyne note • Peace Corps Accused of Quarantining, Then Firing, Volunteer With HIV By Jorge Rivas, Splinter News AP Photo The Peace Corps may do work around the world to reduce HIV stigma and discrimination, but, according to a report on Friday, it’s a different story if one of its volunteers tests positive. A Peace Corps volunteer who was stationed in Cambodia claims the federal government agency quarantined him in a hotel room and . . .

Thanks to a “heads up” from Joanne Roll (Colombia 1963-65) who sent me this link:  https://medium.com/@gabrielkrieshok/the-future-of-the-peace-corps-and-how-to-stop-it-f2e0fe3aff50 I read about Gabriel Krieshok former lead of #ICT4D@PeaceCorps HQ. On his blog, Gabriel had written: For the first time in ten years, I have no official connection to the Peace Corps, and I have felt an itch to reflect on this journey and some observations that have stuck with me. I must first say—that this process of moving on has been a little surreal. The nature of my relationship to the institution has changed over the years, through the various roles I’ve been lucky to have—volunteer, campus recruiter, and most recently as a staff member in Washington, D.C., where I voluntarily stepped down after 5 years of service just last month. After checking out his site, I got in touch with Gabriel, wanting to know more about what he had done with the . . .

Thanks to a ‘heads up’ by Meisha Robinson (Benin 2000-02) NPCA February 2018 Patrick Young, Associate Director for Global Operations Patrick Young joins the Peace Corps as Associate Director for Global Operations. He most recently served as the Acting Chief of Staff for the Office of Personnel Management during a period of significant transition. Prior to public service, Patrick gained extensive experience in operations as well as project and organizational management as an entrepreneur and business owner. Patrick has managed projects and teams for government, private sector, and non-profit clients both international and domestic. Patrick has a master’s degree from George Washington University. Joel Frushone, Associate Director for External Affairs–(Lesotho 1995-97) Joel Frushone joins the Peace Corps as Associate Director for External Affairs after serving for four months as our Director of Communications. Joel brings over 20 years of experience in Africa, where he lived for nearly 10 years. Most recently, . . .

To further fulfill its goals to encourage, recognize and promote Peace Corps writers, RPCV Writers & Readers, the newsletter that was the precursor of PeaceCorpsWriters.org and PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org, presented its first annual awards for outstanding writing in 1990. A total of 143 awards have been given since that time. Winners receive a certificate and small cash award. When possible, Peace Corps Writers Awards are presented at the RPCV Conference Awards Ceremony. Next year, the Awards will be announced at the NPCA Conference at Shawnee, PA in late August. Nominate your favorite Peace Corps book published in 2017 by sending an email to: jcoyneone@gmail.com The Awards THE MARIA THOMAS FICTION AWARD, first presented in 1990, is named after the novelist Maria Thomas [Roberta Worrick (Ethiopia 1971–73)] who was the author of the well-reviewed novel Antonia Saw the Oryx First, and two collections of short stories, Come to Africa and Save Your Marriage: And Other Stories and African Visas: A Novella and . . .

The Intimate Other In “Place of Rest,” Teddy Wilson decides he wants to die in Paraguay. In “Old School,” Rowen Royce makes the decision to live there. For both American characters, Paraguay has become the intimate other. It is a place to which they do not belong but are irresistibly drawn. The choice they make is both conscious and blind. They are impelled. Choosing a largely rural, semi-tropical, landlocked country with a history of problematic government calls for a leap of faith, but faith in what? Neither Teddy nor Rowen would put it this way, but they trust in Paraguay’s otherness, which despite differences of temperament and experience they both find unspeakably beautiful. In an act of defiant identification they ally themselves with the dazzled streets of Asunción summer, the dizzying green sweep of countryside. The way dust hangs in the air over a dirt road down which cowboys have . . .