The book review:
Me here in Kenya I am fine—Walking the Peace Corps Road, Maxine Valdez: Sun City, CA. Winlock Galey, 2004. Maxine was a PCV from 1980-81 at Kerala Girls’ High School, Kimbimbi, on the slopes of Mt. Kenya. Her book is essentially edited from letters home, a journal, and letters from other volunteers. Although an earnest effort—and successful in many aspects—to portray honestly the daily life of a PCV, the book suffers from lack of coherent narrative and insufficiently introduced or developed characters, including Maxine herself. Although we all probably did it in our letters too, another criticism is that the book dwells too much on petty frustrations and annoyances such as matatu rides, lack of running water and poor availability of food. Similarly, it is filled with a bit too much introspection of the why-am-I-here variety. On the up side, from her status as a mid-life PCV, Maxine provides some interesting cross-generational perspectives, mostly unfavorable, on her younger PCV colleagues. Her description of life in an African school—relations with students as well as fellow faculty members—will ring very true to all PCV teachers. Grading problems, sports days, dances, school trips and cross-cultural conversations are well recorded. Even though the title itself, drawn from a letter-writing class, is a poke at Kenyan English, it is not done maliciously nor are other anecdotes. In fact, the school scenes are the most compelling in the memoir. Maxine’s memoir has no plot and just sort of comes to an end when she left Kenya. Yet, it is the sort of collection of reminisces that will appeal to former PCVs, especially teachers, and others who remember some Kenyan PC lore and geography.