Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle

by Moritz Thomsen

At the age of 48, Moritz Thomsen sold his pig farm and joined the Peace Corps. As he tells the story, his awareness of the comic elements in the human situation―including his own―and his ability to convey it in fast-moving, earthy prose have made Living Poor a classic.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Memoir, History, Cultural

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

Reviews

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m a sucker for a well-written Peace Corps memoir; unusually, it seems, I love this subgenre. Peace Corps Volunteers are deeply embedded in poor communities for years, giving them the time to really get to know people and their way of life and to arrive at a place of humility about their own role. And by virtue of joining in the first place, they are open-minded and empathetic, but also practical. Combine those qualities and experiences with a strong, thoughtful writing style and you wind up with an excellent book. This one is a strong addition to the list.

Moritz Thomsen spent three years in a coastal village in Ecuador in the 1960s, making this by far the oldest Peace Corps memoir I have read; he joined only a few years after the agency was founded. He had by that time been a farmer himself for almost two decades, and was meant to teach the locals better farming and animal husbandry techniques. Naturally, results were mixed: most of the farming attempts wind up foundering due to local conditions and practical difficulties (one hopes the Peace Corps has improved at this). On the other hand, he becomes close with a couple of men who do manage to transform their lives by raising pigs and chickens, and traces their changing roles in the community. There’s also a messy attempt to form a co-op, some adventures on the water, and a lot of hard realities and frustrations with the limitations he encounters. This quote on poverty still rings true today:

“Living poor is like being sentenced to exist in a stormy sea in a battered canoe, requiring all your strength simply to keep afloat; there is never any question of reaching a destination. True poverty is a state of perpetual crisis, and one wave just a little bigger or coming from an unexpected direction can and usually does wreck things.”

Thomsen’s observations on nutrition were also eye-opening; he finds himself incapable of eating as meager and monotonous a diet as the men he’s working with, and discovers through experience that there’s a limit to how much work a person can do with insufficient nutrition (not to mention on a lifetime of it, and also while infested with worms).

In addition to these insights, it’s simply a good story, following the author and people he gets to know over several years, as he tries and sometimes succeeds but often fails to make change. The writing is strong, sometimes soul-baring, sometimes with a touch of humor. It isn’t perfect: as with many of these memoirs by men, it is overwhelmingly focused on men, as the people Thomsen had most access to; there are a handful of racial generalizations and complaints about “Latin” culture that feel off today (he was progressive, but it was also written in the 60s). The most jarring bit to me involves Thomsen leading the locals in razing a portion of jungle to plant corn, apparently not cognizant of the environmental impacts of what sounds like slash-and-burn agriculture (there is a tension between conservation and poor people’s need for immediate cash, but he doesn’t even note that, perhaps because people weren’t yet thinking about it in the 60s?). All that makes it an interesting time capsule, at any rate.

Overall though, I enjoyed reading this, remained engaged throughout, and appreciated the author’s honesty and humility about his own failings, alongside his determined attempts to improve the lives of people he comes to know and care about. I may read more from Thomsen, who evidently had an interesting life before this book and stayed on in Ecuador afterwards—this book ends with his departure from the town at the end of his tenure with the Peace Corps, but is not the end of the story.

My rough ranking of Peace Corps memoirs so far (all of which are worth a read):

1. River Town
2. The Ponds of Kalambayi
3. Living Poor
4 & 5. Monique and the Mango Rains; Daily Life in Turkmenbashy's Golden Age
6. The Village of Waiting

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was the one of MANY peace corps memoirs i suffered through (reading material choices were limited to our paltry communal bookshelves in the volunteer lounge of the swaziland peace corps office).
anyway, i used to write a monthly literature review box or our volunteer newsletter, and one month i ranted about this genre. below are my thoughts:

Dissecting the Peace Corps Memoir
One of my least favorite genres of nonfiction is hands-down the “peace corps memoir.” I attribute it to both the fact that I am a volunteer myself, and thus more critical of the actual content. And then probably due to the sheer volume that I read, I’m picky about writing, appreciating only good prose. More often then not, I feel like returned volunteers have good stories to tell and get book contracts for these stories without actually possessing the literary training or raw talent to pull them off. Even the most talented editors couldn’t fix these calamities.
Just to prove that it doesn’t matter how bad of a writer you are, as long as your granddaddy is famous you can get a book deal, Jason Carter’s Power Lines is an embarrassment to his Duke education. Stylistically, his sentences and paragraphs fall flat, lacking cohesion. And grammatically, he leaves the reader reaching for her copy of Strunk & White. The award for most frustrating goes to Susana Herrera whose Mango Elephants in the Sun made me want to jab blunt objects into my eye sockets as I waded through nonsensical odes to lizards and out of place poems. I couldn’t tell if she wanted the reader to feel sorry for her or be envious. I suppose in the end it didn’t matter because I felt neither. I found Sarah Erdman’s Nine Hills to Nambonkaha, one of the newest in the genre, to be nauseatingly pretentious and self-congratulatory. From a literary standpoint, the lack of coherent theme or message was disappointing. As I’ve mentioned in a previous entry, Geneva Sander’s The Gringo Brought His Mother is ridiculously absurd. It’s a memoir written by a volunteer’s mother after a month-long trip to visit her son. The mother is completely nutty and paints a pathetic portrait of her son; then again whose mother actually writes a peace corps memoir ?!?! Moritz Thomsen’s Living Poor was mind-numbingly boring and topped only by Peter Hessler’s River Town. Hessler’s was so dull that even Kelly (training director) couldn’t finish it. And in the “who cares” category is Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery’s Dear Exile, a collection of letters the two friends wrote back and forth during Montgomery’s service (Liftin was stateside). The reader is treated to a nearly constant string of Montgomery’s complaints to her friend about rural village life in Kenya. It’s very hard to muster up sympathy for her bouts of diarrhea when I (and all the other volunteers in Swaziland) still heroically troop to the pit latrine through thick and thin.
It’s not, however, a complete waste of a genre. Two gems sparkle in the rough including Mike Tidwell’s The Ponds of Kalambayi. Tidwell does not shy away from his own shortcomings and writes candidly of his own vices and addictions. His clear and concise prose paints a vivid and enthralling picture of the fisheries program in Zaire.
And then there is George Parker’s The Village of Waiting. The first memoir to take a critical look at post-colonial class, race, and culture issues that surround the Peace Corps experience. Not only is Parker’s writing heads above the best (he’s a Pushcart Prize winning writer whose work has appeared in Harper’s, Dissent, and The New York Times), he’s also brutally honest about his work as white western volunteer living in an African village, acknowledging the inherent problems and paradoxes....less...more
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[Marni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the most interesting thing I've done all day is Google Moritz Thomsen, this book's vivacious, troubled, sharply eloquent author. This man is so interesting to me.
Having lived and volunteered (albeit for only about a month) in a tiny Ecuadorean farming cooperative, this book meant a lot to me. Even though my time there was about three years ago, I look back on it with a hazy mixture of pride and embarrassment for how much I thought I knew about the world, and how much I thought I knew about myself. I'm still sorting through that chapter of my life; still learning from it.
In this book, you basically hang out inside Thomsen's head throughout his three years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Rio Verde, Ecuador, and his words are like a lens that brought a lot of my own thoughts into focus. He sets out to do something beautiful and noble, only to realize that the goal he's working toward doesn't even necessarily exist. After all, what does it really mean to "make a difference?"
He recounts all the small triumphs--when the chickens finally lay eggs, when townspeople finally band together as a cooperative--with genuine joy. Then a few pages later the chickens get cholera and a petty argument nearly destroys what little camaraderie he's been able to foster within the town. And you are crushed. You hurt for Thomsen and for the people of Rio Verde. Then the whole cycle happens again and again.
All these peaks and valleys are illuminated by Thomsen's gift for capturing the universal humanity in the people around him, and also foreignness of their poverty. He shows Ramon, Wai, Alexandro and all the rest as good people and bad people, devious and dull, selfish and self-sacrificing and full of an endurance that people like Thomsen and I can never comprehend. Because we weren't born poor.
More importantly, he doesn't romanticize this endurance. And he never gives up his endeavor to understand it and effect small changes that might render it less necessary, if not for people like Ramon, then maybe for his baby, Martita. Thomson never did leave Ecuador after his tenure in the Peace Corps. He stayed and wrote several more books and died at 75 of cholera.
I know this doesn't sound like cheery read. But there's a lot of humor and charm in the book too. The prose is peppered with great Ecuadorean slang; the imagery (as far as I can tell from my personal experience) is vivid and spot-on. And more than his disappointments, desperation and rage against poverty, what really shines through is Thomsen's zeal for what he's doing. Building chicken houses. Clearing land with machetes. Drinking and dancing with the locals during Semana Santa. Eating bananas because that's literally all there is to eat. Furiously and unsuccessfully trying to convince parents to bring their sick babies to a doctor. He's living poor. And he's written it all down, so we don't have to.
DISCLAIMER: Don't take my rating as a recommendation. If you don't share my fondness for Ecuador, South America in general, agriculture, or the idea of the Peace Corps, then you might find the book on the slow side.

[Lsexton · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Living Poor" is Thomsen's chronicle of how, in middle life, after failing as a farmer, he became a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. Perhaps because he was in one of the poorest regions in the world, battling hunger, poverty, and ignorance, his memoirs have no middle ground: his experiences are either hilarious or deeply sad.

Not only does Thomsen relate what is going on around him, he also has an analysis of what is going on inside himself. He marks his own transformation from a bumbling, naive volunteer into a wiser and sadder person, with honesty and humility.

[Néstor Silverio · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this honest account of events, we meet Martin Moritz Thomsen during his very first years as a volunteer for the Peace Corps. Thomsen provides vivid details of both the struggle and the gripping reality of poverty in Ecuador on the sixties. Every page offers laughs and some tears as we live with him those lost days in Río Verde. An interesting reading on development.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

My one year experience as a WorldTeach volunteer in Quito ('99-'00), and two subsequent years working in sales, also in Quito ('00'-'02), were a much different experience than the author had in Rio Verde. He truly lived with the people in a much more humbling environment than I did. I had my humbling experiences in Ecuador, but nothing like this guy did for that long.

It's interesting to note some of the similarities between what the author describes in the mid '60s and what I had 35+ years later in Ecuador from '99-'02. For example, the immediate rivalry of the Sierra vs. the Coast; people at parties (at a tiny venue, like a salon!) sharing a bottle of liquor or beer in small glasses; the crazy bus rides; the cheap cost of living; the many different cultures in the small country (The closest I've been to Rio Verde is Atacames, in the Esmeraldas province); the brujas and myths; the discovery of the meaningless term "Ya mismo"; and of course, the frustrations of a gringo in a 3rd World Country.

At the beginning, I thought it moved a little slow and got tired of hearing about chickens during the first part. Then it picked up and got more interesting and at the end, I realized that book was essentially a chronicle of the experience itself, much as I wrote almost daily from September '99 to June '00. At times it's easy reading & interesting and other times it's rather boring, but again, that underscores what it was like for Thomsen, as a Peace Corps volunteer.

In Part III, the reader feels a real sensation of frustration with the people of the town, as Thomsen tries to start the cooperative. It really must have been tough, getting people to lift themselves out of poverty and teach them to work together. Getting people to work together is one of the hardest things I know; getting people to work together to lift themselves out of poverty has got to be even harder.

One of my favorite passages in the book:

"..I was making a hundred dollars a month. My hunger was in varying degrees experimental and masochistic, and resulted from laziness, bad planning, and affectation. I was like a six-year-old kid playing doctor; I just wanted to see what it was like. But projecting my own lethargy, exhaustion, and mental depression onto my friends, who weren't playing and who went through this seasonal hunger every year of their lives, I began to see in them such qualities of heroism and endurance, such a wild and savage strength, that it about broke my heart with pride for them. Poverty isn't just hunger; it is many interlocking things--ignorance and exhaustion, underproduction, disease, and fear. It is glutted export markets, sharp, unscrupulous middlemen, a lack of knowledge about the fundamental aspects of agriculture. It is the witchcraft of your grandfather spreading its values on your life. It is a dozen irrational Latin qualities, like your fear of making more of your life than your neighbor and thereby gaining his contempt for being overly ambitious. There is no single way to smash out and be freed. A man has to break out in a dozen places at once. Most important, perhaps, he should start breaking out before he is six years old, for by then a typical child of poverty in a tropical nation is probably crippled by protein starvation, his brain dulled and his insides eaten up by worms and amoebas. No, more brutally true: if he is a typical child, an average child, by six he is dead."

[Gwyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Living Poor is the moving, inspirational, and heartbreaking story of a Peace Corps volunteer who spent four years trying to make a small, poor Ecuadorian town a better place... and failed. Thomsen arrived in Ecuador a freshly-minted volunteer already half-broken by the Peace Corps training, feeling unprepared for the job ahead and knowing only a little Spanish--most memorably, "Los alumnos llegan a la puerta"--but nonetheless full of enthusiasm for his mission.

After his first stay is cut short by illness, Thomsen returned to Ecuador a second time, feeling just as unprepared and enthusiastic, and found a home in the tiny, poverty-stricken town of Rio Verde. With deep candor and unflinching honesty, he describes the people of Rio Verde: dreaming, driven Ramon and his bitter but steadfast brother, Orestes; sour, jealous Alonzo, the storekeeper; sneaking Alexandro, who starts as a friend but becomes an enemy; noble, drunken Wai, the poorest man in town; and many others. In open, conversational prose Thomsen chronicles his attempts to teach the people of Rio Verde how to raise healthier chickens and pigs; take better care of their children; grow more varieties of crops more of them; even create a farmer's cooperative. Along the way he is stymied by the people's stubborn, self-destructive independence, their unwillingness to change, and their fatalistic acceptance of their own poverty.

Although the book is dated (it was publish in 1969), the realities of poverty have changed little in the last forty years. Rio Verde may no longer be as Thomsen described it, but thousands of other town just like still exist, full of people too poor to afford change, too uneducated to know how to change, and too physically unhealthy to make change happen. As travel writing, Living Poor is an excellent book; as a chronicle of Latin America and poverty it is an absolute must-read.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written brutally honest account of his years (around the height of the Vietnam war?) in the 'cuerpo de paz" in a coastal hamlet in the province of Esmeraldas, Ecuador. I'd hear of the author as recommended to me, but this first in a trilogy of memoirs isn't easy to track down, even in its 1991 reprint. He'd farmed since the age of 30 in the Sacramento Valley around Red Bluff. Restless, he joins the Peace Corps at 48. His narrative flows.smoothly even as the events he chronicles erode his resolve to found a village co-op for the subsistence farmers. Thomson comes across as a sensitive, sincere, and searching man who in midlife makes a dramatic change.

There's no sentimentality, at least that lasts for long. Rather a bout with extended depression, hepatitis, and disheartening truths about the reality of expecting progress by introducing the prospects of wealth beyond bare survival to people who don't know how to cope with the volunteer's visions as they slowly take shape around them. It's a blunt, if carefully crafted, story. Just as the author tired of talking about chickens, I confirm this was the one flaw: lots of poultry...

See the other memoirs Thomsen went on to write, an Ecuador sequel "The Farm on the Ground River of Emeralds," and "The Saddest Pleasure" about his Brazilian excursions. Then "My Two Wars," with his father and as a bombing commander in W W2 over Germany. The three Ecuador books get better as the decades/series go on.

But there's an inevitable tendency for the writer to repeat anecdotes, wrestle with his personal demons increasingly with age, and for a tough, stoic, and often downbeat tone as he becomes more of a loner, and more embedded outside U.S. luxuries.

P.S. this same book had been published as Meat Is for Special Days in Britain...just so nobody gets confused into tracking down it twice over.

[Scott Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

To see this memoir as just another volume in the Peace Corps genre is to make a mistake. With him as a Peace Corps volunteer, Moritz Thomsen brings to Ecuador a confused mix of cultish Corps Group Think and a dwindling faith in humanity, the world we inhabit and his place in it. He comes to the Corps late in life, having lost a farm that had thrived at one time. That alone sets Thomsen apart from a typical Peace Corps volunteer.

The strength of the book is this: having explored poverty and its insidiousness, Thomsen comes to terms with the idea that if all you've ever known is poverty, it's almost impossible to imagine a different way of living. Thomsen spends much of his time trying to generate a foundational shift in thinking that holds the promise that imagining a path to a different kind of life might be possible.

As failure piles onto failure, one after another, Thomsen flirts with his old "go to" of "what's the point of anything?" It isn't so much the failures that bring about a return of his old nihilism, but rather a recognition that if success includes ulcers, petty jealousies, loss of friends and family and chronic worry, does success have any intrinsic value? His response is an ambivalent one at best.

I'm now onto Thomsen's next volume "The Farm on the River of Emeralds". Thomsen's mind set hasn't changed much, nor has his plans for constructing a life for himself. None of this bodes well since he still hasn't answered the fundamental "why" of carrying on. I suppose none of us ever do while taking comfort in the notion that some questions are better not asked.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times I was appalled by his racism, his use of DDT and his selfishness. However, this book was written in the 1960's which would explain a little bit about the first two. I liked the fact he was only human and he told a compelling story, hitting on several key points of the unique Peace Corps experience. However, i did not come away from this book with a strong sense of place. His descriptions of the village were sparse and needed more details for those of us who have never been to equador. I also felt the book could have started when he arrived at his second site. The training and illness could have been dealt with more effectively as a flashback. His first site, which he leaves unexpectedly and never returns to is left dangling. In terms of story line i was left thinking what was the point? The point was that it actually happened, but it did not make the story more artful, as a memoir should be. Rather he could have gone back and let the readers know whether or not he returned, what the village felt, what happened to his things and the connections he made there.... I would say in the specific genre of Peace Corps Memoir, this book falls solidly between Nine Hills to Nambankoha at 5 stars and Last Moon Dancing at 1 star.

[Mitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is by far the best Peace Corps book I've ever read, and not just because Moritz signed up for the Corps in my nowhere hometown when I was actually living there. (That was a pleasant surprise on page one!)

Moritz writes bluntly and well. He is earthy and doesn't hesitate to cover his own failings in addition to those of others he is living among.

He also searches long and hard to find good answers to the problems that beset the poor people on Rio Verde in Ecuador. His narrative does a fine job explaining their differing motivations from those of more prosperous peoples and other cultures.

This book presents a lot of raw emotional material and gives the reader much to think about afterward. If you want a book that paints a Peace Corps experience without the whitewash, this is it.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book, though pretty depressing overall. It was remarkable in that the author joined the Peace Corp at age 48 in the 60s--unusual then, I think. He also stayed in a small village in Ecuador for 4 years. I wondered why and it would be interesting to know what life is like there now--both unanswered questions. It does provide a very realistic view of what poverty feels like, up close and personal.

[Missa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone preparing to become a Peace Corps volunteer needs to read this book. I learned a lot about how the Peace Corps used to work and enjoyed contrasting that to the present-day institution. The same message reads for any PC volunteer: we meet a lot of intriguing individuals in this world... and they all rub off on us a little.

[Mark Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This would be Moritz’s first and best known book, about his volunteer work in tropical Ecuador, where despite language and cultural barriers and a serious fatalism amongst the local population, he pushed ahead with a series of projects which would impact him and his village in ways he couldn’t imagine.

As a Peace Corps Volunteer he put down roots, which allowed him to immerse himself in the local culture and economy and understand its dynamics like few other ex-pats. This allowed him to enter the skin and psyche of his neighbors and describe their passions and ignorance with immense candor. As fellow Returned Peace Corps Volunteer and author, Paul Theroux, puts it, “Thomsen is one of those rare, gifted, inventive and courageous Americans with a strong stomach and a dark sense of humor, who went away and never came back—just kept going.”

His writing would also have a profound impact on those who met him and read his books. I was one of those ex-pats, as I’d experienced similar challenges as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala shortly after Moritz’s stint. Moritz was correct in describing the training program a “deselection process” and that it was “not to change your character but to discover it, not to toughen you up or to implant proper motivations for Peace Corps service but to find out what your motivations were…” In my initial weeks as a volunteer, I could commiserate with Moritz’s observations, “As for the depression, I figured that it was a normal reaction to living among the very poor.”

Moritz’s humorous comments about how he butchered his newly learned language was also easy to identify with—the locals had many a good laugh at my misuse of basic, everyday phrases. “Up to a point it was true; in no time at all I could express the fundamentals. To me it was very friendly and rich this fish them,” I would say in impeccable Spanish, receiving a dazed smile of appreciation from my hostess.”

I could also identify with Moritz’s assessment of his initial two-year stint, “…it seemed that in the first two years I had accomplished nothing, that it had been “por gusto.” “I thought of sad Rio Verde…it was just as screwed up now as it had been a year and a half earlier when I arrived. I woke up early one morning and lay there wide awake, impaled on those terrible 3:00 a.m. horrors, sinking deeper and deeper into depression.” Moritz never minced his words and explored the dark side of life and one’s inner feelings and reactions to what he experienced in tropical Ecuador.
Moritz was constantly told that “the coastal people were the laziest, most worthless people in the world and that no one would ever be able to help them. I had been listening to this sort of trash, 90 percent racial, all my life, and it didn’t much impress me…” I faced similar comments about the Maya Indians in the highlands of Guatemala, and these underlying prejudices would go a long way in explaining both countries’ poverty.

We’re introduced to a poor zambo, or beach bum, Ramon Prado, at the beginning of the book and one memorable scene is when Ramon and Moritz sit eating oranges and talking by candlelight on a night of profound darkness. He speaks so naturally, so sweetly, that for a second the room actually blazes with light when Ramon says, “I think you’re a good man; let’s be brothers.” To which Moritz responded, “Yes, let’s be brothers.” Ramon would play a prominent role in Moritz’s life and, therefore, his literary work.

In contrast to his upbringing in a wealthy family in Seattle, Moritz chose to experience and understand poverty. "Living poor is like being sentenced to exist in a stormy sea in a battered canoe, requiring all your strength simply to keep afloat; there is never any question of reaching a destination. True poverty is a state of perpetual crisis, and one wave just a little bigger, or coming from an unexpected direction, can, and usually does, wreck things.”

The book ends with a dramatic scene when Moritz is leaving Rio Verde and says good-bye to Ramon’s wife, Ester, “and everything was under control, everything like a dream. But as I stepped down off the porch to leave, Ester screamed, and I turned to see her, her face contorted and the tears streaming down her cheeks. We hugged each other, and Ramon rushed from the house and stood on the brow of the hill looking down intently into the town.”

Moritz would send his stories on a regular basis to the San Francisco Chronicle, at first rejected by the publisher, eventually published and compiled into his best known work, Living Poor, published by Washington University Press in 1969. The book would go on to sell over 100,000 copies and was a basic part of Peace Corps Volunteer orientation for Ecuador.

Moritz Thomsen was destined to be more fully appreciated posthumously—next year will be the 50th anniversary of the publication of his first book, Living Poor. Several scholarly studies affirm and confirm the idea, widespread among his fans that Moritz Thomsen is one of the most important, but least known, American writers of the twentieth century, and this book is only the first of four remarkable books, which have been compared with the works of Thoreau and Joseph Conrad. So once you’ve read this book, I highly recommend you move on to “The Farm on the River of Emeralds,” although my total favorite, is “The Saddest Pleasure.”

[Ike Wylie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mortiz Thomsen is just a spectacular writer. His prose sneaks up on you, and you are met for a few seconds of surprise and delight- you re-read the sentence because it was so wonderful, and then you can move on.

I started reading this book before I left for service for Peace Corps Ecuador. The times certainly have changed. Thomsen learned, over and over again, after fighting so hard in so many ways for Rio Verde, that life is not fair. I do not mean that in the way an old American veteran may when he is trying to communicate some set of life values to his younger blood relative- but I mean it in the sense of nature being a cruel beast with unequal footing in different parts of the world. Thomsen was honest about his terror, his anger, and his persistence. He stayed in Rio Verde for 4 years, he loved and hated and resented that place- and Ramon.

He communicates multiple times the vestiges of poverty as ones of simple ignorance and complacence. In contrast, he found himself confronted with the lives of farmers who attempt grueling work while subsisting on a protein-deficient diet of platano- the malaise of impoverished subsistence.

Mortiz did many scary, stupid life threatening things throughout his service in the 1960s, god bless him. Three cheers to a brave, brilliant farmer.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book as a Peace Corps Volunteer! It was really interesting to see a perspective on PCV service as Peace Corps was just beginning to form. The stories of the people in Río Verde had me emotionally attached at many points, and it was fascinating getting to have a small glimpse into what Ecuadorian village life was like in the late 60s.

The one thing I don't like about this book is the same thing I love about this book: it's very glamorised. I think that Thomsen is a great storyteller, but a lot of things he wrote felt somewhat unrealistic in that he added additional details. I, of course, have no way to prove this. It was just a feeling I had at many points throughout the book. I also dislike his very cynical view he has at the end about his view of his service, but that could also be a generational mindset difference between him and I.

Overall, it was a fantastic read, and felt like a fun daydream. I would definitely read it again!

[Ted Ferriter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read this book several times since it was “issued” to me in 1970. Each time it gets better. I read it first while I was a PCV in a small town in India. I have loaned to at least five other readers (non-PCVs) and they have enjoyed it just as much.
I was astounded how similar this author’s experience in Ecuador was to mine on the other side of the world. The characters he met were the people I met. The challenges he encountered were mine as well. His hospital stay was not that much different than mine.
I was stunned to read a long, wordy review by another PCV who thought the book was boring, poorly written, and just another PC memoir. My challenge to that reviewer is...fine, write one, and get it published.
Thomsen was a great story teller, who was dedicated to helping the people of Coastal Ecuador.
I highly recommend this read.

[D.W.Jefferson · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a former Peace Corps volunteer myself, I thoroughly enjoyed Moritz Thomsen's memoir. His writing is very evocative, very vivid. This book was recommended to me as one of the best (if not the best) Peace Corps memoir ever written. After reading it, I agree.

But also, it is a unique perspective on the Peace Corps experience. Thomsen was 48 years old when he joined the Peace Corps, a WWII bombardier, and an experienced California farmer. He wrote the book as a series of articles for a San Francisco newspaper, narrating his life in rural Ecuador. Fascinating, I highly recommend this book.

[Tim Otto · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Living Poor, Moritz Thomsen sheds the usual ego defense mechanisms and nakedly narrates his often failing, occasionally triumphant attempt to help inhabitants of an impoverished coastal village in Ecuador. For anyone trying to help others, this book is a searing look at our own mixed motives, the barriers poverty creates, and the painful paradox of the human condition. Wickedly insightful, funny, and humane, this old book is an easy and terrific read (and is free from the internet archive).

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this! Thomsen captures a lot of the realities of the Peace Corps Volunteer experience. Every Volunteer's experience is unique, but there are definitely some overarching... "tropes" that I believe are common to all PCVs. I served as a PCV in The Gambia from 2018-2020, and I felt while reading Thomsen's memoir that there were definite parallels between our experiences. It's amazing that he experienced some of the same internal conflicts and frustrations that I did, and our services were more than half a century apart!

[Suzan Flanagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes this is the type of fish out of water memoir I love to read. But it was more.

Moritz captures the Eucudorian spirit wrapped up in the all-encompassing power of poverty, culture and ego combined. As a member of the Peace Corp living on $100 a month, he lives among the people in a way few Americans have.
His writing style is simple, his candor can sometimes be painful ...this is not necessarily a happy book. But I came away ready to learn more
I would definitely recommend his writings and am seeking more for my own.

[Jwt Jan50 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 1969 by the University of Washington Press. Timeless tale about the impact of poverty and culture on people. And, just how amazing it is to be the first to step away from that into the unknown. In my family it started in the early 1920's coming off the farm to the mills and the railroad. And then finishing high school and stepping away from the small town just this side of the railroad tracks. This is a very disheartening tale, but I know at least 2 other Peace Corp veterans for whom the adventure was very good.

[Colt Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book by a Peace Corps volunteer living in a small town in Ecuador for four years, trying to teach people how to raise chickens and form agriculture and fishing cooperatives. But really, it's about his experiences with poverty and the people who lived in this town. He's frank and down to earth, and his writing is funny and heartbreaking.

[Benjamin C]

Granddaughter gave it to me as I have been contemplating a long felt idea of joining. It is a old book (P Corps wise) and the service has changed. But what a great statement on the importance of American involvement in the world. Not a perfect memoir in structure etc. but engaging and fulfulling.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book during my Peace Corps service, then again shortly after, and now about 12 years later (and maybe another time somewhere in between). Though my country was not Ecuador, there are many experiences, joys, and frustrations in this book that I shared. Great insights, and wonderfully written.

[Karla Kitalong · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was an interestingand timely choice--a chronicle of a 4-year Peace Corps stint in Ecuador--given my concurrent reading of Everyone Who is Gone is Here, which is a dense, compelling, and often overwhelming account of border relations between the US and our southern neighbors. Off to the Little Free Library you go.

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I laughed, cried, and read through this book slow and fast at the same time. It's a great book to read when you are in the Peace Corps. It's a great book to read even if you aren't in the Peace Corps. Wish there as more information on Thomsen after his PC service. Fascinating guy. Dreamy writer.

[Mike Mcquestion · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this best-seller among Peace Corps memoirs, the author faithfully and passionately recounts his wins and losses battling the psychology of poverty, household by household, in backwater coastal Ecuador.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book to read to understand the Peace Corp in Ecuador in the 60’s.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite book.