Nine Hills to Nambonkaha : Two Years in the Heart of an African Village | Sarah Erdman

Nine Hills to Nambonkaha : Two Years in the Heart of an African Village | Sarah Erdman | A Culture of Service

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Nine Hills to Namb...

	Nine Hills to Nambonkaha : Two Years in the Heart of an African Village Sarah Erdman Henry Holt and Co., 2003 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 34 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The village of Nambonkaha in the Ivory Coast is a place where electricity hasn?t yet arrived, where sorcerers still conjure magic, where the tok-tok sound of women pounding corn fills the morning air like a drumbeat. As Sarah Erdman enters the social fold of the village as a Peace Corps volunteer, she finds that Nambonkaha is also a place where AIDS threatens and poverty is constant, where women suffer the indignities of patriarchal customs, and where children work like adults while still managing to dream. Lyrical and topical, Erdman?s beautiful debut captures the astonishing spirit of an unforgettable community.

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6 stars for this engaging trip to a challenging place for us armchair travelers

Honest, earnest, compelling, extremely well-written narrative of two years serving the Peace Corps in a remote village of Ivory Coast-- I emerged from this reading with a knowledge and respect for the people of the village, as well as for the sincerity and objectivity of the author. Sarah Erdman's account of how she works out her unique role as an outsider with a mission to improve family health in a tradition-bound, closely-knit rural village is one of the best of its kind.

Also recommended: Peter Hessler's RIVER TOWN and Mike Tidwell's THE PONDS OF KALAMBAYI.

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A Culture of Service

"Nine Hills of Nambonkaha" is a wonderful first-person account of a young Peace Corps worker's experiences in Ivory Coast in 2000 and 2001. She served as a health care worker, primarily trying to teach the village women about prenatal health and infant care. AIDS became an issue while she was there. Erdman shows maturity beyond her years in her efforts to relate with people of all ages and stations in a little village as remote from her private school upbringing as could be imagined. With patience and respect she teaches invaluable lessons about prenatal and infant care, family planning and disease prevention.

Both her efforts to work with the local people within their culture and her writing skills are inspiring, hopefully enough so to cause other young people to serve the world and themselves in similar fashion.

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Warm, Honest, Skillful, Beautiful and Moving

I served only briefly in the Peace Corps in Sokode, Togo before having to return to the U.S. with a breakdown. It was my overwhelming love for the land and its people that was my downfall, and that took me back to West Africa to work in Nigeria nine years later. I fell totally in love with every chapter that was written here. Every detail that was skillfully described illuminated that which I knew and that which I wanted to know better. From the moment I finished the book, I wanted to reach Sarah to let her know how wonderfully-spent was her year in writing this narrative. To date, at PC HQ, I have never done so. When she states how the electrification of Nambonkaha affected the various people in the village, this miracle that even allows me to write this note, she states: "...as for me, I'll miss the stars." If you don't sense the weight of those words, perhaps you don't yet understand Africa. More than anything else I have read, this will help. I can't imagine serving in the Peace Corps or even visiting West Africa, without reading this book.

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Romantic Portrait of African Village

Erdman's work in Nine Hills to Nambonkaha presents a romantic view of village life in Africa. Her experience from the Peace Corp allows Erdman to paint a rich and lively culture of life in an economically and medicinally depressed area. Coping with challenges of communicating prevention and awareness of AIDS, infant care and personal hygiene, Erdman fully imparts to the reader her dedication in submersing herself into the social rituals and cultural norms in Nambonkaha. Her story telling has a romantic undertone in the spirit of human compassion and tolerance. I highly recommend this narrative.

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Interesting but a little slow

I spent two years in Africa with the Peace Corps and really looked forward to reading this book. I thought it was a good read, but was a little slow. I suspect that readers who have not lived in Africa may find it more entertaining that I did as much of the joy of reading this book is in the discovery of village culture.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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