June 2025 – Peace Corps Worldwide

The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue, by Mike Tidwell (Zaire 1985-87)

Jun 08 2025

Title: The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue Author: Mike Tidwell (Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo, 1985-87) Publisher: St. Martin’s Press; March 25, 2025 Number of pages: 288 Available on Amazon, Bookshop, Goodreads, Thriftbooks, and more Reviewer’s name: Ben East (Malawi 1996-98) Reading The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue feels like strolling the hometown with an affable neighbor, one filled with deep respect for the natural world and a pragmatic concern for its demise. Along the way we meet other neighbors, including state and national political figures; students, scientists, arborists, and public works personnel; a farmer, a midwife, the local pastor. Despite dire news regarding humanity’s relationship with nature, the company makes for an exceptional walk. On one level Mike Tidwell recounts a single year—2023—in a Washington, DC suburb whose residents cope with the local effects of global climate change. These are the tombstone stumps of new-fallen trees, the sudden gaps in rich canopy across which the . . .

Before Before: A Story of Discovery and Loss in Sierra Leone by Betsy Small

Jun 01 2025

A debut author blends autobiography and ethnography in this exploration of Sierra Leone in the 1980s. The recent history of Sierra Leone is one often associated with violence, disease, and tragedy. From the decade-long Blood Diamond War of the 1990s through the Ebola outbreak of the 2010s that killed tens of thousands and displaced millions, the West African nation has been the epicenter of human rights crises for the past 30 years. In this book, Small not only encourages readers to place those tragedies within a larger post-colonial context, but also highlights a vibrant history of the nation from a grassroots perspective in the decade that predated the violence of the ’90s. A Peace Corps volunteer who was born only a year after Sierra Leone became an independent country in 1961, the author spent three years in Tokpombu, a village located 250 miles from the nation’s Atlantic coast (“Here I . . .

Archive - June 2025