Pat Alter: PAT ALTER joined the Peace Corps and served as a volunteer in health education in Paraguay from 1970-1972 after earning her BA in sociology from the University of Denver. For the past 31 years, she has lived and worked abroad as a Foreign Service spouse and librarian, accompanying her husband and co-editor Bernie, also an RPCV (India 1967-69), on postings to Pakistan, India, Thailand, Canada, Hong Kong and Korea. While posted in Toronto in the early 1990s, she earned her master's degree in library science. Since their return to Washington, D.C., she has managed library services for adults incarcerated in a county detention facility, and now works at the Arlington Public Library.
Bernie Alter : BERNIE ALTER received a B.A. in Political Science and American Literature from City College of New York and an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Denver before becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer in India from 1967-1969. He subsequently studied Hindi at Delhi University, entering the Foreign Service in 1975. His career with Department of State spanned 31 years including posts in Lahore and Islamabad, Pakistan; New Delhi and Chennai, India; Chiang Mai, Thailand; Toronto, Canada; Hong Kong; and Seoul, Korea. He speaks Hindi, Urdu and Thai.
Bernie worked primarily in the Consular area, but has also been responsible for refugee issues, working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). He also served as Consul General in Islamabad, Seoul and Chennai. In Washington, Bernie's assignments included Bangladesh Desk Officer in the Near East/South Asia Bureau; Legislative Liaison Officer for State Department, monitoring Congressional action on refugees, human rights and immigration; and Senior Inspector in State Department's Office of the Inspector General.

Take some Inca, Aztec, Maya, and Moche, mix in Spanish, French, English, Dutch and Danish, stir it to the rhythmic beat of Africa and what do you get? A zesty brew, expressed in a callaloo soup of language, food, music, and religion. So much passion, so much sorrow. What seems familiar in the Americas often is not. For Peace Corps Volunteers, there is nothing to do but learn the language, roll up their sleeves, and get busy working alongside strangers who steal their hearts away. These stories take you on overland journeys to the Amazon Basin, into a village in Honduras terrorized by insurgent forces, and to the ball fields of Ecuador for an unusual game of "beisbol."