I am sure that many of you will remember getting the Peace Corps Hotline once you COSed–it is available online at http://www.peacecorps.gov/rpcv/hotline/current.pdf. If you wnt to see what the job market for RPCVs is these days, or if you are looking for a change, check it out.
Letters Home from the Peace Corps
Peace Corps Writers has agreed to edit a collection of Peace Corps letters to be published as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps. We are happy to say we will be advised in this project by Andrew Carroll, editor of the best selling books of “war letters,†featuring the extraordinary correspondence of American soldiers from many eras. Andrew Carroll is the Executive Director of the American Poetry & Literacy Project, a nonprofit organization he co-founded with the late Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky, which distributes free books throughout the country to promote literacy.
Letters Home From Peace Corps will be one way for Peace Corps Writers to preserve the history of the Peace Corps. We believe that personal correspondence offers a valuable insight into the experience we all shared. Letters and emails to family and friends are treasured documents that we must save. Your letters home tell a story, and with this book, we hope to preserve your story — as expressed in your own words — for posterity, and we ask you to share them with us.
While we prefer to see previously unpublished material, letters and/or emails that have already appeared in local newspapers, self-published books, and/or family web sites are all acceptable.
Selecting your letters for submission
In selecting a letter (or email) to be considered for publication in the book, we ask that you choose it thus: Would a reader find the letter intriguing? . . . Dramatic? . . . Humorous? Historic? Insightful? If you can answer yes to one of these questions, send it.
We will select the very best letters that tell the story — through the eyes of PCVs and Staff — of the Peace Corps since its beginnings in 1961.
Your letters can be about any aspect of the Peace Corps experience: Making the Decision to Join, Training, Peace Corps Service, Friends, HCNs, Family Visits, After the Peace Corps, Life as an RPCV, Returning to the Host Country.
Send us no more than three of your best letters or emails. Select the letter(s) that mean the most to you; that tell a story you want to tell.
Mailing us your correspondence for the first round of selection by June 1, 2007.
For letter(s):
o Send a legible photocopy or typed transcript. If we have trouble reading your handwriting, your letter will not be considered for publication.
o Please do not send original letters. We cannot return anything sent to us.
o Send to:
Marian Haley Beil
4 Lodge Pole Road
Pittsford, New York 14534
For email:
o Send your emails to: jpcoyne@peacecorpswriters.org
o Please put in the subject line:
Letters Home From the Peace Corps
Please include for either letters or emails:
o Information about yourself or the PCV/RPCV or staff member who wrote the letter (e.g., where and when he or she served, and any other important personal and/or background information),
o Your phone number.
o Your email address.
o Your mailing address.
Do not send a query asking if we are interested in your correspondence. If your letters (or emails) are Peace Corps-related and meet the criteria described above, you should assume that we are interested in reading them and considering them for publication in Letters Home From the Peace Corps.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Marian Haley Beil
John Coyne
Editors: Letters Home From the Peace Corps
A fortune teller said a bus would play an important part in my future. It did, but not in the way I’d imagined.
Next Stop, My Calling - Meeting My Destiny on the Bus
Newsweek
September 21, 2006
Author: Sarah Paige
During my last week of high school I was thinking less about my future than I was about spending time with my friends. Our mothers had a graduation party for us, an afternoon tea with sandwiches and a lot of questions like, “What will you major in?†and “What do you want to do after college?†My answer to both: “I don’t know.†Then our mothers revealed they had invited a psychic to tell our fortunes at this turning point in our lives.
Isabel, the psychic, had arms full of bangle bracelets that clacked together as she took a turn with each of us, holding our hands to tell our future. My friend Lisa was told that a tall man was in her future, which wound up being true of her 6-foot-2 husband. Angela, it was predicted, would spend time in the South, which came true when she attended law school at the University of Virginia. When my turn finally came, Isabel took my hand, paused for a moment and reported flatly, “I see you … on a bus.â€
As my new fate got a few giggles from the other girls, I was picturing the disgusting bus stations I had only seen in the movies, full of sad and lonely souls who would rather be anywhere else. A bus is supposed to be the conduit to bigger and better things, the unfortunate but necessary inconvenience you endure to get to your destination. But Isabel had made it sound like the bus was the destination. Is that all? My friends get to be Southern belles and marry tall Prince Charmings and all I get is a lousy bus?
My mind raced. What kind of bus would it be? Local? Cross-country? A public bus? A school bus? A tour bus? Where would I be going? Could it be some sort of figurative or metaphorical bus? Would it please just hurry up and come get me so that I could stop dreading spending time in a smelly, uncomfortable bus? Isabel couldn’t answer any questions about my bus, but told me to be aware of opportunities in my future, and for years I was constantly on the lookout for an attachment to anything that remotely resembled a bus. Eventually, I got caught up with more constructive activities. I finished school, got married and started a teaching career, none of which were apparently significant enough to warrant a mention in Isabel’s psychic reading.
Years later, I found myself thinking of Isabel and her prediction. It happened late one night toward the end of a two-year stint working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon. I was heading home to my host village, riding over a treacherous road, on a bus of course. The road was typical of West Africa—unpaved, unlit, narrow and full of holes from six months of torrential rains. The bus was also typical—a 1980s Toyota van with added benches to squeeze in 15 adult passengers, not counting chickens, goats and several children under the age of 2. This particular bus had GOD LOVE painted in large red letters on the side of it, and I was hoping that might provide some protection as we reeled blindly in the dark around a downhill curve with no guardrails. Since Isabel’s vision had just re-entered my mind, I was sure that meant my life was flashing before my eyes. Had Isabel been predicting my untimely death? Was the opportunity she told me to be aware of the opportunity to die in a fiery bus crash in a foreign country?
I survived, of course, but I began to think again about the significance of that bus, and how many loose ends I would have left if that bus ride had been my last. Most troubling to me was that I was still unsure of what to do with the rest of my life. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be an actor. I grew up taking acting classes and performing and dancing in front of any audience that happened to be sitting still. When I got to high school however, I went through a phase of thinking that acting was frivolous and I was embarrassed to do it.
On the bus that night, I thought about all the people I had met in Cameroon. For most of them, their lives had been decided for them by a class system and arranged marriages. Women only recently started working away from their homes and family farms. I am extremely lucky to have choices in my life, and I should not waste my opportunities. I noticed that in Cameroon people took much-needed relaxing breaks by forming groups where they gathered, drank fermented corn beer and acted out ancient stories. Even on terrifying bus rides, most of the passengers were telling jokes and entertaining each other. Whether it is for escape or introspection, entertainment and those who provide it are valuable.
After that bus ride, I finally understood that pursuing my dreams was not frivolous but rather a privilege. It cannot have been a coincidence that this thought came to me during a bus trip. I knew then I would become an actor. Since returning from Cameroon four years ago, I have spent the time studying acting, and I moved to New York City in order to make it a career. I have performed in theater, films and television. I have gotten a late start compared to my counterparts, and as the odds have it, I will probably never be a famous movie star. But that is OK because I love every minute of what I am doing. To me, that is the definition of success.
As far as my destiny with buses, my experience so far has been occasionally dangerous and, yes, sometimes sticky and smelly. But without it, I might never have had the courage to take such a big chance in changing my career. Now in Manhattan, I use public transportation daily, and I am always open to what I might see on a bus.
Paige lives in New York City.
Earlier today I received a call from Peace Corps Regional Director for Africa Henry McKoy letting me know that Peace Corps Director Ron Tschetter has selected James Ham to be the next Peace Corps Country Director for Cameroon. All staff and many volunteers know James from the times he served as Acting CD in Cameroon in 2004, 2005 and 2006. James is an RPCV/Guinea, was the Country Desk Officer for Cameroon for several years, and has recently been serving as a roving CD in the Africa Region. Below, please see James’ more detailed bio.
James plans to come out to Cameroon sometime in January so that he and his wife Sharoya can get their three boys into school in Yaounde. James and I will work together until the end of February when I will complete my five years as Country Director. This will help ensure a very smooth transition.
From the four years that James and I have already worked together, I know that he loves Cameroon and has been very excited about the possibility of becoming the Country Director here. Whereas Nina and I will be sad to leave Cameroon, we’ll be glad to know that my old office will be occupied by someone who couldn’t be more enthusiastic about the country or Peace Corps.
Regards to all and best wishes for a safe and happy holiday season.
Robert L. Strauss
Country Director
Peace Corps/Cameroon
BP 215
Yaounde, Cameroon
Tel: 237-220-25-34
James T. Ham
Country Director Designate
Peace Corps Cameroon
James T. Ham is newly selected Country Director for Peace Corps Cameroon. Just prior to this appointment he served as Country Desk Officer for the Peace Corps Africa Region. He was responsible for the Peace Corps programs in Benin, Cameroon and Burkina Faso. He has served in this position for two years. Among the duties that he has participated in include: the closure and suspension of Peace Corps Gabon and Chad, CD Selection Panels, PCMO selection panels, APCD selection Panels and also served as the Office of Special Services Duty Officer. On three different occasions served as the Country Director for Peace Corps Cameroon. (June - September 2004, July 2005 and March - May 2006). Other activities include co facilitated the Southern Africa Diversity workshop in Mozambique in 2004.
Prior to becoming Country Desk Officer in the Africa Region, James Ham served as the Country Desk Assistant for the nations of Ghana, Guinea, Togo and the Ivory Coast. He assisted with the evacuation of the Volunteers in the Ivory Coast and served on the State Department Task Force during this evacuation process.
Other positions served at the Peace Corps include those of Staging Director, Co-Chair Black History Month committee, member of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Observance Committee, Women’s Month Committee. Mr. Ham was selected by the Director to serve as Co- Chair of the 2005 Combined Federal Campaign for Peace Corps. The Campaign raised over 127% of its $86,000 goal.
Mr. Ham is veteran of the United States Navy. Currently he holds a Bachelor of Arts in Middle Grades Education from North Carolina Central University and in December 2005 received his Master of Arts degree in International Education from American University.
An educator for over ten years teaching in urban, rural and international settings, he is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer where he served as a teacher in Guinea (96-98). Mr. Ham speaks French fluently and was selected to participate in the International Career Advancement Program in Aspen, Colorado in 2004.
James is married to Sharoya Ham and has three sons, Jeremiah 8, Myles 5 and Malachi 3.
We are writing to invite you to come to Italy next summer for a Peace Corps/Cameroon reunion. We are contacting those who were in Cameroon around the early 1980s. Colette and I have been living in Italy for about 12 years now where I work in the Forestry Department at FAO in Rome. For those of you who remember James, he’s now 23 and living in the U.S.
The idea is to gather in the Orvieto area of Umbria, about an hour outside Rome, using our house as the main meeting point. There are a few housing options to consider for those of you who decide to come. They include renting nearby villas or farm houses or staying at a bed and breakfast or “agriturismoâ€. We would organize at least a couple of get togethers (pig roasts, ndole feasts, etc.) at our house during the week, with plenty of ‘Jobajo’, 33 and whatever other traditional fare we can get hold of. There will be lots of flexibility for those who want to explore other parts of Umbria or elsewhere in Italy. We are targeting the week of July 22 - 28 as the likely time to do this.
If you know of anyone who might be interested but who may not have received this message, please feel free to spread the word to others.
Let us know as soon as you have an idea of whether you think you can make it and we’ll start to build a list of maybes, definites, or whatever.
If you need any more info at this time, let me know and we’ll try to provide it.
Hope to see a good number of you next July.
And even if you can’t make it, we’d love to hear from you anyway!
Our best to all,
Doug (PC Cameroon 81-84 - Diang/Yaoundé) and Colette McGuire
email: dougmcguire2002@hotmail.com
phone (H): +39 06 4543 2309
Phone (O): +39 06 5705 3275
address: Località Botto, 31
05010 Canale-Orvieto (TR)
Italy
Accra, Ghana, September 26, 2006 - PCV Donna Daniels, President of the Republic of Ghana John Agyekum Kufuor, and Peace Corps Ghana Country Director, Madeleine Mader, cut a birthday cake at a reception hosted by US Ambassador Pamela E. Bridgewater (left) at her residence with 450 people in attendance including 178 Peace Corps Volunteers and Trainees. Africa Regional Director Henry McKoy looks on (right).