Current national and world events have me looking at some of my writing from Azerbaijan and Togo in a new light. At the time, 2006–8 and 2009–11, I was serving, through the Peace Corps, as a representative of the great United States of America. I personally wasn’t sure the U.S. was all that great, but…
Tag: travel
Ever Wanted to Join the Peace Corps? Now You Can—from Home!
For the first time in its history, Peace Corps has evacuated all volunteers from their posts and is temporarily suspending operations. On one hand, this is terrible, as it interrupts projects, severs relationships, and makes the greed, irrationality, and xenophobia of the Trump administration the face of America instead of open-minded and well-meaning volunteers. On…
Visiting a Catholic Mass in Togo
When I first arrived in Togo in September 2009 to begin my Peace Corps service in that country as a Girls’ Education and Empowerment volunteer, the other trainees and I stayed in Tsévié, a town twenty miles north of the capital, Lomé. Unlike the Northern, Lamba town of Kanté that would become my home for…
Setting a Match to our Own Garbage
While living in Togo, I had to learn what to do with garbage. There was no garbage pickup—of course in a place with no electricity or running water I hadn’t expected that—but somehow I was still surprised to learn that what I needed to to with any garbage I produced was go out into the…
The Embarrassment of Travel in the Trump Era
During our recent travels abroad, I noticed myself embarrassed to be an American. There are reasons I have felt this way earlier in my life, when I spent time abroad in the early 2000’s, but this past year, with the US under the Trump administration, the feeling was way more pronounced. When walking in the…
The Sophisticated Savage
My first book, The Sophisticated Savage, was published in 2009. It’s based on my experiences in Ecuador in 2001, when I taught English for a summer on the Galápagos Islands, and 2005. From the back cover: An anthropological memoir with a romantic twist. A Harvard student and an ex-cannibal may seem like an unlikely pair,…