Search Results for “Eres Tu” – Page 79

Anne Pellicciotto (Mexico 2010-12) Kickstarter Project To Write Her Book

Nov 05 2013

Anne has hit her Kickstarter goal of $15,000. She wrote me, “Lot’s of generous people – friends and strangers – are interested in my Peace Corps Mexico story. NOW it’s time to shift attention back to the writing and get this book done! However, you can get on-board with this project by reserving an advance-copy of the book and getting an invite to the book launch party this coming year. Your help will allow me to complete, professionally edit, layout the art and photos, and produce a quality finished product to add to the Peace Corps collection. Here’s the link to checkout our progress and the rewards: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2074468560/a-story-of-sustainability-from-south-of-the-border (I had to repost the http to make it work. Anne’s bio: As founder and president of SeeChange, Anne Pellicciotto has 15 years’ experience with systems-level change in diverse environments – from IT transformation to reorganization, new program launch to board alignment. In . . .

Peace Corps Writers publishes LITTLE WOMEN OF BAGLAN by Susan Fox

Nov 03 2013

Little Women of Baghlan: The Story of a Nursing School for Girls in Afghanistan, the Peace Corps, and Life Before the Taliban is the true account of Joanne – Jo – Carter who answers the call to service and adventure during an extraordinary time in world history. Her story rivals the excitement, intrigue, and suspense of any novel, unfolding against the backdrop of changing social mores, the Cold War, the Peace Corps, and a country at the crossroads of China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and Iran. When John F. Kennedy delivers a speech in the Senate Chambers on a hot July day in 1957, a young Jo Carter listens from the Senate gallery. In 1967 Jo remembers the now-deceased President Kennedy’s words and is inspired to join the Peace Corps. As a new Peace Corps Volunteer she flies into Afghanistan on March 21, 1968 with her training group. From her plane . . .

Bill Staab (Liberia 1963-65) The Peace Corps' Marathon Man

Nov 01 2013

For those who missed this article in the New York Times (10/29/13), it is a must read story about the volunteer work of Bill Staab (Liberia 1963-65). Thanks to Marnie Mueller ( Ecuador 1963-65) for a ‘heads up.’ Marnie is a runner, by the way, and married to the famous German runner, Fritz Mueller. Bill Staab is an old running friend of Fritz, and Marnie and Fritz have watched Bill over the years as he developed the NYC West Side Runners, a club of primarily working class, hard-laboring immigrants, who after arduous jobs, run long daily workouts in Central and Prospect Parks in preparation for the New York City Marathon. Be prepared to be incredibly moved by this story. Again, thanks to Marnie for letting me know about this article and about the work that Bill Staab has done. Marathon as Melting Pot By LINDSAY CROUSE On a recent foggy Sunday in Central Park, . . .

Review of Harriet Hayes Denison (Tanzania 1966-67) Leopards at My Door

Oct 25 2013

Leopards at My Door, Peace Corps Tanzania 1966-1967 by Harriet Hayes Denison (Tanzania 1966-67) Powell’s Espresso Books, $15 236 pages 2013 Reviewed by Deidre Swesnik (Mali 1996-98) Many Peace Corps stories are filled with hilarious and embarrassing food moments. And Harriet Denison doesn’t disappoint with hers. At the very beginning of Leopards at My Door, Harriet gets dropped off by the Peace Corps Land Rover at her home for the next two years, a secondary school in the relatively bustling town of Mwanza, Tanzania. Right away, she meets Mrs. Makonde, the beloved headmistress of the school, and gets a quick tour of the grounds. Then it’s onto lunch. At lunch with Mrs. Makonde I was self-conscious, trying to please, impress and chat all at once. Politely, I choked down a very spicy bite of tongue stew with rice and decided we’d better settle the housing quickly. You know tongue is . . .

Soledad by Chris Honore’ (Colombia 1967-69)

Oct 15 2013

[Chris Honore’ was born in occupied Denmark, during WWII. After the war, he immigrated to America. He went to public schools and then attended San Jose State University and the University of California, at Berkeley, where he earned a teaching credential, an M.A. and a Ph.D. After teaching high school English for two years, he joined the Peace Corps. He’s a freelance journalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His wife owns a bookstore on Main Street. His son is a cinematographer, living in Southern California.] • SOLEDAD By Chris Honore’ I was thirteen years old when I went to stay with my grandmother. She lived alone in a rambling, two-story farmhouse with a wide wrap-around porch that offered soft views of the road and woods and a sheltered bay just beyond. Not far inland, due east, was the town of Watson. Everything west was ocean, the Pacific, deeply blue and endless. . . .

Second Time Around

Oct 14 2013

by Kathleen Coskran (Ethiopia 1965–67) The following essay was published in September, 2007 at PeaceCorpsWriters.org, and in 2008 received the Moritz Thomsen Award for Best Short Work about the Peace Corps Experience • I JOINED THE PEACE CORPS at 21 because I was restless for adventure and after two years in Ethiopia, discovered that true adventure lies in the relationships and routines of daily life. I was delighted to live in a tiny mud house with the tin roof, thought the sound of roosters in the morning and the whoop of the hyenas at night exotic, learned to prefer fiery food that made me sweat and cry, but the surprise was my students. I fell in love with them — 75 kids in an unlit classroom with mud walls and a tin roof, 75 kids who walked an hour or more to get to school, kids whose parents I never . . .

Maid in Morocco

Oct 14 2013

by Orin Hargraves (Morocco 1980–83) First published at PeaceCorpsWriters.org in March of 2006, this essay was the winner of the 2007 Moritz Thomsen Experience Award • I LEARNED A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO of the death Fatima Meskina, on January 9, 2006. I’m sure that no obituary appeared in any newspaper, and that her death and burial were modest and attended only by a few. But for me — and I expect for a handful of others — her death marked the passing of a legend: in the three years I spent in Morocco she was the most helpful, sometimes the most difficult, the most vivid, and for me personally the most influential person I met. Fatima worked as a maid for a succession of Volunteers in various programs in the middle Atlas town of Azrou. She signed on with Volunteer Jeanne Spoeri in 1977 and got passed down, like . . .

Talking with Mark Wentling(Honduras 1967-69, Togo 1970-73; staff: Togo, Gabon, Niger 1973-77)

Oct 08 2013

Talking with Mark Wentling John Coyne interviews Mark Wentling about his new novel Africa’s Embrace that has just been published by Peace Corps Writers. Africa’s Embrace is Mark Wentling’s (Honduras 1967-69, Togo 1970-73; staff: Togo, Gabon, Niger 1973-77) fictional account of the adventures of a young man named David from Kansas who travels to Africa to follow his destiny, and becomes caught up in a mystical, larger-than-life adventure. . Mark, first congratulations on your novel. How in the world did a PCV in Latin America end up in Africa? I always wanted to go to Africa and was hoping to go there when I first signed up for the Peace Corps. After leaving Honduras in May 1969, I traveled about Europe with two other Honduras PCVs. I returned to Wichita in September 1969 and finished my bachelor’s degree. In May 1970, I re-joined the Peace Corps and did training in . . .

Long, Positive Review of Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975-76) Novel In SF Chronicle

Sep 29 2013

by Dan Zigmond With Vietnam a major trading partner and Russian virtually the second language of Silicon Valley, the intersecting wars of the late 20th century are gradually fading from our collective consciousness. But literature moves at a pace slower than politics. If newspapers are the first draft of history, novels have the luxury of being the second, third or 10th. Great books of the Vietnam War are still appearing, nearly four decades after Tim O’Brien got his start. Now, just as Graham Greene and John le Carre penned the essential novels of the Cold War, so has writer and journalist Bob Shacochis given us a new masterpiece, every bit their equal, that will surely stand as the definitive political thriller of those fragile years of relative peace before Sept. 11, 2001. Shacochis begins “The Woman Who Lost Her Soul” in the largely forgotten U.S. intervention in Haiti in the Clinton years, . . .

Peace Corps Applications Lowest in Decade? True?

Sep 27 2013

[In March, Vocativ, a news website posted this item and it just came my way.] posted by VOCATIV STAFF in SNEAK PEEK “Those who can’t find work, volunteer.” That was a popular idea during the height of the recession, but Vocativ has learned that the number of people applying to serve as volunteers in the Peace Corps is down 35 percent from 2009 and is now the lowest in a decade. As the national unemployment rate hit a record high after the real estate market crash, so did the number of applications to the Peace Corps. 24 months in Tonga? No problem. Build a library in Burkina Faso? Why not. While college seniors scrambled to compete for few entry level jobs, the once for-hippies-only, life-postponing volunteer program offered an alternative stepping stone to adult life. However, that is no longer the case, according to data on applicants and enrolled volunteers . . .

Peace Corps Writers publishes Mark Wentling’s AFRICA’S EMBRACE

Sep 22 2013

Africa’s Embrace is author Mark Wentling’s (Honduras 1967–69, Togo 1970–73; staff: Togo, Gabon, Niger 1973–77) fictional account of the adventures of a young man named David from Kansas who travels to Africa to follow his destiny, and becomes caught up in a mystical, larger-than-life adventure. Upon arrival, he is renamed “Bobovovi” and chosen by the spirit world to ride the “mountain moonbeam” and become “transformed” by an ancient baobab tree. Bobovovi does his best to make his goodwill prevail, but his humanitarian work is fraught with unforeseen, unusual challenges. He moves from one surprising adventure to another, telling an African story unlike any the reader has ever heard before. Africa changes him in unimaginable ways, and those changes are inculcated into the reader in order to teach a wide variety of lessons, helping the reader to better understand Africa and Africans Although Africa’s Embrace is literary fiction, the novel is, . . .

The Peace Corps & Global Health Service Explain Themselves

Sep 18 2013

Yesterday, September 17, 2013, Peace Corps Response arranged an interview with three of the Global Health Service Program/Peace Corps Response Volunteers. This is the new partnership program between Global Health Services and Peace Corps Response.This is the first year of the program. These are a total of 30 doctors and nurses who are assigned to teaching hospitals in Ghana, Malawi, and Tanzania. Their primary mission is clinical education for host country doctors and nurses. They will be in-country for one year. This interview was supposed to be a video, but there were technical problems.The three Volunteers participated via c-phones. One Volunteer nurse educator is assigned to Tanzania and she is a former Peace Corps Volunteer. Her husband is also in Tanzania as a Peace Corps Response Volunteer, not a GHS/PCR Volunteer. The other Volunteers are a husband and wife team assigned in Ghana. She is a nurse educator and he has . . .

A Kinder, Gentler Review of Norm Rush's Subtle Bodies

Sep 18 2013

The September 26, 2013, issue of The New York Review of Books has a long review of Subtle Bodies by Norm Rush (Botswana 1978-83 ) written by Francine Prose. Prose goes back over Rush’s literary history, his three novels that are set in Botswana, written in the years after Norm and his wife, Elsa, were co-directors in South Africa and then she focuses on where Rush is today. This novel is not set in Botswana. Published by Knopf this month, Subtle Bodies, takes place in New York’s Hudson Valley where Norm and Elsa have lived since (and before) the Peace Corps in Africa. Unlike Michiko Kakutani’s The New York Times review (September 17, 2013), novelist and critic Francine Prose finds much to appreciate in Norm’s new book. In her review, Prose makes the point that Rush writes novels for adults….”Rush endows his fictional creations with so much intelligence, complexity, and . . .

And You Think You Get Bad Reviews!

Sep 17 2013

September 16, 2013 Gazing Into Their Past Through Their Bellybuttons By MICHIKO KAKUTANI SUBTLE BODIES By Norman Rush 236 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $26.95. The premise of this tiresome new novel by the critically acclaimed author Norman Rush sounds as if it had been lifted straight from “The Big Chill”: a group of now middle-aged college friends reunite to commemorate the death of one of their own. The result not only lacks that movie’s humor and groovy soundtrack but is also an eye-rollingly awful read. The novel’s preening, self-absorbed characters natter on endlessly about themselves in exchanges that sound more like outtakes from a dolorous group therapy session than like real conversations among longtime friends. Its title, “Subtle Bodies” – which refers to people’s “true interior selves,” whatever that means – is a perfect predictor of the novel’s solipsistic tone. Readers given to writing comments in their books are likely . . .

A Writer Writes: The Lost Volunteer

Sep 17 2013

The Lost Volunteer Whatever happened to Jim King? by Bob Criso (Nigeria & Somalia 1966-68) In the past, I spent a lot of time searching for Jim King, eager to talk with him about the last intense days that we spent together in Biafra. Jim was stationed at Macgregor Teacher Training College in Afikpo, about an hours ride from my house in Ishiagu on my Honda 50. When the war was heating up in the spring of ’67, Peace Corps Enugu gave me a van and a list of people to pick up in case of an emergency evacuation. Jim was on that list and I picked him up during the last-minute rush to leave the country. Jim, a tall, wiry, blond guy with glasses, was on the Peace Corps “whereabouts unknown” list for years. His family had moved from his last Altadena, California address while he was in Nigeria. . . .

Search Results For -Eres Tu