The Peace Corps

This short letter was posted yesterday by Rick Steves on his Travel Blog. It is a perfect Christmas Season Story. The writer is George Gorayeb, a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco, and now a realtor in Annapolis. George is an Arab-American Christian whose family emigrated from Syria. _____ Hello Rick,  In this season of gift-giving, I would like to share a personal story about the humblest yet most-appreciated gift that I have ever given to anyone.  Back in the spring of 1972, I was blessed to be serving as a Peace Corps volunteer, high school English teacher in Marrakesh, Morocco, in North Africa. One day, a half dozen of us volunteers went hiking in the foothills of the High Atlas Mountains. This scenic mountain range separates the city of Marrakesh from the northern edge of the Sahara Desert. For half of the year, these mountain peaks are covered in . . .

The First Christmas Card, 1843  

  by Mark Wentling (Honduras 1967-69 & Togo 1970-73) This holiday season has me reminiscing again about my first Christmas in Africa. As I stare blankly out the window I am transported back to 1970 and my humble room in the Adjakpo family compound in the village of Agu-Gadzapé, Togo. After three months of living there as a Peace Corps Volunteer and learning how to fit in where I would never really fit, the Christmas season was upon us and I began raising questions about what to do for Christmas. Everybody in our congested compound, which was always vibrantly alive with people doing their daily chores and what they had to do to survive the poverty that engulfed them so profoundly, liked the idea of doing something to celebrate Christmas. But, they all said they had no money to do anything. They did, however, tell me how nice it would . . .

  by Jeanne D’Haem (Somalia 1968-70) On Christmas Eve my family gathered at my grandmother’s house on Jane Street in Detroit, Michigan. Her Christmas tree glittered with multicolored bubble lights. The uncles sat in the small living room, my aunts and grandmother tasted and talked in the kitchen. Cousins played with the wooden blocks and the Indian doll in the wooden toy box in the den. Sometimes there were new babies to hold. I was 22 the first time I could not attend, as I was a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Somalia, and  I wanted to at least send a Christmas gift to Grandma Carter. Newspaper cones of tea, alcohol for the tilly lamps, or the blue and green patterned cloth for sale in my village did not seem worth sending across two oceans. However, when my neighbor showed me what she gathered from distant trees, I realized I could . . .

UIC grad Bernice Heiderman, 24, was living her dream as a volunteer in Africa. She died of malaria, which the agency’s inspector general said was easily treatable with proper care. By Stephanie Zimmermann Chicago Sun Times   Serving in the Peace Corps had been Bernice Heiderman’s dream since high school. When the north suburban resident finally got accepted during her senior year of college, she wept with joy at the news, her family says. But just 18 months into her tour, the 24-year-old volunteer from Inverness was dead in a spartan hotel room in the East African island nation of Comoros, the victim of what her family calls a “preventable tragedy.” They say Heiderman endured a painful death from malaria that went undiagnosed by a local Peace Corps physician as well by a medical officer in Washington, even though the disease is endemic in Comoros. On Friday, the family filed . . .

  Evacuated Peace Corps Volunteers had no time to prepare their communities for their emergency departure. That loss has been described  many times by  the Evacuated RPCVs.  Now, Peace Corps has developed a pilot program to help 45 ERPCVs to reconnect with their communities. There are plans to expand the program. Here is the link: https://www.peacecorps.gov/news/library/evacuated-volunteers-participate-virtual-service-pilot-program/ Read the announcement Evacuated Volunteers Participate in Virtual Service Pilot Program December 18, 2020 WASHINGTON – Peace Corps Director Jody K. Olsen announced the completion of the first phase of the agency’s new Virtual Service Pilot program, which connected host country communities with returned volunteers who were evacuated due to the coronavirus pandemic. Nine posts participated in the first phase of an 11-week pilot. A total of 45 returned volunteers donated their time voluntarily serving as private citizens to conduct virtual engagements with our host country partners and, were selected based on a match between . . .

  CNN and Washington Post among others are reporting that Trump won’t be welcomed back in Palm Beach. Larry Leamer (Nepal 1965-67) author of many books, including Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump’s Presidential Palace was interviewed for today’s CNN report. Here is an edited version of what Trump and his current wife are facing when they pack their bags and grab a cab for the National Airport to fly ‘home’. • West Palm Beach-based attorney Reginald Stambaugh wrote to Palm Beach officials on Tuesday saying that Trump has already violated the agreement for visitor stays at Mar-a-Lago, noting the President’s plans to move to the club in January. The letter was first reported by The Washington Post. “It is the Town Council’s responsibility to right these wrongs and restore safety and security to the neighborhood by upholding its Use Agreement,” Stambaugh wrote. “In order to avoid . . .

More…   Heather Arney (Mauritania  2000-02), Kansas City, graduated from Wagner College, NYC with a degree in business management. After a job search that left her quite dissatisfied, she joined the Peace Corp to do something more meaningful. Heather worked with micro-finance, girl’s education, and played in a band that sang about AIDS awareness. From her early years in the Peace Corps, Heather has had an interest in microfinance. This paired with her constant pursuit of knowledge strengthens Heather’s role as the Senior Manager of Water.org’s Insights and Innovation team. Heather leads the team to create a robust evidence base that compels action to catalyze affordable financing for safe water and sanitation solutions. President and Co-founder of Girls to School, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting girls’ education and facilitating microfinance in West Africa. Enabled more than 800 girls to attend high-quality schools and linked their mothers to self-help groups that . . .

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Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Dale Gilles (Liberia 1964-67)   White House trade adviser RPCV Peter Navarro’s criticism of Biden and Harris found to be a violation of Hatch Act White House trade adviser Peter Navarro (Thailand 1972-75) has become the latest Trump administration official found to have violated the Hatch Act, a federal law prohibiting federal employees from engaging in certain political activities. In a report made public Monday, a government watchdog, the Office of Special Counsel, said Navarro violated the law when he made political comments, “disparaging” then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris in television interviews while appearing in his official capacity. The report found Navarro had also disparaged Mr. Biden on Twitter. Moreover, Navarro continued to violate the Hatch Act after he learned OSC was investigating him for just that, the report said. “Dr. Navarro’s violations of the Hatch Act were knowing and . . .

In 1994, a Peace Corps Volunteer named Christopher Davenport settled into the Eastern Highlands to live with a group of subsistence farmers.  He began to learn the language and develop a strong sense of connection with his inherited family.  One day, following the death of a venerated elder, the people of the village kidnap, torture, and ultimately kill a local woman accused of practicing sorcery. Devastated, Christopher tries to reconcile this unspeakable act with the welcoming and nurturing community he has come to love. But in trying to comprehend what he has witnessed through the lens of Western sensibilities, Christopher is unable to find the answers he seeks. Instead, he is left with one universal question: How do we continue to love someone who has done the unthinkable? In this true story, Davenport gives a considerate but courageously honest depiction of his transformative experience. He asks difficult questions about the role . . .

  Once in a Blood Moon by Dorothea Hubble Bonneau (Tanzania 1966-68)is the winner of the  2020 American Fiction Award. The novel tells the story of an African American heiress of a prosperous plantation flees for her life when her mother dies and her father is murdered by racists eager to seize her estate. It is a novel that is set in 1807 on the Heaven Hill Plantation, upriver from Georgetown, South Carolina, and sixteen-year-old Alexandra Degambia walks a tightrope stretched between her parents’ ambitions. Her father, a prosperous planter, wants to preserve the heritage of his African ancestors. But her mother, who can pass for white, seeks to distance herself from her African roots and position herself in the elite society of wealthy free-women-of-color. Alexandra, however, has dreams of establishing her own place in the world as an accomplished violinist. She assumes her talent and her family’s wealth will pave . . .

  In the current issue of The New Yorker (December 7, 2020) is a short story by Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) entitled “Dietrologia”. (DYET-troh-loh-GEE-ah). Dietrologic is a fairly recent entry in Italian vocabulary, only a few decades old. It means “behindology.” The word, which is often used with skepticism and even derision, describes the mental habits of the practicioner of this non-science, the dietrologo who regularly sees something behind events as they are presented. We call this “paranoia.” (p 58)   Paul also has a novel coming out in April entitled Under the Wave at Waimea The plot: Now in his sixties, big-wave surfer Joe Sharkey has passed his prime and is losing his “stoke.” The younger surfers around the breaks on the north shore of Oahu still call him the Shark, but his sponsors are looking elsewhere. When Joe accidentally hits and kills a man near Waimea while driving home . . .