The buzz on seasonal, local eating

I remember hearing my grandma or grandpa tell me about how at Christmas time they would get an orange in their stocking and how big a deal this was given the lack of fruit (other than canned) during the Midwest winters. Oranges, like many other seasonal fruits and vegetables, used to be just that, seasonal. So what has happened? Why is it that nowadays it doesn’t matter if it is winter or summer, one can always find a ripe tomato or a melon at a grocery store? We are fortunate (or maybe unfortunate??) to live in a free market economy where an abundant food supply at low cost is consistently made available to us. We Americans love variety – especially when it comes to food – but maybe it is time for a shift back to the “oranges in the stocking” era.

(Side note – This blog was inspired by a book I just read by Michael Pollan, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A natural history of four meals”). In Pollan’s book, he tells a story about a farmer who sells his eggs (from chickens that are free range and eat grubs left behind from cow pies found in the grass from cows that are pastured) to local restaurants. Eggs will vary from season to season if a chicken is not fed solely on chicken feed and does not live in a cooped up container. Some seasons produce better yolks and others better whites. When the farmer first began selling eggs to chefs, he found himself apologizing to one of the restaurant owners for their pallid hue in the winter months. The chef told him not to worry because during cooking school in Switzerland he’d been taught recipes that specifically called for April eggs, August eggs, and December eggs. Until I read this book, I had no idea that eggs from a chicken could vary from season to season. (Or, better stated, that eggs from a chicken should vary from season to season).

Our global food market allows us to eat whatever we want year round. And I’m not just talking about fruits and vegetables. According to Pollan, pastured animals can be harvested only after they’ve had several months on rapidly growing grass. Feeding animals corn in CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) has accustomed us to a year-round supply of fresh meats. People used to eat most of their beef and pork in late fall or winter, when the animals were fat and eat chicken in the summer. Nowadays, we can eat corn fattened beef year round.

Ok, so what does it matter? What/who does it really hurt if I buy asparagus in the winter and can find ripe tomatoes year-round? First, buying locally and eating seasonally provides a sense of security that comes from knowing that your community, or country, can feed itself. Other reasons to eat locally include preserving the beauty of agricultural landscape (come on, how “pretty” are those giant CAFOs??); the satisfaction of buying food from a farmer you know rather than the supermarket; the fact that local food doesn’t have to travel miles and miles to arrive to your plate; and because by buying locally and eating seasonally, you decide not to participate in the industrial food chain powered by fossil fuel. (One fifth of America’s petroleum consumption goes to producing and transporting our food.) By eating locally, you also make a decision to not take part in America’s big food industry – the advertising, the lobbyists, the profits made from “supersizing” our meals, etc. Plus if you start eating locally, you will make a conscience change to eat better (you won’t find any processed food or frozen meals at your local farmer’s market)!

Eating locally, as Pollan points out, doesn’t necessarily mean it will be organic or even sustainable because there’s nothing to stop a local farmer from using chemicals or abusing animals except the good word (accountability) of his customers. I would think, however, that being accountable to your community members is a much better deterrent for being honest on your growing practices than not having a clue in whose mouth the food you grow and produce will end up.

Ok, so I may sound a little “preachy” and I apologize for that. I’ve got a long way to go until I can follow my own advice but this is the direction I am moving in. Living in Honduras has forced Luke and I to eat seasonally more so than we did when we were living in the States. Last year, I started making a list of what fruits and vegetables were in season when and this year it has been fun to anxiously wait each season. Having less available also makes our meal choices easier. Many volunteers have expressed fright at returning to the States after a two-year term with the PC and being utterly overwhelmed by the options that a US supermarket has to offer.

One of our goals upon returning to the States is to make a better effort at eating locally and seasonally. Among these goals is to grow and produce as much of our own food as possible. It doesn’t get any more “local” than that! Gardening in and of itself is so rewarding and it reduces your waste by turning your throw-away scraps into compost. I used to help my mom can and freeze vegetables and fruit during the summer months when fresh produce is plentiful and this is something I’m hoping to start when I get back. See below for pics of our garden in here in Honduras.

Our front yard garden as of Sunday, April 27

Our variety of lettuces and leafy greens that we planted during rainy season (October - January)

FOR MORE INFO:

Interesting websites I’ve found from magazine articles and books:
http://www.eatwild.com/
www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets
http://www.localharvest.org/

For an interesting article on our carbon footprint and what we can do see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-lede-t.html?ex=1209528000&en=62fa7bceddf15978&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Scenes from Honduras

Hello everyone! Not a whole lot of updates in the way of work or life but I wanted to get a blog up anyhow so I decided to post some good pics from Honduras that we’ve accumulated thus far. I tried not to repeat any others that we have already blogged!

Lake Yojoa in west/central part of Honduras, surrounded by two national parks

Pineapple field

waterfall near lake Yojoa

woman in Copan Ruinas balancing goods on her head

Macaw birds

Tegucigalpa, from the roof of the hotel PC puts us up in for medical reasons

A milkman in Santa Rosa de Copan

Street in Danli

Lots of different fruits!

Sunset in Danli

Sunset in Santa Lucia

Hydrangea in the Santa Lucia park

church in Comayagua

Drying a fresh harvest of coffee beans

Foot bridge to an aldea near Danli

Cows resting near a home

Countryside near Danli

The Honduran license plate that says ¨take care of the forests¨

orange tree (yes, they´re green but very orange inside!)

First a turtle, then some ducks, now a kitten

Some people have already heard that we had to give the ducks away. It was sort of sad to see them go but they wouldn´t stop eating my garden and escaping the PCS. We gave them to our friend who owns property in the mountains just outside Danli. He took Gladys and Melvin to his dad´s house up there and according to him, they´re happily wandering around up there.

So now we have a...kitten. On Sunday afternoon I was washing clothes at the pila when I heard very loud meowing. I went to the porton and opened it and sitting literally right outside our porton was a tiny little kitten who was extremely frightened. I yelled for Luke to come outside and we quickly made the decision to let it in our ¨compound¨ because it was over a 100 degrees outside and the poor thing was all by itself and can´t be more than 4-5 weeks old. Luke asked around on our street to see, just in case, if anyone had lost a kitten and no one had. The story Don Juan (the neighbor who sits outside his house all day and evening selling chips and candy) told us was that a ¨loca¨ (crazy woman) was walking down our street, throwing a kitten in the air. Not sure if I completely believe that or not but in any case, the kitten needed rescuing. Don Juan proceeded to tell Luke how lucky the kitten was to have been meowing outside our house!

After Luke gave me a quick lecture about how I couldn´t get too attached to the kitten because he didn´t want to bring a cat back to the States when we finish our PC service, he constructed a little house for it out of an old box from a package my mom had sent last year and put in off the ground a little bit and under a plastic chair so it can´t get wet when it rains.

The kitten is not allowed inside (we both agreed on that) and is doing well. I am taking it to the vet tomorrow to see what, if any, shots it needs and of course, de-wormer. I haven´t taken a picture yet but will be sure to do that soon and post it.

Any ideas for names for the kitten? We´ve toyed with: Shakina Francis (the name of a beauty salon near our house - what a name!), Francis, and Herbert. We´re not feeling very creative so any suggestions are welcome!

English classes

A few months ago, I started an English class two nights a week for an hour here in Danli. This is something that I was reluctant to do at the beginning of my service. Yes, it’s true, I do have a Masters in English but because teaching English was my job before I came to Honduras, I decided that I wanted to learn different skills while here. I also hesitated to teach English for other reasons. One of them has to do with the misconception of language learning that I find to be very common here. For whatever reason, many Hondurans believe that learning English is 1) much easier than learning Spanish and 2) only takes a few months to learn if you have a good teacher. Language learning as a life-time endeavor is not something commonly believed and I felt that starting an English class would only result in dashing dreams of becoming fluent after a few months (if only!!). Another hesitation has to do with the goal many people have behind learning English. Many people who want to learn English do so because they want to go to the US to work. So I decided that I would only teach English to Hondurans who appeared that they would use whatever they learned to improve their skill sets for their jobs or studies here in Honduras.

The lady who owns the internet café that Luke and I frequent asked me before Christmas if I would be willing to teach English to the two girls that work there. I told her I’d think about it then decided I would. I had remembered several nurses at the hospital where my counterpart works mentioning if I ever started an English class to let them know. So I called them up and then through word of mouth, we ended up with a class of about 14. A Cuban volunteer doctor is part of the class, as well as a friend of Luke and I’s, a young boy who is now in private school and feels behind in his English class since he went to public elementary school, two nieces of the internet café owner, a few friends of the nurses from the hospital that are in the class, and a few others.

All in all it’s been a good experience. I do the planning for the classes but Luke comes and helps out. Hondurans are used to route-type memorization in learning situations so we try and make the classes dynamic and fun by using games, dialogs, roll-playing, etc. The students seem to have a good time. We started the class in mid-February and as of yet, don’t know when the class will end. That’ll either be when Luke and I get tired of teaching or when the class number starts dwindling but for now, we’re enjoying it.

Teaching at the internet cafe last week

Semana Santa in Danli

We have successfully made it through our second Semana Santa (Holy week) here in Honduras! Semana Santa is a week-long holiday celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus. Pretty much every business, both private and government, closes down for the week. Some typical Honduran activities for the week include: traveling to visit family, going to the beach, river, or pool to go swimming, going on a picnic, and participating in the religious processions It’s sort of the official start of summer so any sort of water-related activity is in order. All the stores in Danli a week before Semana Santa started selling blow up pools, inner tubes, balls, etc. Luke and I had planned to do a hiking trip but decided instead to spend the week relaxing and hanging out in Danlí. We spent the week gardening, bike riding, watching movies, going on walks, and cooking. (Not that much different from a normal week I suppose!). On Thursday and Friday there were processions by the Catholic church and since our house is so close to the city center, we could watch them from our front door (see pics below).

Thursday am procession:

Kids in the window are Andrea & Daniel. They live on our street.

Carrying a statue of Jesus on the cross


Friday am activities: preparing an ¨alfombra¨(carpet) made of sawdust for the procession later that night.
Processions Friday evening that went right by our house:

Duck farming in Danli

Hey everyone, here is an article I recently wrote for our Peace Corps Honduras volunteer newsletter…

For those of you that caught my last article (in the newsletter) about gardening in Danlí this one is not nearly as good or funny. At no point have I almost died while duck farming, so feel free to skip ahead to the COS surveys. But I have made sure that my Tami Flu is close by. If anyone in this country is going to get bird flu I assume it would be the gringos living in close quarters with 2 ducks.

Along with our garden, the ducks are our attempt at molding the “Peace Corps Experience” to more of what we thought it would be. Everyone remembers what they thought they were getting into before we rendezvoused in Washington DC. The way we tried to explain what we were going to be doing to friends and family. Going off to live a simpler life with people who still value things like agriculture and cultural traditions. I remember explaining to relatives that we would most likely be living in a rural community with no running water. I was after all joining the Peace Corps under the program of Water and Sanitation and Peace Corps only sends volunteers to communities that ask for help.

We could see it all so clear, helping the people understand the need for clean water, organizing and motivating and the whole nine yards. Culminating at around 18 months in site, finally designing the simple hydraulics on paper that would bring the clean water! Meanwhile throughout the whole process we would be enjoying our time sharing a life’s worth of knowledge. I could draw on my years of dairy farming experience to improve nutrition and introduce economic opportunity, Annie could help start gardens and introduce new recipes in cooking classes. At one point when we were younger Annie’s family had 20,000 laying hens and my family was raising 5,000 turkeys so certainly a small chicken coop project would have found its way into our schedule. I had already envisioned myself raising thanksgiving turkeys to distribute to the community as a cultural exchange...... all of this spaced comfortably throughout hammock time in our adobe house.

But that was before DC.

That was before “safety and security” trainings, before cell phones and saldo, before NGOs and SANAA and “development work”. That was before sites of 75,000 people and a 2-hour daily commute (worse than most big cities in the States mind you), before regional hospitals, and houses with 9 foot walls and razor wire. That was all before.

That was all before I bought 2 ducks.

The ducks have what I call a Pato Confinement System (PCS) in our back yard. This is mostly scraps of stuff that was in our yard when we moved in and starting cleaning the place up. The ducks are named Gladys and Melvin after our host parents in Santa Lucia. They constantly escape the PCS and eat our garden, even after 224 lempiras of chicken wire we can’t keep them from getting into the compost pile or eating our snap peas down to the ground. Melvin has one leg tied to a post inside the PCS to keep him from escaping and both their wings are clipped, but no matter. They still escape.
Their eating the garden makes Annie crazy. The garden is more hers then mine. I help out and do most the tilling of the soil, but she dictates what vegetables and flowers get planted and where. I offer to make the ducks go away but she won’t let me. They wake me up in the mornings well before I feel like getting out of bed (more accurately getting off the colchon). Melvin used to escape and then Gladys couldn’t find him so she would chirp and chirp and chirp. It’s worse than a rooster. Nowadays Melvin is tied up by one leg so he can’t get out but he taught Gladys to escape, and she escapes in silence. Now Annie wakes me up and tells me MY ducks are eating HER flowers. So I have to get up and chase Gladys back into the PCS. We put up with them for some reason.

Gladys and Melvin came to Danlí from Mata de Plátano. Mata de Plátano is the site of one of El Paraíso’s resident PAM volunteers. I went there to help survey a spot for a new basketball court. Mata de Plátano is one of maybe 2 or 3 Peace Corps sites in Honduras without electricity. It is more of what I had imagined pre-DC. Gladys and Melvin were just fuzzy little creatures, living with the pulpería lady, eating pataste and shitting on the floor. For some reason she asked me if I wanted a pair of ducks. I initially said no. How would I get them home? Would we eat them? Where would I put them? Who would feed them when we were gone? Later that day I went back to the pulpería and told the lady I’d take the ducks. ‘What the hell’ I figured; it would be nice to have some livestock.

I put Gladys and Melvin in a box that afternoon and the next day I caught the one and only bus out of Mata de Plátano at 6 a.m. As with most days and projects, things hadn’t gone that well on this trip. People didn’t show up to help us work. The municipality was late with the materials they had promised. I was headed back to a big city that wasn’t friendly and work I didn’t really feel like doing.

But then about 6:10 something happened. Someone on the bus spoke to me…. Some campesino dude with his rubber boots and machete asked me, “What’s in the box?” And I understood him. I knew exactly what he said. Here I was, so damn far out in the middle of nowhere, and I could understand what this old man was saying to me. He wanted to know what I had in this box. So of course I smiled big and told him I had a box of ducks.

A box of ducks.

And at that moment the bus driver cranked the reggaeton music so loud you could no longer hear anything anyone said inside the old school bus. The sun was shining through the pine trees as the bus bounced and jolted and stopped and backed up and steamed and lurched and roared and skidded down the mountain. We passed a house with a whole family outside standing under a big sign on the porch that read “Vivir en Paz”, and I smiled. After an hour and a half the reggaeton was still blaring and the bus stopped to put more water in the radiator and all the men got off the bus to take a piss off the side of the mountain. I got back on the bus and set my box of ducks on my lap again and everything was good.

I had forgotten all about “safety and security”, NGOs, SANAA, and “development work”. All the bad was gone for that 3-hour bus ride down the mountain. It didn’t matter at that point that my time here won’t count towards professional engineering certification in the States. It didn’t matter that whatever it is that I do here is nothing like what I imagined or signed up for. What mattered was that I was crammed onto a school bus riding down the side of a mountain listening to incredibly loud reggaeton music looking out the window with a huge smile on my face holding a box of ducks…… This is what I signed up for.

So I still count down the months, I still get angry at NGOs and SANAA, but I am still here in Danlí enjoying my duck farming.

A little bit of nature and a lot of poison ivy!

Last weekend Sara & Javi, married business volunteers in Comayagua, came to Danli for a visit. We arranged a quick trip to the protected area not far from Danli with Luke’s friend René on Saturday. It was a beautiful day to get out of the city and enjoy nature (plus there was a scheduled power outage from 8 am to 4). We got to learn a little about washing coffee beans, sat under some tall trees and watched howler monkeys including a little baby one, got some poison ivy (sorry Sara & Javi who really got it bad), picked limes from René’s orchid, and saw a small waterfall. We had been to René’s property before but it was fun this time to take other people and share it with them. Below are some pics from the day.

A beautiful transparent butterfly!

Close-up of a purple orchid

Another orchid

Resting by the waterfall

Sara & Javi after a PB & J for lunch

Rene, Luke, & Javi learning how to wash the coffee beans

Inside of old house on Rene´s property built sometime in the late 1800s by a Spanish family. House was inhabited during coffee season to wash, dry, and roast beans. Still in decent condition.

Side notes to comments on last blog

I am happy to see we’ve gotten some good comments on the latest development blogs! I have a few other side notes to add after reading the comments.

If it is indeed true that aid cannot reach the hands of those who most need it and is only augmenting the corruption of the government to which it is given, why continue this less than efficient circle? Not only are we wasting donor and government dollars by handing them over to corrupt governments and agencies, we may also be contributing to what William Easterly calls the “aid curse” – where high aid revenues going to the national government benefit political insiders, often corrupt insiders, who will vigorously oppose democracy that would lead to more equal distribution of aid (“The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good” (2006)). Steve Knack of the World Bank has found that higher aid worsens bureaucratic quality and leads to violation of the law with more impunity and to more corruption. Hmmm...can aid really contribute to making government worse in the recipient country? It seems so ridiculous to even imagine because the nature of aid is to assist countries in need not make them worse off, right??

I do agree with the people who commented on the previous blog that whether aid reaches the hands of the poor has a lot to do (and maybe everything to do) with whether the government receiving the aid is corrupt or not. But I do believe that some of the fault does lie with the donors. Why perpetuate the cycle? Would it not be possible to bypass bureaucracy and take aid away from bad government to try to get it into the hands of the poor? Easterly makes a good point, “…if aid is apolitical on the receiving end, so it should be one the giving end. Can’t Western voters demand that their aid agencies direct their dollars to where they will reach the most poor, and not to ugly autocratic friends of the donors?” Many will argue that aid should go through even bad governments to promote their political development and democracy. But if aid’s true goal is to reach the poor, why not make this as easy as possible?

Second in series

So as promised here is the second blog (follow-up to the one called “Sustainable Development”) on the history of foreign influence in Honduras. Some of you may already be familiar with this information while others may not. Either way, it can help us to understand better the situation that Honduras finds itself in today. To write this blog, I referenced several books including: “Inside Honduras: The essential guide to its politics, economy, society and environment” by Kent Norsworthy with Tom Barry (1994), “Honduras and Beyond: A Memory of Inequality” by T.Y. Okosun (2006) and “Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran woman speaks from the heart” translated and edited by Medea Benjamin (1987).

Here is a short account of US foreign policy in Honduras. In 1954, Honduras gave permission for its territory to be used as a training ground for the CIA-supported, rightwing military force that overthrew the reformist government in Guatemala. In that same year, Washington singed a bilateral assistance pact with the Honduran military that assured the close US-Honduran military cooperation of the 1980s. According to Norsworthy, “it was also during the Honduran banana strike of 1954 that US labor representatives associated with the State Department began infiltrating the Honduran labor movement and exerting a conservative, anticommunist influence that has long obstructed the advance of a unified, progressive popular movement in Honduras”.

In the 1980s, Honduras became the center for US policy in the region. Between 1980 and 1990, the number of NGOs operating in Honduras tripled. The majority of these organizations were US private and church organizations. According to Kent Norsworthy, the rapid rise in nongovernmental organizations was due largely because of the country’s strategic role in U.S. foreign policy in the 1980s. (If you are asking yourself, what was the U.S. up to during the 1980s in Central America, I recommend reading “The Death of Ben Linder” by Joan Kruckewitt or “Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran woman speaks from the heart” by Medea Benjamin).

What was this foreign policy? Well, in the 1980s, the Sandinistas were in power in Nicaragua and in El Salvador the growing strength of the National Liberation Front threatened to oust the US-backed Salvadoran government. Honduras quickly became the key for the United State’s geopolitical interests and both countries soon reached an agreement – in exchange for an increase in US military and economic aid, Honduras would join the US in its effort to topple the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. To give you an idea what kind of “effort” this was, the US spent well over a billion dollars in economic and military aid in Honduras between 1979 and 1989. According to Medea Benjamin, the influx of US dollars created a gold-rush atmosphere which aggravated the endemic corruption and infighting within the Honduras military. So while the military chiefs and politicians were getting rich off US aid, the majority of Hondurans were getting poorer. Although democratic elections were held in 1981 (from pressure by the US), the military maintained a firm grip on reins of power and rather than reducing the power of the military, allowed them to act with greater impunity because they were now covered by the facade of a civilian government. Payment on foreign aid debt gradually began to take up more and more of the government budget (read “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins (2004) to learn about how the US has, for over half a century (and still today??), loaned out money to countries in need with the goal of pushing them into a hole of debt so deep that they are forever indebted to the US, thereby making them “pay” their debt other ways, namely in whatever happens to be of US interest at the time). So anyways, in order to pay back their debt, Honduras reduced it’s already inadequate health budget from $130 million to $97 million between 1986 and 87. Unemployment shot up to 41 percent and there was an alarming rise in human rights abuses. Despite a five-fold increase in US economic assistance between 1981 and 1990, per capita income for the population actually declined. Kent Norsworthy sums up the effects of foreign policy in Honduras nicely:

“Democracy, development, and stability have been the oft-repeated US goals in Honduras. But after more than a decade of aid and intervention, these goals still seem distant. In fact, rather than moving Honduras forward, US policies and programs in Honduras appear to have sown the seeds of economic and political instability. This failure can be attributed in part to the contradictory and misdirected character of US economic and military assistance. But it also has to do with the fact that from the beginning Washington’s interest in Honduras has been mainly a product of US foreign-polity concerns in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala.”

While I am a little afraid to ask it, Honduras’ history does beget the question: Am I as a United States Peace Corps volunteer here in Honduras today to help fix years of misguided and misdirected aid that has resulted in a Honduras worse off today than before US influence?

Comments, criticisms, other sides to the story and perspectives are welcome!

PS: Please remember that what we post on our blog does not represent the opinions of any other organization or people, just us!

Book review

So some of you may have been wondering about our list of books off to the right of the blog that keeps growing…and growing. With no tv (that’s not completely true as we do have a computer and PCVs love to share dvds and tv series), there is plenty of time to get lost in a good read. So here is a list of the books we’ve read thus far with a little “blurp” about them to help any potential book lovers find some new reads. We had a rating system with a ¨thumbs up¨ icon but when I copied and pasted the blog from a Word doc onto the blogger page, it turned the thumbs up into ¨C¨. So three ¨C¨s means you should read the book if you get your hands on it, two means it was a decent read and one means…well, you know, it was a little less exciting. Enjoy!

PS: If anyone has any books they’ve read that they think we might enjoy, please feel free to comment on this blog with your suggestions or send us an email!

Books read by Luke during time with Peace Corps (* = Annie read it too)

*The Color of Water by James McBride CCC (Good non-fiction read about a kid from a mixed-race family growing up in the 50s)

The Known World by Edward P. Jones C (Confusing, only read it because I was stuck in an aldea for 3 days, this is the one I had when I was stuck in the room with the rats!!!!)

Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World by Jack Weatherford CC (If you like native American history)

Waiting for the Snow: The Peace Corps papers of a charter volunteer by Thomas Searlon (a return PCV) CC (things were better “back in the day”)

*The Beet Fields by Gary Paulsen CC (Gary Paulsen books taught me to read)

Tracker by Gary Paulsen CC (see above)

*Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart edited by Medea Benjamin CCC (3 thumbs up if you’re looking for a good book that delves into Honduran culture, history, and economics. A bit outdated now but many things remain unchanged)

*The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini CC (you can just see the movie now)

Huck Finn by Mark Twain CC (classic, that is worth a read or re-read)

Peace not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter CC (explains a lot)

A Whale for the Killing by Farley Mowat CC (I like Mowat’s writing. People of the Deer, a book of his I read before PC, gets 3 thumbs up)

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond CCC (You should get 3 credit hours for reading this)

Ma and Pa Hart Join the Peace Corps by June Hart (RPCV) CC (a quick good read. Makes you want to go to Brazil)

Walking the Big Wild: From Yellowstone to the Yukon on the Grizzly Bear´s Trail by Karsten Heuer CC (Any one want to walk to Alaska?)

The Last Cowboys at the End of the World: History of the Gauchos of Patagonia by Nick Reding CC (Good non-fiction, can’t believe they used to send PCV’s to Chile, I feel I would have fit in better there)

The Red Badge of Courage and ¨The Veteran¨ by Stephen Crane CC (classic quick read about the civil war)

*Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins CCC (People should read this if you’ve ever wondered what US interests in foreign countries really are about)

*The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho CCC (quick read and is worth it (I read the English translation))

Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (a re-read) CCC (One of my favorites)

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown CCC (Very well put together history of the Plains Indians)

The Firecracker Boys by Dan O´Neill CC (I can’t believe they almost blew up Alaska!!! Seriously they were going to blow the whole thing up)

Caribbean by James A. Michener CC (Not my favorite Michener, but a good read)

Into Thin Air: A personal account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by John Krakauer CCC (Quick and very entertaining)

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson CC (If you like Bryson, he is a little tough on rural America at first though)

Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing CCC (Wow! penguins can’t taste that good)

Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols CC (Makes a person want to move to New Mexico)

Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond CC (we’re screwed)


Books read by Annie during time with Peace Corps (* = Luke read it too)

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie CC

Sea Glass by Anita Shreve CC (a good fiction read)

Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown C (too much hype)

A Bend in the Road by Nicholas Sparks CC (a sad but good fiction read)

Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two years in the heart of an African village by Sarah Erdman (a return PCV) CC

The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank CC (good fiction read)

Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho CC (good fiction read about a rural Brazilian girl who ends up in Europe and ends up working as a prostitute. Coelho writes really well)

*White Man´s Grave by Richard Dooling CC (a fictional PCV get’s “lost” in Africa’s bush and his best friend goes looking for him)

The No. 1 Ladies´ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith CC

Cipotes by Ramon Amaya Amador CCC (a great book by a Honduran author (in Spanish))

The House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III C

*Eat, Pray, Love: One woman´s search for everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert CCC (the author writes about life after her divorce and how she went searching
for answers to what life is about and who she is)

Irresistible Revolution: Living as an ordinary radical by Shane Claiborne CCC (the author stirs up questions about the direction of today’s church and world and discusses how to live out an authentic Christian faith).

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris CCC (the author writes about growing up. The book is a compilation of funny stories of childhood. He is a regular contributor to Public Radio International’s “This American Life”.)

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant CCC (a “historical” fiction about Jacob and his family from the book of Genesis, written in first person by Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob)

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards CC (a decent fiction read)