12-01-06, 8:39 am

Nine Hills to Nambonkaha—Two Years in the Heart of an African Village by Sarah Erdman Henry Holt & Company: New York, 2003


In the northern savannah of Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa, there are nine hills between the town of Ferké and the Muslim village of Nambonkaha. There Sarah Erdman spent two years, 1998 and 1999, as a health care worker for the Peace Corps – in Nine Hills to Nambonkaha she describes her experience there with such grace, humor and immediacy that reading it was the closest thing to going there myself!

Nambonkaha is a village of about 500 people. There was no water except that which was pumped, and there’s was no electricity. It is situated in an open, baking, and brown part of Africa just south of the Sahara desert, where during harmattan, the dry season from November to March, the Saharan dust blows into the savannah.

When Erdman saw her quarters there, she saw a gray cement floor, cement walls, two little windows shaded with rusted metal slates, a tin roof with no ceiling, and nothing inside but a collection of flies. It smelled stale. 'My God!' she gasped, 'Two years, I’m going to live in this place for two years!'

And yet those years were probably the happiest two years of her life. The villagers named Sarah 'Guissongui,' which means 'the dreams of our enemies will not be realized,' and they came to accept her as one of them to the extent she would sometimes forget that she wasn’t Black.

Nambonkaha is primitive, tribal village where the people are still as influenced by animistic, ancestor worship and sorcery as they are Islamic custom, but it is on the cusp of change. They were ignorant of common health facts, that, for instance, malaria is spread by mosquitoes.

Erdman instituted the practice weighing the babies to establish that they were growing healthily. As much as she deplored the unhealthy and brutal practice of female circumcision, it is an extremely difficult practice to stop because the women believe that children born to woman who is not circumcised are cursed and will die.

Islamic custom dictates that if a woman loses her husband, she is taken as a wife by her brother-in-law. Whereas this custom works well as social security to protect an impoverished widow, IF her husband has died from AIDS (the scourge of modern Africa) this custom is a recipe for disaster, as she will likely also be infected and will in turn infect her new husband and thus his other wives and any new babies born to them as well.

This wonderful book moved me to tears more than once: At a presentation for fonctionnaires, Guissongui feared her mothers would not be able to recall what they had been taught. Instead, they reiterated perfectly things they had been taught months ago.

Electricity comes to Nambonkaha during Erdman’s stay there, and she not so sure that she welcomes it, perhaps because the lights, once they come on, cannot be turned off, making them feel as though they have been striped naked and night and day have become indistinguishable.

When Guissongui leaves Nambonkaha the poor but grateful villagers pile her with gifts. Perhaps my enthusiasm for this book is perhaps evident. I too would pile Sarah Erdman with gifts, for her contribution to Nambonkaha and for writing this book. An y bara and an y che, Niarafolo for 'good work' and 'thank you.'