Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2003-024-005
Ellen Shively served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia (Eritrea) from 1968 to 1970 as a nurse educator. She was an Army nurse with six years experience when she decided for personal reasons to shift from "the war corps" to the Peace Corps. She completed a large Ethiopia-Eritrea training program. The volunteers staged in Philadelphia, then spent six weeks in the Virgin Islands, followed by specialized training in Addis Ababa. Shively taught in a "dresser" medical school that trained assistant nurses in Asmara, Eritrea, which was part of Ethiopia at the time. She had been trained in the Amharic language but then had to learn Tigrinya. In her second year, Shively was chosen to develop an advanced dresser program from scratch. After the Peace Corps, Shively re-joined the military, served in Vietnam, and then spent her career as a clinical Army nurse. Interviewed and recorded by Robert Klein, January 14, 2003. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).