Search Results for “Mad Woman Part Six” – Page 11

Remarks of Carrie Hessler-Radelet Acting Director, Peace Corps "Honoring Peace Corps Week in the 21st Century" National Press Club, Washington, D.C.

Feb 27 2014

From The Peace Corps Press Office Remarks of Carrie Hessler-Radelet Acting Director, Peace Corps “Honoring Peace Corps Week in the 21st Century” National Press Club, Washington, D.C. AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY February 27, 2014 I’m honored to join you all today in celebrating Peace Corps Week, which commemorates the anniversary of our founding. Each year, during this week, the Peace Corps community comes together across the nation, and around the world, to renew our commitment to service. It’s great to be here at the National Press Club. Let me tell you what the press had to say about Peace Corps in our early days. In 1961, TIME magazine described the first groups of Volunteers in this way: “Peace Corps Volunteers are patriotic and adventuresome….with the patience of Job, the perseverance of a Saint, and the digestive system of an Ostrich.” Personally, I’m not quite sure what it means to have . . .

Thelma Firestone’s Daughter by William Siegel (Ethiopia 1962-64)

Jan 03 2014

[For all of us of a certain age, seeing the new film Inside Llewyn Davis brings us back to those years and the romance of living in New York City and on the edge of society as we tried to make our way as writers, artists, and folksingers. Within the ranks of the Peace Corps, we have a few very successful professional writers and a few really good guitar players, and one of them, Will Siegel, not only played the guitar professionally, but he is also a successful writer and editor. Will Siegel went to Greenwich Village after his Peace Corps (Ethiopia 1962-64) tour, playing in and hung out at the clubs made famous by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and now dramatized in this new movie featuring a character named Llewyn Davis. In his time in the village, Will performed as “Will Street” at Gerde’s Folk City and The . . .

Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) Morsi’s Chaotic Day in Court

Nov 08 2013

[This comes from the New Yorker webpage] By Peter Hessler http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/11/scenes-from-the-first-day-of-mohamed-morsis-chaotic-trial-in-cairo.html= On my way to Monday’s trial of Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected President of Egypt, and the second former President to be tried on criminal charges during the past two years, I found myself walking next to one of Morsi’s lawyers. His name was Said Hamid, and he was sweating and breathing hard. We were still in the early stages of the security gauntlet that had been set up for the trial. Any journalist or lawyer had to carry a stamped statement of approval from the Cairo Court of Appeals, and then he had to pass through four armed checkpoints and three metal detectors. Nobody was allowed to carry a camera, voice recorder, or cell phone; the state seemed determined to control all digital recordings of this event. Each attendee also had to hike for more than half . . .

Thirty Years Later

Oct 14 2013

by Barbara Carey (India 1966-68) This essay was originally published July 2001 on PeaceCorpsWriters.org, and received the Moritz Thomsen Award in 2002. • “I DON’T UNDERSTAND what is ‘first class’” about this train car, my husband said. I looked around at the dirty, rusty old car, with bent bars on the open window, red betel juice stains on the walls, and the single hard seat in the small cabin. I looked through the bars to the bustling train station, with hawkers, beggars, food and magazine stalls, travelers, crying children, hungry dogs, and all the noise that went along with the bustling activity in the humid Bombay afternoon. I could smell the pungent odor that is always present in India — a combination of rotting garbage, sweaty bodies, and smoke from dung fires. The sights, sounds and smells were coming back to me after thirty years of being away. I suddenly . . .

The Things I Gave Her

Oct 14 2013

by Lisa Kahn Schnell (Ghana 1998–00) The following work was first published at PeaceCorpsWriters.org in January, 2004. In 2005 it was the winner of the Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award. • THE FIRST THING I GAVE GENVIEVE was a pile of my clothes to wash. The shirts and trousers were red with dust from day-long bus rides and bike rides, and from nine weeks of my swirl-and-rinse washing. I gave her my full attention as she showed me how to wash thoroughly, with merciless, strong arms, two basins of water and a small bar of soap. She returned my clothes to their normal color and left them smelling only of wind. Once I had more than just a mug to eat out of, once I cleaned the lizard poop off my bed and chased the scream-sized flat spiders from behind the kitchen shelves, I gave Genevieve my trust. She . . .

Review of Molly Melching (Senegal 1976-79) However Long the Night

Jun 07 2013

However Long the Night: Molly Melching’s (Senegal 1976-79) Journey to Help Millions of African Women and Girls Triumph by Aimee Molloy HarperCollins/Skoll Foundation, $25.99 252 pages 2013 Reviewed by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993-95) Molly Melching sat by the bedside of her dear old friend and mentor, Alaaji Mustaafa Njaay, who lay dying in his small hut in a Senegalese village. He breathed with difficulty as he whispered to her., “You are trying to accomplish great things, but nothing is going to come easy for you. … Your work will be like electricity: it has a beginning, but no end. Continue to listen and learn from the people, and you will move forward together.” After a long pause, he spoke again, calling her by her Senegalese name. “Sukkeyna Njaay, things will become even more difficult for you. But always remember my words and never lose hope. Lu guddi gi yagg . . .

Review of Paul Mathes (Colombia 1964-66) To Know the Rainforest

May 19 2013

To Know the Rainforest (Peace Corps Novel) by Paul Mathes (Colombia 1964–66) iUniverse $18.95 (paperback); $22.00 (hardcover); $3.99 (Kindle) 309 pages 2012 Reviewed by Dennis Grubb (Colombia 1961-63) “This was life. This is why he joined the Peace Corps .The could be danger ahead, but the possibility was what made it interesting …..Maybe I am no longer the kid I used to be. Maybe I am becoming a different person ….But what would the Peace Corps brass think about all this-if I they ever found out. No matter, he told himself. I am here to help Colombians; that’s what I am doing.”Colombian settings in books written by former Peace Corps Volunteers, or RPCVs as we are known are few and far between. Paul Mathes, an RPCV , Colombia 1964-66, self-published “To Know the Rainforest”, is an action /adventure novel incorporating the three well-worn Latin America and Colombia themes: poverty, land and . . .

Review of Rhoda and Earle Brooks' (Ecuador 1962-64)The Barrios of Manta: A Personal Account of the Peace Corps in Ecuador

May 16 2013

The Barrios of Manta: A Personal Account of the Peace Corps in Ecuador by Rhoda and Earle Brooks (Ecuador 1962–64) Untreed Reads $4.99 (Kindle) 324 pages (estimated print length) July 2012 Reviewed by Jeff Fearnside (Kazakhstan 2002–04) Originally published by New American Library in 1965, The Barrios of Manta was republished last year as an eBook in honor of the Peace Corps’ 50th anniversary. It remains not only an important document of the Peace Corps’ first work in Ecuador but also an engaging portrait of a fascinating couple, Rhoda and Earle Brooks, the married Volunteers who lived in one of the poorest barrios in the drought-stricken fishing port of Manta from 1962 to 1964. The problems the Brookses faced, the many resourceful ways they solved them, and the occasional failures they met are all relevant to the work of Volunteers today, and should be of interest to anyone who has . . .

A Writer Writes: The Peace Corps in Israel

May 15 2013

[According to former Peace Corps Evaluator and historian Stanley Meisler (PC/HQ 1963-65), author of When The World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and Its First Fifty Years the Peace Corps did go to Israel, at least briefly. Stan wrote to me: “To punish India for battling Pakistan over Kashmir, LBJ held up a group of PCVs heading there in 1965. They shuttled from Israel to Guam to the Philippines for six weeks until LBJ gave in to Shriver and allowed them to go to India. Before that event, PCVs in Ethiopia went to Israel. Dick Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64) reminds me that a number of Ethie Is did their 1963 summer project in Israel working on a kibbutz. This was arranged by Harris Wofford (Ethiopia CD 1962-64). In this “A Writer Writes” essay, Bob Cisco writes about his recent trip, last month, to Israel and what he found after all these years.] The . . .

A Writer Writes: Teachers Room Sex Farce in Nigeria

May 01 2013

Teachers Room Sex Farce by Larry Lesser (Nigeria 1964-65) [Note: The author maintains that this is a true story except that he’s changed everybody’s names except his own and his then-wife’s. No need to change their names because they come out smelling like a rose.] • It’s January 1964 when Harriet and I arrive in newly independent Nigeria, peacefully unyoked from British rule. We’re Peace Corps Volunteers, deployed as teachers at the Government Technical Institute (GTI) in the provincial capital of Enugu. Our school is preparing young Nigerian men for careers in engineering and business. Our principal is ex-RAF wing commander Maddox, who resembles the caricature Colonel Blimp in physiognomy and demeanor. The deputy principal is a Nigerian named Otuagbo. More than half of the faculty are expatriates, representing an assortment of Anglophone nationalities … including the two American PCVs, Harriet and me. Nigeria is being hailed for its successful . . .

Mary-Ann Tirone Smith (Cameroon 1965-67)

Mar 08 2013

This is from “Run to the Roundhouse, Nellie” an online journal about memoir. Melissa Shook is the editor. Mary-Ann Tirone Smith (Cameroon 1965-67) Interview by Melissa Shook I’ve read Mary-Ann Tirone Smith’s ambitious and skillfully crafted memoir, Girls of Tender Age, three times. Forty-seven chapters of varying lengths, 275 pages, crammed with divergent, interweaving stories located in a neighborhood where “you eat guinea food, drink harp beer, ostracize the frogs (since, as the most recent immigrants, they are at the bottom of the pecking order)” in a city, Hartford, Connecticut, where each Catholic church serves a distinctly separate ethnic group. Undoubtedly different readers will find specific threads of particular interest. Mine is in the family, with emphasis on the daughter/author capable of transmitting so much information, including the foibles of her mother, who is given to assigning blame and on the verge of a nervous breakdown until she starts working and . . .

A Writer Writes: Mark G. Wentling (Honduras 1967-69 & Togo 1970-73)

Feb 26 2013

A Writer Writes Mark G. Wentling (Honduras 1967-69 & Togo 1970-73) was a Peace Corps Volunteer and in Gabon and Niger Peace Corps staff. He then joined USAID in 1977 and served in Niamey, Conakry, Lome, Mogadishu, Dar es Salaam before retiring from the U.S. Senior Foreign Service in 1996. Since retiring, he has worked for USAID as its Senior Advisor for the Great Lakes, and as its Country Program Manager for Niger and Burkina Faso. He has also worked in Africa for U.S. Non-Governmental Organizations and he is currently Country Director for Plan in Burkina Faso. On September 20, he marked 42 years in Africa. He has worked in, or visited, all 54 African countries. He has six children and hails from Kansas. His novel, Africa’s Embrace, is scheduled to be published this year. FORTY-SIX YEARS IN THE MAKING: MY FIRST PEACE CORPS STORY by Mark G. Wentling February . . .

JFK Creates The Peace Corps

Jan 30 2013

[Over the next month or so–as we reach the anniversary of the Peace Corps–I thought I might relate some tales of how the Peace Corps was established. Let’s begin with Kennedy and his involvement in the agency that he would create, and what many people think was his greatest achievement, and which all of you were part of making a reality.] Kennedy Learns about the Peace Corps JFK’s first direct association with the Peace Corps came on February 21, 1960. He was on a college television show called “College News Conference” and someone asked about the “Point Four Youth Corps.” Kennedy said he didn’t know what the legislative proposal was. Afterwards, he told aide Richard Goodwin to research the idea. Goodwin, who was the Kennedy link with the “brain trust” at Harvard, wrote to Archibald Cox at the university’s law school about the idea. Then in April and May of . . .

Puta Caballo

Dec 04 2012

Puta Caballo by Miguel Lanigan (Colombia 1961–63) About horses, I knew not much. The few I had ridden back in the States were beaten down robots one finds in rental stables — the giddy-up-go plodders that get you from A to B and back again. The horse the Colombian stable hands were leading up from the stalls below was a trembling, brown, mass of quivering muscle. The beast I was to ride furiously jerked his head from side to side; the whites of his eyes showed he did not want to be ridden — earlier riders had done him too much harm. How, I lamented to myself, had I gotten myself into this unhappy and dangerous situation I was facing. . . . Back in 1961, I had it made in Washington, D.C.: I was twenty-two, driving a black MGA sports car, was a co-chairman of the debutante committee, had . . .

Training on Campus in the U.S. of A.

Oct 18 2012

This is a short piece on Training that Marian Beil and I published years ago on our www.peacecorpswriters.org site. It is another view on Training, this time on a college campus. John Krauskopf (Iran 1965-67) served as a Peace Corps Volunteer for two year in Ahwaz, the provincial capital of the province of Khuzistan, part of the Mesopotamian Delta. He taught English in a boy’s high school, ran a language enrichment program, and organized English instruction for more than 400 teachers and staff of the provincial office of education. Later he worked as a Peace Corps Trainer for two Iran TEFL programs, in the U.S. and Iran. — J. C. • Tequila and Temblors by John Krauskopf (Iran 1965–67) PEACE CORPS TRAINING was intensive and stressful. Superficially, it seemed a lot like the college culture most of us had recently left. Walking around the University of Texas campus in Austin had a . . .

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