Friends and Colleagues from Around the World,
I’ll focus on the impact of dismantling overseas development programs in Culture Watch. Then it’s What We’re Reading and Why, a new Scanning Project segment, What Others Are Saying, plus an updated Calendar.
Culture Watch
Many Americans are unaware what USAID does and few realize the impact of its dismantling. Humanitarian programs like USAID and the Peace Corps comprise our “Soft Power” which impacts how we are perceived abroad. The number of lives lost by its disappearance.
Brooke Nicols, a Professor of Global Health at Boston University, developed an impact tracker. In one of those programs, the US has been a leader in slowing HIV/AIDS through former President George W. Bush’s PEPFAR program, which provides medication to 20 million people worldwide.
So, as the figures above indicate, shutting down programs of TB, Malaria, and HIV/AIDS would be devastating. Almost 90,000 children and up to 103 deaths per hour according to the tracker program.
Beyond individual lives lost, which are listed above, gutting US foreign aid also shatters trust between the US and USAID staff, as well as the local contractors and organizations operating in these countries, Nichols notes. “It’s hard to turn the tap back on once you’ve turned it off, especially if there is no staff to turn it on.” Tracking Anticipated Deaths from USAID Funding Cuts | SPH
The following is a protest letter by a fellow writer and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Mark Wentling. His latest book, Falling Seven Times begins in Ethiopia with a young woman’s struggle to be a migrant worker to support her family. It is a fictional story based on her experience with his Ethiopian wife. She became a naturalized citizen in 2019. As the author told me, “If you are looking for a human face to put on labor migrants, this is it.” Mark worked with USAID for many years and has traveled through some 54 African countries.
Here’s part of his protest letter entitled Preserving America’s Democracy which is timely given the dismantling of USAID:
Like many of you, after my experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I chose as my career path to remain in service to our country by joining USAID. Unfortunately, the current Administration is erasing all that I stood for. My lifetime of work has been reduced to ashes … not because of natural causes but by the relentless application of cruel acts of misguided people.
I know that I am not alone when I write I am fed up. I feel deeply that my past work has been obliterated. And without a past, what future do I have? I worked for ten years with the Peace Corps and forty years with USAID and associated organizations. Now these US organizations – which are 63 years old – have been hastily and carelessly dismantled by a small group of people, leaving thousands of American employees and their families – both in the United States and around the world – without their livelihoods. Their jobs focused on providing life-saving humanitarian aid and relieving poverty in some of the most desperate parts of the world…
Moreover, the quick total termination of foreign aid has left millions of impoverished people in some of the world’s poorest countries without sufficient food and health care. Is the United States now abandoning these people? Questions must be asked: how do we now plan to stop the worldwide spread of disease, including pandemics? (Ebola comes quickly to mind.)
The loss of the food staple markets for US farmers also comes to mind. At least, two billion US dollars will not be purchased by USAID in 2025. The loss of this market is catastrophic for US farmers, many of whom have already planted crops with this market in mind…
I see from the nationwide protests that many people share the same views. I heard their voices on the media, and I join with them in saying “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Mark G. Wentling. Here’s the link to his entire letter and my review of his book:A Letter of Protest from Former USAID Staff
Wentling sent me the following update a few days ago:
My Ethiopian wife informs me that the UN’s World Food Program stopped providing food to over 400,000 displaced people in Ethiopia because they no longer received contributions from USAID.
Our country is the harbinger of death and misery in the world!
Best, Mark
What We’re Reading and Why?
We lost Peruvian writer and Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa at 89. Many consider him the Latin American writer with the largest international impact and audience. Here’s my review of Harsh Times, which depicts international conspiracies in Guatemala, still timely after all these years. Although a historic based fictional novel, the dialogue between the Guatemalan President and U.S. Ambassador seemed tragic and all too true. https://millionmilewalker.com/…/harsh-times-by-mario…/
The Scanning Project
Sharing images from Peace Corps and overseas development work to highlight the people we saw and worked with for a better world.
Rodrigo (left), the Coordinator of the President’s Development Program in the Department of San Marcos, Guatemala in the kitchen of my host family in the village of Calapté 1972 at (8,500 feet).
What Others Are Saying
Two author’s response to my latest unpublished essay, “The Journey’s End: How Travel and Aging Shaped Moritz Thomsen’s Literary Legacy.”
Mark–This is a good piece. You really get it on track with this paragraph:
His decision to join the Peace Corps in 1965 at age forty-eight (the average volunteer is in their twenties) not only marked a career change but a profound life transformation that would define his remaining years and literary work. Thomsen’s works — especially the books written in his final decades — present a fantastic chronicle of a man grappling with the twin realities of geographic displacement and advancing age, both of which resonated through his five published books.
I was hooked right away. Of course, Thomsen’s life feels unique. How many people make such a radical change and stick with it? Many of us can feel the difficulties of aging, and sometimes of isolation. And we write, as Moritz did. But he was always farther out on the limb, and stayed there until he dropped. (Or bounded out of his building, as you describe, and tumbled onto the ground.) Yes, that’s why we want to read about him, because he was so radical, so determined, so devastated. All that is in this latest piece of yours. Good going. John Thorndike, Author (The World Against Her Skin, Another Way Home: A Father’s Memoir.)
Mark, this is excellent! I didn’t know about Bad News From the Black Coast. Just bought it. I thought those musings from is window were never published. Thx for writing this! Mike Tidwell, Author (The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue), founder of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
Calendar
Twenty fellow writers attended my presentation on the making of The Guatemala Reader: Extraordinary Lives and Amazing Stories, including four guests from SEEDS for a Future including their Director Leilani who was in Antigua, Guatemala and a fellow Advisory Board member of the Peace Corps Worldwide. They asked excellent questions and provided real insights into the book, which I greatly appreciated!
- May 17th APW Annual Conference at the Paradise Valley Town Hall
- May 15: Peace Corps Worldwide Advisory Board meeting. We’re reorganizing our book review and publishing programs. (3) Peace Corps Worldwide | Glenn Blumhorst | Substack.
- June 15: My fourth interview by Bill Miller on Global Connections TV will air—our focus “Soft Power.”
- May 24: The Arizona chapter of Pen America is partnering with the Society of Professional Journalists to co-host a panel of Arizona-based journalists who became authors. Poisoned Pen Book Store, 4014 N Goldwater Blvd in Scottsdale.
- September 5th: My interview by Christoper Wurst on “Softpower Fulstory” begins airing after the 5th. Chris is a retired foreign service member who served in Guatemala for two years.
You can find my 85 book reviews and 28 articles, plus several videos and photos, on my website, including a reduced price for my new book if you read it and pass it along to your local library: http://millionmilewalker.com. “Follow” me on Blue Sky—at (2) @millionmilewalker.bsky.social — Bluesky, Substack- Mark D Walker| Substack – and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/millionmilewalker/ for the latest international affairs and literature. And please share the link to the sign-up page to the Dispatch for any friends you think will enjoy it. Million Mile Walker Newsletter – Million Mile Walker.
And, as always, if you’ve read Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, My Saddest Pleasures: 50 Years on the Road, the Best Travel Book according to the Peace Corps Writers, and, of course, my most recent book, The Guatemala Reader, please review and rate them on Amazon and Goodreads.
Shalom!
Mark D. Walker