Nine hills to Nambonkaha: two years in an African town

Description

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."--Jacket.;"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.