WorldView Magazine: Found Objects
Patchwork of Peace
The Patchwork of Peace quilt, created in 1990 at the National Peace Corps Association conference in Eugene, Oregon, is both a historical artifact and a symbol—a tactile expression of memory, advocacy, and collective identity among RPCVs. Measuring 27 feet in length and composed of 100 panels contributed by individual Volunteers, this community quilt reflects the intersection of art, activism, and social memory.
Ubuntu in Action
Last month, the Museum of the Peace Corps Experience (MPCE) launched its first exhibit of 2025, Ubuntu in Action: Exploring the Peace Corps and Shared Humanity, hosted by the International Peace Museum in Dayton, Ohio. This inspiring exhibit delves into the spirit of service, cultural exchange, and the interconnectedness of all people and is the centerpiece of the two museums’ celebration of the Season for Non-Violence accompanied by an engaging series of online and in-person programs running through April.
Camel Bells Calling
Among the items that Martin Kaplan brought home from his Peace Corps service in the Somali Republic (1962–64) was a koor, or camel bell. Wooden bells like this one were used to help locate camels as they transported people and goods through the bush. Like the nearly quarter million other Volunteers that have served since Peace Corps began in 1961, Kaplan returned with crafts, clothing, artwork, and gifts from his host country. Many of these items are imbued not only with memories, but also cultural and historical significance. In 1999, Kaplan surveyed his boxes of memorabilia —including the camel bell—and...
The Art of Reconciliation
Kathleen Malu served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Rwanda in 1980. Thirty years later, in 2010, she returned as a Fulbright Scholar to a very different country. In the intervening years, the horrors of the Rwandan genocide had shocked the world. In 1994, over the course of 100 days, it is estimated that close to one million Tutsi were massacred by Hutus. During her second stay in Rwanda, Malu met Christiane Rwagatare and a group of women using art to preserve tableaus of ordinary Rwandan life, as well as scenes of reconciliation and restoration. The intricate tapestry featured here...
Found Objects: Cabinet of Curiosities
If you had no smart phone, no laptop, no internet, and you had to walk, bike or ride a horse three villages away to make a call or post an aerogram, what to do at night? Turn up the wick on your kerosene lantern and pull your paperback copy of J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories from your library. Yes, for the first several years of Peace Corps, Sarge Shriver’s staff shipped to almost every Peace Corps site a curated library of about 200 books, a moveable post-graduate world study assignment. Not long after the first flights of Peace Corps Volunteers landed in Africa...
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