The book review:
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RPCV Alan Johnston recommended this book. Asante.

The book review:
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I picked up a copy of this book during the Peace Corps 50th anniversary celebrations in Washington. It was one of the first compilations of Peace Corps stories and remains among the best. You can hopefully find a copy at your local library if not it is available from online stores.

The book review:
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This is a candid forthright memoir of a Peace Corps experience in Kikambani, Kenya. Theresa served for nearly three years as a PCV (2004–07): first in Tala, later in Yatta, both in Eastern Province. In both places she taught computer literacy as well as engaged in community projects. The book is a compilation of emails and newsletters that she sent home. Unfortunately, there is regular duplication as stuff mentioned in one section is repeated in the following one.

The book review:
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Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa is an intriguing book that lives up to its odd title. Stearns writes a journalistic history of recent events in the Congo via the mechanism of personal interviews with people who played a role in, or observed, the events that transpired. Given that many such people wanted (or needed) to cover their tracks, the honesty of the revelations is astonishing.

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Like last month’s selection, this book is also a memoir by a British author. This one, however, is not designed to be humorous, but honest. It is indeed that. Daisy Waugh has written a very candid description of her life as an altruistic English girl who in the early nineties spent six months in Isiolo, northern Kenya. Why Isiolo? That is never really explained except by the fact that she knew someone who said she could probably find a short-term teaching position there. That was apparently reason enough.

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This is an odd book by an obviously odd guy. It is a memoir, apparently stoked up quite a bit, of a childhood and adolescence in Africa, mostly in Kenya. Bennun is a British humorist along the lines of America’s Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods). Hence he makes mountains out of molehills, but he does so rather successfully.