Africa

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Bob Poole — Recovery of Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park
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The Volunteer Who Provided a Clear-eyed Look at Africa — Mark Wentling (Honduras, Togo)
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Review: ELEPHANT CAKE WALK by Andrew Oerke (Africa staff)
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Review — SWIMMING by Karl Luntta (Botswana)
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THE GREAT SURGE by Steven Radelet (Western Samoa) reviewed in WSJ
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A Writer Writes: The Boy on the Back of the Bike
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Peace Corps Writers publishes Mark Wentling’s AFRICA’S EMBRACE

Bob Poole — Recovery of Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park

January 26 at McClaren Hall, Flathead Valley Community College, Paul D. Wachholz College Center will bring Emmy-winning filmmaker Bob Poole to Kalispell, MT • BY MIKE KORDENBROCK January 21,2023 An elephant calf. Photo by Gina Poole   An upcoming “National Geographic Live” event at Flathead Valley Community College’s new Wachholz College Center will bring to Kalispell an award-winning filmmaker, with Montana ties, to discuss the story of a national park in Mozambique that has continued to rebound after a prolonged civil war that left the local wildlife population decimated. It’s been a long time since Bob Poole has been to the Flathead Valley’s stretch of northwest Montana, but for the cinematographer and National Geographic speaker, any visit to the state is a reminder of the early years of his career. Poole had an unusual upbringing for an American citizen, in that he grew up abroad. His youth was spent in . . .

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The Volunteer Who Provided a Clear-eyed Look at Africa — Mark Wentling (Honduras, Togo)

(A major portion of this profile was drawn from an article in the Foreign Service Journal & Peace Corps WorldWide)   by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963–65) • Mark Wentling served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras, 1967-69, and in Togo, 1970-73. He retired from the Senior Foreign Service in 1996, after serving as principal officer in six African countries. Mark worked in Africa for the Peace Corps, non-governmental organizations, and as a contract employee for USAID.  He has published eight books, including the three-volume African Memoir Years: 54 Countries, One American Life. (Vol I, Vol II, Vol III Mark recently published an article entitled “Much Cause for Worry” in the September issue of the Foreign Service Journal, giving readers an uncompromising perspective of Africa in a contemporary context. His views emanate from having lived and worked in every corner of this continent, visiting 54 countries over the past 50 . . .

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Review: ELEPHANT CAKE WALK by Andrew Oerke (Africa staff)

  Elephant Cake Walk (Africa Poems) by Andrew Oerke ( (PCstaff: Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Jamaica 1966-71) Poets’ Choice Publishing, 2017 94 pages $19.95 (paperback)   Reviewed by Ann Neelon (Senegal 1978-79) • I distinctly remember coming home from work especially dispirited one day 15 or so years ago.  As a newly minted associate professor, I was in my “winning tenure, losing the thrill” phase, to quote a headline from The New York Times that stuck with me at the time. Strangely, I began to hear something resembling African percussion as I extricated myself from the car. I glanced up into our maple tree.  There were our two young sons, perched in its branches, sporting an eclectic mix of Senegalese, Ivoirian and Moroccan costume elements from the Peace Corps boxes in our attic, including pointed “el hadji” shoes (which must have substantially ramped up the difficulty of the climb). Somehow, our . . .

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Review — SWIMMING by Karl Luntta (Botswana)

  Swimming: Stories Karl Luntta (Botswana 1977-80; staff: Fiji, Solomon Islands, Western Samoa, Kiribati, Barbados) Excelsior Editions/SUNY Press September 2015 180 pages $16.95 (paperback — from publisher), $12.38 (Kindle) Reviewed by Ben East (Malawi 1996–98) • ONE THING IS CERTAIN for foreigners at work in much of Africa: the proverbs can be as colorful as they are vague, utilitarian as they are vexing. The truth can emerge — or remain obscured — with a single phrase applied in limitless ways. Truth, in these proverbs, lies in the eye of the beholder and not the object beheld. This principle is at work in the eight stories of Karl Luntta’s Swimming, each of which churns beneath the surface with traces of hidden truth. Whether his characters are far removed from the world we know — like Maag, digging his own grave at the edge of the Kalahari — or are much closer to home, Luntta’s . . .

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THE GREAT SURGE by Steven Radelet (Western Samoa) reviewed in WSJ

Friday, February 12, 2016 the Wall Street Journal carried a long review by Mark Moyer, visiting scholar at the Foreign Policy Initiative, of  The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World written by Steven Radelet (Western Samoa 1981-83), a former chief economist of AID and now holder of  the Donald F. McHenry Chair in Global Human Development at Georgetown University, is well as an economic adviser to the president of Liberia, and  most importantly, husband of Carrie Hessler Radelet, Director of the Peace Corps. In his review, Moyer writes, “Combining the real-world knowledge of a practitioner with the rigor of an academic, Mr. Radelet delivers a stimulating reconsideration of development aid.” Moyer points out that Radelet believes what has triggered the “great surge” was the crumbling of the Soviet Empire. “The discrediting of Marxist-Leninism encouraged poor countries to discard autocracy and state control of the economy in favor of liberal democracy and capitalism. The end of superpower competition also . . .

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A Writer Writes: The Boy on the Back of the Bike

[In the May 2005 issue of Peace Corps Writers, we published this “A Writer Writes” essay “The Boy on the Back of the Bike” written by Terry Campbell (Tanzania 1985-87; Dominican Republic 1989-92; Crisis Corps El Salvador 2001-02). We haven’t heard from Terry in some time, not sure he is following our site or the workings of the Peace Corps, but this piece he wrote shows where his heart is.] The Boy on the Back of the Bike By Terry Campbell IN NOVEMBER November 2004, I returned to Tanzania where I had served in the Peace Corps from 1985 to 1987. I had been wanting to go back for a long time, but as everyone knows, it’s expensive. Then I saw this deal on the internet and I grabbed it. After hitting the final “purchase ticket” button, I panicked a little. It had been seventeen years since I’d left Tanzania! . . .

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

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, . . .

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