Sierra Leone – Peace Corps Worldwide

2023 Winner of Peace Corps Writers’ Award for Best Poetry Book

Jul 17 2023

Ten Years A Poet Philip Fretz (Sierra Leone 1967–69) I have written poems and short stories since I can remember, years before word processing freed me from the perils of my illegible handwriting. Subsequent to retiring, I discovered first the Osher Life Long Learning program in Lewes, Delaware, and then the Renaissance Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. Both of these programs offered many opportunities to practice writing in many subject areas with encouragement from classmates and instructors. The selection of poems in this volume represent many that were spawned by participation in these programs. I’ve been awakened to notice the people I see in ordinary settings and events that occur in everyday life. They arouse my inspiration to record what I see and hear and translate those ideas into poetry and prose. Philip Fretz has lived in Philadelphia, southern Delaware, and in Baltimore, MD. He has been an active . . .

Film of RPCVs returning to Sierra Leone

Jul 12 2023

The Peace Corps Returns A Documentary film by Steve Kovacs and RoseAnn Rotandaro. In the summer of 2011 twenty Peace Corps Volunteers returned to Sierra Leone, West Africa. For most of them, it was the first time returning to the country since they had served in the 1960’s and 1970’s. They came to reconnect with their friends in Sierra Leone. It was an auspicious time for their trip. The nation was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary of independence from Great Britain. The year also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Peace Corp’s arrival in Sierra Leone. From 1961, and for a 30-year period, 3,500 the U.S. Peace Corps Volunteers served in Sierra Leone. Then, in 1991, a civil war broke out and ravaged this small nation for over eleven years. It claimed 50,000 lives and victimized more than 20,000 surviving citizens victims by amputating limbs and other acts . . .

Review | THROUGH GRATEFUL EYES: The Peace Corps Experiences of Dartmouth’s Class of 1967

Jun 23 2023

Through Grateful Eyes: The Peace Corps Experiences of Dartmouth’s Class of 1967 by Charles A. (Chuck) Hobbie (Korea 1968-71) — Compiler/Editor iUniverse Publisher 273 pages July 2022 $2.99 (Kindle); $39.99 (Paperback); $31.95 (Hardback) Reviewed by Evelyn Kohl LaTorre (Peru 1964-1966) • “Talk less and listen more.” “Accept the values of the population you’re working with.” “Adapt to being comfortable being uncomfortable.” These are a few of the sage learnings found in this 2 ½ pound, 8 1/2” x 11” tome that relates the Peace Corps experiences of 19 members of the Dartmouth class of 1967 and several of their spouses. All served in the Peace Corps in the late sixties and early seventies, and their exploits are a sampling of the 30 Dartmouth ’67 graduates who went on to join the Peace Corps. Their fascinating, and often humorous, stories are punctuated with 146 photos that show the youthful volunteers . . .

SOFTBALL, SNAKES, SAUSAGE FLIES AND RICE | Philip Fretz (Sierra Leone)

Jun 02 2023

Softball, Snakes, Sausage Flies and Rice: Peace Corps Experience in 1960s Sierra Leone by Philip Fretz (Sierra Leone 1962-64) Self Published January 2014 148 pages $0 (Kindle); $5.99 (Paperback) Just a few months out of student life on the rolling green lawns of Haverford College, Philip Fretz was living in a small, remote West African city amid insect invasions, deadly snakes and coups. It was the tumultuous 1960s, in both the United States and Africa, and he had become an early recruit to the Peace Corps, founded in 1961. He was the first volunteer to be sent to teach English at the Kenema Technical Institute in Sierra Leone, a former British colony that had been left in stark poverty and underdevelopment when colonialism ended. Half a century later, he began to pore through the diaries he had kept, sporadically, during those two years in Kenema. When his father died in . . .

Brittney Nadler (Sierra Leone) awarded Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship

Feb 04 2023

Illinois University alumna Brittney Nadler (Sierra Leone 2019-20) was recently awarded a Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship. Funded by the U.S. Department of State and administered by Howard University, the Pickering Fellowship supports individuals who seek careers in the State Department’s Foreign Service. Nadler was among 45 awardees selected from nearly 900 applicants. The fellowship will fund a two-year master’s degree in an area of relevance to the Foreign Service. It also will provide extensive professional development opportunities including internships, mentoring and skills training. Nadler will complete a summer internship at the State Department in 2024 and an overseas internship at a U.S. embassy or consulate in summer 2025. Upon successful completion of the program, Nadler will become a U.S. diplomat. Born in Park Ridge, Illinois, and raised in South Elgin, Nadler served as a Fulbright English Teacher in Thailand from 2017-18, bringing 10 of her students to Malaysia . . .

New books by Peace Corps writers | November-December 2022

Jan 11 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 . . .

Martin Puryear (Sierra Leone) | VESSEL

Dec 02 2022

Martin Puryear, Vessel, 1997-2002 Eastern white pine, mesh, tar Smithsonian American Art Museum One of the most important American sculptors working today, Martin Puryear (Sierra Leone 1964-66) is known for his handmade constructions, primarily in wood. After studying painting at Catholic University in Washington, DC, he traveled extensively — teaching in Sierra Leone with the Peace Corps, studying printmaking in Stockholm from 1966 to 1968, and visiting Japan through a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982 – experiences that have shaped the artist’s practice. He creates abstract forms that are evocative and familiar, yet elude singular interpretations. Motifs like human heads, ladders, and vessels take on symbolic resonance, and function as meditations on powerful universal concepts such as freedom, shelter, sanctuary, migration, mobility, and equality. In Vessel, a form lies facedown on the ground, the neck and crown rising up in opposite directions, like the bow and stern of a ship. Contained within this openwork structure . . .

New books by Peace Corps writers | September – October 2022

Nov 02 2022

The Volunteer who built schools in Africa . . . after leaving Peace Corps — Cindy Nofziger (Colombia)

Oct 08 2022

by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963–65) Cindy Nofziger’s personal journey went from being a Peace Corps Volunteer at a leprosy hospital in Sierra Leone, West Africa, from 1985 to 1987 to subsequently founding “Schools for Salone” to help rebuild the national educational structure that had been destroyed by the country’s civil war that lasted from 1991-2001. In 2005, Cindy returned to Sierra Leone (also known as ‘Salone’) for the first time it was possible to do so since the end of the decade-long civil war.nThe civil war had rolled back all educational gains. Rural communities like Masanga, Cindy’s old site, were the worst hit. Schools were destroyed, or they just weren’t being built. While there, she reconnected with an old friend, John Sesay, from the 1980s. John asked Cindy to help build a community school, and . . . thus, Schools for Salone (SfS) was born. Since then, SfS has . . .

The Volunteer Who Was the Very Model of a Modern Foreign Service Officer | Donald Lu (Sierra Leone)

Oct 07 2022

(A portion of this Profile is drawn from a Peace Corps WorldWide publication of April 2022.) by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) Donald Lu served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone, 1988-90, where he helped restore hand-dug water wells, teach health education, and conduct public health programs such as latrine construction, use and maintenance. Donald graduated with an A. B. from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs in 1988 after completing a 158-page long senior thesis titled “The Involvement of International Peacekeeping in Providing Humanitarian Assistance. He later received an M. P. A. from the Woodrow Wilson School in 1991. In 1990, Donald joined the U. S. Foreign Service and went on to serve in most every Office at the U. S. Department of State. Armed with a wide ranging competency in eight languages, including Chinese, Russian, Urdu, and West African Krio, his first posting . . .

EPITAPH by Carolyn Ladelle Bennett (Sierra Leone)

Oct 01 2022

A nation dying of self-inflicted mental and moral wounds turns rabid-extremist. Leadership crippled by corruption, moral impairment, physical and mental decay, capable of nothing other than the same old thing, flails and destroys and in cowardice (likened to an infant, but powered by lethal partners), ducks responsibility and blames a made-for-the-occasion “enemy.” America’s leadership class of kleptocrats, gerontocrats, incestuous hangers-on and clingers to Washington’s revolving door are the American (anachronistic, anarchist, nihilist) extremists. They create and feed on global and national crises; and spawn America’s weakness, unpreparedness, and loss of common defense. Their age must end. Epitaph returns to the framers of the American Union, lays out the nature of present-day American extremism with critical evidence from distant headlines and information sources and context of world thinkers — originating far beyond the Washington Beltway. The work ends with advisory notes to youth, and notes toward forming a “More Perfect . . .

Who Is RPCV Donald Lu?

Apr 05 2022

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan Sunday revealed the name of the US official who allegedly threatened the PTI government, putting the ties with Washington at risk. The premier had made the revelation during an interaction with the party lawmakers after a televised address in which he congratulated the nation for “foiling the international conspiracy” and announced that he has advised the president to dissolve the assembly. While briefing his MNAs about the political situation in the country, he had said that US State Dept official Donald Lu (Sierra Leone 1988-90) is behind this “conspiracy” against the PTI government due to an independent foreign policy. PM Imran Khan in a public rally on March 27 had claimed that a foreign power had interfered in the national affairs of the country and attempted to dislodge his government. At that time he did not name the country and the official but in his . . .

Review — BE STEADFAST by Bryan J. Meeker (Sierra Leone)

Feb 10 2020

Be Steadfast: A Peace Corps Volunteer Journey in Sierra Leone By Bryan J. Meeker (Sierra Leone 2011-13) 361 pages CreateSpace March 2019 $9.99 (paperback) Reviewed by D.W. Jefferson (El Salvador 1974–76; Costa Rica 1976–77) • Where to begin? Bryan Meeker has written a wonderful memoir of his Peace Corps service in Sierra Leone. I’ll start with a synopsis from the back cover: “Be Steadfast” is a deeply personal memoir of a Peace Corps volunteer’s service in Sierra Leone. Absent during the decade-long devastating conflict, the Peace Corps returned in 2010 as a symbol of unity and progress. While the Peace Corps had worked in Sierra Leone for decades before the war, many of the traditions and cultural norms changed, leaving these new volunteers to forge brave new paths. Being a volunteer is a transformative experience, expressed in this work with honesty and with an immense amount of love. Not . . .

“Pay The Price” by Robert Gribbin (Kenya)

Mar 06 2017

Pay the Price by Robert Gribbin (Kenya 1968–70) • I WATCHED HIS TWO BROWN FINGERS thump against my arm. “Aha,” he muttered under his breath, then I saw the needle poised slowly before it plunged into the vein. Has it come to this? I thought morosely as I slipped away into somnolence while my blood dripped into the bag. Shortly, I awoke with a start to find Mamadou grinning down at me. “Okay, Jimmie,” he grimaced, “all done.” “You rest until dark, then go. Arrangements are in place. You’ll be safe.” I nodded assent. I was indeed ready to go. TWO AND A HALF YEARS in Sierra Leone was more than enough. I had dawdled and procrastinated, found myself bound by slippery ties to a place that I didn’t really like and to a culture that I could not fathom. Yet that is partly why I stayed to try . . .

Patrick O’Leary (Sierra Leone) — KFAI radio interview 1/24

Jan 16 2017

On Tuesday, Jan 24th, 7pm to 8pm,CST, KFAI (“Radio without Boundaries”), 90.3FM & 106.7FM from Minneapolis/St. Paul, will interview Patrick O’Leary (Sierra Leone 1966–68) on its show “Write On! Radio”about his Peace Corps memoir From Freeborn to Freetown & Back. KFAI can be heard on the TuneIn app. From Freeborn to Freetown & Back Patrick O’Leary (Sierra Leone 1966–68) Peace Corps Writers September 2016 146 pages $14.95 (paperback), $10.00 (Kindle)