Triumph & Hope: Golden Years in the Peace Corps

by Barbara E. Joe

Overview

When the author announced plans to join the Peace Corps in her 60s, a male friend was skeptical, predicting her prompt return home “by Christmas at the latest.” But thanks to the welcoming folks of two towns--El Triunfo, The Triumph, and La Esperanza, The Hope--acknowledged in her book's title, she extended her stay beyond the usual term and finally made peace with the tragedy of her son's untimely death. A powerful, inspiring personal story offering an intimate look inside Peace Corps service, showing that no matter what your age and circumstances, you can always forge a new direction. Readers will experience, step-by-step, what Peace Corps service is really like, its ups and downs, adventures and challenges. Ample illustrations enhance the text. Baby boomers considering their next life passage will be especially interested in this frank and moving recital.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940013426160
Publisher:	Barbara Joe
Publication date:	12/28/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	297
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Barbara E. Joe, MA, a native of Boston, is an alumna of the University of California, Berkeley, and a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. She lives in a century-old house on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, where she works as a freelance writer, Spanish interpreter, and translator. She has been a member of Amnesty International since 1981 and is also a board member of three non-profit organizations working internationally. From 2000-20003, she served as a health volunteer with the Peace Corps in Honduras and wrote an award-winning memoir, Triumph & Hope: Golden Years in the Peace Corps in Honduras, declared “Best Peace Corps Memoir of 2009” by Peace Corps Writers. Readers are invited to view her blog, http://honduraspeacecorps.blogspot.com where she posts comments about her return trips to Honduras, volunteering with medical brigades.

Editorial Reviews

Traveling the world, attempting to make it a better place is the call of the Peace Corps. "Triumph & Hope: Golden Years with the Peace Corps in Honduras" is the memoir of Barbara E. Joe, as she joins in the Peace Corps in her retirement years in the grief of losing her son. Her tale is a life of living much younger in her age and showing the difference one elderly woman can make in the world still. "Triumph & Hope" is an inspiring read that should not be ignored for personal memoirs collections

Basic Review

There’s more than triumph and hope going on here, this is a complete “journal” of life as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras! Barbara believes she is telling you the story of her success and failures as a senior citizen in this lush banana country, when in reality she is describing what most volunteers go through as they begin their first months “in-country,” and try to make it through the first year. Barbara stays three years. Surprisingly, as a child in 194

Bob Arias

The average age of a Peace Corps volunteer is 27, and the nation's other service and volunteer organizations are packed with twenty- and thirty-somethings fresh out of college, eager to serve, or restarting, refocusing or reconsidering their careers before settling down once again.
But what about the nation's senior citizens still eager to serve?
Barbara E. Joe finally took the leap and applied to the Peace Corps in 2000 when she was 62-years old. She soon found herself serving in Hond

Ed O’Keefe

Barbara Joe writes with passion and love, telling the stories she has lived through years of travel through Latin America, following a trail charted by her parents, Leonard and Virginia Currie, since she was little girl. “Triumph & Hope” takes the reader on a journey of discovery that includes mysterious and even remote places like the communities of El Triunfo and La Esperanza in Honduras, but which have always remained close to Joe’s heart, as her years of volunteer work f

Humberto Rodriguez-Camilloni, PhD

“If your idea of a good time is to hop into your climate controlledcar, call ahead on your cell phonefor Chinese take-out, and pick upyour meal steaming hot after payingby credit card,” writes Barbara E. Joe, “Peace Corps service is notfor you.” But if you want to make ameaningful contribution before “retiringto the golf links” – and you’re willing to use a latrine, share your bed with scorpions, and shower by pouring a bucket of water over

Karen Lyon