The Peace Corps

BY LEX RIEFFEL, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR 02/21/20 01:00 PM EST   Last month, before the corona virus outbreak, the Peace Corps informed the Congress that it would begin terminating its program in China in Sen. Marc Rubio (R-Fla.) applauded the decision, noting that China no longer is a developing country and, echoing the sentiment, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) told reporters: “I’m glad the Peace Corps has finally come to its senses.” I beg to differ. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in India (1965-67) and I’ve done research on what America gains from allocating funds in the federal budget for the Peace Corps. Measured against our country’s long-term national interests, pulling the Peace Corps out of China now looks like a dumb move. Let’s start with a few facts. The Peace Corps was established in 1961 by President Kennedy in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union when the U.S. was competing . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Arnold Zeitland (Ghana 1961-63)     The Peace Corps isn’t just bringing home 7,300 volunteers because of the coronavirus. It’s firing them.  By Joe Davidson, Columnist Washington Post March 20, 2020 Peace Corps volunteers in Cambodia take an oath at the National Institute of Education in Phnom Penh in 2007. The 30 English teachers served in Cambodia teaching English and supporting teachers in Cambodian provinces and districts to improve their English language and teaching skills. • Because of the coronavirus, the Peace Corps is doing more than evacuating its 7,300 volunteers from 61 countries. It’s also firing them. In a March 15 open letter to the volunteers, the agency’s director, Jody Olsen, said, “We are acting now to safeguard your well-being and prevent a situation where Volunteers are unable to leave their host countries.” But nowhere in the statement posted on the agency’s website does it tell . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Dick Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64)   Last night on MSNBC Brian Williams had on Anne Rimoin (Benin 1993-95) who is a noted epidemiological. Williams said the daughter of a friend had just been brought home from her Peace Corps country, and Dr. Rimoin said she was confident all this would pass and the Peace Corps would resume its great work. Anne W. Rimoin, Ph.D., M.P.H. is a Professor of Epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and Infectious Disease Division of the Geffen School of Medicine. She is an internationally recognized expert on global health, emerging infectious diseases, vaccine preventable diseases and disease surveillance systems in low-resource settings. She is the Director of the Fielding School’s Center for Global and Immigrant Health. Dr. Rimoin’s research, conducted in the some of the most difficult areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has yielded several . . .

    Americans approaching retirement can redefine their lives and find new fulfillment by pursuing international adventure and service instead of drifting in their familiar jobs. That’s the message of Not Exactly Retired written by David Jarmul, who served as a PCV in Nepal from 1977 to 1979, where he met his wife, Champa, and at the age of 63 David rejoined the Peace Corps and Champa also became a PCV, and they went to Moldova from 2016 to 2018. A graduate of Brown University and past president of the D.C. Science Writers Association, his previous books are Headline News, Science Views and Plain Talk: Clear Communication for International Development.  David was the head of news and communications at Duke University for many years and held senior communications positions at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Academy of Sciences. He has also worked as an editor for an international development organization, a writer for . . .

The evacuating PCVs have many questions. For those of you who may be contacted for information by parents and/or  others, here is the Peace Corps link: https://www.peacecorps.gov/coronavirus/ The National Peace Corps Association has also come forth with a plan. https://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/articles/a-message-from-npca-president-glenn-blumhorst-to-peace-corps-evacuees NPCA Response to COVID-19 and Peace Corps Evacuations Through their personal stories and photos shared on social media over the last few days, an entire Peace Corps community has vicariously lived the shocking reality of 7,000+ serving PCVs evacuating from 60 countries around the world. This traumatic interruption of service is not the way a PCV envisions their service to end – with unfinished projects, unsung farewells, unrung COS bells, and unsaid goodbyes. To the PCV evacuees, my heartfelt sympathy. I share your grief. As you return home, know that there is an empathetic and caring Peace Corps community awaiting you with our collective embrace. We are thousands of returned Peace Corps Volunteers (including many whose service had also been cut short), former staff, host country . . .

  https://www.peacecorps.gov/news/library/peace-corps-announces-suspension-volunteer-activities-evacuations-due-covid-19/   March 15, 2020 WASHINGTON – The following is an open letter to Peace Corps Volunteers from Director Jody Olsen. Dear Volunteers, I know this is a very stressful time for you and your families, your host communities and the staff at your post. As you know, we recently evacuated Volunteers from China and Mongolia due to the COVID-19 outbreak and related travel constraints and school closings. Further evacuations are now under way at several posts. Unfortunately, it has become clear in the last 48 hours that numerous posts must follow suit. It is against this backdrop that I have made the difficult decision to temporarily suspend all Peace Corps operations globally and evacuate all of our Volunteers. As COVID-19 continues to spread and international travel becomes more and more challenging by the day, we are acting now to safeguard your well-being and prevent a situation where Volunteers . . .

  In January 1961, I had been kicked out of Jefferson Nursing School in Philadelphia for “unprofessional behavior” (Singing in coffee shops with folksingers was not approved of. After I calmed down I became a volunteer teacher’s aide at the little Quaker school I had attended so that’s where I was on May 1st. All during high school, I had participated in many weekend workcamps led by David Ritchie in south Philadelphia, working with families there to paint a room in their homes. I really liked meeting people outside my Quaker world who were different and interesting so I figured that the Peace Corps experience would be like a two -year weekend workcamp adventure, and I was not disappointed. I do know that my Peace Corps application number was # 103. My brother in California applied at the end of that week and his application number was more than 1,000. . . .

Pease note:  This was posted last April, here on Peace Corps Worldwide.  I am posting it again as the subject of Selection is once again appearing in the comments.   “The University of New Mexico was the training site for Peace CorpsTrainees bound for South America, from 1962 to approximately 1967.  Selection was an important part of the training process. Trainees were observed at all times and subject to psychological testing and evaluation in addition to the elaborate background checks.  The University of New Mexico has archived important documents from Peace Corps Training.   Thank you to the Archivists at the University of New Mexico’ s Center for Southwest Research.  The archivist emailed me a digitial copy of the memo. I had to reformate it in order to post it here.  The text was not changed. Here is the citation: Box 1 in the Selections 1962-1963 folder of UNMA 150, . . .

    Remembering the Peace Corps — 60 Years Later Marnie Elberson Mueller, Ecuador 1963-65 • I was in my dormitory at Case Western Reserve University on March 1, 1961.  I was a sophomore. I have this image of being in the downstairs parlor of a 19th Century building, looking toward the entryway, and for some reason thinking, “I want to do that,” meaning join the Peace Corps.  I don’t know how I received the news.  Was it from the radio or a newspaper or a letter from my parents? I’ll claim the latter because it’s the sort of information my parents would have loved: The adventure, the commitment to doing good, the concept of helping people to help themselves. My father was an economist turned community organizer and my mother, a teacher with a commitment to underprivileged children.  They married in 1938 and spent their honeymoon in a dirt-floored . . .

  Doing the Blitz Peace Corps Recruitment in the ’60s by Hal Fleming (Staff: PC/W 1966–68; CD Cote d’Ivoire 1968–72) • IN 1966, I CAME DOWN TO WASHINGTON from New York. It was a time in our country when the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War divided the nation. I had been tapped to work as a staff member in the Public Affairs and Recruiting office for the Peace Corps. On my very first workday in Peace Corps/Washington, I was told to join Warren Wiggins, the Deputy Director of the Agency, in his government car for a one-hour ride to a conference for new campus recruiters at Tidewater Inn in Easton, Maryland. Wiggins, preoccupied with his opening speech to the conclave, said very little to me except to read out a phrase or two of buzz-word laden prose, mostly unintelligible to me as the new guy, and ask for . . .

  The Peace Corps Story, A Towering Task How can you tell the Peace Corps story in a one hour-and-forty seven minutes film? Tell the story of more than 240,000 volunteers spanning 60 years of service? (You know how long people talk just about their two-week European vacation.) Somehow Director Alana DeJoseph  (Mali 1992-94) has managed to tell the story of all of our experiences. It takes an RPCV to get the job done. The Peace Corps began by President Kennedy in 1961 when he sent young Americans into the developing world not with a rifle, but with a handshake, and that, as we say, has made all the difference. This film– A Towering Task–tells the stories of these Americans who went from innocent to worldly, from ignorant to enlightened, from strangers to adopted members of their host country families in 141 foreign countries. Director Alana DeJoseph captured in a . . .

The Peace Corps Breaks Ties with China The agency has always been viewed as removed from political spats. But the timing of the U.S.’s decision seems suspicious. By Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) March 9, 2020 The author, lower left, with other China 3 volunteers in front of the Forbidden City, in Beijing, in 1996.Photograph courtesy the author On the morning of January 17th, shortly before I was scheduled to meet with a hundred and forty Peace Corps volunteers in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, there was an unexpected announcement that the China program was ending. The Peace Corps had first come to the country in 1993, and as a volunteer from the early years I had been asked to speak at an in-service training that the organization was holding in a hotel near where I live. But by the time I arrived nobody was in the mood for nostalgia. The . . .

    In keeping with the original three goals of the Peace Corps Act, a pilot program to upgrade the level of English learning and teaching in Ethiopia is seeking RPCV’s who have taught English in Ethiopia. We’re developing some new digital materials for Ethiopian grade school students and would like to have them reviewed by teachers with experience in Ethiopian English classes, preferably in upper elementary and middle schools. We are particularly interested in recent returnees who used the series, English for Ethiopia in their classes. This is a not-for-profit venture and participation is on a voluntary basis. We are excited about the potential of this work to solve an urgent challenge facing Ethiopian education, particularly in rural areas. If you would like to learn more or to volunteer, contact Andy Martin (Ethiopia, 1965-68) or Michael McCaskey (Ethiopia, 1965-67) at jcoyneone@gmail.com

Talking with Paul Theroux . . . an interview by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962–64)This is an interview I did with Paul around 2002. Since he is speaking in Washington this Saturday, March 7th, I thought I would republish it to fill in everyone about his early years in the Peace Corps.PAUL THEROUX (Malawi 1963-65) has produced some of the most wicked, funny, sad, bitter, readable, knowledgeable, rude, contemptuous, ruthless, arrogant, moving, brilliant and quotable books ever written. In doing so, he has been in all regards the most successful literary and commercial writer to come out of the Peace Corps.For those not familiar with Theroux’s life, he was born in Medford, Massachusetts in 1941, one of seven children, and studied premed at the University of Maine before transferring to the University of Massachusetts and taking his first creative writing class from the poet Joseph Langland. He graduated in 1963 from . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Steve Kaffen (Russia 1994-96) Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) Saturday, March 7 12:15 pm – 1:15 pm Travel Theater Paul Theroux, Bestselling Author, Novelist, Travel Writer My travels began in 1963 when I joined the Peace Corps and became a teacher in Central Africa. At last, I had something to write about, something that mattered, something inspired by travel. I traveled throughout Africa for the next six years and published four works of fiction. After three years in Singapore and travels in South East Asia, I published Saint Jack which became a movie. Resident in Britain, I was stumped for an idea, but decided that travel had always served me well: so I set off on the trip that became The Great Railway Bazaar, a book that led to ten other long trips, and ten more books – some of the trips risky, but all of them fruitful, in . . .