Ethiopia

1
A letter from Kristi Davis (Ethiopia 1969–72)
2
Neil Boyer's (Ethiopia 1962-64) Christmas Letter Home
3
The Peace Corps and America's Most Serendipitous Man: Harris Wofford
4
Second Time Around
5
April & May & June Books by Peace Corps Writers
6
Barry Hillenbrand (Ethiopia 1963-65) Remembers: Norman Rockwell Slept Here (Maybe)
7
Ethiopian RPCV Carol Beddo Wins Two Travel Writing Awards
8
Talking with Publisher Tom Weck (Ethiopia 1965-67)
9
Waiting for Stan Meisler's History of the Peace Corps
10
Talking With Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978-80)
11
Neil G. Kotler (Ethiopia 1964-66)
12
Betty Hite Graff (Ethiopia 1963-65)
13
Patricia I. Eimerl (Ethiopia 1967-69)
14
Sally Collier (Ethiopia 1962–64)
15
Dan Close (Ethiopia 1966–68)

A letter from Kristi Davis (Ethiopia 1969–72)

Kristi Davis was a TESL teacher in Debra Tabor, Ethiopia from 1969–70, and then a game warden at Lakes Shalla and  Abiata from 1970 to 1972. Here is a letter she wrote to her parents from Debra Tabor  Oct. 10, 1969 shortly after she arrived. • It’s more amazing here every day . . . the atmosphere, that is. I look out the window while I’m steaming plum pudding and see men riding by with capes flying back and scarves tied in back that look like white wigs, and I think I’m living in an early American time . . . or I can walk into the living room and it will be the old West with a large fireplace, skin rug, and kerosene lamp . . . or I can pull seeds out of cotton and become a pilgrim beginning to spin, or 1600 Salem and the witch scare when the wizard next door starts . . .

Read More

Neil Boyer's (Ethiopia 1962-64) Christmas Letter Home

What parents, siblings, and friends loved most about our Peace Corps experience were our letters home. Of course, today, there is little need for such letters, given cell phones and the Internet, but in the first years of the agency, letters home (and received) were treasured by all of us. Recently Neil Boyer (Ethiopia 1962-64) sent me an email about his first Christmas letter home. Neil wrote: “My cousin Barbara Duhamel recently supplied me with some of her archives, and they included the holiday letter that I sent from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in December 1962 — the first of many letters.  From the distance of 52 years, some of the contents of this letter seem a little exaggerated and perhaps overly optimistic, but it’s pretty clear I was enjoying my introduction to the Peace Corps.” I asked Neil if I might reproduce the letter for others to share and enjoy. . . .

Read More

The Peace Corps and America's Most Serendipitous Man: Harris Wofford

The November 2014 special issue of the New Republic is their anniversary issue (One Hundred Years of Politics & The Arts) that features articles on America’s great and infamous, and has much to my delight (and to all of us who were with him in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia) an article written by Jason Zengerle, the senior editor at The New Republic entitled, “Wofford Was Here: The Twentieth Century’s most Serendipitous Man.” Spotting it today when the magazine arrived in the mail I thought: Well, it’s about time. There are two photographs, one of Harris with Kennedy on the White House lawn greeting PCVs training in Washington, D.C. in the summer of ’62. (Those PCVs just happen to be the Ethiopia I Volunteers) and another photograph of Harris and his wife Clare and Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the Oval Office. The article charts Wofford’s long life, some . . .

Read More

Second Time Around

by Kathleen Coskran (Ethiopia 1965–67) The following essay was published in September, 2007 at PeaceCorpsWriters.org, and in 2008 received the Moritz Thomsen Award for Best Short Work about the Peace Corps Experience • I JOINED THE PEACE CORPS at 21 because I was restless for adventure and after two years in Ethiopia, discovered that true adventure lies in the relationships and routines of daily life. I was delighted to live in a tiny mud house with the tin roof, thought the sound of roosters in the morning and the whoop of the hyenas at night exotic, learned to prefer fiery food that made me sweat and cry, but the surprise was my students. I fell in love with them — 75 kids in an unlit classroom with mud walls and a tin roof, 75 kids who walked an hour or more to get to school, kids whose parents I never . . .

Read More

April & May & June Books by Peace Corps Writers

Connecting Two Worlds: An Environmental Journey From Peace Corps To Present by Anthony Simeone (Burkina Faso 1971–73) A Peace Corps Writers Book, $19.95 132 pages March 2013 • Africa on My Mind: Educating Americans for Fifty Years, Living Peace Corps’ Third Goal by Angene Wilson (Liberia 1962-64) A Peace Corps Writers Book $10.00 (paperback) 210 pages February 2013 • Gimme Five (Poems) by Philip Dacey (Nigeria 1963–65) Blue Light Press $15.95 55 pages 2013 Strange Stones—Dispatches from East and West By Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) Harper Perennial trade paperback; $14.99 354 pages May 2013 • The Vast Unknown: America’s First Ascent of Everest by Broughton Coburn (Nepal 1973–75) Crown Publishing, $26.00 300 pages April, 2013 • Glimpses through the Forest: Memories of Gabon by Jason Gray (Gabon 2002–04) A Peace Corps Writers Book $14.95 (paperback) 288 pages May 2013 • The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and . . .

Read More

Barry Hillenbrand (Ethiopia 1963-65) Remembers: Norman Rockwell Slept Here (Maybe)

Memory and history are tricky. So tricky that it’s amazing that history gets anything right, even a matter as seemingly uncomplicated as a minor moment in Peace Corps history. In April this year nearly 30 RPCVs from the Ethiopia II training group that served in Ethiopia and Eritrea from 1963-1965 met in Florida to catch up with what was happening Ethiopia — and with each other.  At one point someone recalled the visit that Norman Rockwell made to Ethiopia to do some sketches for a project he was preparing for Look magazine on President Kennedy’s legacy. “Right,” I blurted out, “Rockwell slept in my bed.”  As everyone laughed, I explained that when Rockwell came to Debre Marcos, the town where I was teaching along with seven other PCVs, we made plans to turn over some of our rooms to the Rockwells.  Debre Marcos, you’ll understand, was not renown for four star . . .

Read More

Ethiopian RPCV Carol Beddo Wins Two Travel Writing Awards

In 2003 Carol Beddo (Ethiopia 1964-66) returned to Bahar Dar, Ethiopia, her Peace Corps village on the shores of Lake Tana, and overwhelmed with memories of being a PCV teacher there in the mid-sixties she began to wonder: Who was that young woman? While writing about herself as a young woman, she came to understand how the Peace Corps experience provided a foundation for the rest of her life as a community activist and as a consultant in public policy, political campaigns, and elections. Since this 2003 visit to Ethiopia, she has continued to write about her experiences in the Peace Corps and numerous essays have been published in the San Jose Mercury News, as well as in several travel anthologies. Two of her essays were recently selected Solas Award winners by Travelers’ Tales and they can be read at  http://BestTravelWriting.com on the following links: http://www.besttravelwriting.com/btw-blog/great-stories/travel-memoir-gold-winner-fear-and-bitter-justice/ http://www.besttravelwriting.com/btw-blog/great-stories/my-ethiopian-tent/ Congratulations Carol for this, and for all your writing . . .

Read More

Talking with Publisher Tom Weck (Ethiopia 1965-67)

JUST NORTH OF THE PROVINCIAL CAPITAL of Dessie in the Debub Wollo Zone of Ethiopia is a small road-side town called Haik (or Hayq), wedged between low range hills and Lake Hayq. It is famous for being the home of the Coptic Church’s Istifanos Monastery, and for being the Peace Corps site where Tom Weck taught 7th and 8th grade English and math from 1965 to 1967. Tom was the only PCV in Haik, though a dozen or more PCVs (including his future wife) were stationed in Dessie, 28 kilometers south on an all-weather gravel road that bisected, north and south, the Empire of Emperor Haile Selassie. Haik was a town through which everyone — from missionaries, tourists, lorry drivers, and the Ethiopian government officials — raced. There was nothing in Haik, beyond the monastery and a 1930s Italian graveyard for the bodies of dead Blackshirt soldiers of the brief . . .

Read More

Waiting for Stan Meisler's History of the Peace Corps

Next month Stan Meisler’s book on the Peace Corps When The World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and Its First Fifty Years will be published by Beacon Press, but you can order it now at www.amazon.com (be the first RPCV on your block to own a copy!) We will also have a review of the book next month done by Robert Textor who was an early consultant to the Peace Corps, and editor of one of the first studies about the agency, Cultural Frontiers of the Peace Corps, published in 1966 by MIT Press. Meanwhile….For those who don’t know, Stan Meisler…was a reporter for AP who came late to the Peace Corps.  “I was not there at the madcap, exciting, glorious beginning. I started my work at Peace Corps headquarters just after the election of Lyndon B. Johnson to a full term as president, a year after the assassination of . . .

Read More

Talking With Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978-80)

A few years ago when I first met Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978-80) he reminded me of Thomas Wolfe (the real Tom Wolfe of Look Homeward, Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again) — big and slightly ungainly with a quiet brooding presence, a thick wedge of dark hair and a massive face. A hulk of a guy. There is something of Wolfe in Mark’s prose, the luxury of his language and the way Mark fills a page with wonderful details, but Jacobs is a much more disciplined writer, and more inventive. We met in Union Station in Washington, D.C. where I had been waiting for him in that beautiful, vaulted marble main lobby and he came in out of the sunlight of the city, a towering figure and I thought: now there’s a guy who looks like a writer! And truly he is one. He joins a small band of first-rate intellects . . .

Read More

Neil G. Kotler (Ethiopia 1964-66)

Monday, November 21 5:30 pm MAKING A CONTRIBUTION as a teacher in improving the lives of other human being, particularly young people — this was at the core of my Peace Corps experience in Ethiopia. I never felt better employed in my life as I had teaching Ethiopian history, at a time and place where few Ethiopians were studying their own history. The first semester I was asked to teach Greek and Roman history to 11th and 12th grade students. I was puzzled by this assignment. What in the world were my Eritrean students going to learn from the Greeks and Romans? Why weren’t my students studying Ethiopian and Eritrean history? When I proposed to teach Ethiopian history the following semester, the headmaster eyed me with amusement and asked what qualified me to teach national history. Eventually, the headmaster consented, and during the next year and a half I taught, . . .

Read More

Betty Hite Graff (Ethiopia 1963-65)

Monday, November 21 5:27 pm PRESIDENT KENNEDY SPURRED ME to try new adventures. In 1963, Kennedy said Americans need more physical exercise – take a 50-mile hike in 20 hours – I walked twenty. Then Kennedy said, “Join the Peace Corps, serve in a foreign country.” I joined the Peace Corps. I stepped off the plane in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in September 1963 with much awe and trepidation as to what I was about to begin. A new life for me. A new beginning in the most beautiful country with the most beautiful people in the world. I wrote in my journal that day: “What a magnificent view and what a beautiful airport we landed at! Today is the Ethiopian New Year. The women are dressed in white (off white from washing them in the dirty streams) hand woven dresses with colorful trim around the edges. I guess I’ll have . . .

Read More

Patricia I. Eimerl (Ethiopia 1967-69)

Monday, November 21 7:15 pm THIS IS OUR SECOND YEAR as Peace Corps Volunteers in Ethiopia. This year we are working in the city of Axum in Northern Ethiopia. Axum is a 2000-year-old city and the center of Ethiopia’s Coptic Christian Church. Ethiopia’s brand of Christianity began in Axum in the fourth century and spread to the rest of Ethiopia from this city. We enjoy exploring the ruins nearby; all the hills surrounding the city have various kinds of ruins, many of them unexcavated. We also enjoy finding different kinds of agates, quartz geodes, and other kinds of rocks in the fields and valleys of Axum. Our work this year is similar to last year, i.e., teaching. We are more experienced this year and so enjoy our teaching and our students even more than last year. We know how to handle the discipline problem better. Pat teaches English to the . . .

Read More

Sally Collier (Ethiopia 1962–64)

Monday, November 21 8:00 pm I served with the Peace Corps as a music teacher in Ethiopia with the first group to go there, from 1962-64. I lived in Addis Ababa with four other young women. Our house was termed “Debutante Hill” by our would-be humorous friends. My roommates included Mo, the daughter of a Chicago Irish policeman, Sylvia, an Italian-American, who when asked one day how she was, said, “Oh, so and so,” Peggy who was in seven Land-Rover accidents during her two-year stint (no one wanted to fly home on the same plane with her), and Stephanie who laughed on a perfect C- scale, always us. My roommates were fresh out of college; I was 25 – an older woman. I probably should have been wiser for my extra four years of living, but my real education had only begun. It began the day I received the invitation . . .

Read More

Dan Close (Ethiopia 1966–68)

Monday, November 21 5:57 pm In November of 1963 I came to Washington to say farewell to Jack Kennedy. I came here with hundreds of thousands of people, and we stood in lines that stretched for countless Washington blocks through the cold November night. We walked slowly for hours toward the Capital, and along the way we met friends and relatives, brothers and sisters whom we had never met before, whom we would never meet again. We had come from all directions, along roads filled with hitchhikers carrying signs that said simply “Washington,” and we stopped and picked them up, carried them forward in our slow and silent and subdued tide. Through the long night, we were the American people, assembled to pay honor to our fallen leader, Jack. The lines of mourners entered the Capitol from the east, and there were placed the flowers sent by many nations, and . . .

Read More

Copyright © 2022. Peace Corps Worldwide.