My Malawi Journal

Rating:
Summary: Peace Corps Failure
Review: Bea Buckley's approaches her Peace Corps experience with trepidation and a kind of self-imposed ageism. Though no doubt well-intentioned, she worries and whines during her few months in Malawi concerned with toothpaste and clean underwear. Only once--this when she is waiting for a ride to the airport to go home after qutting--does she allow herself to see the beauty and possibilities of the country. Whether the Peace Corps failed her by not screening its candidates properly or whether Buckley failed herself hardly matters. Overwhelmed by depression and worries about physical illness, she cannot continue. Her family, for whom she claims this book is written, should never have allowed her to pubish it. The writing is atrocious, needs editing, and the product is not what it claims to be--about the poverty and hunger in a Third World country. It is about a woman who is so self-involved that she cannot see beyond her own minor discomfort (on a bus, with the food, outhouse, darkness, even Athlete's foot!) to allow herself the compassion necessary to identify with those more needy than she. As a reader older than Buckley, I resented her ageism. As a person who has frequently traveled to impoverished countries, I found her desperation (She brushed her teeth with perfumed soap, for heaven's sake!) pathetic.

Rating:
Summary: Very Poor Account
Review: This book badly needed editing once the inexplicable decision was made to publish it. Buckley does not give us a sense of the history of the country, the political situation, environmental problems or anything else connected to Malawi. Most of the text (laden with exclamation points tagging the most trivial observations) is concerned with the author's intestinal problems; thus the claim that the book is about Malawi is misleading and the title should have been "My Truncated Experiences with the Peace Corps in a Generic African Country." Truly a squandered opportunity.