Search Results for “Mad woman Part Three” – Page 4

Connor H. O’Brien (Ukraine) Peace Corps Volunteer says: Choose violence

Apr 28 2023

Why words like ‘diplomacy,’ ‘ceasefire’ and ‘negotiations’ are such rubbish in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine The EAGLE American University I will never forget the day I arrived in Ukraine to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer. It was a cool September afternoon, several months after I graduated from American University. After landing in Kyiv, my fellow Americans and I were whisked off to the northern city of Chernihiv for orientation. On the bus ride, as we fought against jet lag and looked out upon expansive fields of wheat, a Ukrainian woman who worked for the Peace Corps addressed us. She explained that our orientation would be in an old Soviet-era hotel and that we needed to put our luggage in the basement upon arrival. She went on to explain that the basement was built to be a bomb shelter during the Cold War. . . .

One Day in Ethiopia

Apr 26 2023

This is a letter I wrote when I was a PCV in Ethiopia. It was published in the collection Letters From The Peace Corps in 1964, selected and edited by Iris Luce. She wrote in her introduction to her book. It was my good fortune one evening to be seated with the wife of Senator J. William Fulbright, whose daughter was working here in Washington at Peace Corps Headquarters. Mrs. Fulbright suggested that someone should compile a collection of letters from Peace Corps Volunteers in the field to give Americans a firsthand report on the triumphs and the hardships that these people have experienced while working in the Corps “One Day in Ethiopia” was a letter I had written home to my family and friends, several at the agency in Washington that Iris Luce found and included. In her introduction to the chapter, “One Day in Ethiopia,” she wrote: . . .

A Conversation with Jody Olsen, Former Peace Corps Director

Apr 05 2023

Women’s Economic Empowerment and the Peace Corps – A Conversation with Jody Olsen, Former Peace Corps Director Interviewed Held on March 8, 2019 Edited for this blog Dr. Olsen served as a volunteer in Tunisia in the late 1960s, and she held various leadership positions throughout the agency in the ’80s, the ’90s, and 2000s. And between that time she spent time as a visiting professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore School of Social Work, as well as the director of the university’s Global Education Initiatives. The moderator is CSIS Senior Associate Nina Easton chair of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women International Summit and the co-chair of the Fortune Global Forum. Nina Easton: OK, hands up: How many former Peace Corps volunteers do we have here? Ooh. (Cheers, applause.) OK. (Applause.) And, Jody, thank you for your service. Jody Olsen: Well, thank you. Nina Easton: I warned you that we . . .

Saving the Planet by Kathleen Coskran (Ethiopia)

Mar 26 2023

Saving the Planet By Kathleen Coskran (Ethiopia 1965-67) The title of the Westminster Town Hall Forum in Minneapolis was “Can We Save Our Planet?” The speaker, Carl Pope, former Executive Director and Chairman of the Sierra Club, was asked, “What can we do to halt the population explosion that threatens the planet?” Pope’s answer: “Educate girls.” I nearly jumped out of my chair to shout, YES! I had recently returned from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where I attended a gathering of 130 girls and young women, some still in secondary school, and others who had been able to finish secondary school and go on to college and university because of Resources for the Enrichment of African Lives (REAL, real-africa.org). REAL was founded by Tsehai Wodajo, from Nedjo, Ethiopia. Tsehai knew first hand what it took to keep a girl from a poor family in school. In 1970, 8th grader Tsehai wrote . . .

Remembering the Murder of PCV Deborah Gardner (Tonga)

Mar 17 2023

In the late Nineties, shortly after I had taken over the job of manager of the New York Recruitment Office for the Peace Corps, I got a call from a reporter at the New York Observer newspaper. I thought he was calling to ask me about the Peace Corps and to write an article about the agency. Well, in a way he was, but he started by asking if I knew anything about the murder of a young PCV woman in Tonga in 1975. The reporter’s name was Philip Weiss and he didn’t realize he had stumbled on an RPCV who was fascinated by the history of the Peace Corps and obsessively collected PCV stories. Phil Weiss was also obsessed, but by the murder of this PCV in Tonga. In 1978, when he was 22 and backpacking around the world, he had crashed with a Peace Corps Volunteer in Samoa named . . .

A Cold War Tale That Ended Peacefully by George Brose (Tanzania)

Mar 15 2023

. . . or I’ll Show You My Country’s Nobel Laureate if You Show Me Yours by George Brose (Tanzania 1965-67) After my two years of Peace Corps service in Moshi, Tanzania and Loitokitok, Kenya, I was drafted into the US Army in April, 1968. We had been told in Peace Corps training that former Peace Corps Volunteers could not serve in intelligence units and likewise former intel specialists could not go into the Peace Corps for a number of years after leaving either service. It was supposedly federal law. After a year of training in German at the Army Language School in Arlington, VA, I was sent to Germany, but not yet assigned to a unit over there. When I got to Heidelberg I was told I would be sent to an intel unit on the East German border. When I heard that I politely told the . . .

Once Again: Five Great Short Stories About the Peace Corps Experience

Mar 13 2023

Five Great Short Stories About the Peace Corps Experience The Mending Fields by Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975–76) I WAS ASSIGNED to the Island of Saint Kit in the West Indies. Once on an inter-island plane, I sat across the aisle from one of my new colleagues, an unfriendly, overserious young woman. She was twenty-four, twenty-five . . . we were all twenty-four, twenty-five. I didn’t know her much or like her. As the plane banked over the island, she pressed against the window, staring down at the landscape. I couldn’t see much of her face, just enough really to recognize an expression of pain. Below us spread an endless manicured lawn, bright green and lush of sugarcane, the island’s main source of income. Each field planted carefully to control erosion. Until that year, Saint Kit’s precious volcanic soil had been bleeding into the sea; somehow they had resolved . . .

Dan Douglas (Botswana) found the love of his life in the Peace Corps

Mar 05 2023

Dan Douglas first told this story on stage at the Des Moines Storytellers Project’s “Love.” The Des Moines Storytellers Project is a series of storytelling events in which community members work with Register journalists to tell true, first-person stories live on stage. Dan traveled the world in search of adventure. He also found the love of his life. In January 1969, I was sitting in the staff room at a secondary school in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana in southern Africa, waiting for the first staff meeting of the term to start. I was a brand-new Peace Corps volunteer assigned to teach English and history. I had just finished a master’s degree in history at the University of Missouri and decided to take a break from academia and see a bit of the world — hence the Peace Corps. I had spent the previous summer living with my parents . . .

The Legendary PCV Post Card

Feb 25 2023

Marjorie Mitchelmore was a twenty-three-year-old magna cum laude graduate of Smith College when she became one of the first people to apply in 1961 to the new Peace Corps. She was attractive, funny, and a smart woman and was selected to go to Nigeria. After seven weeks of training at Harvard, her group flew to Nigeria. There Marjorie and the other Trainees were to complete the second phase of their teacher training at University College at Ibadan, fifty miles north of Lagos, the capital of Nigeria. By all accounts, she was an outstanding Trainee. Then on the evening of October 13, 1961, she wrote a postcard to her boyfriend in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Here is what she had to say: Dear Bobbo: Don’t be furious at getting a postcard. I promise a letter next time. I wanted you to see the incredible and fascinating city we were in. With all the . . .

“Remembering Doctor Giovanni Balletto” by George Brose (Tanzania)

Dec 13 2022

On November 18, 2022 John Coyne wrote an entry on this site talking about the “give away books” at his public library. I was inspired to follow up with this piece. Remembering Giovanni Balletto by George Brose Tanzania (1966-67) John: I, too, forage for books on the give away rack in our library where I live now in Comox, British Columbia. Recently my Peace Corps experience came into play with those free books. But, to see the connection, you will have to be patient and let me tell the lead in to acquiring a free book at my library. In the Peace Corps, in 1966-67, I was stationed in Moshi, Tanzania at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and I often climbed the mountain with an aging Italian doctor, Giovanni Balletto. Dr. Balletto ran a small health clinic on the Marangu Road that led up to where most of . . .

“Memoirs of a White Savior” by Jonathan Zimmerman (Nepal)

Dec 10 2022

Thanks for the ‘head’s up’ from Alana DeJoseph’s (Mali 1992–94) by Jonathan Zimmerman (Nepal 1983-85) Published in Liberties Fall 2022 • Last year, a student came to my office hours to discuss her post-graduation plans. She said she wanted to travel, teach, and write. “How about joining the Peace Corps?” I suggested. She grimaced. “The Peace Corps is problematic,” she said. I replied the way I always do when a student uses that all-purpose put-down. “What’s the problem?” I asked. “I don’t want to be a white savior,” she explained. “That’s pretty much the worst thing you can be.” Indeed it is. The term “white savior” became commonplace in 2012, when the Nigerian-American writer and photographer Teju Cole issued a series of tweets — later expanded into an article in The Atlantic — denouncing American do-gooder campaigns overseas, especially in Africa. His immediate target was the “KONY 2012” video . . .

Peter Hessler Writes About China’s Covid 19 in Current New Yorker

Dec 06 2022

Illustration by Anson Chan Do you personally know anybody who has been infected with covid-19? In most parts of the world, the question is absurd—it makes more sense to ask, “Do you know anybody who has not been infected?” But, recently, on a survey that I sent to former students in China, this was one of my questions. I taught these students from 1996 to 1998, when I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in southwestern China, and since then we’ve stayed in close touch. For nearly a decade, I’ve sent them annual surveys, and this year I was curious to know more about their pandemic experiences. Of forty respondents, none had been infected. Nobody had had a case in his or her household, and there were also no infections among close relatives—parents, spouses, children, or siblings. Only six personally knew anybody who had tested positive for covid. For three of these respondents, the . . .

“Ask Not . . . ” by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia)

Nov 22 2022

by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) • In 1963, I became a Peace Corps Volunteer, assigned to La Plata, a small village of some 3,000 residents nestled at the 4,000 feet level of Colombia’s Andean mountains. It had no telephone systems, though there were episodic telegraphic services. On what soon would became a fateful morning of November 22, 1963, I had taken a bus into the Departmental capital, Neiva, to obtain some governmental authorizations of Community Development Funds for one of our projects. Like most every bus in our area, firmly set above the driver’s head were three pictures with Christmas tree lights around them: Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and President John F. Kennedy. Later in the afternoon, about 3:30 PM or so, before boarding the bus for the trip back, I stopped at a newsstand to see if it had a recent copy of Time Magazine. There was one copy . . .

Establishing the Peace Corps, March 1, 1961

Nov 04 2022

This article I wrote in 1999 and I repost it now so new Volunteers will know the early history of their agency. JC Let me start with a quote from Gerard T. Rice’s book, The Bold Experiment: JFK’s Peace Corps: In 1961 John F. Kennedy took two risky and conflicting initiatives in the Third World. One was to send five hundred additional military advisers into South Vietnam; by 1963 there would be seventeen thousand such advisers. The other was to send five hundred young Americans to teach in the schools and work in the fields of eight developing countries. These were Peace Corps Volunteers. By 1963 there would be seven thousands of them in forty-four countries. Vietnam scarred the American psyche, leaving memories of pain and defeat. But Kennedy’s other initiative inspired, and continued to inspire, hope and understanding among Americans and the rest of the world. In that sense, . . .

Review — THE BAD ANGEL BROTHERS by Paul Theroux (Malawi)

Oct 03 2022

The Bad Angel Brothers by Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65)) ‎Mariner Books Publisher ‎352 pages September 2022 $14.99 (Kindle); $26.09 (Hardcover), $22.35 or 1 credit (Audiobook) Reviewed by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971-73) • Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) is probably the most prolific of the Returned Peace Corps writers, with 33 works in fiction and 53 books overall. As with his latest book, I wasn’t enthusiastic about reading it, as I prefer his nonfiction travel stories. But just as was the case reading the life of the aging surfer in Hawaii in Under the Wave of Waimae (2021), he does a stellar job developing the characters in this psychological thriller. This most recent book is a classic tale of a dysfunctional family. A younger brother’s rivalry with his older brother, Frank, a domineering brother and a well-known lawyer in their small community in Massachusetts. Frank also has a propensity to come up with . . .

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