WRirnER~. D . J $ o-neaaers Returned Peact• Corps Voluntet•rs write ahout their world

May 1994 Volume 6, Number 3

Recent books by Peace Corps writers

BIG DREAMS MANAGING EMERGENCY INTO THE HEART OF CALIFORNIA SITUATIONS IN LAW FIRMS by Bill Barich (Nigeria 1964-66)) MINIMIZING THE DAMAGE Pantheon, $24.00 by Nina Wendt (Malaysia 1973-76) and 539 pages L. J. Sklenar Inside ... May, 1994 Association of Legal Administrators Talking with Dick $75.00 (members), $100.00 (nonmembers) BUDDHA'S UTILE INSTRUCTION Lipez ...... 2 Kendall Hunt Publishing Company BOOK P.O. Box 1840 Reviews ...... 4-6 by Jack Kornfield (Thailand 1967-69) Dubuque, IA 52004 Bantam Paperback, $9.95 Readers write ...... 7 210pages 192 pages February, 1994 Heads up! ...... 8 May,1994 rl SALVAGING A LAND OF PLENTY Journals of Peace ... 10 MASTERS OF ILLUSION GARBAGE AND THE AMERICAN DREAM (Novel) Famous 1si Lines ... 1·1 by Jennifer Seymour Whitaker by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith "'~ ... (Nigeria 1962-64) Poem ...... ,:i: ...... ::12 (Cameroon 1965-67) _, William Morrow, $22.00 Warner Books, $21.95 288 pages Announcements ..... 13 210 pages ' . April, 1994 Cable Traffic May,1994 ...... everywhere TAT-TAP BOB VILA'S GUIDE TO HISTORICAL (A children's picture book about Haiti) HOMES OF THE MIDWEST AND by Kilren Lynn Williams (Malawi 1980-83) GREAT PLAINS lllustrated by Catherine Stock BOB VILA'S GUIDE TO HISTORICAL Clarion Books, $14.95 HOMES OF THE WEST 34pages by Bob Vila (Panama 1969- 70) March, 1994 Quill, $15.00 THE MEANING OF INTERNATIONAL 320pages EXPERIENCE FOR SCHOOLS May,1994 by Angene Hopkins Wilson (Liberia 1962-64) Greenwood Press, $47.95 184 pages July, 1993 Talking with Richard Lipez

Dick Lipez is one of the many Peace Corps Volunteers who served in Ethiopia and then went on to publish books. Among the Ethiopian RPCVs writers are Maria Thomas, Kathleen Coskran, Mark Dintinfass and John Coyne. Lipez was an Ethiopia I Volunteer teacher, then returned to worked in Peace Corps/Washington before becoming a full-time writer in the late Sixties. For several years he wrote a humor column for The Nation and published newspaper and magazine articles. In the mid-eighties he returned to Ethiopia and wrote about the war in Eritrea from the Eritrean front. His first novel, GRAND SCAM, was published in 1970. Since then he has written a series of mysteries featuring Don Strachey, a gay detective, under the pseud- onym of Richard Stevenson. Most of the books in the series have been set in upstate , close to where Dick lives in western Massachusetts.

You have published four novels about a gay detective. Why mystery novels? Why a gay detective? I was the snootiest of English majors and didn't read a mystery until I was 35. Then a friend made me try one -I think it was a Ross MacDonald -and I discovered myster- ies could be literate, socially astute, funny. I started writing them for profit and fun, and because the conventions you can fall back on make them easier to write than non-genre fiction. I marvel at writers who invent characters and make up good stories without props. It must be like flying. The detective's being gay had to do with my own snails-pace coming out. I shoved Don Strachey out first, then anxiously followed. It was my contribution to gay readers too. Gay characters in mysteries had always been psychotic-fop killers, suicidal wretches or contemptible eccentrics. That was only a tiny part of real life and therefore a lie. I wanted to help tell the truth for and about gay people and do it entertainingly. I used the pseudonym Stevenson - my middle name- because when the first Strachey came out in 1981 I had kids in elementary school and didn't want them to be told, "Hey, your pop's a sodomite." Not that that necessarily would have happened. I showed the first book in the series, DEATH TRICK, to an old-time newspaper guy I knew, and he said, "Lipez, you're smart to use a pseudonym on this. Otherwise people might think you were queer."

You were one of the first returned Peace Corps Volunteers hired in Washington, and hired by Charlie Peters in the old Evaluation Division. What was that like? It was terrifying at the time. I barely knew what I was doing and wish I could go back now and do it right. Writer-reporters- some old pros, some young ex-Volunteers- made lengthy visits to the field, hung around asking questions of the Volunteers and their co-workers, then wrote book-length critical reports of the programs. The requirements were clear thinking and good writing. The aim was to make officials want to read the evaluation reports, and they were read. It was provocative and useful,

2 RPCV Writers & Readers and every government agency should be doing it now, including the Peace Corps. The Evaluation set-up was arrogant, of course, but no more arrogant than the whole idea of the Peace Corps. I remember stepping off a plane on a 1965 evaluation trip and think- ing, "Hmm, what can I come up with to fix India?"

Besides your novels, how else do you make your living as a writer? It's hardly a living- I'm back in the economy of 1971, while the country has inconsid- erately moved on. I write editorials part-time for the Berkshire Eagle, mystery reviews for the Washington Post and New York Newsday, and I do free-lance book editing. The editorial-writing pay is crummy, but the job is stimulating and I can help bring some internationalist perspective to a small-city paper. Pittsfield, Massachusetts readers got harangued for years on the virtues of the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front and just barely escaped a tirade on the devaluation of the CFA franc caused by France's termina- tion last year of its policy of subsidizing the Francophone Africa currency. I realized, just in time, that was going too far.

My last book, THIRD MAN Our, is under option by a filmmaker who wants badly to do it. I wish him godspeed. When I am old, I hope Congress will declare a Peace Corps veterans bonus.

If you were writing the Great Peace Corps Novel, what would be the subject matter? There won't be a Peace Corps Big One about the Peace Corps Land and the Peace Corps Sea and the Peace Corps Sky, because there's no need. It's already written, in the collective and individual work of all the Peace Corps writers whose books have been described in this publication over the past five years. It has to be that way: the Peace Corps isn't like the Napoleonic wars or the old-order-receding. It is, above all else, personal, and the Great Peace Corps Novel is in the deeply personal novels and stories of Maria Thomas, Richard Wiley, Bob Shacochis, Kathleen Coskran, etc. If I could, I would do it too.

What is the best Peace Corps book that you've read? It's too hard to pick one. I love Moritz Thomsen's books because he lets fly with the cross-cultural total-immersion dementia most of us were too Presbyterian to experience, let alone turn into literature. I like THE VIL.L.AGE OF WAITING a lot too- George Packer is no slouch in the belles-lettres nervous-breakdown department. Mary-Ann Tirone Smith is best at catching the humor that kept a lot of us sane. Mike Tidwell's THE PoNDS OF KALAMBAYI is the most canny and affective book about doing a Peace Corps job as well as anybody can. Geraldine Kennedy's recent HARMAITAN, about her trip across the Sahara, is very fine in the way it captures the innocence and chutzpah of the Peace Corps in Africa in the early Sixties. I know there are other good Peace Corps books that I haven't read yet.

What's your next book about? It's another Don Strachey mystery, about a psychotherapy group whose leader is helping "cure" the men in the group of their homosexuality. This type of thing still goes on. There's lots of potential in it for intrigue and mayhem and, of course, my settling a few scores in a harmless and diverting way.

May 1994 3 CABLE Reviews TRAFFIC ..,. AdWeek selected ALMA MATER a man: nothing human is alien to me" - as one of February's Kluge sets up housekeeping in a freshman "Best Spots" People A College Homecoming all-male dorm. The roiling life there Magazine's advertise- ment that featured by P. F. Kluge (Micronesia 1967-69) inspires him in his quest to uncover the RON ARIAS {Peru Addison-Wesley, 252 pp. real Kenyon. 1963-64). The ad $22 .95 Kenyon was founded in 1825 by Episcopal showed Ron display- Bishop Philander Chase, who was ousted ing what he takes Reviewed by Ann Neelon (Senega/1978-79) with him on assign - shortly thereafter by disgruntled faculty ment overseas. and trustees. Illustrious alumni of Chase's "Conjugate it now: I am good, you are ..,. It's a • review in "star of the west" include Rutherford B. good, we are good," P. F. Kluge comments the March 26th issue Hayes, Paul Newman and Jonathan of Publishers Weekly to himself in good-hearted mockery of the Winters. In the 1940s and 50s, fledgling, for MARY-ANN ingratiating speeches delivered by the but later famous, writers such as Robert TIRONE SMITH's President, the Provost and various deans to Lowell, James Wright and E. L. Doctorow (Cameroon 1965-67) assembled parents and freshmen at Kenyon descended on Kenyon to study under the novel, MASTERS OF College's Convocation in autumn 1991. eminent poet-critic John Crowe Ransom. ILLUSION. PW sums up ALMA MATER: A CoLLEGE HoMECOMING is not a by saying, "This dar- But Kenyon is not "the Mr. Chipsy kind of ingly imagined novel paean to academe. It is, however, a quali- place" it used to be. Issues dividing the adds a new dimen- campus include: a proposed reinstitution sion to an already of the residential requirement for faculty, impressive body of the proposed formation of a College work." Also reviewed ... not a Tenure and Promotion Committee, two and given a • in the controversial hiring searches, renegotiation same issue was WHITE paean to MAN'S GRAVE by of fraternity housing rights in dormitories, Richard Dooling and recruitment of minority faculty and (NRPCV), a novel academe students. The college has experienced a about a PCV in West "disintegration of consensus," as one Africa. PW calls it a professor of English puts it. " .. . galloping tale about a clash of Like Henry David Thoreau at wordviews." Walden Pond, Kluge lives deliber- Mary-Ann was ately in his year at Kenyon. In his featured in the May case, sucking life to the marrow 28th issue of PW fied ode, in which involves sitting in on ali-day talking about MASTERS Kluge celebrates Admissions Office meetings; OF ILLUSION, and her the local heroes of venturing into a female-sexuality course travel essay in GOING Gambier, Ohio, Kenyon College's home- UP COUNTRY. taught by a radical lesbian feminist; town, at the same time that he worries ..,. A new book of exulting in an act-of-God ice storm that about "the way Kenyon simultaneously gives seniors an extra day to tum in their poems by ANN gilds and embalms." NEELON (Senegal comps; and eerily envisioning his own 1978-79), who Kluge, the son of German immigrants, first dead parents, Maria and Walter, housewife teaches at Murray arrived at Kenyon in 1960 as a scholarship and machinist, in the crowd at graduation. State University in student. The author of four novels and one Again like Thoreau, Kluge refuses to live Kentucky, is a finalist what is not life, even on a college campus for the Walt Whitman previous work of non-fiction, Kluge returns Award this year. Ann 30 years later as a distinguished visiting where the quality of life is sometimes will be reading in writer. His teaching load is light- one threatened by political correctness. Nor early June at the course per semester- and he spends the does Kluge fall prey to the imitative Baseball Hall of Fame rest of his time poking around campus with fallacy. He brings life even to the tedium of along with several the aim of writing a book. Perhaps having grading papers. "You sit at your desk other writers whose digested Terence's famous dictum- "I am writing 'awk' for 'awkward,"' he says. work was included in the anthology

4 RPCV Writers & Readers CABLE TRAFFIC "You write it so often- awk, awk, awk, from the first, drawing one into its personal, Diamonds Are a Girl's you feel like a bird shitting on a statue." political and natural landscapes. Best Friend: Women Writers on Baseball. Unlike his tenure-track colleagues, Kluge is As the novel begins, Anne Schmidt, former .,.. The first issue of a free agent. He can ask penetrating community organizer in Guayaquil, has Creative NonFiction, questions without fear of repercussion. returned with her new husband to show a literary journal How can a good college become great? him the country where she had served. One published at the Should faculty divide themselves equally of her goals on the trip is to come to terms University of between teaching and research? What is to with the guilt and regrets that have bur- Pitts.burgh, carries an essC~y be done about rampant grade inflation? If dened her since she hastily left the country by PETER CHILSON (Niger as many people apply to teach at a college four years earlier. However, when con- 1985-88) entitled as to study in a given year, is something out fronted with the reality of Guayaquil, she " Bush Taxi Comman- of whack? What is the role of race and cannot bring herself to stay there or to visit dos," which is a gender in the curriculum? Why aren't the barrio where she had worked. section of his people in academia happier? Kluge does forthcoming book on Fleeing those unhappy memories, Anne not ask these questions impetuously. "So the culture of the road and her husband Kai head to the interior of in Africa. the divisions in the college," he writes, the country, the Oriente region. Kai, a bird- "have become divisions in me." .... " It's No Snow watcher, is thrilled at the prospect of Job," an article by VIC I would recommend ALMA MATER to Kenyon trekking into the rainforest, where he hopes COX (Brazil 1964-66) alumni, to graduates of other liberal arts to glimps some of the exotic species he's appeared in the colleges, to detractors of liberal arts only been able to admire in books. After March/April issue of colleges - in short, to anyone capable of arriving in tiny Puerto Napo, at the end of a Sea Frontiers magazine. Cox is now caring deeply about higher education. It is a twelve-hour bus trip, Kai and Anne make finishing a "young cogent and a heartfelt book. Kluge can rest an acquaintance and a decision that takes adult" book on immi- assured that Denham Sutcliffe, his beloved, them on a dangerous journey up the Napo gration issues that sardonic English professor, will not roll River, deep into the jungle. offers a balanced look over in his grave. at all the opposing The metaphor of the river journey is one of views on the topic. several similarities between GREEN FIRES and Ann Neelon is a poet and an Assistant Professor Anyone interested in Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS. Central the subject who wants of English at Murray State University in to both Mueller's novel and Conrad's is the to contact Vic should western Kentucky. image of the great tropical river that bears write him care of one away from civilization and its con- "Cable Traffic." straints, deep into the jungle inhabited by .,.. The literary antho- dangerous creatures and indigenous people logy just a Moment GREEN FIRES carried a short story, who live by ways unknown to the rest of "The Missing by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) the world. Volunteer'' by JO Curbstone Press, 319 pp. At the heart of darkness, in Conrad's novel, MANNING (Philip- $19.95 pines 1961-62) in its sits the strange, depraved figure of Kurtz, spring issue. The story Reviewed by M. Susan Hundt Bergan the German, who has made himself into a is about flagellantes (Ethiopia 1966-68) petty despot, preying upon the local people. and ritual crucifixion In GREEN FIRES, we hear, very early in the in the Philippines. It is Jo's first published GREEN FIRES is the story of Annie Schmidt's novel, about a mysterious German who Peace Corps story. return to Ecuador, where she had served as lives deep in the Oriente, far from any a Peace Corps Volunteer, set against the - settlement. When Anne, Kai and Mingo, .... P.F. KLUGE (Micronesia 1967-69) backdrop of the first efforts by multina- their guide, reach their destination far up the Napo River, they meet the German, Don wrote about the tional oil companies to recover the petro- reception of his book, Jorge Haberie, a refugee from World War IT leum reserves located in remote jungle ALMA Mt.TER: A COLLEGE areas inhabited by indigenous tribes. It is a who has settled here to escape his memo- HoMECOMING (about compelling story that captures the reader Continued on page 6 Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio) in the New York Times

May 1994 5 CABLE Reviews (continued) TRAFFIC Continued from page 5 Education Life section ries. Don Jorge, unlike Kurtz, is not an evil struggling with her demons. The one on April 1Oth. Kluge man but in fact a champion of the indig- character who seems forced and artificial is offers advice to other enous people among whom he is living. the Friar, who is so uncouth and writers who want to Don Jorge is risking his own safety to venomous that he seems to be a write about, as he puts it, "this green, protect his friends and neighbors from the caricature. outside powers that are ready to do cloistered arena" and By the end of the novel, despite then eloquently sums whatever is necessary to gain control over the ominous developments in up the experience of the region's oil reserves. writing a personal the interior, the reader knows book about ones As Anne travels into the rainforest, she that for Annie Schmidt there family or alma mater, journeys also into the shadows of her own is hope. The fires of the forest "Any book is an act of childhood memories; ambivalence about purge her of the paralyzing caring and a kind of her religious and ethnic identity; and guilt, and Annie is ener- tribute. It's a gift. It shattering guilt about abandoning her gized to return to the U. S. distinguishes its friends in the barrio for the safety and with Kai to use their subject from all the unremarked places, comfort of America. influence and experience to fight for the people of the ones that never Her mother, who died when Anne was get written about at the forest. very young, had been Jewish. Yet, for most all. Maybe your col- of her life, Anne had made an effort to lege- your par- M. Susan Hundt Bergan is a Unit Leader for conceal her Jewishness from the world. ents- will under- the Solid Waste Reduction & Recycling stand it. Maybe they Those years of denial and duplicity seem Department of the State of Wisconsin. won't. If not today, to her now to have blighted much of her maybe tomorrow." life. Although she is very much in love .,.. The April/May '94 with Kai, a good and gentle man, the fact Review carried that Kai's father had been a member of the GONE, BUT NOT a thoughtful piece by Nazi party during World War II makes GEORGE PACKER FORGOnEN (Togo 1977-79) Anne feel that marrying him was a kind of by Phillip Margolin (Liberia 1966-67) entitled "An Interven- betrayal. Doubleday, 376 pp. tion." It is his account She is burdened by another failure and of returning to Togo $22 .00 another denial from her time as Volunteer. ten years after being a The guilt from that time is a ghost she has PCV. Reviewed by Joan Richter (Kenya 1965-67) come back to Guayaquil to exorcise. She .,.. On May 20th, The Writer's Voice of the struggles with what she might have done The roses in this novel are black and the to save the life of her friend's baby and West Side YMCA in murders connected with them are gory. New York presented how she might have intervened with the And they keep coming. GoNE, Bur NoT "Back From the Edges: military government to locate her friend FoRGOTTEN is the kind of book that will make The Peace Corps Angel. Angel, who had worked with her in you hope the flight you're on is long Writer." JOHN the barrio as a community organizer, was COYNE (Ethiopia enough to take you to the last page. A seized by the authorities just before Anne 1964-64) introduced former Volunteer, Phillip Margolin is a left Guayaquil. novelists JOANNE criminal defense attorney in Portland, OMANG (Turkey Ms. Mueller's weighty themes are sus- Oregon. 1964-66), BOB tained by her plot and well-realized SHACOCHIS (Eastern There are a lot of characters in this fast- characters: Mingo Mincha, the Western- Caribbean 1975-76), paced criminal investigation/ courtroom educated Jivaro tribesman who takes the MARY-ANN TIRONE thriller, but the one who gets the most space Schrnidts up river and is the key to much SMITH and RICHARD is Betsy Tannenbaum, a young wife and WILEY (Korea 1967- of the action; Don Jorge, the German; his mother who has gained acclaim as a 69) who read from Ecuadorian wife, Maria, a rich and feminist defense attorney in (where else?) their Peace Corps sympathetic figure; Kai, a complex and writings. Portland, Oregon. attractive man; and Annie Schmidt, .,.. The first Interna- tional Peace Corps

6 RPCV Writers & Readers CABLE TRAFFIC Betsy is made of tough stuff. There's little But Nancy Gordon, a Hunter's Point Film Festival was held flinching when she finds herself in the homicide detective, believes the real on May 8th in Boston. middle of a case that involves the disap- murderer is still alive. She arrives in Organized by T. DOANE PERRY pearance of the wives of several prominent Portland to make the connection for Alan (Uganda 1966-69), businessmen, soon revealed to be the Page and then she, too, disappears. the Mother's Day victims of sadistic killings and kidnappings. With quick cuts and short takes that keep event featured Even when she senses that her life and her documentary films by the reader on the edge, and with informa- child's may be in danger, Betsy RPCVs as well as tion withheld until just the right moment, stays the course, wavering only international films, Margolin switches from character to when she begins to wonder including The Gods character and place to place in a Must Be Crazy, Cry whether her client, complex geographical and chrono- Freedom, and Bopha! multimillionaire real logical crisscross. The earlier ..,. Poet and short estate developer Martin murders are revisited, churning up story writer CHRIS- Darius, could be the suspects and suspicions at every TOPHER CONLON killer. tum, involving even the White House (Botswana 1988-90) has poems appearing Complications mount and a Supreme Court nominee. in the upcoming when Alan Page, the A compelling read, GoNE, Bur NOT FoRGOT- months in Poet, Portland district attorney This: A Serial Review, TEN will satisfy devotees of this genre, inchargeoftheinvestigation, learns that America and Thomas stretching plausibility a bit, but at the same across the country in Hunter's Point, New Wolfe Review. A story time titillating the imagination about the York, a murderer who leaves the same by Conlon entitled dark comers of mind and motive. calling card of a black rose and a note "Bulger's Ascension" appeared in the saying "Gone, but not forgotten" was Joan Richter is a writer of short mystery fiction. December, 1993 issue caught ten years ago. The case was closed. of Interrace. His novella, "Falling Off The Edge of the World," is scheduled for an upcoming issue of Interrace. .... BROUGHTON Readers write CORBURN'S (Nepal 1973-75) book NEPALI AAMA: PoRTRAIT OF A Unasked questions Lost opportunities NEPALESE HtLL WOMAN, I enjoyed reading the interview with RPCV I'd like to renew my subscription- which was published by Moon Publications writer Mamie Mueller [March, 1994], and I however I have a concern about the in 1991, will be look forward to reading GREEN FIRES . There "Opportunities" segment of the newsletter. reissued by Anchor were several questions I kept waiting to be I noticed it was not included in the last Books this year. His asked, which by the time I had gotten to the issue. second book, with the end of the interview had not been. Two fine working title of IN "Opportunities" has been an important books (at least) have come from PCVs who SEARCH OF THE SACRED, resource to me as an RPCV writer. [Before I is the story of a served in Ecuador: LNING PooR by Moritz renew] Please let me know if you intend to 12,000-mile pilgrim- Thomsen, and THE MAKING OF AN continue the column. age around the U.S. UNAMERICAN by Paul Cowan. Did she know with an 84-year-old either of the authors while she was in Mary Sibley (Honduras 1984-87) woman from the Ecuador, and did their books have any foothills of the impact on her novel? Himalayas. Corburn If the Ms. Sibley had renewed, she would have calls it "Something of found a page of opportunities now called Nick Royal (Philippines 1961-63) a sequel to NEPALI "Announcements" on page 13. Ed. AAMA." It will be published by Anchor Books in 1995.

May 1994 7 HEADS UP! Info and observations by H. C. N.

The future is not what it used to be Bob Shacochis is all over the place, teaching here, lecturing there. At the end The snow has melted in Ketchum. The of the summer he'll have more Frequent boys and I have been out hiking in the Flyer miles than Carol Bellamy. lowlands south of town. Having them I once went to a writers' conclave at the toddling up the trails ahead of me, famed Breadloaf in Vermont. At the turning with cheery faces to urge me on, time, I was a virgin in more ways than I smile at my great fortune. Two healthy one, and actually believed this Famous kids, and my long easy days in this Author was interested in my two short wilderness wonderland. Later, however, stories and not my two ... well, never at the town library, I came across the mind. This was all pre-Peace Corps and I February issue of The Atlantic Monthly still believed in men of good will and with Robert D. Kaplan's sad and fine writing. Now I just believe in fine shocking article entitled, "The Coming writing and keep away from other Anarchy." It seems I haven't been writers and editors. Especially editors. outside of Idaho since coming home When they say "I just love your work," from Peace Corps- is it that bad "out run for the door. there?" You have to read Kaplan's piece, though it will ruin your day, or week. Kaplan traveled Peace Corps fashion Dead writers don't talk ... through Africa and Asia and into Central . .. but their books keep collecting Europe writing about what he saw, and royalties, and Truman Capote, that little drawing some depressing conclusions. squirt, used his to set up a trust to help He hasn't many good things to say for writers and critics before he passed away my kids' future, or your kids' either. in 1982. Iowa Writers Workshop at the Read the article on how scarcity, crime, University of Iowa and the Creative overpopulation, tribalism, and disease Writing Program at Stanford University are rapidly destroying the social fabric of will share in the profit generated by the our world. It will make your skin crawl. rights and royalties from Capote's books. I met Truman once. Actually, I didn't Men (and women) can't live by really meet him. I was ten and on Breadloaf alone vacation with my folks in Key West when Truman barged through the door It's that time again of seemingly endless of the Chart Room Bar in the hotel where writing conferences scheduled to stretch we were staying and nearly toppled me through the long hot summer. Writers, over in his confused (shall we speak ill of editors and agents, along with all those the dead and say drunken?) state. I was would-be writers, will converge to give on my way to the hotel pool at the time (and get) sage advice on the prose of and struggling to keep a hotel towel poetry and the politics of getting wrapped tightly around my lanky, lolli- published. This year, there will be, I've pop body. (I must have imagined there read, over 140 writers' conferences, three were ten-year-old boys around.) Truman times as many as a decade ago. Our own said sorry and seemed embarrassed and

8 RPCV Writers & Readers flustered as he apologized to me, my so I paid $400 of my Readjustment mother and everyone else. Later, my Allowance and sat in rapt attention for mother told me who he was. Actually, two and a half days of scripting. It was she told my father as I listened acutely to like Peace Corps training all over again "adult conversation" as she rubbed sun -but without the shots. Still my butt tan lotion across my shoulders. He was hurt from all that sitting. Estimates are the first real writer I ever met, which that McKee makes like $1.5 million a proves you don't have to be famous to year doing this. He's a paunchy little lead an exciting life. Thanks, Truman, for guy hitting fifty who, by the way, hasn't helping out us would-be writers. yet written a script himself that has been produced. Most of what he does is a real The Caribbean challenge acting tour-de-force centered on Casablanca. It's six hours of scene-by- Last week the boys went to Grandma's scene deconstruction of this romantic house and I biked out to Hemingway's sap of a movie. Won't the Forties ever grave site. It was one of our first sunny die? I'm tired of Bergman and Bogie. spring Idaho afternoon and I hadn't been Save your money. Go see a real movie, on my bike all winter. I burned up the like Chinatown. Or better yet, read a tarmac to our Famous Tourist Spot, book. Mine. Ernie's grave. I went not so much to pay respects to Papa, that old chauvinist pig, The hub left me but to pop an Evian bottle in his face. I just got word that my collection of stories Back in my Youth, (i.e., before Peace of the Caribbean, . . . AND THEN SHE Corps) I dreamed of marrying Mr. Right. SrocK HER ToNGUE IN Hrs EAR, had Then I went overseas and turned a lot of been accepted for publication. My potentially sexy relationships into "sister first book accepted for publica- & brother" acts so that I could survive tion after many summers of two years without becoming pregnant rejections and winters of and abandoned. I must say, after you discontent. Move over Shacochis, spend a long weekend with a male Vol- here I come. unteer and know him like "a brother" you think there must be something Orth does Equal Time better waiting for you back home. Anyway, my husband of five-years-six- Did you catch Tim Russert's Main months-eleven-days and one hour left Squeeze on Equal Time? Filling in for co- me for his dentist- can you believe host Jane Wallace late last March was the that? It's a Woody Allen movie in RPCVs' Most Famous Journalist, the Ketchum. The husband, Ralph (let's call Colombian Kid herself, Maureen Orth. him Ralph, which, of course, is his There she was, eager as a puppy, trying name), is a doctor. I mean, not a doctor hard to dish it out like my hero, Mary who helps you, the other kind, an Matalin. Bill O'Reilly, the anchor of Inside academic. He teaches and writes and Editor, was the subject of the gals' flies around the world being important. crossfire. Now, of course, he can do it with The Dentist. Me, why, he never even took me Germans wore gray ... or was it blue? to Boise. I flew out to L.A. for a weekend to take a The point of all this. Whaf is the point, course from Robert McKee. Have you anyway? The point is, gals (and guys), heard of him? He offers these intense don't louse up your Peace Corps marathon weekend workshops on how experience by being Big Sister to all the to write for the movies. Everyone I know boys from the boonies. Have a good in Ketchum has taken his course at least time. Besides, you might fall in love with twice. McKee is sort of a Gordon Lish for a real prize. And to think that I thought young screen writers. Well, I'm not a all those dental visits had to do with would-be screen writer, but I am young, root canals.

May 1994 9 journals of Peace

A Visit from a Friend

by Diane Woods Englund (Cameroon 1969-71)

AFEW WEEKS AGO, ONE MONDAY AFfERNOON, I WAS SOMEWHERE between carpools and supper preparation when the phone rang. A high-pitched, awkward-sounding voice asked me to identify myself and then said, "Good! J. B. Lekpa, here at Howard Johnson's. You come and get me. Yes?" Yes! I could hardly get there fast enough - clucking the kids into shoes and jackets, chattering an incomprehensible explanation. The Man From Africa has come! Our Friend from Cameroon! A BIG surprise! It's the story of this September, 1988, visit that I want to share. It holds two of the treasures of our Peace Corps experience- friendship and an affirmation of values out of favor. It's a small story of two families. It's a large story, as well, of hope, friendship, effort, commitment, and trust. From 1969 to 1971 my husband and I were teachers in Cameroon. One of Greg's students took particular interest in us. Lekpa. He was fifteen. A good student. Hard- working. Interested. Thoughtful. Generous of spirit. A special friend. Greg taught him English. He learned well. He carne over in the early evening and explained his ways to us and asked us questions about our own. On one occasion my husband, Lekpa and I walked 10 kilometers into the beautiful volcanic bush to greet his blind father. I sat on one of his two raffia stools in front of his windowless hut and drank homemade palm wine. We spoke through Lekpa because his father speaks only his village language. Lekpa's father gave me a rooster as a gift. I remember thinking at the time that this generosity was the equivalent of inviting a schoolteacher over in the U. S. and giving her a car or a swimming pool as a gesture of good will or gratitude.

Wleft Camewon in 1971. We told Lekpa that if he worked hard, we would work hard to help him continue his schooling. He did. We did. For the next several years, when we borrowed money for our own educations, we sent him some. Seventeen years have passed. Thanks to the mails, the friendship has continued. Lekpa is 35 years old. He has seen us through schools, illnesses, births and deaths. He has six children. One is named after me. Both Lekpa and his wife -whom we remember as a girl of 13 - are teachers in a lycee which was built after we left. He graduated from the university in Yaounde. He has worked for five years for Peace Corps in Cameroon. He

10 RPCV Writers & Readers continues to work for the at a research station in his country's highlands. He is working on a doctorate and is hoping to teach at Cameroon's univer- sity. If malaria doesn't ruin his health. If political unrest doesn't disrupt his future, he'll make it. He's come too far not to. In August of this year, he borrowed money from his tontine to go to France to take his orals. Then he sold his car to buy passage from Toulouse to the Howard Johnson's in Concord, Massachusetts. He carne to share our horne for ten days. Of course, he carne with gifts. We showed him in glorious autumn color and tradition. We took him to Manhattan for an astounding weekend. He continued to teach us both his ways and our own through the lens of Bamilike vision. It was the moment of a lifetime. But parting wasn't wrenching. This friendship has exceeded our imaginations. We know the relationship will continue. We have an commitment to this man. It is a shaping connection in the lives of an ordinary, middle-class Cameroon family and an ordinary middle-class American family. Among other things, it is a connection that helps us hold on to a set of values held high in the Kennedy years and hard to hold onto of late. ~

The Journals of Peace, a 24-hour vigil of readings by Returned Peace Corps Volunteers from journals, diaries and recollections of their years overseas, were read in the U. S. Capitol Rotunda in 1988 to mark twenty-Jive years since the death of President John F. Kennedy. The readings began at noon on November 21 and ended at 11 :45 the next morning. A commemorative service followed at St. Matthew's Cathedral. The preceding was one of the journals read in the Rotunda.

5 ]amous 1'[ lines bi:J Peace Corps writers -

"Ez a konyv a COBOL szamft6gepes programozasi nyelv felhasznalasaval mutatja be az allomanyfeldolgozas alapelveit."

from FILE PROCESSING WITH COBOL (Hungarian version)

by Don Bei I (Somalia 1964-66)

May 1994 11 WE HAVE NO AMBASSADOR HERE

by Margaret Szumowski (Zaire and Ethiopia 1973-75)

Green peninsulas, blue water floated to us. Long grasses lined the runway. "Heaven," we said. We thought the red carpets, the drums, the old women frenzied by dance, the feathered skirts were for us. But their soldiers rifled our belongings, our blue jeans, our books, our toothbrushes. Even our priests had no token with them. They thought we were mercenaries and spies. They thought our books and maps would help us conquer them. When we sang they thought we were singing obscenities. We were not used to real guns pointing at us. Caged by a circle of guns, we grew mad. We were not used to being without an ambassador, sleeping on red plastic couches in an airport lobby, guarding our tongues. "lei meme les murs ont des oreilles." The walls had ears and eyes. We wanted our suitcases, our toothbrushes, our combs and kleenex. Where were the gazelles, the flamingoes wading cool waters, the people with their hearts in their hands. After they taught us, after one of us had a wounded thigh, they let us go. The dancing was over, but sunlight so bright it could blind. They led us to a plantation, white-pillared floating in red and yellow cannalilies, tortoises meandering the courtyards. We wanted to wander by the deep blue lake but their soldiers waited. "You have no ambassador here," they said.

This poem won Third Place in the Associated Writing Programs Anniversary Awards in 1984.

12 RPCV Writers & Readers ANNOUNCEMENTS RPCvn'ITERS CHELSEA AWARD FOR SHORT FICTION: A KISS IS JUST A KISS: $500 for the best unpublished work of short Editor seeks personal essays on significant & Readers fiction selected by the editors of Chelsea in an kisses-the best, worst, most enchanting, anonymous competition. The winning entry horrifying, wanted, unwanted, first, last, gay, will be published in an issue of the magazine. the kiss of a cousin, lover, rapist, prostitute, Manuscripts must not exceed 30 typed pages, etc. "We want the reader to share the Editor: or 7,500 words. An entry fee of $10 includes a experience." Proportional royalty paid. Marian Haley Beil subscription. Deadline: June 15 (Chelsea also Guidelines for SASE. Little River Publishing, (Ethiopia 1962-64) gives an annual award in poetry; that 19 Parkwood Road, Hanover, CT 06350. deadline is December 15.) Send a SASE for Copy 'Editor: guidelines. Chelsea Award for Short Fiction, Judith Coyne JUAN RULFO INTERNATIONAL LA TIN (NRPCV) P.O. Box 1040, York Beach, Maine 03910. AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN PRIZE FOR Contributing Editor: 207.363.8220. Richard Foerster, Associate LITERATURE: Editor. Donald Beil $100,000 to a native of Latin America or the (Somalia 1964-66) Caribbean who writes in Spanish, Portuguese, HEMINGWAY SHORT STORY French, or English; or a native of the Americas Research: COMPETITION: who writes in Spanish; or a native of Spain or JoManning (Philippines 1961-62) A first prize of $1,000 and two runner-up Portugal who writes in Spanish or Portu- prizes of $500 each for original, unpublished guese. Any writer who has produced Copyright© 1994. short stories of 2,500 words or less. Entries noteworthy work in the genres of poetry, must be typed and the author's name should novel, drama, short story or essay is eligible. • • • not appear on the manuscript; include the The prize is awarded by a consortium of RPCV WRITERS & READERS author's name, address, phone, and story title Mexican government agencies, universities (ISSN 1062-4694) is an on a separate 3x5 card. Manuscripts will not and banks. Cultural or educational institu- independent (non-profit tions, associations, or groups interested in be returned and must be sent with a $10 entry making) newsletter and fee by July 1. Send a SASE for an entry form literature may nominate a candidate, and is in no way affiliated and guidelines. Hemingway Short Story should send the writer's curriculum vitae and with the Peace Corps or Competition, Hemingway Days Festival, P.O. supporting document by June 30. Juan Rulfo the National Peace Box 4045, Key West, Florida 33041-4045. Prize, Avenida Juarez 975, Piso 7, C.P. 44100 Corps Association. It is 305.294.4440. Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. 523.625.7359. published six times a year in January, March, WOMEN AND BEARS: RPCV '94 CONFERENCE: May, July, September, For a book tracing this relationship in myth, Register now for the July conference in and November. The art, literature, dreams and "real life," author Atlanta. Among the features: writers reading, subscription rate is seeks stories from women about their bear books for sale, RPCV WRITERS & READERS $12.00 for 6 issues, sent dreams or enigmatic encounters with bears in booth at the Grand first class within the the wild. Thoughts on significance of dreams Bazaar where you . For those July 28 to 31, 1994 or encounters essential. Anonymity okay. might just meet some outside the US. the rate Janie Claire Blaeloch, P.O. Box 95545, Seattle, Peace Corps is $19.00 for 6 issues sent WA 98145-2545. literati, a writers' airmail to all countries. workshop The mailing label MILKWEED NATIONAL FICTION PRIZE: entitled "How to indicates the date of the $3,000 applied against royalties and publica- sell your Peace last issue you will tion by Milkweed Editions for a novel, Corps story" (with receive. Back issues are novella, or collection of short fiction. The a panel of Don Beil, available for $3.00 each. competition is open to writers who have John Coyne, Geraldine published a book-length collection of fiction Kennedy, Mamie Mueller, Mary-Ann Tirone • • • Smith, Mike Tidwell), old friends, Peace or a minimum of three short stories or Please send correspondence novellas in commercial or literary journals Corps Director Carol Bellamy, Solicitor regarding RPCV WRITERS with national distribution. Manuscripts from General Drew Days ill (Honduras 1967-69), & READERS to: 150 to 400 pages should be sent before July 15. and Eli Segal, Director of the Corporation for Send an SASE for further guidelines. National & Community Service giving the RPCV Writers & Readers Milkweed National Fiction Prize, Milkweed Volunteer Day send-off. Write: AARPCV Marian Haley Beil Editions, 430 First Avenue North, Suite 400, 1994 Conference, c/o Martha Harich, 1164 4 Lodge Pole Road Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401-1743. DeLeon Court, Clarkston, GA 30021 for Pittsford, NY 14534-4550 registration information. 612.332.3192. • • •

May 1994 13 0 r' U") U") ~ ~ I ~ tf') 11 U") ~ ..•, ~ ...... >-z "'0.... ~ .....0 ...."' c..·~ • "'0 ~ «l (f) 0 ~ ~ rLl Qj -0 july 94 8 c.. Maurice L. Albertson H Qj bO 731 W Olive St "'0 0 Fort Collins CO 80521 ,..J

~ •

Qj r:o >. Qj «l -:r: (::; «l · ....~ «l ::E