PCV Life in Kenya

 

A review of Jackson’s Kenya – A Peace Corps Story by Richard Otto Wiegand, www.safari-shamba-books.com, 2020.

 

I have long been awaiting a good Peace Corps memoir from Kenya. At last, one arrived in author Wiegand’s remembering his years in Kenya in the early 1970s.  Otto Wiegand was a dairy expert charged with improving animal husbandry in a half dozen of the Settlement Schemes in the trans-Nzoia region between Eldoret and Kitale.  As do most memoirs this one follows a hazy chronological order. The author recounts some events or anecdotes from the 70s and then updates them with a later observation or comment about how things changed or didn’t.  His Kenyan history of what went on around him is broad brushed, and accurate. It is not hard for the reader to put matters into that context.

More to the point, Wiegand’s reminisces about his life in Kenya are chock full of anecdotes about life in rural areas with rural folks. His guide to much of this was a man named Jackson, whom Wiegand employed as a cook, but who subsequently became a friend, Swahili teacher and guide to all things Kenyan – tribalism, corrupt politics, local customs, and culture. Wiegand’s experiences reflected a growing understanding of the environment he was in and with that understanding he became an increasingly effective volunteer. His recitation of the problems that small scale Kenyan farmers encountered clearly illustrated the complexities of economic development in third world countries. 

In addition to rural life, Wiegand recounts some of his travels and the young expatriate social context he enjoyed. All PCVs took advantage of East Africa’s magnificent possibilities – high mountains, terrific game parks, gorgeous beaches. The only error of fact I found in the book was geographical. Wiegand swaps the positions of Masaka and Mbarara, Uganda, in telling of a trip there. 

In summary, Wiegand does an excellent job of describing the life of a volunteer of that era in Kenya. He writes in a frank un-hyperbolic fashion that is a pleasure to read. 

A disclaimer – I was a PCV in the same part of Kenya in the years just before Wiegand arrived. We never met, but I installed the water systems on several of the Settlement Schemes – Ndalu and Kiminini - he worked as an extension agent. The memoir also mentions several volunteers from my group who hung on after I departed.

Gulu in the Rain

 

A review of I Miss the Rain in Africa by Nancy Daniel Wesson, Modern History Press, Ann Arbor, Mi, 2021. 

 

This memoir of Peace Corps service in Uganda in 2012/13 has the immediacy of a blog/diary from which it is drawn. Consequently, it is a cumulation of little horrors of third world poverty and ah-ha’s of cultural insight. Hyperbole characterizes the prose. Everything is reported in near breathless terms. That criticism aside, the author was a first-time visitor to Africa, and she was posted to a difficult place in a difficult time. 

Gulu, a city in northern Uganda was the locus of terrible troubles in the 1980s and 90s when the Lord’s Resistance Army terrorized the region, killing, kidnapping, looting and conscripting inhabitants. Many fled to the relative safety of the city but brought their personal trauma with them. This emotional climate then overlaid an urban environment where traditional values were already under siege from modernity.  Gulu was author Wesson’s posting. She worked for a non-governmental organization which promoted literacy.  Once she found her niche she contributed to the organization’s effectiveness.    She was especially proud of a program to develop libraries for children.

Much of the memoir focuses on the difficulty of life for a Peace Corps Volunteer: poor housing, urban noise, medical issues, food, weather, dreadful public transportation, and more.  Wesson was not an especially happy camper and called them like she saw them. Yet she recognized that Peace Corps was a lifechanging event and a learning experience for her.   I give her credit for hanging in.

The Peace Corps Gulu portion ends about half-way through the book. The remainder relates a bit back to it but continues with the author’s next life experiences.

Kudos for the Serpent

A review of The Serpent of the Nile from the Foreign Service Journal, November 2021.

 This taut thriller opens with Paul Simmons, a former Peace Corps volunteer who is now a Nairobi-based freelance journalist, being freed from captivity in South Sudan. Surprise: Someone doesn’t appreciate his dogged pursuit of stories of corruption, arms smuggling and human trafficking in that wartorn nation, the newest in Africa. But who? And who, or what, is the novel’s titular snake?

As Simmons gets caught up in the violence and intrigue that plague one of the world’s most desperate nations, Robert Gribbin introduces us to a kaleidoscopic cast that includes figures from the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army and some of their local victims, as well as government employees, British and American expatriates, missionaries and (fictional!) Embassy Juba personnel.

Set against the grim reality and history of the region, and drawing on the author’s decades of diplomacy in Africa, this novel accurately portrays the despair, hope and aspirations of South Sudan’s beleaguered people.

Ambassador (ret.) Robert Gribbin spent 35 years in East and Central Africa, first as a Peace Corps volunteer and then as a Foreign Service officer. He was posted to 15 African countries and served on delegations to the United Nations General Assembly and U.N. Human Rights Commission. He served as U.S. ambassador to Rwanda (1996-1999) and to the Central African Republic and occasionally takes on short-term assignments for the Department of State. He is the author of In the Aftermath of Genocide: The U.S. Role in Rwanda (2005), and novels: State of Decay (2003), Murder in Mombasa (2013) and The Last Rhino (2020).

Justice for Deborah

 

A review of American Taboo – A murder in the Peace Corps by Philip Weiss, Harper Collins, 2004.

 Following up my read of Every Hill a Burial Ground about a Peace Corps murder in Tanzania, a friend sent me this book about a Peace Corps murder in Tonga.

Indeed, there was a murder in Tonga, a very small Pacific Island nation, in 1975. Deborah Gardner, a Peace Corps teacher was murdered by a fellow volunteer, Dennis Priven. He even confessed. The saga, of course, was complicated. Deborah was a vivacious young lady, who enchanted all she met. Priven became smitten with her; enthusiasms she did not fully reciprocate. That seems to have been the underlying theme of the crime. She had other romantic entanglements but refused Priven.

The author painted a complicated scene of Peace Corps life in Tonga. It was a small place with many volunteers. They all knew each other and socialized together frequently.  Tonga is portrayed as a place where there were two types of volunteers – those who engaged in Tongan culture and those who disdained it, preferring the company of other expatriates.  The latter group and certainly some of the former often apparently engaged in drunken revelries and revolving relationships. It is not a pretty picture of Americans abroad. There is some, but not much revelation of what volunteers actually did or what contributions they made. Politically, however, the American presence was important to Tonga and vice versa. The Peace Corps was the tangible expression of America’s interest in the island nation. As it turned out, neither side wanted to lose that connection on account of a murder.

Everyone was, of course, shocked by the murder and the violence of it. Priven was quickly fingered and hunted around the island prior to his turning himself in. He confessed but said nothing further. The evidence was clear and incriminating: eyewitnesses placed him at the scene, his knife was the murder weapon and Deborah’s dying statement was that Dennis did it.

Tongan Peace Corps officials, with the backing of Peace Corps Washington, soon turned to facilitating, mounting and financing a defense of Priven, claiming that he was mentally impaired at the time. Truly, he was a troubled soul but was he crazy?  This defense took lots of maneuvering especially with psychological interventions at the trial but was ultimately successful.

All in all, American Taboo is a sordid tale where power and manipulation on the part of official Americans offset the delivery of justice under Tongan law. Tonga too was guilty of not wanting to hang an ugly American if the cost – justice for Deborah – was too high in terms of eliminating the Peace Corps presence and souring ties with the United States.  

Author Weiss did an astonishing amount of research for this book. Literally chasing down and interviewing dozens of folks who had little desire to relive these sordid events.  The book contains lots of details from overlapping and conflicting memories, after-the-fact justifications, and regrets. Sometimes it is too much. If, however, a reader wades through it all, the result remains disquieting; justice was not served.