Ecuador – Peace Corps Worldwide

Maggie (Wolcott) Nurrenbern (Ecuador) running for state senate

Feb 24 2023

Missouri State Representative Maggie Nurrenbern Launches Campaign for State Senate District 17 Press Release, February 22, 2023 Today, Missouri State Representative Maggie Nurrenbern, who was elected to represent House District 15 in 2020, is announcing her campaign for State Senate District 17. “I’ve always been proud to call the Northland home and I know we need leaders who will stand up as a voice of moderation, bring people together and actually achieve results that make a positive difference for our community. That’s exactly what I’ve done as a State Representative, working across the aisle, I’ve worked to deliver real solutions and investments in education, infrastructure and healthcare,” said State Representative Maggie Nurrenbern. “Now, I’m running for State Senate because as a mom of three, former local public school teacher and dedicated community volunteer, I have a renewed purpose to fight for great public education for every kid in our state, . . .

John Clark (Ecuador) joins Sarasota’s Selby Gardens

Feb 02 2023

John L. Clark PhD Joins Botany Staff at Selby Gardens TUESDAY JAN 31, 2023 | Marie Selby Botanical Gardens [in Sarasota, Florida] recently welcomed Dr. John L. Clark to its staff as a full-time research botanist. Affiliated with Selby Gardens as a research associate since 2009, Clark has spent his professional career discovering and documenting plant diversity. His work concentrates on the plant family Gesneriaceae, or gesneriads, an important focus of Selby Gardens’ botanical research and a notable component of its living plant collection. An evolutionary biologist as well as a botanist, Clark studies plant systematics, evolution, and biodiversity, focusing on the identification, classification, phylogeny, and taxonomy of neotropical gesneriads. Gesneriads serve as scientific models for understanding broad patterns in the evolution, pollination, and diversification of plants. About a third of gesneriads are epiphytes (a type of plant that grows on another plant without harming it), and Clark’s . . .

Review — ANDEAN ADVENTURES by Allan Wind (Ecuador)

Jan 17 2021

Andean Adventures: An Unexpected Search for Meaning, Purpose and Discovery Across Three Countries Allan “Alonzo” J. Wind (Ecuador 1980–82) Self-published August 2020 270 pages $14.99 (paperback), $4.19 (Kindle), $17.46 ( Audible) Reviewed byD.W. Jefferson (El Salvador 1974–76; Costa Rica 1976–77) • Allan Wind knew he wanted to join the Peace Corps from pretty early in his life. But he expected that he would serve two years abroad and then return to the US and continue his career. He became a Peace Corps volunteer (PCV) and served for two years in Ecuador but after that he did not return home. He stayed on in Ecuador, working in development, later working in Bolivia and Peru as well. This is a memoir of the early years of Wind’s lifelong career in development. He begins his journey after college in 1980. From the beginning he is an agitator, always trying to go beyond his job . . .

Mike Tidwell remembers Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador)

Mar 18 2018

Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965-67) died of cholera in Guayaquil, Ecuador on August 28, 1991. In March 1993 in our newsletter Peace Corps Writers we published an essay entitled “Ashes on the River Esmeraldas” written by Mike Tidwell (Zaire 1985-87). Tidwell who had published his Peace Corps story The Ponds of Kalambayi: An African Sojourn that won the RPCV Writers & Readers’ Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award in 1991. Mike’s book, Sargent Shiver told me, was one of the best accounts of Peace Corps service. • Ashes on the River Esmeraldas Quite fitting that on my first morning in Quito, Ecuador, there to visit the buried ashes of Moritz Thomsen, I watched a dirty waif wrap his arms around a gringo tourist’s leg, begging for coins, refusing to let go. To free himself, the tourists made the boy fetch like a pathetic dog, throwing some coins toward a trash heap, . . .

Review: DRUMS FOR A LOST SONG, translated by Rob Gunther (Ecuador)

Mar 29 2017

Drums for a Lost Song (novel) by Jorge Velasco Mackenzie Rob Gunther (Ecuador 2009–2002) (Translator) Hanging Loose Press 200 pages March 2017 $18.00 (paperback) Reviewed by Jim Criste (PC Staff/Ecuador 1999-02) • Ecuador is an incredibly diverse country in so many ways. Jorge Velasco Mackenzie takes us on a journey through one part of that diverse country, the western lowlands along the Pacific Coast, to places both known and unknown, real and imagined. Drums for a Lost Song seems to be the literary equivalent of a school of painting in Ecuador known as “Magical Realism.” This is pointed out clearly by the translator in his afterword where he cites, “One of Velasco’s themes is the slippery nature of what we call “facts” or “truth. . .,” which just shows that Velasco was ahead of his time in the use of “alternate facts.” The reader is challenged not only to sort out what may . . .

Journals of Peace — Gary P. Russell (Ecuador)

Mar 03 2016

Journals of Peace Gary P. Russell (Ecuador 1978-81) Monday, November 21 7:18 pm • To this day, my Peace Corps experience remains the most influential and rewarding time of my life. For this, I have you to thank JFK. In forming the Peace Corps, you championed a concept that captured the best in humanity. You gave me and other Americans a unique opportunity to work with other citizens of the world in the pursuit of economic and social development and world peace. Twenty-seven years after its enactment, the Peace Corps is alive and well; its work valued by political leaders at home and aboard. As a child I remember being attracted to the commercials that asked Americans to join the Corps. Even then, as an average run of the mill kid, I was fascinated by the concept, though at the time I never really gave much thought to joining as . . .

Tom Miller on Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965-67)

Sep 05 2014

Tom Miller has been writing about Latin America and the American Southwest for more than thirty years, bringing us extraordinary stories of ordinary people. His highly acclaimed adventure books include “The Panama Hat Trail” about South America, “On the Border,” an account of his travels along the U.S.-Mexico frontier, “Trading With the Enemy,” which takes readers on his journeys through Cuba, and, about the American Southwest, “Revenge of the Saguaro” (formerly “Jack Ruby’s Kitchen Sink” — which won the coveted Lowell Thomas Award for Best Travel Book of the Year in 2001). He has edited three compilations, “Travelers’ Tales Cuba,” “Writing on the Edge: A Borderlands Reader,” and “How I Learned English.” Additionally, he was a major contributor to the four-volume “Encyclopedia Latina.” This following piece on Moritz Thomsen ran in the Washington Post Book Section in October 2008. Recently the article way expanded and republished in Spanish and English . . .

Meredith Schroeder Green (Ecuador 1967-69)

Feb 23 2010

Monday, November 21 5:33 pm EXCERPTS FROM LETTERS HOME — NOVEMBER, 1967 The bus trip down from Quito to Guayaquil was like a quick tour of Ecuador. The climate and vegetation changed every few miles during the decent as did the type of housing construction and the physical make up of the people. In the High Sierra, buildings were largely of cement, the population predominantly Indian; half way down the side of the Andes mountains the houses were built of brick, the people looked more Spanish, except for the distinct ethnic group of Colorado Indians and the landscape became green and lush. By the time the bus reached sea level, the tropical heat was oppressive, the bamboo houses with tin roofs gave the landscape a sense of temporariness and the small, dark skinned people spoke a rapid fire Spanish that was undecipherable le to my untuned ears. My emotions went . . .