Making It Happen: A Memoir of Peace Corps and Venezuela in the 1970s - Paperback

by Mike Kendellen (Author)

Have you ever wondered about your place in the world? Had trouble figuring out your next steps? Wanted to just run away from it all? Mike Kendellen did. In the mid-1970s, just out of college and with no real plans for life, he decided to pack it all up and join the Peace Corps, moving to Venezuela as a Volunteer. Making It Happen is the revealing story of Mike's two-plus years in Venezuela, where life wasn't at all what he expected. From coaching baseball in a remote town to working with special needs children in a group setting, Mike's reflective tales evoke an era when life was different not only in the States, but in Latin America as well. The attitudes of the people he met, the challenges, the annoyances, and yes, the rewards are all treated with humor, blunt realism, and honesty. It's not a sugar-coated view of the world, but it is eye-opening, especially when told from the personal perspective of a young American always trying to determine his next move as he experiences life far from home and learns about the world-and finds his place in it.

Author Biography

Mike Kendellen was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Venezuela and Morocco in the 1970s. After Peace Corps and until he retired in 2014, he directed programs in various refugee and post-war settings in Asia, the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia. From 1999, Mike supervised, monitored, researched and surveyed projects on three continents associated with the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, landmine survivors and surveys. He and his wife, Barb, live in Washington, D.C.