Malawi

(This is a short essay I wrote years ago about Theroux and his ‘Peace Corps Experience’  and I am reposting it now to continue the discussion of his latest book.) Living on the Edge: Paul Theroux • He went — in the way the Peace Corps rolls the dice of our lives – to Africa as a teacher. “My schoolroom is on the Great Rift, and in this schoolroom there is a line of children, heads shaved liked prisoners, muscles showing through their rags,” he wrote home in 1964. “These children appear in the morning out of the slowly drifting hoops of fog-wisp. It is chilly, almost cold. There is no visibility at six in the morning; only a fierce white-out where earth is the patch of dirt under their bare feet, a platform, and the sky is everything else.” How many of us stood in front of similar classrooms . . .

In case you missed it, Brian Lehrer on WNYC had Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) on his show this morning (see link below). He talked about his new book on travels in the South and mentioned the Peace Corps. (Thanks to a “Heads Up” from Bill Preston (Thailand 1977-80) http://www.wnyc.org/story/paul-theroux-american-south/ In case you missed it, Paul had a piece in the New York Times on Sunday, October 4, 2015. Thanks to a “Heads Up” from William Evensen  (Peru 1964-66) A factory in Toccoa, Ga., that was closed in 2010 by the manufacturing company SundayReview | OPINION The Hypocrisy of ‘Helping’ the Poor By PAUL THEROUX OCT. 2, 2015 EVERY so often, you hear grotesquely wealthy American chief executives announce in sanctimonious tones the intention to use their accumulated hundreds of millions, or billions, “to lift people out of poverty.” Sometimes they are referring to Africans, but sometimes they are referring to Americans. And . . .

Dan Krell (Malawi 1966-68) was stationed in Nsanje in a tuberculosis control program. As he wrote me recently, ” I’ve not kept up with things in Malawi as well as I would have liked, but I recently retired; life is not getting in the way as much as it had been over the last 1/2-century, so I’m looking forward to doing better.” He began by reading a recently self-publishing novel about Malawi written by an RPCV and while he had some good things to say about the book, he raised a concern we all have about books by RPCVs. I thought we all could learn from his words. So, further authors pays attention to what he has to say and have your book well edited before publication. Here’s what Dan wrote me. I just finished reading a self-published, fictional book, describing Peace Corps involvement in Malawi, shortly after independence. Granting . . .