Archive - October 24, 2011

Even The Smallest Crab Has Teeth: 50 Years of Amazing Peace Corps Stories: Volume Four, Asia & The Pacific Jane Albritton (India 1967–69), Editor Travelers’ Tales 373 pages $18.95 (paperback) October 2011 Reviewed by Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000–02, Madagascar 2002–03) Even The Smallest Crab Has Teeth: 50 Years of Amazing Peace Corps Stories: Volume Four, Asia & The Pacific is the last of a series of four handsome anthologies celebrating and recording Peace Corps’ accomplishments and contributions to the world through its first half century of life. In this final edition, Albritton reserved for herself the daunting task of collecting stories from the most diverse of the four regions: Asia and The Pacific. The wide scope of the book reveals the well-trodden truth that no two Volunteer experiences are alike. Albritton writes, How is it possible to collect stories from countries that fit into a scalene triangle set on . . .

Back in 2001 Peace Corps Doctor Milt Kogan, who served in the Republic of Upper Volta from June 1970 to June 1972, sent me a copy of his 169 page, double spaced, typed diary that he kept in-country in those early days of the Seventies. Dr. Kogan was the Peace Corps Physician in care of 70 PCVs in the nation now known as Burkina Faso. The nation was renamed by President Thomas Sankara in 1984 to mean “the land of the upright people” in Mossi and Dioula, the major languages of the country. Dr. Kogan went to Africa during those early days of the agency when the Peace Corps, through Public Health, sent MDs overseas to care for Volunteers. He arrived in Upper Volta with his wife, Dena, and two babies: Teidi, one month old; and Magavin, two-and-a-half. In the first entry of his diary, he writes, “I’m not sure . . .