Eastern Caribbean – Peace Corps Worldwide

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 . . .

RPCV Doctor Michael Daignault Tells Us to Take A Walk

Oct 09 2022

Are you getting your daily steps in? Walking could save your life. Dr. Michael Daignault (Eastern Caribbeon 2003-04) USA TODAY • Did you know that getting in your daily steps could save your life? A new study of more than 2,000 adults showed that taking at least 7,000 steps a day reduced mortality by 50% to 70% compared with those who took fewer steps. The average age of study participants was 45, and they were followed over 11 years. This is the kind of evidence-based study I like to share with my patients in the ER. Although our time together is limited, I try to discuss diet and exercise with my patients as much as possible. I’ve found that most patients who don’t typically exercise find it daunting to start. They assume their only option is to transition from not exercising to joining a gym. While a lot of people can make that leap, I . . .

“Notes on the Common Practice of Rape” by Bob Schacochis (Eastern Caribbean)

Mar 14 2016

Bob Shacochis wrote this essay for Roxane Gay who is putting together a rape anthology that will be coming out next year. After reading it, I asked Bob if we might put it up on our site, as in this piece he discusses several rapes that happened to women — and almost Bob — in the Peace Corps. As we know, the issue is a serious one for PCVs women, and what is being done about it — and not being done about it — continues to be a problem for Volunteers in-country and for the Peace Corps here at home. • NOTES ON THE COMMON PRACTICE OF RAPE by Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975–76) A friend, an architect in Manhattan, has a default mantra, an unwanted but repeated thought that loops through his brain as he walks from his Soho loft to his downtown office or further south to Battery Park — There is something wrong with us. . . .

Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975-76) Wins Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction

Oct 22 2014

By Ron Charles September 24 (Courtesy of Grove/Atlantic) “The Woman Who Lost Her Soul,” an epic about America’s unbridled military ambitions, has won this year’s Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction. In their announcement of the $10,000 award this morning, the judges said that novelist Bob Shacochis “creates an intricate portrait of the catastrophic events that have led to an endless cycle of vengeance and war between cultures.” This complex, demanding novel about a father-daughter pair of spies was a . . .