2022 Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award Winner — I MISS THE RAIN IN AFRICA
Can't wait to read your book. I almost served in 2020 in Namibia. Hope to get another chance.
by Nancy Daniel Wesson
(Uganda 2011-13)
At a time when her friends were planning cushy retirements, Nancy Wesson instead walked away from a comfortable life and business to head out as a Peace Corps Volunteer in post-war Northern Uganda. She embraced wholeheartedly the grand adventure of living in a radically different culture, while turning old skills into wisdom.
Returning home became a surreal experience in trying to reconcile a life that no longer “fits.” This becomes the catalyst for new revelations about family wounds, mystical experiences, and personal foibles.
Nancy Daniel Wesson
Nancy shows us the power of stepping into the void to reconfigure life and enter the wilderness of the uncharted territory of our own memories and psyche, to mine the gems hidden therein. Funny, heartbreaking, insightful and tender, I Miss the Rain in Africa is the story of honoring the self, discovering a new lens through which to view life, and finding joy along the path.
Growing up in Baton Rouge and the rich cultural gumbo of South Louisiana was bracketed by a Master’s Degree in Audiology. Her first book, Moving Your Aging Parents (Love Healing Press 2008), was her account of helping her aging parent. At the time, she was running a consulting business, Focus on Space. After fifteen years of that — at the age of 64, she walked away and became a PCV.
She has traveled far-and-wide; cruised on a small sailboat; raised kids, businesses, and husbands; and had more than a few adventures, but nothing compared to the deep immersion in war-torn Northern Uganda. That and the consequent plunge into the wilderness of her own psyche and the new self that emerged, has been — by far — the greatest of these adventures, all told in I Miss The Rain In Africa.
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I Miss the Rain in Africa: Peace Corps as a Third Act
by Nancy Daniel Wesson (Uganda 2011-13)
Modern History Press, May 2021
296 pages
$24.95 (Paperback); $7.95 (Kindle); $37.95 (Hardcover)
Wow – this is very exciting! Thank you!!!
Hooray for you Nancy
So glad you wrote of your experience with such deep vulnerability and love
Congratulations,🎈 Karla
Thank you Karla, and for recognizing and valuing those
attributes in the tale. One of my biggest surprises in writing was the arrival of “the muse.” I’ve always heard the expression, the muse,” but never identified with the concept. That said, it was absolutely clear that at the point I thought I was finished, “the muse” took over and off we went into the wilderness. Super grateful for Peace Corps Worldwide for their recognition and support of the work of PC writers and creatives!
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this wonderful work! AND especially the spiritual reflections you have undergone since your return. Most of all, for your expressed vulnerability . I am a better informed future peace corps volunteer for this memoir, and every page was a new adventure in itself!
Can’t wait to read your book. I almost served in 2020 in Namibia. Hope to get another chance.