Search Results for “Mad Woman Part two” – Page 28

Aïssa

May 24 2010

by Margot Miller (Niger 1972–74) First published on the blog of PeaceCorpsWriters.org on October 12, 2005 • UNDER MY MOSQUITO NET, I’d barely slept an hour when I stirred awake. I heard soft footsteps and the sound of scraping near the wall. I pulled the mosquito net up and looked around, disoriented. My clock was gone. I took myself indoors where it was too hot to sleep. The next night I moved back outdoors, locking the front door and putting the key under my pillow. Perhaps I should report the incident to the police. I remembered that I had been told something about the Chief of Police living across the street. When I found the time to go across the street, at the doorway, I clapped to signal my presence. A tall, slim young woman came to the door. She had warm brown eyes and beautiful, straight white teeth that . . .

Who Was The First Peace Corps Volunteer?

Apr 18 2010

Lately there has been endless talk among RPCVs about who was the first PCV. Perhaps I’m partially to blame with my blogging about the early days of the Peace Corps. Or is it because we are reaching the milestone of the 50? Some RPCVs are drawing on faulty memories, old plane tickets, anecdotal incidents, typewritten letters from Shriver, and yellow copies of telegrams folded and unfolded over the last fifty years, to make their historical (if not hysterical) claim. “Yes, it was I! I was the first PCV!” Well, let me take another tact. Let me suggest to you who really was the first Volunteer. We can end the guessing game, solve the mystery, and all go on and argue about something else. As we said back in the Sixties: Here’s the skinny. The Peace Corps began in a light drizzle at 2 a.m. in the early morning of October . . .

Nigeria on My Mind. Again.

Apr 16 2010

Published author John Sherman (Nigeria/Biafra 1966–67; Malawi 1967–68; staff: PC/Washington 1970–71, 1975–77; PC/Ghana 1971–73) has a multi-faceted publishing company in Indiana that offers editorial services, and assists others publish and market their books. He also does pro bono work for charitable organizations, and keeps close attention on Africa, particularly Nigeria where he once was a PCV. Recently he returned to his first Peace Corps country and was kind enough to send me this “going home” account for our site. • IT’S ALWAYS A CHALLENGE to write about Nigeria. So much to say. Lamenting. Complaining. Defending. Speaking with sadness, rage, and excitement, often in the same conversation, hell, in the same sentence, about that wild, crazy, wonderful country. Nigeria and I have been in this dysfunctional, on-again/off-again relationship ever since I was a college senior. At times, I’ve tried to push it away, but failed, leaving it an integral part of . . .

Tony D'Souza In India Reviews Paul Theroux's A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta

Apr 06 2010

Reviewer Tony D’Souza’s novel, Whiteman, received the Peace Corps Writers Maria Thomas Prize for Fiction, and is loosely based on his Peace Corps service in an Ivory Coast headed for civil war. His second novel, The Konkans, is loosely based on his mother’s Peace Corps service in India from 1969 to 1970 where she met and married his father. Tony has contributed fiction and essays to The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, Outside, Granta, McSweeney’s, the O. Henry Awards, and Best American Fantasy, and is the recipient of two NEA Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and gold and silver medals from the Florida Book Awards. He lives in Sarasota, FL, with his wife Jessyka and two young children, Gwen, 18 months, and Rohan, 6 months. The D’Souzas are spending the next few months traveling in India. Here, Tony reviews Paul Theroux’s A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta. • A Dead Hand: . . .

How Do You Say Nicholas D. Kristof In Your HCN Language?

Mar 15 2010

This is a terrific piece by Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) that is on the website of The New Yorker as of today, March 15, 2010. Peter takes on NYTIMES writer Nicholas Kristof and his piece the other day that stirred a lot of interest among RPCVs who have been there, done that, and know how to say more than “doorknob” in their host country language. Read it, and if you haven’t read Warren Wiggins’ comments about what the founders of the Peace Corps were trying to do 50 years ago, read his comments, too. And also, if you are taking a class from John Brown at Georgetown University, give him an F. He’s like a lot of those foreign service officers we know overseas. You know, the ones we called, “dumb f****! in our host country language. Here’s Peter’s piece: “Here’s a one-word language test to measure whether someone really knows a foreign country and culture: . . .

The Peace Corps On Day One: #19 Famous Women And The Man Men At Peace Corps HQ

Mar 13 2010

Arriving for work on or before March 1, 1961, the day President Kennedy signed the executive order establishing the Peace Corps, were a few women who were early volunteer staffers and who would become famous in those first years of the agency. The majority of these women were well connected by family or friends to Shriver and eager to work at the Peace Corps, the shining star of Kennedy’s administration. The Peace Corps was the ‘hot’ agency and everyone, of course, wanted to be connected to Kennedy–if they couldn’t be in the White House–they wanted to be with Shriver and the Peace Corps. The women at the time were mostly ‘second class’ citizens in the world-of-work. They were not, for example, sitting at the ‘big conference table” at Senior Staff meetings. Looking at old black-and-photos of Peace Corps HQ meetings, you might see that Elizabeth (Betty) Forsling Harris had wedged herself into the group, but that . . .

Review: New Novel By Joseph Monninger (Burkina Faso, 1975-77)

Mar 04 2010

Reviewer Jan Worth-Nelson is the author of Night Blind — a Peace Corps novel. Her most recent publication, “Ordinary Dirt,” was part of a Driftwood special issue featuring poems of exactly 100 words. Her works of more than 100 words — essays, fiction, poems and reviews — have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, East Village Magazine, Witness, Controlled Burn, Blaze, Dunes Review, Fourth Genre and others. Her manuscript-in-progress is Lost at Angels Gate, a collection of poems attempting to capture her dual life in Flint and Los Angeles. She teaches writing at the University of Michigan/Flint. • Eternal on the Water by Joseph Monninger (Burkina Faso, 1975-77) February, 2010 368 pp. $15.00 Reviewed by Jan Worth-Nelson (Tonga 1976–78) In the past few years I’ve reviewed a number of books by RPCVs whose stories delivered compelling drama, but whose writing left something to be . . .

Review of Thirteen Months Of Sunshine

Jan 20 2010

Reviewer Bryant Wieneke is the author of a series of suspense novels exploring the idea that a practical, effective and far less militaristic American foreign policy may be achieved through Peace Corps-like principles. These novels are available at www.PeaceRosePublishing.com. • Thirteen Months of Sunshine Peace Corps Adventures in Ethiopia 1962–1964 by Patricia Summers-Parish (Ethiopia 1962–64) 199 pages $19.95 Publish America October 2009 Reviewed by Bryant Wieneke (Niger 1974–76) Thirteen Months of Sunshine made me wish I’d been a better Peace Corps Volunteer. Patricia Summers-Parish was living in Milwaukee in the summer of 1962 when she was inspired by President Kennedy to apply for the first Peace Corps program in Ethiopia. Sent to an 8,000-foot-high, overgrown mountain village called Dessie, she taught English to eighth graders in a classroom with no books and innumerable flies. It is the story of many Volunteers over the Peace Corps’ 50-year history, but the author’s . . .

Review of Vello Vikerkaar's Inherit the Family: Marrying Into Eastern Europe

Jan 19 2010

Reviewer Tony D’Souza’s first novel, Whiteman, received the Peace Corps Writers Maria Thomas Prize for Fiction, and is loosely based on his Peace Corps service in an Ivory Coast headed for civil war. His second novel, The Konkans, is loosely based on his mother’s Peace Corps service in India from 1969 to 1970 where she met and married his father. Tony has contributed fiction and essays to The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, Outside, Granta, McSweeney’s, the O. Henry Awards, and Best American Fantasy, and is the recipient of two NEA Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and gold and silver medals from the Florida Book Awards. He lives in Sarasota, FL, with his wife Jessyka and two young children, Gwen, 15 months, and Rohan, 5 months. The D’Souzas will be spending the next few months traveling in India. Here, Tony reviews Vello Vikerkaar’s Inherit the Family: Marrying Into Eastern Europe. The author . . .

The Curious Case of Peace Corps Evaluator Mark Harris

Dec 23 2009

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 . . .

Colombia One's Country Director And The White Squall

Dec 21 2009

Colombia I (1961-63) group was the first to go to Peace Corps Training and these PCVs had the first of the many famous CDs who served in the agency. In some ways their director was the most famous of all. His name was Christopher Sheldon and he is the sort of person legends are made of, and books written about. In fact, a book and a movie were written about Christopher Sheldon. If it had been his book, it would have been a love story about himself and his wife, and how they met on Capt. Irving Johnson’s last voyage around the globe, and how his new bride perished at sea. It was typical of Shriver to select someone like Chris Sheldon to be a CD, but it was Mary Bunting who suggested Chris Sheldon to Shriver. Bunting was on the Peace Corps Advisor Board. She was also the President of Radcliffe College, and the woman responsible for fully . . .

RPCV Arsenault In The Hartford Courant On Sunday

Nov 23 2009

Interview by Carole Goldberg When Emily Arsenault was growing up in Cheshire, a teacher told the fifth-grader she was very good at writing. Give that teacher an A. At age 11, Arsenault, a fan of ghost stories and books for girls, wrote her first novel, about a summer camp, with the idea of getting published. But a year later, she said in a recent telephone conversation from her home in Shelburne Falls, Mass., she realized, “This isn’t very good.” As an adult, she tried again but also judged that young adult novel “not ready for prime time.” This fall, however, Arsenault, now 33, has published her debut novel, “The Broken Teaglass,” and it is an accomplished work. It is set at a staid dictionary company not unlike Merriam-Webster in Springfield, where she once worked. Peopled by quirky characters and centered on a mysterious killing – although it’s not a mystery . . .

Review: Memoir of Colombia RPCV Paul Arfin

Sep 28 2009

Portrait of a Peace Corps Gringo by Paul Arfin, self-published with BookSurge in August, is reviewed here by Honduras RPCV Barbara E. Joe, author of Triumph & Hope: Golden Years with the Peace Corps in Honduras, selected as Best Peace Corps Memoir of 2008 by Peace Corps Writers and Best New Non-Fiction Finalist, National Indie Excellence Awards. Barbara works as a Spanish interpreter, translator, and freelance writer in Washington, DC. • Portrait of a Peace Corps Gringo by Paul Arfin (Colombia 1963–65) BookSurge August 2009 378 pages $17.99 Reviewed by Barbara Joe (Honduras 2000–03) In Portrait of a Peace Corps Gringo by Paul Arfin, I looked forward to becoming reacquainted with Colombia, where I’d spent two teenage years. This book, however, turned out to be more autobiography than Peace Corps memoir. Peace Corps service is often valuable in shaping young people’s future. For Arfin, this pattern held true. While the author . . .

A PCV Death In Tanzania

Sep 09 2009

In the fall of 1964, just back from Ethiopia and working for the Division of Volunteer Support, I met Peverley Dennett and Bill Kinsey during their training program at Syracuse University. Bill had been assigned to Malawi and Peppy [as Peverley was called] to Tanzania. In those early years of Peace Corps Training groups were often trained together on college campuses, but that decision was changed because too many Trainees from different projects were meeting up and falling in love. The Peace Corps might be the “greatest job you’ll ever love” but the Peace Corps didn’t want you “falling in love” during Training.] Bill and Peverley were two young goodlooking kids just out of college. Bill, as I recall, had a bright smile, blond hair cut into a crew cut, an All-American looks. Peverley was sweet and shy and very pretty. They were the picture of what Peace Corps Volunteers . . .

Novelist Abraham Verghese Writes of Addis Ababa

Jul 13 2009

This is an interview I did recently for the Ethiopia & Eritrea RPCVs newsletter (The Herald) that I thought would-be writers would like to read. Dr. Abraham Verghese used aspects of his own life story to write this novel, setting his narrative in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and the U.S. Dr. Verghese is not only a noted doctor, he is also a well published writer of fiction and non-fiction. jc • Abraham Verghese was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and is the Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine. In February 2009, Knopf published his first novel, Cutting for Stone. The novel is set in Addis Ababa. Dr. Verghese is also the author of two books of non-fiction, My Own Country and The Tennis Partner. Dr. Verghese began his medical training in Ethiopia, but his . . .

Search Results For -Mad Woman Part two