Niger – Peace Corps Worldwide

Founder of Timbuktu Center for Strategic Studies on the Sahel with Peter Chilson (Niger)

Oct 06 2023

In the news Foley Institute hears about effects of climate crisis overseas Founder of Timbuktu Center for Strategic Studies on the Sahel recounts experiences facing climate and migration crises AIMEE SULIT, Evergreen reporter October 4, 2023 Washington State University English professor Peter Chilton (Niger 1985-87) shared that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees has found that almost 100,000 people try to leave Africa within West Africa every month and the population of displaced persons in places such as Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger reach about 3.2 million people at Tuesday’s Foley Talk. El Hadj Djitteye, Timbuktu Center for Strategic Studies on the Sahel’s Founder and Executive Director also spoke and discussed the climate and migration crisis in the West African Sahel as well as the conflicts that result from them. Djitteye gave his presentation alongside Chilson, who has been traveling to West Africa since 1985 and was . . .

Jennryn Wetzler (Niger) wins Catalyst Award

Sep 26 2023

In the news Creative Commons is a non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. About The Catalyst Award This award is presented to an individual actively engaged in promoting the creation and implementation of OER and application Open Practices. A Catalyst is someone other than a professor/teacher that supports the ideals of the Open Education movement through their own practices and who creates engagement in Openness within an organization or community. Examples might include but are not limited to librarians, researchers, instructional designers, policymakers, or administrators. Jennryn Wetzler (Niger 2004-06) Jennryn Wetzler is the Director of Learning and Training at Creative Commons. She runs the Creative Commons Certificate program, a training in open licensing, copyright, and the ethos of our global, shared commons. She focuses on projects to increase collaboration and . . .

New books by Peace Corps writers | July–August 2023

Sep 04 2023

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 free copy along with a few instructions. P.S. 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 . . .

Talking with Gene Stone (Niger)

Apr 13 2023

An interview by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962–64) A graduate of Stanford and Harvard, Gene Stone (Niger 1974-76) is a screenwriter, television producer, and journalist as well as a book, magazine, and newspaper editor. He has also ghostwritten more than thirty books (many of which were national bestsellers), specializing in socially conscious business and health—among his bestselling health related books are UltraPrevention (with Drs. Mark Hyman and Mark Liponis) and The Engine 2 Diet (with vegan firefighter Rip Esselstyn). I met Gene Stone at a party in Thurston Clarke’s (Tunisia 1968) apartment on the upper West Side of New York years and years ago. He was just back from the Peace Corps and working as an editor, and I was trying to write fiction full time. We eyed each other with equal amounts of suspicion. Editors are always (and I know this from being married to one) cautious of “would . . .

HAUSALAND DIVIDED by William F.S. Miles (Niger)

Nov 25 2022

How have different forms of colonialism shaped societies and their politics? William F. S. Miles (Niger 1977-79) focuses on the Hausa-speaking people of West Africa whose land is still split by an arbitrary boundary established by Great Britain and France at the turn of the century. In 1983 Miles returned as a Fulbright scholar to the region where he had served as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Already fluent in the Hausa language, he established residence in carefully selected twin villages on either side of the border separating the Republic of Niger from the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Over the next year, and then during subsequent visits, he traveled by horseback between the two places, conducting archival research, collecting oral testimony, and living the ethnographic life. Miles argues that the colonial imprint of the British and the French can still be discerned more than a generation after the conferring of . . .

Review of Dan Grossman's (Niger 1992-94) Rogue Elephants

Jun 17 2014

Rogue Elephants: a novel of the Peace Corps by Dan Grossman (Niger 1992-94) Lulu Publisher $16.00 (paperback) 300 pages2013 (Reissued) Reviewed by Richard M. Grimsrud (India 1965-67) For the most part, Dan Grossman’s novel Rogue Elephants is a fast and informative read about Peace Corps operations during the early Nineties in southeast Niger, a little-known area in West Africa at the southern edge of the Sahara adjacent to where the terrorist group Boko Haram (which literally means “Western education is sinful and forbidden” in Hausa) recently kidnapped 276 schoolgirls. The book provides among its many interesting insights a look at how the Peace Corps experience can affect sexual diversity and assault and a good ethnographic sketch of Hausa culture, from which Boko Haram has drawn most of its adherents. Hausa culture is a fusion of Arab and traditional black African systems, which grew up in the Sudan/Sahel zone with the . . .

William F.S. Miles (Niger 1977-79) "A Used Book, a Lost Era"

Nov 07 2013

The back page of The Chronicle Review always has a thoughtful short essay written by an academic (yes, some academics can write) and it is usually what I turn to when the weekly Chronicle of Higher Education arrives. (This publication, by the way, is one of the best edited papers in the U.S.) The November 8, 2013, issue has an essay entitled “A Used Book, A Lost Era” by William F.S. Miles (Niger 1977-79) that tracks how he found a used copy of R.C. Abraham’s 992-page Dictionary of the Hausa Language, that he had as a PCV in Niger, and that he would use later when he was a Fulbright Scholar in Niger. He found a used copy of Abraham’s dictionary on sale at Amazon for $25. He bought the book and he writes with great feeling and great regret: I opened the shipping packet with the kind of anticipation . . .

School Garden Project, Madarounfa

Dec 25 2010

by Margot Miller (Niger 1972–74) This essay was first published on the blog of PeaceCorpsWriters.org on January 31, 2006 THE SUN SLIPS ABOVE THE HORIZON on the dot of six in Madarounfa, a mere thirteen degrees north of the equator, close enough that sunrise and sunset vary almost not at all the year ’round. The ten primary school teachers who have gathered for this late-December, weekend school-garden-project instruction are up within minutes. Once they have washed and made their separate trips to the bush, they gather for breakfast under the old baobab tree. It’s still cool and they drink hot tea, brewed very strong, with great chunks of sugar chopped out of a cone that comes wrapped in blue paper. Jon, the American who is instructing them, has made oatmeal. It’s nice of him but the teachers find it rather bland. They add sugar and salt and are polite while . . .

Aïssa

May 24 2010

by Margot Miller (Niger 1972–74) First published on the blog of PeaceCorpsWriters.org on October 12, 2005 • UNDER MY MOSQUITO NET, I’d barely slept an hour when I stirred awake. I heard soft footsteps and the sound of scraping near the wall. I pulled the mosquito net up and looked around, disoriented. My clock was gone. I took myself indoors where it was too hot to sleep. The next night I moved back outdoors, locking the front door and putting the key under my pillow. Perhaps I should report the incident to the police. I remembered that I had been told something about the Chief of Police living across the street. When I found the time to go across the street, at the doorway, I clapped to signal my presence. A tall, slim young woman came to the door. She had warm brown eyes and beautiful, straight white teeth that . . .

Ruth Hirsch (Niger 1976–78)

Feb 25 2010

Monday, November 21 3:36 pm HOW TO PUT INTO WORDS an experience that profoundly affected my outlook on life, my core values, my “spirit”? I began my Peace Corps service at 22 years of age, bringing with me a middle class background, a belief that life held much suffering, and a strong desire to work to alleviate suffering. For 2 years I set up maternal-infant preventive health programs in several villages. I conducted well-baby exams and prenatal exams; nutrition education programs; training for indigenous midwives; evaluations of the relationship between the season of the year and nutritional status. I lived in small villages, along side the people that I’d come to work for and with. In retrospect, while my work was not insignificant, its importance to my personal growth seems minor in comparison to what I learned about my African co-workers, patients, and medical trainees. It’s been 10 years now . . .