Peace Corps Worldwide

  PCV Bernice Heiderman (Comoros 2018) died of undiagnosed malaria in 2018. Please read the article Peace Corps faces questions over another Volunteer death (Comoros) posted here in Peace Corps Worldwide. The New York Times published this article, October 2, 2020. The article quotes from the Inspector General of the Peace Corps’ report.  Her parents are preparing to sue the agency over the death of their daughter.  As the Peace Corps evidently plans to send a new contingent of Volunteers overseas, when countries are safe and are willing to welcome new PCVS, the problems identified by the OIG become even more important to resolve.   Click here to read the entire OIG report. Here is the Executive summary: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY “This report provides the results of our review of the circumstances surrounding the death of Peace Corps Volunteer Bernice Heiderman (PCV Heiderman) on January 9, 2018, in Comoros. PCV Heiderman died . . .

  Letter to the Editor The New York Times October 5, 2020   This relates to Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s, “As Peace Corps Gears Up to Redeploy, Its Health Care is Questioned,” that appeared in our Sunday home delivery edition of The New York Times on October 4, and was printed digitally October 2, revised October 3.  The story is an excellent, if saddening report. Two people are completely absent from the article. The director of the Peace Corps in the Comoros and the Peace Corps Director herself, Josephine Olsen. During the formative years of the Peace Corps, 1961-66, volunteer deaths and serious injuries were the responsibility of the Peace Corps Director himself, Sargent Shriver, and myself as founding counsel. The only Peace Corps Washington staff person mentioned in the article is the regional director, a third or fourth ranking official. I happened to be the Senior Duty Officer on a weekend when . . .

Directed by Alana DeJoseph (Mali 1992-94) Reviewed by Kathleen Coskran (Ethiopia 1965-67) • A Towering Task: The Story of the Peace Corps took on a towering task: to tell the story of a 57-year-old government agency where virtually all the people involved were short-timers. Volunteers served two  years, with a few, very few, extending to a third year, and staff were limited to 5 years of service. What RPCVs like me remember is our window of service in the country we served, but the story is much bigger than a single slice of time. Director Alana DeJoseph obviously knows that the best way to portray history is through the stories of participants threaded together, and makes generous use of interviews and film clips beginning with those present at the creation and including volunteers, host country nationals, and staff of every era. It opens with Sarge Shriver earnestly explaining the purpose of the Peace Corps, then moves to John . . .

  By Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) New Yorker Magazine October 5, 2020 On my second visit to the site of the former Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, at the intersection of New China Road and Development Road, in central Wuhan, I wore a mask and a pair of sunglasses with a loose frame. It was late August, and three security guards in black uniforms sat at the entrance. They examined my passport, checked my temperature, and asked me to scan a QR code that connected to a registration system. The system, though, required a national I.D. number, and the guards seemed uncertain what to do with a foreigner. I handed over the sunglasses and explained that they needed to be repaired. The earliest documented clusters of coronavirus infections had occurred in the Huanan market. During my first visit, a week earlier, I had left after attracting the attention of a man . . .

  Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl Ny Jonathan Slaght (Russia 1999—02) Ferrar, Straus and Giroux August 2020 358 pages $28.00 (Hardcover) Reviewed by: John C. Rude (Ethiopia 1962-64) • This haunting memoir by a former Peace Corps volunteer is not about his Peace Corps experience. Rather, it is a book that explores the mind and heart of the wilderness that could have come from the pen of Jack London, had the author lived a century later and been a volunteer. This tale of a young American traveling in eastern Russia resembles “Call of the Wild” in its sensitivity to the powerful forces of nature, and its passion for human survival. Yet the author’s modern story chronicles the efforts to save a non-human species — the elusive Blakiston’s fish owl — from extinction. No one is better equipped to tell this . . .

  A 24-year-old volunteer died of undiagnosed malaria on the island nation of Comoros. It was one of at least three deaths since 2009 that have been linked to mistakes by Peace Corps doctors.   By Sheryl Gay Stolberg New York Times Oct. 2, 2020, 5:01 a.m. ET   WASHINGTON — The Peace Corps, which suspended all operations for the first time in its history as the novel coronavirus raced around the globe, is facing renewed questions about the quality of its medical care — in particular, after the death of a 24-year-old volunteer from undiagnosed malaria — as it prepares to send volunteers back into the field. The volunteer, Bernice Heiderman, died alone in a hotel room on the island nation of Comoros off Africa’s east coast in January 2018, after sending desperate text messages to her family. Ms. Heiderman, of Inverness, Ill., told them her Peace Corps doctor was not taking seriously . . .

  October 1, 2020 by Scott Brinton (Bulgaria 1991–93) Long Island Herald Community Newspapers   My soul is aching. As the Covid-19 death toll surpassed 200,000 last week, we mourned Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of America’s greatest daughters — an incredible mind with a voracious appetite for learning, a fearless, indomitable advocate for women’s rights and, quite simply, a good and decent human being, with an old-school sense of politeness that enabled her to deliver a penetrating verbal jab without personal insult. Her death at age 87 came only two months after the passing of U.S. Rep. John Lewis, who was 80. Together they represented a particular brand of leadership: strength obtained not through bullying, but through the depth of their moral conviction, their sense of justice and their commitment to telling the truth under all circumstances. Each helped create a more equal society and a more . . .

  Mary Kate Lowndes, RPCV (Honduras 1989–91) and member of Peace Corps staff in Washington, has been indicted on one felony and three misdemeanor voter fraud charges CONCORD, NH — A Washington, D.C., woman has been indicted on four voter fraud charges after being accused of wrongfully registering to vote in New Hampshire in 2016 and voting during the 2018 general election, according to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office. Mary Kate Lowndes, 57,  was indicted on a felony wrongful voting charge, two counts of misdemeanor wrongful voting, and a single count of misusing an absentee ballot. According to prosecutors, Lowndes filed a voter registration form in 2016 claiming to be domiciled at a shopping center on Crystal Avenue in Derry when she actually lived outside of New Hampshire, a misdemeanor charge. Investigators accused her of requesting and receiving an absentee ballot in the Nov. 6, 2018, general election and then . . .

The Long Arc of the Universe: Travels Beyond the Pale by Kathleen Stocking (Thailand 2006-07; Romania 2010-12) Stocking Press 384 pages’ January 2016 $19.95 (Paperback)   Reviewed by Steve Kaffen (Russia 1994-96) The Long Arc of the Universe is a well-written, detailed, example-filled, and meaningful account of the author’s travels on four continents over a span of 16 years. With the premise that there is kindness in the world, Kathleen Stocking seeks to affirm and experience her premise. It takes her from the prisons of California to two Peace Corps volunteer tours and, in the last chapter, home. I was struck by her methodology. Rather than seek out kindness, she crafted ways to give it, and one of the fascinations of the book is learning how her kindness is perceived and flows back to her. The results energize her to continue her outreach in another country and continent. In the last . . .