6/6/83

I'm sitting here like the usual vegetable that I am on Monday mornings. Not exactly sure why I am so ‘burnt’ today. It was a busy weekend and perhaps I am feeling the effects of that.  Last night I had a rather rough time with some Montezuma's Revenge of unknown etiology. I still feel kind of ‘bleah’. This is no way to be starting the week. 

Good news and ‘bad’ news. Best part of the weekend was talking with Mom et. al. Actually we managed to talk to Todd for the first time in months and got caught up in the latest coming and goings in his life (and the status of my truck). Holly is going to be mighty busy with her wedding plans.  She was hoping that Deb and I could move up our visiting date and come to the wedding. To complicate things further, my sister Jeni moved up her date to October 1st.  With Deb's friend Vickie getting married on October 8th we could fly up and witness three weddings in 2 weeks. But that would be much too frantic a pace and we'd probably never see Debbie's folks in Meridian. So Hol will get married without us being there. The world moves on without us. Rats. 

Also good was our welcoming party we had for the EC-34s. As we counted them out, about 60 people came. That was mostly PCV’s but it was also some VSOs, Vincentians, Canadians, French and a couple of folks from USAID.  All told it was a heck of a party.  They ate and drank everything in sight. We didn't lose out too badly money-wise because Mark went round and collected a ‘free will' offering. It really was a nice time. We did have a dark cloud in addition to torrential rains. We learned that Liz Stephens had been raped. By no other than our Island tour bus driver, Kelly.  After receiving conflicting counsel from Peace Corps, she has decided to prosecute. We are 100% behind her. But her rape, and that of Lisa, Marion and a couple of other PC women brings up a lot of questions. Like what kind of legal and other support can raped PCVs expect from P.C., what is P.C. doing to equip PCVs with the ability to defend themselves? What is the proper procedure in dealing with a rape? The more we talked about it, the less we felt P.C. was doing to act as our advocate in such matters. So we want to press the issue a bit. We are tired of being left in the dark and in receiving no or little support from the P.C. or the US government. I'm worried to death about Debbie's safety and we found out that the man who beat Guy nearly to death before raping Marion is still on the loose. After 2 years. Needless to say our security about living in Edinboro has been shattered and Debbie and I thought, and are thinking seriously of an E.T. Anyway, emotions are running high and people are looking for something to be done. Mostly we want Elizabeth to know that we support her.