Archive - July 29, 2019

A Writer Writes     Strange by Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon 1996-98) For my Spanish homework this week my maestra, Edith, asked that I write a true story — in Spanish, of course — about a strange (extraño) incident I’d experienced. Piece of cake, I thought. In a life that has spanned seventy-four years and countless miles so far, I felt I have a lot of material to draw from. But the strangest stories of all for me have come from my eight-or-so years lived on the ground in Africa. One incident in particular stands out. I gave it only two paragraphs in my Peace Corps memoir, How to Cook a Crocodile, but in my memory it’s as vivid as a full-length feature film.   I was taking the ten-hour train ride — on the country’s one and only train — from Lastoursville, my Peace Corps post in the thickly-rainforested interior of Gabon, to the . . .