Ethiopia – Peace Corps Worldwide

Sad News — Mark Himelstein passes (Ethiopia 1)

Sep 17 2022

Mark Himelstein September 19, 1939 – September 12, 2022 Mark Himelstein died on Monday 12 September, a week before his 83rd birthday. He was battling hereditary issues with his heart when he lost. He is survived by his wife Nancy, his two sons Matt and Sam, his two daughters-in-law Laura and Alicia, and his grandchildren Solomon, Malakai, Meyer and Rhodes. Mark joins his daughter Suzy in the afterlife. Mark grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He was a fan of baseball and basketball, as is Indiana tradition. Mark graduated from Indiana University with a BA in 1962 and from George Washington University Law School with an LLB in 1967. But if you ever met Mark you would know that he considered his service as a reserve in the Marines (1959-65) and his experience in the Peace Corp (Ethiopia, 1962-64) as the core learning experiences of his life. Mark found . . .

New novel | BIX by Stephen Foehr (Ethiopia)

Sep 16 2022

BIX: Because I eXist by Stephen Foehr (Ethiopia 1965-66) Foehr & Son Publisher 286 pages August 2022 $0.00 (Kindle); $8.99 (Paperback) Five characters explore how to resist an authoritarian government without being beaten, imprisoned, or killed. Socrates, former gang leader and ex-con, uses lesson learned on the street and in prison: When outmaneuvered and outgunned, outsmart your opponent. Isabel, community do-gooder, takes her experience as the widow of a Mafia hitman: When under attack, develop a network of allies, and be sly. Aster, wanna-be firebrand, advocates to use force against force. Hank, first-generation Asian-American tries to be useful to all sides, without compromising his personal integrity. Lativia espouses the radical approach that Mass Kindness be the guiding principle of social, economic, and political policies.

Founder and Executive Director of HPP — Martha Ryan (Ethiopia)

Sep 08 2022

“I wanted to make the world better. That’s what we’re supposed to do, right?” Ask Martha Ryan (Ethiopia 1973-75), who says Peace Corps Ethiopia put her on her path. Face-to-face with dire need Martha returned home to the Bay Area after her tour as a PCV in Ethiopia. She earned a nursing degree, and took a job at San Francisco General Hospital, and worked in intensive care. But then she found herself pulled back to Africa, where she’s cared for refugees fleeing civil war in camps in Sudan and Somalia, and travelled with a team of nurses to Uganda. But short-term trips weren’t enough. After a few weeks or months back in the U.S., Martha longed to return to Africa to live. It was where, she believed, she could most be of service — a value that was ingrained in her while at the University of San Francisc0 . . .

RPCV Jon Ebeling Dies From Heart Attack (Ethiopia)

Aug 04 2022

Dr. Jon Sutton Ebeling, Professor Emeritus in Political Science, CSU Chico, passed on July 25, 2022, in Napa, California, after a long struggle to recover from a heart attack during May. Dr. Ebeling grew up in southern California with the surfers who gave the Beach Boys something to sing about. There was a movie about one of his fellow surfers, Gidget, based upon a book that her father wrote. Long after he left Santa Monica Jon occasionally ran into some of his beach friends including Gidget and Tom McBribe. Jon was born in Queens, New York in 1938 to Beatrice Coulbourne Ebeling and William Ebeling. After his father passed away in 1939, Jon’s mother brought him and his older brother, Peter, across the U.S., stopping in Arizona first, before finding work as a bookkeeper in Los Angeles. His high school counselors thought that Jon would make a good sheet . . .

16 New books by Peace Corps writers — May and June, 2022

Jul 01 2022

To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com — CLICK on the book cover, the bold book title, or the publishing format you would like — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance from your purchase that will help support the site and the annual Peace Corps Writers awards. We include a brief description for each of the books listed here in hopes of encouraging readers to order a book and/or to VOLUNTEER TO REVIEW IT. See a book you’d like to review for Peace Corps Worldwide? Send a note to Marian at marian@haleybeil.com, and she will send you a copy along with a few instructions. In addition to the books listed below, I have on my shelf a number of other books whose authors would love for you to review. Go to Books Available for Review to see what is on that shelf. Please, please join in our Third Goal . . .

Mildred D. Taylor (Ethiopia) STORIES OF RACISM: Stories of Racism–Confronted by a Family with Courage and Love

May 14 2022

A tribute to decades of work by children’s author Mildred D. Taylor. This year, Peace Corps Writers recognized her with the Writer of the Year Award. By John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) NPCA World View Special Books Edition 2022 • Mildred Delois Taylor is a critically acclaimed author of children’s novels. In 1977, she won the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature, for her historical novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. It was the second book in a series of ten novels focusing on the Logan family, and portraying the effects of racism counterbalanced with courage and love. Her latest book, All the Days Past, All the Days to Come, published last year, is the final novel in the series. Since receiving the Newbery Medal, she has won four Coretta Scott King Awards, a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN Award for Children’s Literature. In . . .

“An Unexpected Love Story — The Women of Bati”

Apr 13 2022

by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) If the reader prefers, this may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a piece of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact. — Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast • AT AN ELEVATION OF 4,000 FEET, the town of Bati, Ethiopia, off the Dessie Road, is the last highland location before the Danakil Depression. A hard day’s drive from the Red Sea, it’s famous only for its Monday market days when the Afar women of the Danakil walk up the “Great Escarpment” to trade with the Oromos on the plateau. These women arrive late on Sunday, and with their camels and tents, they cover the grassy knob above the town. They trade early in the next morning for grain, cloth, livestock, and tinsels and trinkets imported from Addis Ababa, 277 kilometers to the south. Numbering as . . .

The Lion in the Gardens of the Guenet Hotel (Ethiopia)

Apr 11 2022

by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962–64) • In the final days of our in-country Peace Corps training in Ethiopia, we had a celebration dinner at the Guenet Hotel in the Populari section of the capital, Addis Ababa. The Guenet Hotel, even in 1962, was one of the older hotels in Addis Ababa. It wasn’t in the center of town, but south of Smuts Street and down the hill from Mexico Square, several miles from where we were housed in the dormitories of Haile Selassie I University. While out of the way, this small, two-story rambling hotel, nevertheless, had a two-lane, American-style bowling alley, tennis courts, and a most surprising of all, an African lion in its lush, tropical gardens. At that time in the Empire, no Ethiopian was allowed to keep a lion, the symbol of the Emperor, Haile Selassie, whose full title was “By the Conquering Lion . . .

“The Mad Man and Me at the Commercial School in Addis Ababa”

Apr 09 2022

by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) • We 275 PCVs, the first to be assigned to Ethiopia, arrived in-country in early September of 1962. Addis Ababa, the capital, was at an altitude of 7,726 feet. It has one of the finest climates to be found in the world. It was once a ramshackle city, which years before the travel writer John Gunther described as looking as if someone had tossed scraps of metal onto the slopes of Entoto mountain. I was assigned to live and teach in Addis, and lived my first year in a large stone house on Churchill Road, a main artery of the city that led uphill to the center of the city — the Piazza, with four other PCVs. That house, like most in Addis, had a tin roof and it was pleasant to wake early on school days during the rainy season and hear the heavy, . . .

Bob Dylan, “Desolation Row,” and A Rat in the Kitchen (Ethiopia)

Apr 03 2022

by Karl Drobnic (Ethiopia 1966-68) March 31, 2022 • Bob Dylan, head slightly cocked, stared at me from the wall of my Peace Corps home, a dirt and wattle hut in a remote Ethiopian village. Highway 61 Revisited flickered, hanging on a thread I’d snaked through the the album cover, glossy in the candlelight of my little house that had no electric, no water, and most of all, no record player. “Stupid situation,” I imagined Dylan saying, an abrupt harmonica wail highlighting the “stupid”. A friend had gifted me the then-new album while I packed for two years in the African back-country. “Stay in touch,” she said. “Lots is happening in America, too.” A few days later, I was in my village, two miles up on the high escarpment of southern Abyssinia. Just behind the town, mountains jutted skyward another 4,000 feet, catching fluffy clouds that drifted above thorny acacia trees and . . .

RPCV Mary Stephano (Ethiopia) Passed Away

Mar 27 2022

Mary Winslow Stephano, of Oswego, N.Y. passed away Friday evening February 18, 2022 at her home. She was 86. She was born in Oswego, a daughter of the late Charles and Frances O’Connor Stephano. Mary Winslow was a 1958 graduate of Le Moyne College with a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities. She joined the second class of the Peace Corps in 1962, and was stationed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She earned a Ph.D. in Economics, Public Administration and Planning from Syracuse University in 1970. Over her 30+ year career she served with aid agencies such as the United Nations, USAID, and the Near East Foundation, providing expertise in the planning, design, management, and evaluation of Ministry-level human resources and economic development programs. While in public service, she travelled to every continent except Antarctica and spent years living in Paris, Botswana, Malawi, Iran, and Papua New Guinea. While advising the . . .

A Wedding in Ethiopia

Mar 14 2022

By John Keller (Ethiopia 2016-18) SEPT. 17, 2021, Peace Corps • It’s the day of Nezif’s long-awaited wedding, which will take place in his home village in western Ethiopia. It is far from the village where I live and work as a Peace Corps Volunteer, but I’m not exactly sure how to get there. Nezif is a former student at the high school where I teach English. Like many of my students, Nezif had to walk several hours to get to school. Despite the distance, he attended regularly and did well academically, eventually becoming a teacher himself. At 10 a.m. I get a call from Nezif, who is elated that I’m coming to his wedding. He has even paid for someone to fetch me. He is overjoyed to see me when I arrive at the village after a 90-minute trip. I walk into the mud-walled house and join elder . . .

My Eritrean Sister by Laurel West Kessler (Ethiopia)

Feb 07 2021

By Laurel West Kessler (Ethiopia 1964-66) Mhret clasped my hand as she pulled her filmy shawl over her face, looked down at her lap, and shed silent tears. Sitting on low stools on her patio, we were looking at photos of her son, Tefera, who was living in our city in California. He had gone there in 1991 to earn a soccer coaching license. Now in 1996 my husband, Wayne, and I were living in their country, Eritrea. Mhret wondered when and if she would see her only child again. Her diabetes — which occasionally put her in the hospital — certainly gave her reason to worry. I had first noticed Mhret and Tefera in October 1964, when they arrived by bus in Adi Teclesan, the village in Eritrea where we were Peace Corps teachers. In the crowd of arriving and departing passengers, they stood together holding hands, a . . .

“Return” by Kathleen Coskran (Ethiopia)

Jan 05 2021

Notes from the Editor: Kathleen Johnson Coskran (Ethiopia 1965-67) taught in Addis Ababa her first year, then transferred to Dilla, a small town in the far south of the Empire. She wrote “So This Is Paris” about Dilla, an essay Marian Beil and I published in our newsletter, RPCV Writers & Readers in 1994. For me that essay is one of the finest written about the Peace Corps experience. I republished it in a collection I edited titled, Peace Corps: The Great Adventure. In 2007 Peace Corps Writers.com publish “Second Time Around” that subsequently received the 2008 Peace Corps Writers Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award. Kathy has continued to write and continues to win awards. This is an essay she wrote about when she and her husband Chuck returned to Ethiopia and traveled for ten hours by bus through the Rift Valley to see Dilla one last time. Here is . . .

Review — UNDER CONSTRUCTION: TECHNOLOGIES OF DEVELOPMENT IN URBAN ETHIOPIA by Daniel Mains (Ethiopia)

Oct 27 2020

Under Construction: Technologies of Development in Urban Ethiopia By Daniel Mains (Ethiopia 1998-99) Duke University Press 240 pages September 2019 $24.65 (Kindle); $82.49 (Hardback); $25.95 (Paperback) Reviewed by Janet Lee (Ethiopia 1974-76) • Under Construction is a scholarly work about the intersection of various forms of technological infrastructure in Ethiopia, the Ethiopian state that governs and develop the technologies, and the human element that service and should be served by the technologies. Construction projects in this study include dams, specifically GERD (the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam), Bajaj transportation, asphalt road construction, and paving stones. Under Construction is an apt title, because as the author details, these projects appear to be perpetually under construction. Mains is Wick Cary Associate Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Oklahoma and the author of Hope is Cut: Youth, Unemployment, and the Future in Urban Ethiopia (2011), a fascinating culmination of . . .