Dead Calm by Carole Sojka (Somalia 1962-64)
This short story by Carole Sojka takes place in Kenya in the early sixties. As Carole wrote me, “My husband and I were Peace Corps Volunteers in the Somali Republic from 1962 to 1964. We were with the first Somalia group. There were, I think, seven other Peace Corps groups sent to the Republic before the coup in 1969 that sent the country hurtling into its current state of chaos. I taught English in the secondary school in Merca, a town about forty miles south of the capital, Mogadiscio, where the language before independence was Italian. My husband taught English to the local officials, i.e., the D.C., the police chief, the harbor master. He also took photographs for the Ministry of Tourism. It was a hopeful time in Somalia. “The story of ‘Dead Calm’ came from an experience my husband and I had on a train trip in Uganda in . . .
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