Peace Corps in Nigeria

 

A review of A Snowflake in the Jungle – My two years in the Peace Corps Nigeria, West Africa, 1964-66, by James Jablonski, Publisher: Gravel Pit Press, 2025

    This memoir of time spent in Nigeria is not a snapshot. It is more a full-length feature film. The story is drawn from a daily journal and scads of letters home. It faithfully recounts Jim Jablonski’s – JJ as he was called by villagers - profound Peace Corps experience in a Nigerian village.  He was the only white man to reside in Affa - perhaps the inspiration for the title - and was given the task of creating a cooperative to grow and market vegetables.  The memoir traces the hurdles involved: convincing villagers to participate, securing the land, inputs and water, protecting the gardens from pests such as insects and wild cattle, the hard never-ending physical labor required, the vagaries of climate, and the difficulties of marketing.  But most important to the project’s success were the human interactions, the relationships built, the quarrels ironed out and friendships developed.  Jablonski chronicles these developments as they unfold.

    Throughout the book, the author muses about economic development and the difficulties of convincing villagers who are enthusiastic about an idea but are reluctant to do the work required to implement it. He judges that the pains of poverty are offset by rich relationships and spirituality. JJ learns much about Igbo culture, about the village hierarchy, about hospitality, marriages, burials and other ceremonies where cultural obligations take priority over modern logic. He observes the subordinate role of women.  He notes the dichotomy between the work ethic of school leavers who disdain physical labor and garden participants. He discusses the clash between traditional juju religion and Christianity but participates in both.  In summary, JJ becomes subsumed in village life. At first, they tolerated him, but because of his industriousness, came to appreciate him.

    This memoir will appeal to those who want the nitty gritty of what a day-to-day Peace Corps experience was like. Folks who served in West Africa will certainly want to compare JJ’s experience to their own.  Overall, the many anecdotes reveal a life changing experience for all involved – Jablonski certainly, but also his Nigerian friends, acquaintances, counterparts, fellow volunteers, missionary friends and government officials. That is what the Peace Corps is supposed to do.  Make a difference.

    Comment.  One cannot help but wonder, as does the author, whether the project can survive the absence of leadership provided by the PCV.  I believe that by their nature cooperatives have short life spans. Early success may keep them going but over time enthusiasm wanes, people move on, conflict arises and the venture expires.  That might have been the fate of JJ's cooperative but there was little time for internal dynamics to erode. Instead, the project was a victim of Nigeria's terrible civil war that reduced Biafra and Affa to ashes.     

 

Tropical Ice, Elephants and Adventure

 

A review of Outsider – A life with the Elephants and Mountains of Africa by Iain Allan, Vanguard Press, 2024

In this memoir Iain Allan retraces his times in Kenya from the 1950s to the present.  Originally from Scotland, he arrived in Nairobi as a preteen. There he found the stiff British Kenya culture stultifying. He did not prosper in school but found his niche in rock climbing. He honed this skill and summited Mounts Kilimanjaro and Kenya by the age of eighteen. Upon graduation he followed loves to England and Australia before realizing that his destiny lay in Kenya.

Once back home, Allan became a safari guide specializing in taking clients up Kilimanjaro and Kenya. On his own time, he pioneered climbing routes on those mountains and on other cliffs.  (Indeed, a good part of the memoir details just what was done and where. Rock climbers will undoubtedly find these descriptions fascinating.) Ultimately Allan started his own company called Tropical Ice that focused on adventure experiences on the mountains but also in the bush, especially walking treks through the national parks of Tsavo West and Tsavo East. 

The author recounts good safari stories of encounters with wild animals. He tells of conquests of mountains around the globe. Throughout he names people – friends and adversaries – encountered along the way.  He muses over changes in clients’ attitudes towards safaris ranging from enthusiastic flexibility in days past to demands for precise undeviating information today. He attributes this to the impact of modern information-on-demand culture. He also tracks the vicissitudes of Kenyan government policy regarding poaching. Finally, he notes with understanding and regret that Kenya’s burgeoning population increasingly puts pressure on the wild spaces and creatures that he loves.   

In sum Allan’s recollections constitute a good story; one well worth reading. People who know Kenya – its geography, people and challenges -  will enjoy his perspective. He called them as he saw them.  I learned a lot about rock climbing.  I especially enjoyed the passages about walks along the Tsavo River.  They brought back memories. My wife Connie and I participated in one of those excursions in 1983 with Iain and Mohamed as guides.

Review from The Literary Reporter

 

My African Anthology by Robert E. Gribbin is a vivid, multifaceted collection of stories and vignettes that transport readers into the heart of contemporary Africa.

With the keen insight of a seasoned diplomat, Gribbin captures the complexities, beauty, and challenges of the continent through tales that span everything from Gacaca justice in Rwanda to mysterious disappearances, rebel encounters, and mythic beasts. Each story pulses with authenticity, whether depicting the quiet strength of landscapes or the charged tension of political intrigue.

Gribbin’s prose is evocative, rooted in lived experience, and often poetic, as shown in his lush descriptions of acacia-scented air and towering mountains.

The collection is not just an exploration of Africa’s external realities but also of its spiritual and cultural soul. For readers seeking a deeper, more human understanding of Africa, beyond the headlines, this anthology offers a compelling, memorable journey into its many truths.

Secrets from Africa?

 

       My latest tale from Africa, Freida's Secret, is now available on amazon as both an e-book ($2.99) and a paperback ($13.99). I enjoyed writing this one. It starts with a recitation of the famous, but ill fated, expedition to relieve Emin Pasha and morphs into a story about his daughter Freida and subsequently the efforts of a former Peace Corps Volunteer to discover the secret. 

    The search for Freida’s secret begins in 19^th century Africa, leads onward to Germany before and during the world wars and ends in Idi Amin’s Uganda.   African explorer Henry M. Stanley’s 1887 expedition to relieve beleaguered Emin Pasha, governor of Equatoria Province of Sudan foundered in the depths of the equatorial rainforest prior to arriving on the shore of Lake Albert where Pasha, and his daughter Freida, who were threaten by Islamic jihadists resided. After much dithering, they reluctantly decamped from Equatoria joining Stanley on a march to the coast. That is history, but what happened to young Freida as she carried a secret forward in life? A mixed-race child she was shunted off to Germany where she confronted the strictures of culture and Nazism. Her secret preserved until uncovered by an American research student in the 1970s.  He in turn set out for Africa to find the truth.  

    Author Gribbin weaves an intriguing tale that combines history and fiction. It is buttressed throughout by realistic descriptions of places – the horrors of the jungle, first sighting of the Mountains of the Moon, the slave port of Bagamoyo, steamship travel through the Suez, Hamburg during the Nazi era, Peace Corps travels in Tanzania, Idi Amin’s Uganda - and people – boisterous Stanley, enigmatic Emin Pasha, self-confident Freida and intrepid Gerson. In sum, it is a heartwarming tale that leads us to ask – what other secrets lie undiscovered?

Insight, Views and Advice from an Africanist

 

 A comment on Born in Kansas but made in Africa by Mark Wentling. Ebook off Amazon.

     Wentling had a long and storied career in Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer, Peace Corps staffer, USAID employee and contractor for various NGOs.  He has visited all of Africa’s 54 nations. (I’m jealous. I only have 46.)  Mark has written about thirteen books describing his experiences. Perhaps this is his last one. He goes back over well plowed territory to recount and relate pithy bits of conversations, mostly with Africans. These recollections are full of opinions, both theirs and Wentling’s, which collectively reveal a realistic cynicism about Africa – about culture, about the role of experts, about American development efforts – guided and misguided - about whites in a black land, and foremost about how interlocutors see themselves in their societies.

    If there are themes in this collection they are: home grown corruption complicates everything, development projects have a short life span, western ideas for agricultural progress are flawed.  Wentling harps on the last point. Africa’s food production has declined due to urban migration, poor soil quality, uncertain land rights, insufficient inputs, market issues, and limited irrigation.  Efforts to mitigate these constraints have not been very effective.

    The book is somewhat difficult to follow. Ostensibly organized along chronological lines by decades, nonetheless it jumps around forward and backward in time and across regions. You can be reading an anecdote from Niger in the 1970s and then be transported to Mozambique in the 90s.  Fortunately, there is no plot, just the stream of anecdotes and observations. 

    All told, I found the book to be interesting and truthful.  Wentling admits that the Africa he first knew is gone. He describes the past and his experiences well, but the continent is changing as are attitudes, policies and possibilities.  Increasingly decisions of what Africa is to become rest with its peoples.

The Horror of Ebola

 

A review of Crisis in the Red Zone by Richard Preston, Random House, 2019

Richard Preston the foremost author writing about hemorrhagic fever, especially Ebola, provides a blow-by-blow, day-by-day, chronicle of how the 2013/14 Ebola epidemic arose, grew, and swamped West Africa in disease and death.  He tells of patient zero, a child in Guinea, and tabulates how the virus spread via contaminated bodily fluids, specifically through traditional funeral practices and/or care for those infected.  At first no one in the medical establishment knew what they were dealing with, perhaps malaria, perhaps Lassa fever.  No one knew of Ebola in West Africa. When laboratories in the U.S. and Europe finally identified the virus as Ebola, the epidemic had already killed hundreds. Thousands more were to die.

The bulk of the book details the personal stories of the heroic work of front-line medical personnel in Kenema, Sierra Leone and their efforts to find victims, identify the virus, but mostly to care for the infected.  Preston writes of bloody medical procedures, the difficulty of working in protective gear, and the challenges of providing care in overcrowded unsanitary wards, as well as the need to counter community fears and suspicions engendered by so many deaths.  An additional challenge was the necessity to get the outside world to recognize the scope of the tragedy and to step up.

In order to put the 2014 outbreak in perspective, Preston remembers the first major outbreak in the Congo in 1976. Again, the author effectively employs personal vignettes in order to tell the tale.  In the Congo hundreds died before village communities there invoked the ancient rule, a practice of isolation and quarantine in which those infected were left to live or die. Either way the disease ran its course and did not spread further.

In addition to events in West Africa, Preston also details how individuals in the U.S. and Europe, the small community of folks who tracked dangerous viruses, worked to identify the virus, parse its DNA and begin to create an antidote.   Once one dose (of 7) was in West Africa, medical personnel there were confronted with the ethical issue of who should receive it.  ZMAPP vaccine was not used in Sierra Leone to save a key doctor but was used in Liberia to save an American doctor and a nurse.

By the time more vaccine could be produced, the terrible epidemic had largely run its course.  Two key doctors and thirty-seven nurses from Kenema Hospital numbered among the 10,000 dead in the region.

Preston concludes with a warning: with Ebola we were lucky! The world is not prepared for a lethal virus that could devastate the planet’s huge cities.  

Comment:  The book focuses narrowly on the early spread of the disease coupled with efforts in the U.S. to identify the scourge.  What is missing is an assessment of how governments of the three affected countries (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone) acted, how the international community intervened, with what assistance and when.  I was the interim U.S. ambassador in Freetown in August and September of 2014 at the height of the epidemic. CDC had dozens of experts on the ground, to be followed by disaster team from USAID. Neighboring Liberia had more of the same including a belated U.S. military presence.  It did take some time, but finally the collective effort of many governments and organizations helped stem the tide.  As Preston correctly notes Ebola died out – this time – essentially because the ancient rule of isolation, quarantine, and no contact was implemented by the governments and communities affected.

A separate note: As U.S. Ambassador in the Central African Republic (1992-1995) I once visited the town of Mobaye, located on the Oubangui River across from Zaire.  The Ebola River and the mission of Yambuku where Ebola first surfaced in 1976 were nearby. Zairians often came to Mobaye for market and health care. While touring the local hospital I asked the doctor in charge about procedures for patients who had hemorrhagic fever. He said such people did not come to the hospital, instead they quarantined themselves or the village did, or neighboring villages did, while the disease ran its course. Clearly this was the ancient rule that Preston identified being implemented.

 

What is the link between food, Africa and happiness?

 

Following is my review of Food, Africa, and the Pursuit of Contentedness, by Mark Schultz, Backwood Basics Press, 2021, which I wrote at the behest of PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org and which is published on that site. 

    The title tells it all. This book is a memoir about Peace Corps service in Africa with side themes about food eaten there and the relative contentment of most citizens (and PCVs) with their lives.  No one had much but they made what they had suffice.  After Peace Corps, the book morphs into advocacy for fresh food for Americans through organic gardening and disdain for commercially produced sugar and fat filled foods.

    Schultz was a fisheries volunteer assigned in 1982 to Basse Kotto prefecture east of the capital city of Bangui, Central African Republic. The terrain of the region was conducive to the establishment of fishponds for growing tilapia. That was Schultz’s task. Convince farmers to dig ponds, help them do it, provide fingerlings and teach aquaculture.  A reader will learn lots about fish culture. What worked and why.  Beyond that the author’s descriptions of everyday life ring true for all who have served – insects, darkness, inquisitive children, always being the butt of the joke, crowded markets, motorcycle maintenance, malaria, the joy of growing understanding of culture, and even the thrill of an ice-cold coke.

    An astute observer of life around him, Schultz notes the difficulties of poverty in villages – inadequate nutrition, nonexistent medical services, subsistence agriculture, lack of opportunities, no monetary income - yet he concludes villagers were generous, sharing and content with their lives.  He contrasts that with the western quest for possessions, more and more of everything, including non-nutritious food.

    Returning from Africa in the mid-eighties, Schultz devoted himself to trying to find that balance of contentment he saw in villagers. He believes that a pathway to such harmony is fresh food via sustainable, organic practices. A bricoleur (handy man) at heart, Schultz fabricated, tested and operated several systems for fish or poultry production plus various greenhouse heating and irrigation systems.  Much “how to” is included in the book.

    In sum Schultz’s book is an interesting combination of an evocative portrait of a fisheries volunteer in the CAR and his later in life advocacy for contentment through wise eating. At first glance it seems to be an unworkable link, but it works. The Central African portions clearly provide the basis for the convictions and advocacy that followed.

 

Robert Gribbin built rural water systems as a PCV in Kenya in the late 1960s. He subsequently spent forty years with the State Department, mostly in Africa, including five years in the Central African Republic. He is the author of two memoirs In the Aftermath of Genocide – the U.S. Role in Rwanda and My African Anthology, plus five novels set in Africa.