Tonga

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THE FLY THAT FLEW OFF THE HANDLE by Jonathan Toret (Toga)
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Once Again: Five Great Short Stories About the Peace Corps Experience
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HOUSE OF FIRE by Elizabeth Di Grazia (Tonga)
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A Writer Writes — “A Season of Survivor Was Filmed on an Island Nicer Than Mine“ by Harry Seitz (Tonga)
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Remembering the murder of PCV Deborah Gardner (Tonga)
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The Murder of Deborah Gardner (Tonga)

THE FLY THAT FLEW OFF THE HANDLE by Jonathan Toret (Toga)

When you have a story to tell, you’re in the midst of a national pandemic, and you’re Jonathan Foret, you write a book. The original story is beautifully illustrated by Alexis Braud, a Cut Off-based professional artist, bringing Jonathan’s story to life in the pages of The Fly that Flew Off the Handle. Jonathan, who is the Executive Director of the South Louisiana Wetlands Discovery Center, is proud to present his newly published children’s book, The Fly that Flew Off the Handle. “The story is about a little fly named Lester who feels angry a lot, but doesn’t quite know why or what to do about it,” explained the author. After a long journey of trying and failing to feel better, Lester meets a little butterfly, Seymour, who helps him figure out what’s wrong by asking him two simple questions: “What makes you angry?” and “what makes you happy?” Maybe . . .

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Once Again: Five Great Short Stories About the Peace Corps Experience

Five Great Short Stories About the Peace Corps Experience   The Mending Fields by Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975–76) I WAS ASSIGNED to the Island of Saint Kit in the West Indies. Once on an inter-island plane, I sat across the aisle from one of my new colleagues, an unfriendly, overserious young woman. She was twenty-four, twenty-five . . . we were all twenty-four, twenty-five. I didn’t know her much or like her. As the plane banked over the island, she pressed against the window, staring down at the landscape. I couldn’t see much of her face, just enough really to recognize an expression of pain. Below us spread an endless manicured lawn, bright green and lush of sugarcane, the island’s main source of income. Each field planted carefully to control erosion. Until that year, Saint Kit’s precious volcanic soil had been bleeding into the sea; somehow they had resolved . . .

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HOUSE OF FIRE by Elizabeth Di Grazia (Tonga)

  House of Fire shows that thirty years of breaking free from a cycle of violence was not enough to prepare Elizabeth Di Grazia for the trials of starting her own family. Growing up in the 1970s, she suffered repeated sexual abuse, incest, and neglect. Although in the Catholic church, she was forced to have a hushed-up abortion at the age of fourteen. Within a year she was pregnant again, by another brother. Di Grazia gave birth to a son who was quickly taken away and adopted into a family she never knew. Elizabeth’s story traces her healing and the creation of an intentional family. She and her partner, Jody, adopted two Guatemalan babies. They learned that provision and protection were not enough, but refused to allow denial and secrets to go unexposed became critical. Elizabeth di Grazia graduated from Hamline University with an MFA in Writing in 2003. She . . .

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A Writer Writes — “A Season of Survivor Was Filmed on an Island Nicer Than Mine“ by Harry Seitz (Tonga)

• I served in the Peace Corps in Tonga from 2014–2016. Some of the volunteers got sent to sites in the capital. They had electricity, running water, supermarkets, the works. A few of the others were sent to ’Eua, a large island close to the capital. Life was a little more difficult there, but they still had all of the basic amenities. The remainder and I were sent to Vava’u, the main island of which is relatively developed, but also much further away from the capital. I alone was sent to Ofu. While technically a part of Vava’u, it is an outer island. No roads, no restaurants, and very limited electricity. Ferries didn’t even run there. I had to hitch boat rides with my neighbors every other weekend to buy food on the main island of Vava’u. Lifuka (Survivor Island) Lifuka is a part of the Ha’apai group of islands. . . .

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Remembering the murder of PCV Deborah Gardner (Tonga)

In the late Nineties, shortly after I had taken over the job of manager of the New York Recruitment Office for the Peace Corps, I got a call from a reporter at the New York Observer newspaper. I thought he was calling to ask me about the Peace Corps and to write an article about the agency. Well, in a way he was, but he started by asking if I knew anything about the murder of a young woman in Tonga in 1975. The reporter’s name was Philip Weiss and he didn’t realized he had stumbled on an RPCV who was fascinated by the history of the Peace Corps and obsessively collected PCV stories. Phil Weiss was also obsessed, but by the murder of this PCV in Tongo. In 1978, when he was 22 and backpacking around the world, he had crashed with a Peace Corps Volunteer in Samoa named . . .

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The Murder of Deborah Gardner (Tonga)

The murder of Deborah Gardner in 1976 in Tonga still haunts the Peace Corps agency and particularly those who were in Tonga during this terrible time when the agency did not do justice to one of their own. I have written about this murder several times over the years and Jan Worth Nelson (Tonga 1976-78) wrote the 2006 novel Night Blind based on the murder. She alerted me to the recent documentary. It is part of a series called “Passport to Murder” produced for Discovery ID TV. The  segment on Deborah Gardner was entitled “The Devil in Paradise.” It was aired on July 29, 2016. Jan, who was interviewed for the segment wrote me after it aired, “I have come to believe there probably isn’t any closure to be had.  But unlike Emile Hons (Tonga 1974-76), I didn’t really know her AND, most importantly, I didn’t walk into that cursed hut to . . .

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