Peace Corps News

Central African Republic RPCV Michael Shereikis is a singer and guitarist for Chopteeth

Central African Republic RPCV Michael Shereikis is a singer and guitarist for Chopteeth
Chopteeth is an "old-school afrofunk orchestra, with a big horn section and the whole works," according to Shereikis. The music is a mix of Yoruba tribal music, Jamaican ska, Ghanaian funk and Senegalese rumba. The band consists of a five-piece horn section, a drummer, two percussionists, two guitarists, a bassist, a keyboardist and two singers. When I was in the Peace Corps, I started zeroing in on African guitar styles, then in New Orleans and Abidjan," Shereikis said. "Making rhythmic music is always something I've just done. I pursued (guitar) in my second or third year of college."

Chopteeth performed in January at the inauguration of Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. The band also played at a wrap party for the HBO series "The Wire" and at Washington's Kennedy Center.

The band has been nominated by the Washington Area Music Association for four Wammie awards, including Best World Music Group. Members expect to finish recording their first compact disc by summer's end.

Shereikis composes most of the music for Chopteeth, which he helped found in 2004. Shereikis and the band's other vocalist sing in at least seven languages or dialects, including English, French, Yoruba (Nigeria), Twi (Ghana), and Swahili (eastern Africa).  Read more.

Read more about Peace Corps Central African Republic.

Read more about the Peace Corps and Music.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers: Wine, Wild Women, and Song

Drink With Paraguay RPCV Philippe Newlin For a Solid A
For two nights every week, Philippe Newlin holds forth at the Business School and SIPA on the more exciting parts of the vinous world: the political economy of Spain, the open rebellions in Australia, the terroir-istes in Burgundy. As the tasting director for Wine & Spirits magazine and a long-time instructor at New York's International Wine Center and the Wine & Spirit Education Trust of London, Newlin has a story or two to spin.

A fast-talking native of Manhattan, who would be mute without his arms, Newlin knows how to relate the complexities of wine to just about anyone. At age 42, he has been a Peace Corps volunteer in Yhu ("blackwater"), Paraguay, a cab driver at the height of the crack epidemic, a waiter at Brasserie Les Halles ("back when the celebrities still went there"), and an investment banker with Swiss Bank Corp., now UBS. He speaks five languages and is leading the IWC's first courses in Spanish this spring. He doesn't come across as a wine geek, and his classes are more about enjoying what's in the glass than figuring out what rootstock a vintner's using.

He feeds off the raw wackiness that comes from mixing people and alcohol, even as he tries to maintain order and focus. The format of the class helps, with everyone seated in a semicircle around him, and the assistants only pour two wines at a time. There are notes on the blackboard, but the lecture is extemporaneous and always passionate. "If you like strawberries, gamay is your wine," he says, twirling a Beaujolais Villages. "Put this one in your lunchbox." For pairing food with a Volnay: "You have those garlicky snails, and then you have that bright cherry fruit, and then you're like, oh yeah. Or you're like, yuck, because it's snails."

Surprisingly enough, this light approach wasn't born from childhood familiarity with great wine, though his mother is from France. "Growing up, I spent every summer in the Loire Valley drinking bad wine mixed with water," he says. "It was only as a banker visiting South Africa that I had really good wine, and chucked the beer in favor of this stuff." Despite the loose structure, most of the course is focused on the practical side of things. After pouring the third and final round, he gives the temporarily restrained class his tips for enjoying wines as delicate and fragrant as pinot noir. Read more.

If wild women are said to wear red, then Namibia RPCV Toddre Monier must have a closet full of the hue
The owner of the "Wild Women Wear Red" shoe boutique knows a fashionable, comfortable pair of shoes when she sees them, and she knows how best to sell them. "I wanted to create a store that would not only be a sanctuary and communal space for women, but would also be a place of inspiration featuring shoes that comfort the soul," Monier says.

As a Peace Corps volunteer, Monier was on assignment in Namibia when she dreamt she owned a shoe store with a name that represented the fire, passion and wildness that exists in every woman. Upon returning to the United States in 2000, she and her husband opened the boutique, which owes its success to serving a specific niche market. The business was profiled in the Washington Post in May 2002.

"Washington, D.C., is a walking city, and we carry what no one else in the area has," says Monier of her stylish, functional footwear and handmade crocheted bags. "Although our clientele comes from all walks of life, our main customers tend to be professional women and graduate students." Based on her shop's steady business, Monier hopes to open another shoe boutique in the area and someday buy a home overseas. Until then, she is content to empower women to be both fashionable and comfortable in their footwear. Read more.

Korea RPCV Cris Groenendaal has played the role of the Phantom in the hit musical "The Phantom of the Opera" more than 860 times on Broadway
After Groenendaal graduated from college, he joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in South Korea. Then he returned to Erie, got a job in a bank, and auditioned for local theater productions. "There was a lot of local really wonderful community theater," he says of Eerie. "I started doing all these different roles, from Shakespeare to Eugene O'Neill. I got a lot of wonderful experience." In July 1975, a stint with a summerstock theater in Ohio helped Groenendaal earn membership with Actors' Equity -- the national union for performers and stage managers in professional theater. By September of that year, Groenendaal had decided to move to New York to pursue acting full-time. "There were a lot of unknowns, but I wouldn't have taken such a plunge if I didn't feel like I could do it," he says of the transition.

There were plenty of challenges in New York, from finding an apartment to auditioning for four years before finally landing a role in the Broadway show "Sweeney Todd." "You go with a little bit of money, and you just start to learn the ropes by talking to the right people, auditioning and taking the right classes," he says of starting out in New York. Groenendaal says his "big break" came when he was hired as a chorus member and understudy for the lead male role of Anthony in "Sweeney Todd" in 1979. Victor Garber, who originally played Anthony, left the show after six months, leaving Groenendaal to take over the role.

In the 26 years since then, Groenendaal has performed in a myriad of other productions -- including "The Phantom of the Opera" on Broadway, where he started with the role of Monsieur Andre and later went on to play the phantom -- and produced two albums with Anderson. The couple also has performed together across the country. He has soaked up the limelight in a slew of other roles on Broadway, including the original Monsieur Andre in "The Phantom of the Opera;" Miles Gloriosus in "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum;" Major Rizzolli in "Passion;" Louis in "Sunday in the Park with George;" and Anthony in "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street." Read more.

Read more about the Peace Corps and Small Business.

Read more about the Peace Corps and Fashion.

Read more about the Peace Corps and Music.

Read more about Peace Corps Humor.

Beth Ashley writes: Earlier this month I spent four days at the Festival on the Niger in Mali where I met some of the Peace Corps Volunteers who had recently been evacuated because of political unrest in Guinea

Beth Ashley writes: Earlier this month I spent four days at the Festival on the Niger in Mali where I met some of the Peace Corps Volunteers who had recently been evacuated because of political unrest in Guinea
Does the Peace Corps really help in West Africa? I asked cultural instructor, Sylvain Dabou. "A lot," he said. "They are educating the people about good health practices, and little by little they are making progress." (They have campaigned with some success, for instance, against clitoral excision, still widely practiced in West Africa.) The volunteers represent the best aspects of the American people, Dabou said. "They are not fighting Islam. They are helping us."

The Americans were half delighted to be in Segou, where Mali's most famous musicians played on the riverfront stage, and half sad at having left the villages where most had spent most of two years. When we talked to them, they didn't know whether they would be allowed back to Guinea or not: "I just want to finish my project and say goodbye to my friends," said Devon Brooks, a volunteer from New Jersey. Having seen Mali's villages, I tried to imagine what it would be like to have the Peace Corps drop you off in one of them and leave you there, alone, to work for two years. Orr lived in a village of "three mosques and one water pump" and a school with second, third and fifth grades. Like others I spoke to, he was a health educator, teaching villagers to wash their hands (with soap), eat nutritious foods and brush their teeth. He had felt lonely at times, but the villagers were "very nice people."

Volunteers spoke lovingly of their work in Guinea. One had been assigned to an area that supported the beleaguered president, so she had not been in any danger; another in their group had had "frightening experiences," she said. Both of them hoped to go back.

Talking to the girls over lunch, I couldn't help feeling emotional. I told them how difficult it had been as an American to see our country's reputation tarnished the world over - diminished by our government's go-it-alone attitude and ill-advised war in Iraq. I told them how heartening it was to see Americans doing what they were doing - showing that most of our countrymen have kind hearts, high ideals and good intentions and are trying to do good in the world.

"Thank you," I said. "You've done a lot to restore my faith." Then I left them, afraid I might burst into tears.

Read more about Peace Corps Guinea.

Read more about Peace Corps Mali.

Caption: Festival sur le Niger 2007, Segou, Mali
Photographer: Damian Rafferty Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and Popular Music

Lesotho RPCV Jason Wilder Evans' song, Come Home Soon, has attracted lots of attention on Neil Young's Web site
Evans spent almost two years in Lesotho, an enclave of South Africa that is slightly smaller than Maryland. "My job title was environmental engineer, but I was working as a beekeeper,” explained Evans. "I also was involved in HIV education and teaching secondary school students, ages 12 to 18 or 20.” Evans was in a remote area of Lesotho. "Many times I was the only Westerner within an hour's drive,” he said. "But my time there really flew by.”

It was in Africa that his penchant for writing and singing really developed. His song "My Given Love” was featured in the independent film, "Trust Fall.” Evans' sometimes dark lyrics are not always in the stereotypical country music vein, which he attributes in part due to the physical isolation of his Peace Corps experience. "During that time, my writing process was so introverted, the things that I saw and the life that I lived, not that different from Jack Kerouac or Ernest Hemingway,” he said. "I wrote from what I knew and looked inward for strength, ideas and turned them into somewhat autobiographical fiction.” Read more.

Paraguay RPCV Rich Hopkins leads the Luminarios, one of Tucson's biggest desert rock bands
"I started when I was in the Peace Corps in 1981 in Paraguay, South America. It was just something fun to do. Everyone played music down there. I had always wanted to play music, but it took me until I got out of college and had time. I always wanted to play music as a kid, but my parents didn't really encourage me to do that so it took me a long time to get around to doing what I really always dreamed of doing."

"I would love to basically get back to a point where I really could open for bands like Tom Petty and Neil Young because that's kind of where I see myself, and I think I'm really good enough and the band is good enough. But I think it's a combination of what length are you willing to go to to get there and try to 'make it again' and also the right timing. Life is a combination of work and timing."  Read more.

Mauritania RPCV Shauna Wells performs lyrical, acoustic pop music with a folk bent and a contemporary style
Wells is a charismatic singer-songwriter whose infectious melodies and powerful vocals have launched a great breath of musical fire into the contemporary folk scene. Her first full-length release, Burn Up the Sun, (October 2002) brims with tales of old lovers and old cars, in addition to more serious material dealing with world events and her experience as a special education teacher. Although new to the music scene, Wells' life experiences make you feel as though she is a seasoned performer. A former Peace Corps Volunteer, she began taking her songwriting seriously while living in Mauritania, West Africa.  Read more.

Read more about Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who are musicians.

Peace Corps volunteers in Namibia are producing a CD called "NamibiAlive!" that will raise awareness about Namibia's AIDS crisis inside the country itself

Peace Corps volunteers in Namibia are producing a CD called "NamibiAlive!" that will raise awareness about Namibia's AIDS crisis inside the country itself
PCV Amy Taylor and other volunteers are working with Namibian recording artists to create the CD, which will be distributed free to 5,000 combis, mini-buses that transport Namibians from town to town, in December. In her nearly two years spent in a Namibian homestead, Taylor said she's formed a bond with the people that compelled her to do whatever she could to help. Taylor teaches English classes in Namibia in which she incorporates AIDS education into the curriculum, and she's organized an HIV/AIDS awareness volleyball tournament, HIV/AIDS testing and peer training for students, an AIDS awareness week and World AIDS Day activities and events.

"'NamibiAlive! is important to me because the people of Namibia are important to me," Taylor said in an e-mail message. "I live with around 20 babies and children on the homestead. They call me Meme (mom) and I adore them. The women in the village all care for me like I was their child. "It hurts to know that, statistically, if something drastic doesn't happen to change the course of AIDS, these people that I love so much will not live past 45."

"The musicians are great," said Taylor. "We were already on the same page. Many of them had already released HIV/AIDS-related songs or been involved in AIDS awareness efforts. Everybody in Namibia, myself included, is desperate to do something to curtail the epidemic. You just can't imagine what it's like to wake up to a funeral gun (people in the villages shoot off guns to alert their neighbors of a death in the house), and know that someone close to you has fallen victim to HIV/AIDS. There are funerals all the time."

The CD was released on Dec. 1, World AIDS Day. And after her service time with the Peace Corps is done Dec. 15, Amy says she'll stay in Africa until mid-March, touring the continent with friends.

Visit their web site for more information on "NamibiAlive!"

Learn more about Peace Corps Namibia.

Louise M. Pascale is republishing the collection of Afghan children's songs that she had compiled as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s

Louise M. Pascale is republishing the collection of Afghan children's songs that she had compiled as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s
Rummaging through her bookshelf five years ago, Louise M. Pascale, an assistant professor of creative arts and learning at Lesley University in Cambridge, came upon the collection of Afghan children's songs that she had compiled as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s.

It was sort of like finding an old yearbook, but instead of illustrating how hairstyles and skirt lengths had changed over the years, the tattered green songbook called attention to a greater change: The devastation reaped on Afghanistan after years of Taliban rule. Holding the relic, Pascale was certain that all remaining copies of the songbook, which she distributed in Kabul during her time in the Peace Corps, had been destroyed. She assumed they were lost, along with instruments and archives of local folk songs, when the Taliban outlawed music.

"I said to myself, 'I want to give this back to the kids in Afghanistan,' " Pascale recalls. " 'It's not doing me any good in my bookcase.' "

The songbook has come a long way from its creation nearly 40 years ago, when the 22-year-old Pascale realized, while traveling to Afghan schools to teach music, that students lacked books of songs. She worked with local poets and musicians to transcribe traditional songs.

Pascale's goal, to return these songs to a country stripped of its music, will be realized in the coming months. But the project is not over yet. The Afghan minister of education has asked that songs now be gathered for adults, so a second book can be created. Pascale takes the request as a good sign: "It makes me feel that they see the importance of it, and they know that music is a way to solidify and connect the country."

Learn more about "Children's Songs from Afghanistan."