January 16, 2023 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Review | GROWING MANGOS IN THE DESERT by Katherine Baird (Mauritania)

Jan 16 2023

Growing Mangos in the Desert: A Memoir of Life in a Mauritanian Village by Katherine Baird (Mauritania 1984–86) Apprentice House Press 2022 380 pages $19.99 (paperback), $32.99 (hard cover), $6.49 (Kindle) Reviewed by Lucinda Wingard (Nigeria 1966 – 68) • Among more than two dozen young volunteers trained for agricultural service in Mauritania in 1984, Katherine Baird was one of ten remaining by her second year. She had survived the rigors of wielding her short-handled hoe in blistering heat, had adapted to eating meals from a common bowl with her neighbors, and had successfully threaded through baffling local hierarchies. Mauritania needed Peace Corps to help staff a fledgling initiative funded with foreign money: growing rice along a desolate part of the Senegal River. Baird brought no experience to help her fulfill this work, but her diligent note-taking and detailed records show she pitched into her assignment with a will. “Keyti” . . .

Review | DEEP SOUTH by Paul Theroux (Malawi)

Jan 16 2023

Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963–65) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 485 pages $9.40 (Kindle), $34.74 (hard cover), $9.89 (paperback) Reviewed by Mark Walker (Guatemala 1971-73) • I’ve read and reviewed the last eight books by the “Dean of Travel Writing” — Paul Theroux. I wrote my latest book, My Saddest Pleasures: 50 Years on the Road, in honor and appreciation of Theroux, and another travel writer, “who personally knew and was inspired by Moritz Thomsen and passed their enthusiasm on to me.” Thomsen wrote the Peace Corps experience classic,Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle. Theroux’s book, The Tao of Travel, celebrates 50 years of travel writing and inspired my series, “The Yin & Yang of Travel.” Theroux is probably the most prolific of the Returned Peace Corps writers, with 33 works in fiction and 53 books overall. He describes his passion for long “road trips” as follows, “My experience of . . .

Archive - January 16, 2023