From Publishers Weekly
Erdman, who now works for the Peace Corps in Washington, D.C., spent two years in Nambonkaha, a northern Ivory Coast village, starting in 1998. As a culturally sensitive community development volunteer, she took her time finding her niche. She started working on maternal and child health by introducing the regular weighing of babies, as a means of monitoring malnutrition and as a way of opening the door to a wider range of health-care interventions. Without funds or equipment, this boiled down to rudimentary first aid: cleaning and bandaging wounds, cooling down a fever or recognizing malaria and going to the nurse for pills. By the end of Erdman's stay, with the support of the village, she'd moved on, very successfully, to birth control and AIDS prevention education. Happily, Erdman focuses on the story behind the story: how she learned local ways, how she gained the confidence and friendship of assorted villagers and even how she couldn't do anything about some atrocities, like female genital mutilation. In the end, she understands the village world view so well, she can imagine better ways to deal with certain issues, like promoting condom usage: what if international health organizations had depicted AIDS as a sorcery problem and "introduced condoms, with the help of chiefs and fetisheurs, as the only fetish that can stave off" the disease? This is an engrossing, well-told tale certain to appeal to armchair travelers and to anyone-especially women-considering international volunteer work.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Erdman spent two years as a Peace Corps worker in the small town of Nambonkaha, Ivory Coast, at the end of the last decade. Erdman, who acted as a health-care worker and instructor, is surprised to find herself called upon to help women in labor, surrounded by curious children who want to learn to read, and honored with gifts from the chief. She also faces the challenge of trying to meld medical knowledge with traditional sorcery, as the village denizens believe most illness and misfortune is caused by witchcraft rather than infection. This is particular dangerous in regards to AIDS, which arrives in the village in the form of a young widow and her son. With the help of several of the town's residents, including Sidibe, the only nurse in the town, Erdman begins teaching classes and sets up a baby-weighing station in the market. With graceful, thoughtful prose, Erdman ponders the problems the village faces and describes in vivid detail the many people she met there. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Sarah Erdman's voice rings with a distinct and refreshing intimacy....This book is simply about people and their stories. In the joys and failures of daily routines in a small African village, she finds life itself."--Peter Hessler, author of Rivertown

"Exemplary...The writing has the narrative pulse of good fiction, and is as absorbing."--Norman Rush, author of Mortals

"Sarah Erdman has been blessed with these gifts: a fervent curiosity, a generous heart, a lightly self-mocking manner, and a fluent and poetic language...A vivid, at turns hilarious, at turns terrifying, important, and beautiful book."--Melissa Fay Greene, author of Praying for Sheetrock

"It is rare to be so completely transported to another land....[Erdman’s] powers of observation, her prose, and her daring are truly Orwellian."--Abraham Verghese, author of My Own Country



Review
"It is rare to pick up a book and be so completely transported to another land, another culture. The village of Nambonkaha comes alive in Edrman's hands. Her powers of observation, her prose and her daring are truly Orwellian." -Abraham Verghese, author of My Own Country



Book Description
The village of Nambonkaha in the Ivory Coast is a place where electricity hasn’t yet arrived, where sorcerers still conjure magic, where the tok-tok sound of women pounding corn fills the morning air like a drumbeat. As Sarah Erdman enters the social fold of the village as a Peace Corps volunteer, she finds that Nambonkaha is also a place where AIDS threatens and poverty is constant, where women suffer the indignities of patriarchal customs, and where children work like adults while still managing to dream. Lyrical and topical, Erdman’s beautiful debut captures the astonishing spirit of an unforgettable community.



About the Author
A graduate of Middlebury College, Sarah Erdman still works for the Peace Corps and lives in Washington, D.C. The child of parents who spent their entire careers in the Foreign Service, she lived in eight countries while growing up.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
You've heard the drill before: A young American travels to Africa to spend two years in the Peace Corps. But this is not the same old story, and Sarah Erdman is not your average writer. Everything about this book rises above its predecessors. Everything.

Erdman fully absorbed the complex culture of the West African village to which she was assigned, and in Nine Hills to Nambonkaha, she shares the gift of her experience, enfolding readers in the place that challenged her, provoked her, and transformed her in memorable ways. Erdman's prose is lucid and rhythmic, her voice comfortable and insightful. Her storytelling? Poetic and superb.

Assigned to a village in northern Côte d'Ivoire, Erdman longs to help the residents overcome the blight of AIDS and poverty, to protect their women from female circumcision, and to promote education to the suffering populace. But the villagers' culture stands outside of time; the same word is used both for "today" and "tomorrow." Into this place, Erdman injects a humble confidence, both passionate yet teachable. With inner strength and honesty, her relationships grow and deepen, and as the villagers struggle to adapt to an ever-encroaching modernity, true friendship seeps warmly onto the page.

Having read this book, it's safe to say that Sarah Erdman is probably a great example of a Peace Corps volunteer. She is certainly a great new writer. (Fall 2003 Selection)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the northern part of the West African nation known as Cote d'Ivoire the savanna undulates and baobab trees rule over the horizon. Nambonkaha, village of Nabon (Stranger), has often been forgotten by the world. Sorcerers here still conjure magic. Electricity's arrival has been endlessly delayed. Sunrise brings the tok tok of women grinding corn with pestles. At times of dancing, young boys smack calabash drums so fast their bare hands blur.

Yet Nambonkaha, for all its innocence, is a little world on the cusp of enormous change - another spot where the modern issues facing all of Africa are beginning to disturb and disrupt. Sarah Erdman, a Peace Corps volunteer here for two years, shows us all the reasons we should care, drawing us into the lives of this funny, colorful, and haunting place. Beginning with the faithful but overworked village nurse and his sometimes cantankerous wife, we meet a gallery of village residents - salt sellers and seers, cotton farmers and vieilles, witch doctors and genies - and witness their ways of life, death, celebration, and survival. We visit market day, where bejeweled tribeswomen snap up bargain bushrat and glitter for girls' faces. We observe a sacrifice to the ancestors, births complicated by sorcery, and an all-night wedding festival. We attend a graduation where children whose chores leave no time for schoolwork watch diplomas, and the opportunities they represent, pass them by. Erdman also shows us Nambonkaha's first AIDS loss and the beginning of the villagers' struggle to fight against the disease that could destroy their futures and the community that has sustained them.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Washington Post

Erdman sets about her incremental work—wheedling mothers to weigh their babies, gently broaching the scandalous topic of AIDS—with the eye of a social scientist and the ear of a poet. It was a long and fascinating trip, and her delightful telling of it has me hoping she'll be packing for another one soon.—Steve Hendrix

Publishers Weekly

Erdman, who now works for the Peace Corps in Washington, D.C., spent two years in Nambonkaha, a northern Ivory Coast village, starting in 1998. As a culturally sensitive community development volunteer, she took her time finding her niche. She started working on maternal and child health by introducing the regular weighing of babies, as a means of monitoring malnutrition and as a way of opening the door to a wider range of health-care interventions. Without funds or equipment, this boiled down to rudimentary first aid: cleaning and bandaging wounds, cooling down a fever or recognizing malaria and going to the nurse for pills. By the end of Erdman's stay, with the support of the village, she'd moved on, very successfully, to birth control and AIDS prevention education. Happily, Erdman focuses on the story behind the story: how she learned local ways, how she gained the confidence and friendship of assorted villagers and even how she couldn't do anything about some atrocities, like female genital mutilation. In the end, she understands the village world view so well, she can imagine better ways to deal with certain issues, like promoting condom usage: what if international health organizations had depicted AIDS as a sorcery problem and "introduced condoms, with the help of chiefs and fetisheurs, as the only fetish that can stave off" the disease? This is an engrossing, well-told tale certain to appeal to armchair travelers and to anyone-especially women-considering international volunteer work. Agent, William Clark. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

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.-Linda M. Kaufmann, Massachusetts Coll. of Liberal Arts Lib., North Adams Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews