Botswana – Peace Corps Worldwide

“Discovering the Courage to Pursue My Dreams” by Sarah Busch (Botswana)

Sep 04 2023

RPCVs in the News: UWMedicine as told to Nicole Beattie Sarah Busch (Botswana 2018-20), a third-year medical student at the University of Washington School of Medicine, shares how scholarships are helping her become a doctor and fulfill her passion for public health. • I was born in Great Falls, Montana, the oldest daughter in a family with nine children. I raised a lot of my younger siblings, and maybe that’s where taking care of people started. But it was a fundamentalist environment that didn’t believe women should have careers or pursue big things. And I got to the point where I realized that the life my parents were living — and that they were giving me — was not the life I wanted. I liked science, and when I was in high school, I took Advanced Placement Biology. The teacher was a huge science nerd and really unashamed about . . .

Jennifer Ching Peace Corps Response Volunteer (Ethiopia & Botswana)

Jul 29 2023

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963-65) From the Peace Corps Website, May 25, 2023 Jennifer Ching, a returned Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Ethiopia from 2016 to 2018, is now a Peace Corps Response Volunteer serving in Botswana. Jennifer, who is Chinese and lived in Malaysia as a child, shares why Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month is important to her, how her Asian American identity impacted her service as a Volunteer, and her favorite cultural traditions. 1) Why is AANHPI Heritage Month important to you? AANHPI Heritage month is important because it increases the exposure and promotion of the presence of these groups of people in the social consciousness. It’s also important to me because it spotlights my people and culture, as well as our contributions in the United States, both historically and during the present day. . . .

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 . . .

Review — DUSTY LAND by John Ashford (Botswana)

Mar 24 2018

Dusty Land: Stories of Two Teachers in the Kalahari John Ashford (Botswana 1990–92) Peace Corps Writers December, 2017 260 pages $13.00 (paperback) Reviewed by D.W. Jefferson (El Salvador 1974–76; Costa Rica 1976–77) • MANY RETURNED PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEERS (RPCVs) feel a need to share our stories of life in another country, and our often transformative experiences. Because most of our family, friends and coworkers just are not very interested, we find our audience in local RPCV groups and at RPCV conferences. John Ashford took the next step and filled his need by publishing two collections of stories. Dusty Land is the second of those story collections. The author and his wife Gen were midcareer and middle-aged professionals when they joined the Peace Corps and headed to the African nation of Botswana. This book of stories and his previous one, titled Meeting the Mantis – Searching for a Man . . .

John Ashford’s (Botswana) DUSTY LAND published by Peace Corps Writers

Dec 30 2017

IT WAS A GREAT RELIEF for John Ashford to realize that he was going to do something new in his life. In his mid-fifties and happily married to his second wife, Gen, John wanted to feel as passionate about work and life as he had felt when he started teaching thirty years earlier — and he was going to be a Peace Corps Volunteer! With some convincing, and a short stint volunteering with him in a refugee camp in Thailand, Gen agreed to be John’s fellow adventurer and join the Peace Corps to serve in Botswana in southern Africa. Once in Botswana, John began taking notes about his “new” life with an inkling that he would publish a book about his experiences. He kept a journal of conversations, cultural differences, people and their idiosyncrasies, and what it was like being a middle-aged Westerner in Africa. When the Ashford’s two years . . .

Review: MEETING THE MANTIS by John Ashford (Botswana)

Aug 15 2016

Meeting the Mantis: Searching for a Man in the Desert and Finding the Kalahari Bushmen by John Ashford (Botswana 1990–92) Peace Corps Writers August 2015 216 pages $13.00 (paperback), $4.00 (Kindle) Reviewed by Julie R. Dargis (Morocco 1984-87) • “Follow the lightening,” the first people of the Kalahari said. At the end of the proverbial rainbow in Western culture, lies water, herds of wild animals, and life in the desert. For years, John Ashford fantasized about what it would be like to live the life of a Bushman. After years of contemplation, the photograph of Freddy Morris that John Ashford had once glimpsed in his hometown library, came to life. By the time the author met him, Freddy Morris had clocked nearly 90 years straddling two cultures. Before he set out on his journey, Ashford could lay claim to a half-life of Freddy’s experiences, the most relevant months boiled . . .

John Ashford (Botswana) publishes MEETING THE MANTIS

Feb 18 2016

John Ashford was a library director at Seattle Community College for almost twenty years when he decided he needed a change of scenery, a change of activity, and a dose of another culture. In preparation he obtained a certification as a teacher of English as a Second Language. Then, both he and his wife Genevieve ended their careers and went to Botswana in 1990 with the Peace Corps as teachers. John spent his two years as a lecturer in library studies at Tonota College of Education. Facing the end of their Peace Corps service in Botswana, the Ashfords began making plans for travel with the purpose of learning more about the San, an indigenous people of Southern Africa — also known as the Kalahari Bushmen. Years earlier, while still in college, John had been introduced to the Kalahari Bushmen in an anthropology class and had retained a fascination with them. . . .

Christopher Conlon (Botswana 1988-90) On Top Ten List For Best Horror Fiction by American Library Association

May 25 2015

Booklist is a book-review magazine that has been published by the American Library Association for more than 100 years, and is widely viewed as offering the most reliable reviews to help libraries decide what to buy and to help library patrons and students decide what to read, view, or listen to. It comprises two print magazines, an extensive website and database, e-newsletters, webinars, and other resources that support librarians in collection development and readers’ advisory. HORROR FICTION This list of the best horror fiction reviewed between May 15, 2014, and May 1, 2015, covers the gamut, from an old-fashioned horror novel, tasting of blood and dust, to a zombie plague (what would a top 10 list be without one?) to a grisly, darkly comedic road trip. Savaging the Dark. By Christopher Conlon. 2014. Evil Jester, $11.99 (9780615936772). (Starred Review.) “If there’s a single author working in the horror genre who . . .

Summer Books From Two Fine RPCV Writers

Apr 01 2015

Karl Luntta (Botswana 1978-80) A swimming pool in the Kalahari Desert, the ice skates of a boy in a wheelchair, and a midnight train ride in the cool African night form the backdrop of the eight diverse stories in Swimming. Some of the stories take place in Africa, others in the United States, but in all of them, the characters confront cultural and racial differences, both historically and in the present. In “A Virgin Twice,” an American teaching in Botswana struggles to understand a village’s response to a violent assault. In “Jeff Call Beth,” a white American father attempts to connect with the daughter he left behind in Africa. And in the title story, “Swimming,” a Danish expatriate dying of cancer decides to build an Olympic-sized swimming pool in the Kalahari Desert. All of these characters are clinging to emotional survival in a complex world, confronted by a moment or element . . .

Eileen Flanagan (Botswana 1984-86) Interview in Chestnut Hill Local

Mar 19 2015

Spiritual crisis recorded in Hiller’s acclaimed new book Eileen Flanagan, a member of Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting for the past 16 years, recounts how she dealt with a mid-life crisis of the spirit in her third book, Renewable: One Woman’s Search for Simplicity, Faithfulness and Hope, which was released March 3 by She Writes Press Publishers. The article appeared in the Chestnut Hill Local, a weekly newspaper serving Chestnut, in Northwest Philadelphia, PA and the surrounding communities. It was written by Len Lear. At the age of 49, a 16-year member of Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting, Eileen Flanagan, had an agonizing feeling that she wasn’t living up to her potential – or her youthful ideals. A former Peace Corps volunteer who had once loved the simplicity of living in a mud hut in Botswana, southern Africa, she now had too many e-mails in her inbox and a basement full of . . .

The Ballroom

Oct 15 2013

by Christopher Conlon (Botswana 1988-90) This poem won the 1994 Moritz Thomsen Award for Best Short Work about the Peace Corps Experience. • Southern Africa, Kalahari Desert She is the perfect image of a rag doll I saw when I was a child, in a trash can, dirty, ripped abandoned: here in the Kalahari is that same doll, maybe five, eyes huge, legs white with desert dust. Ke Kopa madi, sir, ke kopa madi. Money: I shake my head no, no madi: try to move on. But she stares at me, suddenly transfixed. No longer begging. Her eyes wider than before. My sunglasses: I crouch down, she approaches me, nose to nose, tattered, filthy, she stares at me, at herself. Then her hand moves to her chin and she says Oh, in a tiny, surprised voice. She rubs away the dried spittle there. Then she turns and, whitened heels kicking . . .

The Ballroom

May 23 2009

The 1994 recipient of the Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award presented by PEACE CORPS WRITERS for the best short description of life in the Peace Corps. • The Ballroom by Christopher Conlon (Botswana 1988-90) Southern Africa, Kalahari Desert She is the perfect image of a rag doll I saw when I was a child, in a trash can, dirty, ripped abandoned: here in the Kalahari is that same doll, maybe five, eyes huge, legs white with desert dust. Ke Kopa madi, sir, ke kopa madi. Money: I shake my head no, no madi: try to move on. But she stares at me, suddenly transfixed. No longer begging. Her eyes wider than before. My sunglasses: I crouch down, she approaches me, nose to nose, tattered, filthy, she stares at me, at herself. Then her hand moves to her chin and she says Oh, in a tiny, surprised voice. She rubs . . .