Rating: 
Summary: Next best thing to being there
Review: I want to congratulate Ms. Erdman on her book and her Peace Corps experience, and for being the sort of person that made both possible. The book is the best Peace Corps memoir I have read. I was a Peace Corps volunteer for three years in northern Togo (Sansanne-Mango) in a similar ecological and cultural environment (small, pre-electrification village; predominantly Muslim). To me, just about every word of Erdman's narrative rings true. I thank her for bringing it all back so vividly (I served 1980-83). Language footnote: in Togo, yam "foutou" is "foufou" and millet beer, "chapalo" is "chakpalo."
I could not disagree more with the notion that the book was not "personal" enough. In my experience, many Peace Corps volunteers understandably spent a lot of time focussed on their own reactions to their experiences. Fair enough, but then some had the presumption to think that the rest of us would be interested in reading about them. Erdman, in contrast, stays in the psychological background enough to let the people she is writing about show themselves more clearly, and thereby reveals herself in a way that to me explains her apparent success as a volunteer. It is of course true that the Peace Corps is a combined personal voyage of discovery/cross-cultural experience. When attempting to write a memoir about it, focussing too much on the former tends to distort the interpretation of the latter. I prefer Erdman's approach.
If you want a better sense of village life in this part of Africa than provided in Nine Hills, you're going to have to spend a couple of years there yourself. Peace.
Chuck Manning
Seattle
Rating: 
Summary: Motivating & Heartwarming
Review: I've recommended this book to all my friends and given it as gifts to several.
Rating:
Summary: Authentic
Review: If it were fiction, it would hold your attention because it is well written and tells some wonderful stories. From her two years in a simple African village, Erdman manages to pull details and descriptions that capture the culture, the country, and the people in a way that brings them to life. Parts of her account are difficult for us to believe because they are so different from our own reality. Others strike a chord of intense connection - we recognize them, we have been there ourselves. One of the things I like best about the book is that Erdman tries to really understand where the Africans she meets and interacts with are coming from rather than reacting with automatic judgment or with a tone of Western superiority. That is not to say that she likes or approves of everything she sees and experiences; however, her response is not "I'm right - you're wrong" but rather "how can I accomplish what I think needs to be done in spite of these obstacles?" As a result, she is able to make a difference. The book is a non-fiction account of Erdman's two years in Africa - but it's also a good adventure tale and an education in cultural differences as well.
Rating:
Summary: Nine Hills to Nambonkaha : Two Years in the Heart of an Afri
Review: In this complex debut, Peace Corps worker Erdman, who lived in eight countries growing up, takes the reader on a vivid and compelling journey into the colorful world of a small village in the Ivory Coast. Arriving in early 1998, she faced extraordinary challenges as she taught children how to read and women about nutrition and birth control, overcoming superstition, language barriers, ignorance, diseases, lack of funding, and her own personal fears. The lecherous gendarme; the many children; the old women of the village, who raise money to begin building a clinic; and Erdman's friends, local nurse Sideb‚ and his wife, Abi, are all wonderful, three-dimensional characters that liven up the narrative. Erdman's eloquent descriptions allow the reader to appreciate the scenes of cautious yet excited village women who show up each month for the healthy-baby contest and then to desperation at the description of a baby dying of AIDS. The author's sensitivity to the traditions of the villagers, the unique ways she found to overcome and incorporate those traditions in her work, and the despair she sometimes felt over the intrusion of the modern world make this a complicated but also contemplative book. Highly recommended for all libraries.-
Rating:
Summary: Innocent and Compelling
Review: Nine hills is a journey. You follow Sarah who is in the peace corps and her struggle to help the village of Nambonkaha, in northwest Africa, learn about health, their bodies, disease and most important AIDS. Many of the villagers do know about the dangers of disease, AIDS and female circumcision, but they do not try and stop it. Sarah finds the village people fascinating. She educates them in traditional ways, flyers and classes, and nontraditional ways with plays and having the women preform in front of the whole village. You learn about the small village of Nambonkaha, but also of the larger country of Africa because Africa is made up of so many of these small villages. This book is great for people who are interested in joining the peace corps, like helping people, or love to read. It's a story that never ends, because you'll still want to learn more about Africa and these simple yet intriguing people.
Rating:
Summary: The gripping facts about life in Africa !!!
Review: Nine Hills To Nambonkaha is one of the best true stories I've ever read! I give this book five stars because Sarah Erdman has a brilliant talent for writing what she sees, but also writing what she feels. Nine Hills to Nambonkaha is about her wanting to help the village with their health problems. She comes from within the Peace Corps, just one woman, but in the end that's all this village needs. She opens up the eyes of the villagers by talking about issues that nobody else would dare speak outloud about. Issues like malnutrition, how to be a good mother, and the biggest " silencer" of all AIDS!! I was touched greatly when I finished this book, knowing that an outsider to the village of tradition could be known as one of their own, like a sister. Also she was welcomed and will always be remembered by the people of Nambonkaha. I was very sad when i finished the book because I was so wrapped up in all the emotions that were expressed at the end, that i never wanted her to leave. If you want a story about real poeple and what they go through every day to stay alive, Nine Hills to Nambonkaha is the one your looking for!!! A Excellent read !!!
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent writing; compelling story
Review: One does not have to be a returned Peace Corps volunteer to find this book mesmerizing. In vivid prose, with an uncanny eye for detail, feeling, and mood, Erdman captures the people in her remote village in a personal way and at the same time tells a compelling story. And the writing! I kept stopping, saying to myself, "This is magnificent," and turning to the author's photograph to see just who it was that had crafted such beautiful prose. As a bonus, readers will come away with a keen understanding of the daunting issues facing a placid people in an unsettled land.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed Feelings
Review: This book begins to capture some of the ambiguity inherant in delevopment work in French West Africa, but tends to generalize from the author's personal experiences to make inferences and assumptions about the rest of West Africa and even Africans and Africa as a whole. It has a tendency to be didactic; long sections digress into a tedious descriptions intended to offer context, but which I found irritating, unnecessary, and sometimes inaccurate.I would have loved this book if it had remained in the personal, giving us her experience as it affected her uniquely. Inevitably much of what she felt, saw, and touched rings true for any person trying to work abroad. Erdman's descriptive skill and her generosity of spirit can not be denied. She was right to write this book and I am glad she (and her publisher) shared it with us. But by making it, in so manys places, a lesson about Africa - and by assuming in fact that there is one Africa about which to lecture - she weakens the experience and distances those who have also been there and tasted some of what she has tasted.
Rating:
Summary: She really gets it!
Review: This is a truly wonderful book. Rarely have I read a book of this genre where I feel that the author really understands the very interesting complexitites of African community life. Erdman "gets" it; the dynamic between urban and rural, village elites and everyone else, rich and poor, northern and southern, etc. Either she understands all this better than any other author or she has just done a better job articulating it.
Of course there are many faces of Africa and one size does not fit all, but there are still many lessons that ring true elsewhere. I served in another West African country in a village that was not Muslim, was not in the north, and yet I saw so many similarities to what Erdman describes. Very well done!
In terms of recommending it to would-be Peace Corps Volunteers, I find that this sort of book simply must be read AFTER serving in the Peace Corps to really be appreciated. If you do read it before you go, make sure to read it again after you get home. For anyone else who wants to read a novel that really conveys the everyday life of rural African communities, look no further. Bon travail!
Rating:
Summary: phenomenal
Review: This is the best book I have read about an outsider's view of West Africa from the inside. I only wish I had access to it before spending 4 months in Mali. Now it brings back memories and future prospects... hopefully. Anyone going abroad to or interested in the West Africa of today should read this--this means you--SIT prospects and development buffs.
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