The Life of an African Peace Corps Child

The Life of an African Peace Corps Child PDF Author: Chia Tasah
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1491771577
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
My autobiography recounts my life from 1980 as an African Peace Corps child until I became a US citizen in 2012. I lived a full life as a needy child from a poverty-stricken nuclear family of nine and believe I have something fascinating to share with the world. Despite my pennilessness, I made great strides in my endeavors and thrived. I call myself a Peace Corps child of Africa because American Peace Corps volunteers, with benevolent and philanthropic gestures, encouraged my growth into an authentic adult. Mr. Alan Lakomski whisked me away from my job as bartender and manager of a confidential decadent brothel at Club 185 Njinikom at age fourteen and sent me to secondary school. He returned to the United States when his term expired. Bill Strassberger replaced Dan Hunter and supported my education. Christine Swanson advised me to apply to the master-of-education program in human resource development at the University of Minnesota in 2003. I graduated in 2005 with an MEd and now work as an independent team-building and cultural-diversity consultant at All World Languages and Cultures, Inc., in Kansas City, Missouri.

The Life of an African Peace Corps Child

The Life of an African Peace Corps Child PDF Author: Chia Tasah
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1491771577
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Get Book

Book Description
My autobiography recounts my life from 1980 as an African Peace Corps child until I became a US citizen in 2012. I lived a full life as a needy child from a poverty-stricken nuclear family of nine and believe I have something fascinating to share with the world. Despite my pennilessness, I made great strides in my endeavors and thrived. I call myself a Peace Corps child of Africa because American Peace Corps volunteers, with benevolent and philanthropic gestures, encouraged my growth into an authentic adult. Mr. Alan Lakomski whisked me away from my job as bartender and manager of a confidential decadent brothel at Club 185 Njinikom at age fourteen and sent me to secondary school. He returned to the United States when his term expired. Bill Strassberger replaced Dan Hunter and supported my education. Christine Swanson advised me to apply to the master-of-education program in human resource development at the University of Minnesota in 2003. I graduated in 2005 with an MEd and now work as an independent team-building and cultural-diversity consultant at All World Languages and Cultures, Inc., in Kansas City, Missouri.

Life of an African Peace Corps Child

Life of an African Peace Corps Child PDF Author: Tasah Chia (author)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781649089427
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Monique and the Mango Rains

Monique and the Mango Rains PDF Author: Kris Holloway
Publisher: Waveland Press
ISBN: 1478609028
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
In a remote corner of West Africa, Monique Dembele saved lives and dispensed hope every day in a place where childbirth is a life-and-death matter. Monique and the Mango Rains is the compelling story of the authors decade-long friendship with Monique, an extraordinary midwife in rural Mali. It is a tale of Moniques unquenchable passion to better the lives of women and children in the face of poverty, unhappy marriages, and endless backbreaking work, as well as her tragic and ironic death. In the course of this deeply personal narrative, as readers immerse in village life and learn firsthand the rhythms of Moniques world, they come to know her as a friend, as a mother, and as an inspired woman who struggled to find her place in a male-dominated world.

No Hurry in Africa

No Hurry in Africa PDF Author: Theresa Munanga
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 9781450251563
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Have you ever dreamed about joining the Peace Corps? Unemployed and aching to really make a difference in the world, Theresa Munanga applied to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer. When she left for her assignment in Kenya, she had no idea what the three years from 2004-2007 would hold. No Hurry in Africa follows the author as she teaches computer skills to Kenyans, some of whom have never seen a computer before, in areas where electricity comes and goes, and where four computers serve to teach up to forty students per class. Riveting journal entries and emails home introduce Kenya as a beautiful country, yet a country of contrasts: where people walk miles out of their way to direct you to your destination. Where men can have multiple wives. Where women wash clothes by hand and carry babies on their backs. A country with friendly, hard working people, but also a country with a lack of safe drinking water, poverty, corruption, and less than adequate medical services in the remote areas.

A Life Inspired

A Life Inspired PDF Author:
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
Contains a collection of autobiographical reminiscences written by about 28 former Peace Corps volumteers.

Nine Hills to Nambonkaha

Nine Hills to Nambonkaha PDF Author: Sarah Erdman
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1466850051
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
A portrait of a resilient African village, ruled until recently by magic and tradition, now facing modern problems and responding, often triumphantly, to change When Sarah Erdman, a Peace Corps volunteer, arrived in Nambonkaha, she became the first Caucasian to venture there since the French colonialists. But even though she was thousands of miles away from the United States, completely on her own in this tiny village in the West African nation of Côte d'Ivoire, she did not feel like a stranger for long. As her vivid narrative unfolds, Erdman draws us into the changing world of the village that became her home. Here is a place where electricity is expected but never arrives, where sorcerers still conjure magic, where the tok-tok sound of women grinding corn with pestles rings out in the mornings like church bells. Rare rains provoke bathing in the streets and the most coveted fashion trend is fabric with illustrations of Western cell phones. Yet Nambonkaha is also a place where AIDS threatens and poverty is constant, where women suffer the indignities of patriarchal customs, where children work like adults while still managing to dream. Lyrical and topical, Erdman's beautiful debut captures the astonishing spirit of an unforgettable community.

Life After Retirement

Life After Retirement PDF Author: Amelie M. Mothie
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
ISBN: 1426947143
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Life After Retirement shares the story of Amelie Mothie's experiences after retirement, when, at the age of sixty-seven, she joined the Peace Corps. She had entertained the idea for a long time; she longed to learn more about the people of whom her grandmother had spoken so freely throughout her childhood. It was a big decision to go to Africa and to leave everything behind to pursue her dream, but she finally did it two years after retirement. She had heard many stories of disease and poverty in Africa, but she was encouraged by her belief that African countries had done much more in a few decades of independence than their colonial governments had done in centuries. She was fascinated by the African personalities that had begun to emerge through literature, arts, music, sports, and fashion. Her two-year term in West Africa was full of exhilarating moments as well as many painful, frustrating, and discouraging instances of dealing with the ravages of disease and poverty. In the end, for her, all the bad days were worth it in light of the good memories she shared with her new African friends and other volunteers.

I Miss the Rain in Africa

I Miss the Rain in Africa PDF Author: Nancy Wesson
Publisher: Modern History Press
ISBN: 1615995749
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
At a time when her friends were planning cushy retirements, Nancy Wesson instead walked away from a comfortable life and business to head out as a Peace Corps Volunteer in post-war Northern Uganda. She embraced wholeheartedly the grand adventure of living in a radically different culture, while turning old skills into wisdom. Returning home becomes a surreal experience in trying to reconcile a life that no longer “fits.” This becomes the catalyst for new revelations about family wounds, mystical experiences, and personal foibles. Nancy shows us the power of stepping into the void to reconfigure life and enter the wilderness of the uncharted territory of our own memories and psyche, to mine the gems hidden therein. Funny, heartbreaking, insightful and tender, I Miss the Rain in Africa is the story of honoring the self, discovering a new lens through which to view life, and finding joy along the path. "Inspiring and educational when it comes to what we can accomplish when we put our best foot forward, I Miss the Rain in Africa shows how Nancy Daniel Wesson and others are putting the needs of others ahead of themselves-and what we can all do when it comes to stepping out on faith and choosing to act." -- Cyrus Webb, media personality and author, Conversations Magazine "I would think that many of us could learn or strive to live life to the fullest by following Nancy's example. Imagine venturing into new realms-especially at a later time in life when we possess meaningful knowledge for analyzing, but also for applying a critical philosophical perspective on new experiences." --Gary Vizzo, former management & operations director, Peace Corps Community Development: African and Asia "I Miss the Rain in Africa is an absorbing record of the exploration of self by a woman who, at age 64, enters a remote area of Africa to work with an NGO. Part adventure, part interior monologue, this is an account of a 21st century derring-do by an intrepid, intriguing and always optimistic woman who will, undoubtedly, enjoy a fourth and maybe even a fifth act wherever she may find herself." --Eileen Purcell, outreach literacy coordinator, Clatsop Community College, Astoria, Oregon "Wesson offers a montage of stories and experiences that introduces the reader to the colorful people and challenging life in Uganda. Wesson's observations are shared with humor, respect, and compassion. For anyone who has ever wondered what serving in Peace Corps or immersing oneself in a radically different life overseas might be like, this book provides a portal." --Kathleen Willis, Retired Peace Corps Volunteer-Community Organizer, former organizational development consultant Learn more at www.NancyWesson.com

Sixty Years of Service in Africa

Sixty Years of Service in Africa PDF Author: Julius A. Amin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000982068
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Based on previously unused primary sources obtained from both sides of the Atlantic, this study provides a more fundamental, consistent, and balanced source-based assessment of the role of the U.S. Peace Corps across its entire existence in Africa. The study sheds light on a new and intriguing historical perspective of the Peace Corps’ meaning and significance. Though the main trust is Cameroon, the study offers a window to understanding Peace Corps performance in all of Africa, and the larger global community. It examines Volunteers’ service in countries including Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, and Guinea, showing how the agency transitioned from a Cold War agency to the Post-Cold War era, while asking important questions about the continuous relevance of Peace Corps in Africa. In addressing the topic, the book goes beyond the Peace Corps and delves into America’s "Achilles heels," which was the culture of anti-black racism, showing how it impacted U.S. foreign policy in the post-World War II era. The book interrogates modernization theories showing how those ideas shaped the creation of the Peace Corps, but ultimately contributed to the agency’s problems. The book questions the Peace Corps’ effectiveness as a development organization and much more. Yet for all the agency’s problems, the Peace Corps served as a rite of passage for returned Volunteers to make everlasting contributions to American life and society. This book contributes to modern African and American studies, and to diplomatic history.

The Barrios of Manta

The Barrios of Manta PDF Author: Rhoda Brooks
Publisher: Untreed Reads
ISBN: 1611873770
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
In February 1962, Earle and Rhoda Brooks, a young sales engineer and his schoolteacher wife, left home and friends in Illinois to serve as members of the Peace Corps in Manta, Ecuador. This book is an account of their life in the Peace Corps. The first book ever written by Peace Corps volunteers, it is a revealing chronicle of personal involvement, of people from vastly different cultures learning to know one another on the level of their common humanity. Earle and Rhoda begin their story with their decision to enlist as trainees in President Kennedy's people-to-people grassroots aid program. They describe their jubilation at being accepted, the initial testing in Chicago, and the briefings in New York. With warmth and humor, they recount their experiences during the four-month training period in Puerto Rico. This was a time of trials and learning, of physical exertion and mental and emotional challenge. Of the 100 men and women who had formed their original group, 61, including Earle and Rhoda Brooks, graduated from trainees to volunteers. Earle and Rhoda were assigned to a community development project in Manta, a small fishing village on the coast of Ecuador. Here they would spend two years, working with the people, helping them to help themselves. The Brookses' story of Peace Corps life in Ecuador is no simple success story, no tale of triumph over staggering odds, rather it is one of beginnings, as these two young Americans put all their skills, knowledge, compassion, and ingenuity into an effort to provide humanitarian grassroots help in alleviating poverty and disease. Their story also shares what they learned from their humble fisher-people friends and neighbors. From their rich and varied experience emerges a picture of Latin American life far different in focus, and in many respects, far truer, than that of learned economists and political pundits. It is an intimate, human picture of a land filled with paradoxes and beset by problems that yield no easy solutions. It is a picture of a quest for learning and sharing, not on a soapbox or in the press, but in the hearts and minds of the common people. Now, in 2012, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Peace Corps and fifty years after their decision to join the Peace Corps, Rhoda Brooks has created a new Foreward and Afterword, to highlight the intervening years during which she and her husband adopted two Ecuadorian youngsters, ages 2 and 4, and brought them home to Minnesota. She tells of the growing up years of Carmen and Koki (Ricardo) in a suburban community west of Minneapolis, the birth of their biological son and the adoption of a mixed race daughter three years later. Brooks explores the challenges and opportunities presented in the raising of their bi-racial family, the pain and sorrow of the untimely deaths of her husband Earle and their daughter, Josie, as well as the excitement and apprehension generated by the return to Manta for a visit when the children were in their teens. Brooks continues the Afterword with the return to Manta of her five Ecuadorian grandchildren who, then in their teens, went to explore their roots and meet their own biological grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. She concludes the final part of her story with an update into the lives of her seven grandchildren and the arrival of new great grandson, Brooks.