Tag: Peace Corps
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Around the World & Right Here
I would visit corners of this strange land not unlike my hometown: unknown and invisible to the world, no place of pride on any map, unsung in the guide books. Places nobody came from and nobody went to. Corn farms. Tobacco farms.
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Where Fact Meets Fiction
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My personal journeys work best as parody. I am a very unserious traveler. I board the train for the potato cutlet, not the arrival in Bangaluru.
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Eggnog Around the World
The first year I cooked eggnog, the result was a combination of lumps and slime. Not even the high-proof white lightening we poured in–the Malawian jungle juice known as Powers No 1–could cure the stuff. We were Peace Corps Volunteers celebrating Christmas in the back of beyond. We had most of the right ingredients, fresh…
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What is mine to do?
God Holds You offers a chronicle of hope. As we entered the Pandemic Wilderness in March 2020, progressive Lutheran pastor Sarah Scherschligt began publishing daily reflections about adapting to the new constraints. Written with her congregation in mind, these real-time posts transcend the self and her faith community to form a relatable narrative that is both…
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A writer in residence
I’ve taken on a surprising new assignment. I have a nice official title, but what it boils down to really is writer in residence. And what is this residence? I report to a cozy white cottage behind a row of heirloom corn off the beaten paths traversing the expansive training grounds of our nation’s foreign…
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The United States Department of State
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Referred to as the State Department, State, and DOS, the U.S. Department of State has recently been called by an unfitting new label. I don’t care about the insult. Hearing it called “deep state department” glances off as a meaningless jab. I’ve long inured myself against the public bluster. What concerns me more is the…
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Peace Corps, the Musical
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Five years ago, I flirted with writing a musical based on ‘the generic Peace Corps experience.’ I tabled the idea quickly. The unique nature of volunteer service set abundant hurdles. Peace Corps Africa and Peace Corps Latin America are different beasts. The organization’s six decades presented another problem. We’d moved from the era of ‘Drop…
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Always
Puzzled that I’d spend my time doing this, people will ask, ‘How long have you been writing?’ Part accusation, part sincere inquiry, it deserves consideration. The truest answer I have—and it’s not a wise guy answer—is always. I say ‘truest’ because of the stages leading up to my present output: two published novels; two mid-grade…
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Sex Ed: Anne Frank in Africa
Without telling us the punchlines, Dutch researchers announced this week the discovery of four dirty jokes papered over in Anne Frank’s diary. I taught the diary as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi two decades ago, curious from the start why it was on the curriculum. My students faced a lifetime of grinding poverty, endemic…
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Review–Memoir from Paraguay
Latest review posted at Peace Corps Worldwide, home for Peace Corps-affiliated writers who publish stories from around the world. Mark Salvatore writes simple, declarative sentences. His Peace Corps memoir, Shade of the Paraiso, is stripped to fact and detail, observation and truth. Even its replication of time — passing slowly at first, building inexorably over months,…
Ben East Books 