Then read First Comes Love. Then Comes Malaria, by Eve Brown-Waite.
“If you go to Latin America, you'll come
back fomenting revolution, if you go to Asia, you'll come back spiritually
enlightened, and if you go to Africa, you'll come back laughing”. (Old saying
in the Peace Corps)
First Comes Love. Then Comes Malaria,is not focused on war issues or ethical dilemmas of volunteers who are face to face with major human rights violations in host countries.
Rather it is simply the story of an
everyday woman who started with the desire to help people in need, but not
really knowing where or how to start. Eve Brown-Waite tells about her
unforgettable years in humanitarian aid, first in Ecuador with Peace Corps and
then in Uganda with her “do-gooder” husband.
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| Typical northen Ugandan houses |
The author writes with lots of humor
about those difficulties all volunteers have to face: difficulty of coping
field trip with private life, gender and culture issues during the missions,
the come-back to “normal life”.
Eve
Brown-Waite's book is an easy-read book that simply shows how an everyday woman
handled to live through several humanitarian adventures in spite of her fears
and needs of western comforts. She got to find ways to get involved in many
people's life and help them achieve their individual objectives. It is
refreshing to read a simple human scale experience, which we, as beginners in
the humanitarian world, can refer ourselves to.
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