From land-locked Afghanistan to the smallest of islands in the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean, stories by peace Corps Volunteers from this region come from (mostly) Hindu India—1,269,210 square miles worth of democracy patched together from princely states—Confucian Korea, Muslim Indonesia and Buddhist Thailand.
Imagine delivering a baby—with the help of the handy Peace Corps first aid kit—on a rust bucket of a passenger ship in the Pacific or practicing agriculture with armed Pathan farmers in the Pashtun region of Pakistan. How about trekking into the far reaches of Afghanistan to inoculate women and children for small pox, or returning 25 years later to your school in India to find that, yes, your students do remember you? These stories say. I Was There.”
Howard_Daniel
Posted April 15, 2012
I'm writing this review prematurely (I haven't yet finished the book), but I can't contain my enthusiasm. I'm a former Peace Corps volunteer, and each of the stories I've read so far has brought back memories of my own experiences, even though all but one of those I've read have been stories of countries other than India (which is where I served).
This book will make you laugh, cry, cringe and cheer. Returned volunteers -- from any country -- will feel echoes of many aspects of what they went through. For me, the unifying theme is that of seeing, experiencing and coming to terms with entirely new worlds we couldn't previously have imagined. Other readers, I feel sure, will get a vicarious sense of having "been there."
My advice: Don't wait. Just buy the book and enjoy it. And while you're at it, buy the other three volumes in this four-part series, "50 Years of Amazing Peace Corps Stories" (one volume each for Africa, the Americas, Asia/Pacific and "Heart of Eurasia"), published to mark the Peace Corps' first half century.
Truth in advertising: I wrote one of the stories in this volume -- and you can find it on the Web at Pen4Rent-dot-com-slash-Pen4Rent-slash-a-different-way-dot-aspx.
Overview
From land-locked Afghanistan to the smallest of islands in the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean, stories by peace Corps Volunteers from this region come from (mostly) Hindu India—1,269,210 square miles worth of democracy patched together from princely states—Confucian Korea, Muslim Indonesia and Buddhist Thailand.
Imagine delivering a baby—with the help of the handy Peace Corps first aid kit—on a rust bucket of a passenger ship in the Pacific or practicing agriculture with armed...