Susana Herrera

Subtitle: How Life in an African Village Let Me Be in My Skin

Reeling from the breakup of her marriage, Herrera decided to sign up for the Peace Corps and an assignment teaching English in a remote village in Cameroon. This is a memoir of the time she spent in that African village.

I was interested and engaged in the experiences Herrera related, but somewhat appalled by how she lacked even basic understanding of the differences in culture before she arrived at her assignment. She seems to have no clue that she’d have to kill her own chicken if she wanted to cook one, or little idea of how to protect her meager furnishings from the ravages of hungry termites. Some scenes were touching or humorous. Many hit me upside the head with the change in perspective.

For example, Herrera relates how the women decide to teach her to prepare lunch. They must start at 7:00a.m. to prepare the noon meal, because first they have to catch the chicken. They they must go to the fields and dig up the peanuts, go into the forest to cut wood for the fire, and meticulously clean the rice of sticks and stones. When she comments that she doesn’t know how to do these things because “our rice comes already clean in a bag from the store,” the women respond: “Your country is rich if you can pay for someone to clean your rice for you.”

Later she is trying to explain that not all Americans are rich, and tells the women about the homeless in America. Her audience is taken aback. “I think your country shouldn’t kill chickens for people until the homeless have a home.”

She learns that teaching a young woman to ride a bicycle has resulted in censure by her family, and Herrera apologizes for the trouble this has caused. “Miss,” Lydie interrupts, “the price is nothing. Do you think he can take away what you have put inside me?”

There is some poetry that Herrera has written included in the text. These poems are in the voice of a lizard that frequents her home and serve as a sort of internal dialogue as she comes to grip with the trauma she is running from back home and begins to realize her calling as a teacher.… (mer)

A Peace Corp Adventure in Africa

Navajo Indian woman Susana Herrera decides to put her violent childhood and abusive marriage behind by joining the American Peace Corp. Signing on for a two year stint in Cameroon Africa to teach young children, she has no idea just what she has gotten herself into.

Arriving on the West Coast of Africa where temperatures get well over 125 degrees and where the land is as dry as the Sahara, Susana’s first struggle is to gain respect and trust from the local villagers of Guidiguis. Peace Corp volunteers are not to interfere with local politics, government rules and regulationsm and are not encouraged to attempt trying to change, or improve the lifestyle of the native people. They are to mingle, commune with, and live the life as the locals do, not allowing themselves too many outside luxuries or comforts in order to achieve acceptance and gain an accurate picture of a realistic life in their foreign surroundings.

This is a hilarious, yet poignant heartwarming memoir that both humbles and inspires Susana. The reader will laugh out loud as she learns to balance water buckets on her head, eat fried locusts, twist the neck of her dinner time chicken, run for her life as snakes invade the outhouse, and when ravenous termites literally chomp away at her bed leaving her lying one morning, mattress on the ground. You will also cry with her as she witnesses death and disease and the frustration of the villagers who live and breathe to suffer through extreme poverty. Slowly inching her way into the hearts of the local women who teach her to cook local delicacies, she stands up to the men who are used to ordering their wives about, and gains the unconditional love of a classroom full of precious children so eager to learn English. Their goal is to learn enough to someday free themselves from their plight of living in a barren land devoid of enough food and water to keep their families alive.

Susana’s tale is so full of love and hope as she becomes one with the Cameroon people. Falling in love with the local Doctor, adopting two teenage sons that teach her the African way and protect her from harm when local uprisings threaten their village, teaching the kids to cook pizza and making home-made banana splits that melt in minutes, are scenes that will have readers enchanted with her story. You too will be smitten with these people who although have nothing, are so rich in the art of loving, giving, and who welcome Susana with open arms.

The author is a very talented writer, the story is beautifully written with lavish descriptive prose. The real treat here is the interjected fun poems that are told through the eyes of a lizard as he watches Susana’s adventures through love and loss and her incredible stamina to recreate her own identity, as well as bring laughter and learning to the people of Africa. This is probably one of the best travel narratives I’m come across yet, I really loved Susana’s story!… (mer)