Anasara: A Peace Corps Journey

Remember the Peace Corps? Tom Griffith does, because he volunteered in Niger in the early 1970s. For decades, he told everyone he met about it and welcomed their admiration. Nowadays, he has to explain to school groups “what the bloody Peace Corps is.” And so he does, in this remarkable memoir. It follows him from student days at UC Berkeley, scene of riot and revolution. Then, to service as a teacher in one of the poorest countries on earth. He recounts a famine, a coup d’etat, snake attacks, classroom violence, and culture shock that led him into his “own private heart of darkness.” Griffith’s zest, humor and honesty make this more than the usual memoir. In describing his coming of age, he probes the paradoxes of baby-boomer identity - the high ideals and the low behavior, the pride and the guilt, the lures of the flesh and the quests of the spirit. In Griffith’s case, the upheavals of his twenties led him to the last place he expected – a Christian conversion. Out of his Peace Corps journey, he finally found peace.