Review | AFRICA OPENED MY HEART by Julia Dreyer Wang (Benin)

Africa Opened My Heart: A Memoir
Julia Dreyer Wang (Benin 2012-14)
Native Book Publishing
August 2024
341 pages
$19.99 (paperback), $3o.00 (Hardcover), $4.99 (Kindle)

Reviewed by Karen Chaffraix Waller (Senegal, Agroforestry, 2012- 14) 

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Julia Wang (Benin 2012-14)

In Africa Opened My Heart Julie Wang takes the reader on a journey into deepest Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. But unlike most of us who engage in this two-year mission, she fell in love with a native and put down roots on the continent. She built a family and a house and a thriving foundation that continues to change lives. She is now in her 70’s, white, monied, and brave.

Wang’s story is woven with insights and confessions. She tells us why she went and why she stays, all the while illuminating the malevolency of the world’s black/white divide with its inherent contradictions and evils. She illustrates the discernable difference between coldness of life in The States, where the self rules, with the warmth of the poor of other countries for whom sharing is living. Americans in general seem to have little tolerance for anyone who needs anything. We go about our lives blissfully unaware of the waves of injustices born upon the poorer world at large, (not to mention those struggling among us). At best we feel inadequate and incapable of doing anything about what seem to be insurmountable problems. I think most Peace Corps volunteers live out their days with a heavy heart – supremely aware,  but unable, ultimately, to rectify this imbalance.

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I met Julie Wang in Dakar, Senegal in 2012 where I was serving, at 56, as an agroforestry volunteer. She was some ten years older and serving in enterprise development in Benin, over 1000 miles away. We intersected at Dakar’s Peace Corps headquarters, where we had both been sent to their well-appointed infirmary.

One evening that week, we found our way to a good sushi restaurant thanks to a nice young Senegalese man who had us follow him like ducks behind their mother, and whom we had to rather awkwardly stave off at the door. Every day of service Peace Corps volunteers endure the agony of just how much to share. We have so much. They have so little.

Within a few years after my return to The States, periodic newsletters began to arrive chronicling the progress of “BioBenin,” a foundation Julie set up to help a local business grow and thrive. Wow. Who knew. This lady wasn’t your normal Peace Corps volunteer. Most drop down into their mission, spend two intense years feeling disoriented and uncomfortable, and then fly back to the States to start chosen professions, and, in time, a family. Older volunteers don’t follow that script.

Africa Opened My Heart is an outstanding read on many levels. Well-written and flowing, it is a plea to the wider world to rethink the way we treat each other. Julia’s  insights remind us to be grateful, to share, to step back from our privileged first-world lives of plenty and re-evaluate what is important. She is observant, introspective and self-analyzing, as one tends to be living abroad. With refreshing honesty, she admits she is capable of selfishness for comfort and convenience. She agonizes over how much to lend, pay for, and purchase for her friends in Benin.

Guillaume

Of course, much of what she has done in Benin has been for love. Specifically, for love of one strong, handsome, capable, intelligent (and much younger, it must be said), Beninese man. Guillaume ran a small restaurant that attracted regional NGO’s and Peace Corps volunteers. She was smitten at first bite. Guillaume had finessed chefdom from internships with foreigners in his country, some French, some Moroccan. He was intelligent and capable and resourceful. She could help. And more than a decade later, she is still helping.

In love, the author found a way to bridge life in two very different worlds. The book weaves the story of how she does this, and why.

Africa Opened My Heart is indeed all about heart. Hers. And those of the many with whom her travels intertwined. It is a valentine to Benin.

Being a Peace Corps volunteer is not easy at any age. It takes courage and resilience to live among the poor, to subsist on their diets, live in their dwellings, learn a tribal language, drink dubious water, and travel in the gutted European cast-offs that are their buses and taxis. One lives with constant reminders of the precariousness of life itself.

And there are other stresses. We elder volunteers share our mission with young Americans just out of college, a contingent of whom abuse alcohol and behave badly.

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Karen Chaffraix Waller ( Senegal 2012-14)

My service was punctuated by deep disappointment with program administrators unable to make concessions where appropriate. I was sent home without the noncompetitive eligibility status (for government jobs, which I desperately needed) because I wanted to leave 90 days early. I had accomplished incredible things for my village: two wells repaired, pipes built now watered the cashew crop, a new school bathroom meant kids and teachers no longer had to hold their bladders all day. My work was essentially done when my sister emailed that “Mom is just getting weaker and weaker.” She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s after my return, but unable to “prove” she was sick, I was considered a quitter. To this day, my ‘Thank You for Your Service’ plaque has never arrived.

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Wang had her own frustrations with the Peace Corps, although she treats it gently. Whatever one’s experiences as a volunteer, however, the institution does foster the building of human bonds that forever color perception of “the other.” We Americans are changed by the heartfelt relationships that grow when you work beside those who welcome and protect you. And the community we leave behind is enriched (hopefully) by positive memories of American visitors who came to help. Deep affection is often engendered, living on in our hearts and minds.

But Julie Wang did not stop there. She perseveres in her mission to better the lives of those she came to know and love. She continues to make a difference in this world. Her writing sings a song we should all hear.

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