The Peace Corps

  Far Away In the Sky: A Memoir of the Biafran Airlift David L. Koren (Nigeria 1964–67) First Peace Corps Writers Edition June 2016 346 pages $18.85 (paperback) Reviewed by Roger Landrum (Nigeria 1961–63) • The Biafran war for independence from Nigeria ended 47 years ago (1970), yet the horrors that occurred before and during the civil war linger. So does the idea of Biafra: an independent African state created by Africans, not by a European colonial power drawing the boundaries, a modern state with an efficient and productive democratic government. They seem to have a life of their own. One of the reasons for this was a dramatic humanitarian airlift operated from the remote island of Sao Tome to shuttle food and medical supplies into Biafra for a civilian population being deliberately starved into submission. The airlift was organized by a hodgepodge of church and humanitarian organizations, contracted planes and . . .

  Reading & Book Signing Steve Murphy, who worked briefly as a Republican political appointee (Schedule C) at the Peace Corps as Regional Director for the Inter-Americas Region (2002-2003), will do a reading and signing of his book at the University of Washington bookstore this week. Murphy’s On the Edge: An Odyssey is a memoir of his life working in Rio de Janeiro as an international banker and at Hollywood studios, to be a political employee in both Bush administrations. He will talk about how he kept his composure and helped others. Murphy is  a University of Washington graduate. University Bookstore’s Author’s Showcase is this Tuesday, Dec. 6, 6-8pm – parking is free in bookstore lot.: Check out the website for more information.

On January 20, 2017, 30 Schedule Cs (Political Appointees) will walk out the door of the agency. They have already submitted their letters of resignation to the White House. In their place, civil servants, not connected to anyone’s campaign, past or present, will take over running the agency. It could be months before the new administration gets around to appointing a new corps of 30 Schedule Cs to run the agency. One thing we can be pretty sure of, none of them will come from the ranks of RPCVs. The question remains: will there be a Peace Corps in the Age of Trump? The word from Washington is that the Peace Corps has a good deal of support on both sides of the aisle and that it even might grow in the years ahead. Some conservative Republican congressmen and senators, I’m told, would like to dismantle certain agencies and give that . . .

Donald Trump has chosen Elaine Chao, the former Labor Secretary, Peace Corps Director, and wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to be Transportation Secretary, an official briefed on the matter told CNN on Tuesday. The announcement is expected to come this afternoon. RPCVs will remember how Chao would burst into tears when talking about meeting PCVs overseas. It became a joke with them; they would laugh at the woman who couldn’t believe Americans would “volunteer” to live in the developing world. (She wouldn’t, of course.) She also earned the reputation of scheduling hair appointments every day while traveling in the developing world, and for not meeting with government officials but rather spend her time, when she could, playing volleyball with Volunteers. Back in DC, she was famous for her ‘little bell’ that she kept on her desk so she could summon her secretary from the outer office when she . . .

Regardless of what else might be said about the “Gale Method” it established two important elements for the Peace Corps. HQ staff now understood how recruitment was done, and had acquired the skills that would make them effective recruiters. More importantly was that within the first years, the Peace Corps was established as part of campus life. Peace Corps Recruiters would be invited back every year, and would be welcomed, often with the same deference and cooperation shown in 1963. By now, and this was early in 1965, the Peace Corps was starting the “In, Up & Out” policy that Robert Textor had crafted in a memo for the agency, and Bob Gale was thinking of leaving. He didn’t want to be Director of Recruiting for Life, as Shriver had declared at the senior staff meeting in March 1963. Gale wanted to leave when the going was good. In the academic year 1963-64, his recruiting techniques had bought in thirty-six . . .

Bob Gale was apprehensive being called into Moyers’s office. It wasn’t Moyers’s way to have a tete-a-tete. Moyers was edgy standing behind his desk, and while only about 27 at the time, he appeared “fatherly,” thought Bob. There had been “talk,” Bill told Gale. Talk of ‘after-hour’ antics on the California advance trip. Moyers told Gale that as the head of Recruitment it was his responsibility to behave himself and to see that others did at well. They (the recruiters) had no right to ‘party on a business trip at government expense.’ He told Gale that his ‘antics’ could bring shame to the Peace Corps. “He was being very‘Baptist’ with me,” Gale recalled. Moyers had also been “thoroughly informed” as to all of their doings in California and had exaggerated them in his mind, or his informer had exaggerated them to the Deputy Director of the Peace Corps. Moyers told Gale that it was dangerous to cavort into . . .

The Senate on Thursday passed the Nigerian Peace Corps Bill which seeks to empower, develop and provide gainful employment for youths. The Bill, which was sponsored by Senate Leader, Mohammed Ali Ndume(APC-Borno), was first read at plenary on March 10, 2016 and scaled second reading. It seeks to facilitate peace volunteerism, community service, neighborhood watch and nation building. The bill will also facilitate the training of youths to advance the course of peacebuilding and conflict transformation through peace education, mediation, and conflict resolution among warring groups or communities where there is crisis in Nigeria. The passage of the Bill followed a report presented by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Interior, Sen. Bayero Nafada (APC-Gombe North) after clause by clause consideration. According to the report, the head of the corps will be referred to as Commandant General with six Deputy Commandants from the six geopolitical zones of the country. The headquarters of the corps would be domiciled . . .

The current issue of The ChronicleReview, November 25, 2016, is devoted to the reaction on college campuses to the Trump win. One article by Roland Merullo (Micronesia 1979-80) I found particularly insightful and on target to “why Trump won.” Roland, as you may know, is the author of his Peace Corp novel, Leaving Losapas, published in 1992. He is also written twenty books of fiction, and non-fiction, and is a former faculty member at Bennington and Amherst Colleges, and now teaches in the low-residency M.F.A. program at Lesley University. He is also a great golfer, which as we know, covers all necessary qualifications. Just ask Trump. — jc • What Liberal Academics Don’t Get By Roland Merullo  NOVEMBER 20, 2016 All the election postmortems make me think of the disgraced former presidential candidate John Edwards, who famously talked about “the two Americas.” There are different ways to delineate these two Americas: according to race, . . .

The most famous recruitment trip of them all was in early October 1963. It was the one that gave rise to the term, Blitz Recruiting. Gale put together five advance teams and five follow-up teams. Each team spent a week in southern California and then a week in northern California, visiting every major campus in both areas. Coates Redmon sums up the ‘teams’ in her book. “One advance team consisting of Nan McEvoy, then deputy director of the Africa Regional Office, and Frank Erwin, then deputy director of Selection, were assigned first to Los Angeles Sate University (where there was only modest interest in the Peace Corps) and next to San Francisco State University (where there was considerable interests). Bob Gale, Linda Lyle (his secretary) and Doug Kiker took on the University of Southern California in the south and then the University of California at Berkeley in the north. Gale had friends at both.” . . .

KickAssQueer is a gay Web site thousands go to for news, gossip, and as a forum to exchange often heated opinions about GLBT life in America. When one of KAQ’s editors is savagely murdered, it’s PI Don Strachey’s job to uncover whether one of the site’s many harsh critics, gay or straight, is responsible for this young man’s death—and possibly for other brutal assaults on gay men in and around New York City. What Strachey is soon forced to confront is a side of the Internet that is not just disturbing, but sometimes downright lethal. Note on Lipez Richard Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64) currently resides in Massachusetts. He is best known for his Donald Strachey mysteries, which are published under the pen name Richard Stevenson. He is the author of 16 novels (and you think you write a lot!) and according to the website Thrilling Detective, “For those of you who haven’t . . .

It’s that time of year again. Time to pick a new Peace Corps Director with a new Administration. The President and his people get to fill 30 top level positions in the Peace Corps Administration, from director to heads of divisions. They are called Schedule C Appointments. The next Director, however, will not have the opportunity to put together ‘his or her team’ as the appointees come usually from the campaign workers. Historically the ‘jobs’ are in great demand. In previous administrations, there have been many RPCVs who didn’t want to go to the White House. They wanted to go back to the Peace Corps and “fix it” (in their minds) from what it was when they were PCVs. Other political types have seen the job as glamorous and full of overseas travel and cushy jobs. (Of course, those were Schedule C types who had never been near a PCV.) Bill . . .

Trouble, however, was brewing for using the Wisconsin Plan at other colleges across the country. And early Peace Corps Evaluator Dave Gelman was warning that unless the Peace Corps gave priority for quality over quantity, the Peace Corps would not only acquire too many “high-risk” applicants but also “drink dry the well of potential recruits.” (Remember when the agency had those–High Risk/Low Gain–Trainees?) Gelman felt Gale’s method was wrong and warned about the “evils of excess” and the grave danger of becoming over-eager to ‘sign-up’ people for two years of service. One young applicant expressed his disappointment at the Wisconsin Plan style this way: ‘I thought we were something special. Then I saw that they were just pulling people off the street and testing them later.” Dave Gelman was a bright and tough son-of-a-bitch. I did not know him, but I watched him in the hallways of the building. He always appeared . . .

The five RPCVs named here were PCVs in the ’60s, ’70s, and 2000s.  Tino Calabia (Peru, 1963-65) spoke to them and had meetings with the State Department-funded national organizations called Volags. If you have questions or interest in helping out please contact Tino at: fcalabia36@gmail.com Tino Calabia Writes: As the UN High Commissioner for Refugees posts new stats on refugees — 65 million and climbing — some TV viewers change channels, and newspaper readers turn the page.  Others vent their rage against those they fear as including hordes of terrorists disguised as refugees or others whom they damn as “illegals.” But show photos of a Syrian toddler bleeding, covered with dust from rubble caused by bombings or of a three-year-old tike lying facedown dead like the flotsam littering the rest of the seashore.  These photos shock and awaken Americans to the plight of desperate asylum seekers.  Many Americans ask what can be . . .

Following Sarge’s ‘T’riffic!’ and approval for the new recruitment campaign, Gale went up to his rabbit warren of rooms and started to call everyone he knew at the University of Wisconsin. “They were all old pals of mine, and they were going ape over the phone about my plans for the Peace Corps at the university. But it wasn’t an easy job. In 1963, the campus covered nine hundred acres on the shores of Lake Mendota. There were over 17,000 undergraduates, another 7,000 grad students. Gale realized early on that he (and the Peace Corps) had to see the recruitment trip as a presidential campaign. There were two of them assigned by Sarge for the first campaign–Doug Kiker and Bob Gale–neither of them knew each other at HQ. Both were new to the Peace Corps. They couldn’t do it all Gale realized so he decided on a second team to arrive in Wisconsin a . . .