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Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2011-014-001
Sally Davenport served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania from 1963 to 1965 in an education program. She had previously worked as a congressional intern and spent a summer with Crossroads Africa in Ghana. Davenport trained at Syracuse University. In Tanzania, she worked as an English teacher in an upper primary school in a remote resettlement village on the shores of Lake Victoria. Interviewed and recorded by Robert Klein, March 9, 2011. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2007-010-011
Anne Wiggins Thompson served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania from 1965 to 1967 in a secondary education project. She was a graduate in mathematics from Sam Houston University. Her training was at Syracuse University and included Swahili and practice teaching in Syracuse public schools. Thompson taught math and science at a girls' secondary school run by Anglican nuns. The school was in temporary quarters for the first six months until it could be relocated to a newly built site in Korongwe. During one vacation, Thompson worked with a United Nations smallpox eradication project in the bush. Interviewed and recorded by Robert Klein, September 17, 2006. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2007-010-008
Tom Katus served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanganyika from 1961 to 1963 on a road surveyor project (Tanganyika I). Katus had an engineering degree from the South Dakota School of Mining. His group trained at Texas Western College in El Paso. They met President Kennedy at a Rose Garden ceremony in August 1961, then helped set up the Peace Corps Outward Bound training camp in Puerto Rico. The group also had in-country training with an emphasis on learning Swahili. Katus worked under a British regional engineer based in Morogoro. He and fellow volunteer Jerry Parsons did field survey work, such as basic road mapping and market surveys, as part of a feeder road development program. After his tour, Katus founded Volunteer Training Specialists, Inc., which provided training to 2,000 Peace Corps volunteers destined for Africa. Interviewed and recorded by Robert Klein, September 15, 2006. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2006-058-014
Jack Wood served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania from 1964 to 1966. After training at Syracuse University, he was assigned to a teaching job in a major city over his preference to work on roads and bridges in the bush. Note: Interview ends abruptly. Interviewed and recorded by Ernest Zaremba, August 6, 2005. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2006-058-008
Allen Podell served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania from 1964 to 1966 as a road engineer. Following his training at Syracuse University, he was assigned to work as an engineer and surveyor on a roads and bridges project in Dodoma. He also taught at an Alliance school. Note: Interview ends abruptly. Interviewed and recorded by Ernest Zaremba, May 18, 2005. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2005-041-005
Robert Muller served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania from 1964 to 1966. He joined the Peace Corps after debating whether or not to join the military. He trained at Syracuse University where he learned the language by having meals with Tanzanian students. He was assigned to work on a roads and bridges project. He also taught English and math at the Mission School. Interviewed and recorded by Ernest Zaremba, December 18, 2004. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2005-041-004
Steve Manchester served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania from 1963 to 1964 as a teacher. He discusses the apprehension of individuals on being selected for the Peace Corps, his assignment teaching English in Tanzania, the local reaction to the death of President Kennedy, and general impressions of America and the Peace Corps. Interviewed and recorded by Ernest Zaremba, August 28, 2004. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2005-025-004
David (Dave) Brush served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania from 1964 to 1966. He graduated from junior college and spent four years in the Navy before applying for the Peace Corps. News of President Kennedy's death triggered him sending in his application papers. After one month of in country training, Brush began surveying roads despite the lack of equipment and supplies. He extended his two year service for three more months to finish some of the work he had begun. Note: Interview ends abruptly. Interviewed and recorded by Ernest Zaremba, November 22, 2004. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2004-002-012
Donn Fry served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanganyika from 1964-1966 as a teacher. He trained at Columbia University. In country, he taught English at a boys' boarding school in Tanganyika. Fry lived on campus and spent leisure time at a European country club. He also met Robert F. Kennedy when he toured Tanzania. Interviewed and recorded by Ann Marie Quinlan, February 6, 2003. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2018-013
Brenda Brown Schoonover served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Philippines Group One from 1961 to 1963 as a 5th and 6th grade English teacher. She began training at State College Pennsylvania and then continued her language and cultural training in-country at Los Banos in a group of 128 volunteers. In the Philippines, she was stationed in the town of Magarao in the Bicol Region where she worked in the elementary school and established a community library. In her interview, she describes the warm relations she enjoyed with host country nationals. While interacting with students, teachers, and other host-country nationals, she says she learned valuable lifelong lessons in cross-cultural sensitivity -- lessons she believes have served her well throughout her subsequent career as an American diplomat. After completing her teaching assignment, Schoonover continued working as a Peace Corps staffer in Tanzania and at the Peace Corps office in Washington, D.C., and eventually became a foreign service officer. President Bill Clinton appointed her Ambassador to the West African nation of Togo, and she served there from 1997 to 2000. Interviewed by Ivan C. Browning, April 6, 2018. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2017-024
Roger Rattan served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanganyika from 1963 to 1965. (The name of the country was changed to Tanzania in 1964, in the midst of his service.) Roger and his wife entered the Peace Corps together. During training, they studied the Swahili language, and spent six weeks at Syracuse University and another six weeks in Mbeya, a city in southern Tanganyika. Rattan was assigned to teach English and math in a middle school in Mwanza, a northern city on the shore of Lake Victoria. His first placement was at a school where the students were predominantly South Asian; in the second year he transferred to a school with African students. The interview includes Rattan's recollections of receiving the news of President Kennedy's death during training in Tanganyika. He also discusses how Peace Corps volunteers participated in the ceremony to mark the changing of the country's name to Tanzania. Interviewed and recorded by Phyllis Noble, 29 January 2017. 4 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2016-042
Julie Kovalaske served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania from 2009 to 2012. In her first two years, she was a health extension worker. She extended for a third year to work as a primary education specialist. Kovalaske entered the Peace Corps with a degree in education from the University of Wisconsin as well as a teaching license and proficiency in Spanish. Her training took place in-country in Muheiza, where she lived with a Swahili-speaking family for two months to help learn the language. After training, Kovalaske was placed in the southeastern regional capital of Lindi where she successfully engaged young children in dramatizations about good health practices. She extended her service for a third year and moved to Mtwara, where she worked with a USAID-affiliated agency to develop educational technology. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file). Interviewed and recorded by Phyllis Noble, June 17, 2016.
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2019-118
Jennifer DaPolito served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania from February 2015 to March 2017 in a community health program. She describes her background in international development and the relevant permaculture skills she gained from working on a small homestead farm prior joining. Her training included a community-based home-stay, cluster-based language and culture training, and a 3-month community entry and mapping phase in the village where she would serve, Idetero. DaPolito emphasizes that the most meaningful parts of her service were the close personal and work-related relationships she cultivated with the women and girls, especially her work training women to be "nutrition mamas" and training children to make re-usable sanitary pads. She also talks about witnessing the lasting impact that volunteers can have among the people with whom they live and work. After the Peace Corps, DaPolito completed a master's degree in public health and is writing a book about the resiliency of the girls and women she met during her service. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, June 22, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Sound recording
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2011-006
Audio recording of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Tanzanian official Nsilo Swai addressing the Tanzania X group at their training facility at Syracuse University in October 1965. Speakers include Senator Kennedy; Dr. Fred G. Burke, director of the East Africa Studies program at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University; and A. Z. Nsilo Swai, Tanzania Minister of Industries, Mineral Resources and Power, and former Permanent Representative of Tanzania to the United Nations. After his speech, Swai takes questions from the volunteers. The audience may also include individuals from the Somalia and Malawi groups that trained at Syracuse with Tanzania X in the fall of 1965. The recording was made by Ingrid Liedman, a member of Tanzania X.
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2002-014-035
Part of a series of research interviews conducted by Jonathan Zimmerman for his article "Beyond Double Consciousness: Black Peace Corps Volunteers in Africa, 1961-1971." Dr. Anne Wortham served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanganyika from 1963 to 1965 (Tanganyika III). Interviewed by phone, March 4, 1994. 1 tape (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2003-007-003
Vicki Merrill served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania from 1965 to 1967 as a teacher (Tanzania X). Between her sophomore and junior years of college, she had participated in Operation Crossroads Africa in Southern Rhodesia. She had five months of Peace Corps training at Syracuse University, where learning Swahili was not considered essential because the teaching was to be in English. Merrill was assigned to an all girls secondary school (a former Lutheran missionary school) that was outside of Moshi. She taught English and geography, traveled extensively, and participated in projects. Interviewed and recorded by Robert Klein, September 26, 2002. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Collection
USPCPC
Photographs, 1961-1968 and undated. Black-and-white images of United States Peace Corps administrators and staff, both at headquarters and in the field, as well as images of volunteers working at their duty stations abroad. Photographers include Rowland Scherman, Paul Conklin and Abbie Rowe.