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E. Jackson Allison, Jr. MD/MPH, FACEP (Malawi 1967-69) is a Professor of Emergency Medical Care at Western Carolina University. He also served a 3-year tour with the Peace Corps in Malawi, Central Africa, where he was a public health Volunteer in the bush.  He is best known as a singer/songwriter there, having recorded arguably the most popular song with a message in Malawi — Ufa wa Mtedza (Peanut Flour in Your Child’s Corn Mush).  After Peace Corps, Jack went to medical school, and recently retired after a 30-year career in academic emergency medicine.  He has done three public health stints in Africa — a USAID mission in Tanzania in ‘82, a Project Hope Mission in Malawi in ‘94, and US State Department mission in Malawi in ‘05 — the latter two involved helping to eradicate AIDS in that Central African country.  Since 1967 Allison has raised more than $150,00.00 with his . . .

Late today Aaron Williams sent out another alert on what the Peace Corps plans to do. You can read it all on the Peace Corps website: www.peacecorps.gov. However, for those who want to volunteer for what was called the Crisis Corps, here is what Aaron has to say: “While formal partnerships with Haiti relief organizations have not been established, Peace Corps is currently assessing how we can be helpful in the future. I encourage all Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) interested in possible short-term, high impact assignments in Haiti or other programs around the world to apply to Peace Corps Response. As an RPCV, you have the opportunity to serve again by putting your skills and experience to good use in the places where you are needed the most. Over 500 Americans have served in Haiti as Peace Corps Volunteers and Haiti will forever be a part of the Peace . . .

If you follow golf at all you know about the new groove regulations coming into effect this year. The volume of grooves has been changed by the USGA, and the groove edge sharpness reduced for clubs with lofts greater than or equal to 25 degrees. These rule was made by the governing body of American golf (United States Golf Association) to reduce the spin on shots played from the rough by “highly skilled golfers” (well, that leaves me out of the mix) and the reason, according to the USGA, is to “increase the importance of driving accuracy.” The USGA also determined that “average golfers playing from the rough hit the green in regulation only 13 % of the time”  so our club requirements aren’t immediately subject to the new rule. We don’t have to go out an buy a new set of club. Also, there aren’t too many amateurs who can win a . . .

Hi John.  I would have liked to know that you planned to publish our correspondence as I might have reviewed it a bit more closely.  Anyway, no harm no foul.  I think this is your way of compelling me to write something more. Also, you called me Roger in the first paragraph, not Robert. Go ahead and put this on the record if you want: It’s not that I’m no longer interested in the Peace Corps as you wrote.  I remain very interested in Peace Corps but unfortunately have come to the conclusion that there is no managerial will to undertake the reforms at Peace Corps that would help it fulfill its initial promise.  Peace Corps, as I have repeatedly written, is a wonderful idea that has been undermined by a terrible system that fails the agency’s larger purpose at every turn. As regards “why didn’t he (Strauss) send them . . .

I recently wrote Robert Strauss (Liberia 1978-80) in the hope of getting him to blog about the Peace Corps and development on our site. Robert, in case you haven’t read him, is an RPCV and former Peace Corps Country Director who does development work in Africa. He is currently living in Antananarivo, Madagascar where he is a writer and consultant and lives with, as he writes, “my wife and daughter in a small house surrounded by a large garden.” Robert is also a serious critic of the Peace Corps and what the agency is doing around the world. He has written articles and Op-eds (one famous one in the NYTIMES) and most recently another article about the Peace Corps  in The American Interest Magazine.” The American Interest Magazine piece is entitled, “Grow Up: How to Fix the Peace Corps. (The American Interest, by the way, is a bimonthly magazine focusing primarily on foreign policy, international affairs, global economics, . . .

Then came Ann Arbor, Michigan. On October 14, Kennedy flew into Michigan from New York, where he had just completed his third debate with Nixon. He had agreed to say a few words to the students at the university. Ten thousand students waited for him until 2 am, and they chanted his name as he climbed the steps of the student union building. Kennedy launched into an extemporaneous address. He challenged them, asking how many would be prepared to give years of their lives working in Asia, Africa and Latin America? The audience went wild. (I know, because at the time I was a new graduate student over in Kalamazoo. I was also working part time as a news reporter for WKLZ and had gone to cover the event.) According to Sargent Shriver, “No one is sure why Kennedy raised the question in the middle of the night at the . . .

Karen Chaput, Video Production Manager in the Office of Communications for the Peace Corps, caught up with me when I was in D.C. recently and asked if I would sit down and be interviewed for her digital project. She recently sent me the unedited transcript of my 40 minutes with her talking about the history of the agency and the work we have been doing with Peace Corps writers. Here is a brief except from those 40 minutes. (With some additional editing by the author.) Q. John, you’ve devoted a lot of your personal time to Peace Corps writers over the years.  You obviously have a passion for helping people recreate their Volunteer stories.  Can you explain a little bit about that? John:  Well, oddly enough, I’ve only written one story myself about the Peace Corps, and I have published 25 novels and books of non-fiction. Two of my collections, one fiction and . . .

One afternoon back in 1963 novelist Mark Harris received a telephone call from Sargent Shriver inquiring whether he’d be interested in writing a special report about the Peace Corps. Mark gladly accepted, then waited five months while his loyalty and sanity were investigated (been there, done that), and then went overseas  to West Africa where he wandered around for ten days in a country he called ‘Kongohno’  and then wrote his one-and-only Evaluation Report for Charlie Peters. Mark Harris retells all this in a book entitled, Twentyone Twice published in 1966. The book has two sections. One is about getting through security, the second is about Africa. The fictional name that he used of the West African country he visited is Kongohno…I’m not sure of the actual country, but I believe it is Sierre Leone. Old timers in the Peace Corps might know the real name of the country Mark Harris  visited as a Peace Corps Evaluator in 1964. But who was Mark Harris and why did . . .