Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village

by Sarah Erdman

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.

Genres: Africa, Nonfiction, Memoir, Travel, Ivory Coast, Book Club, Biography Memoir

336 pages, Paperback

First published August 28, 2003

Reviews

[Dorie - Cats&Books :) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this memoir! I felt transported to the northern Ivory coast of Africa. Sara Erdman, a young Peace Corp volunteer is assigned to the market village of Nambonkha. The rarity of this woman's work however is that instead of trying to force her Western ways onto the villagers, she takes time to find her niche among the people and become accepted.

Slowly, with the help from the local male nurse, Sideb and his wife Abi, are introduced to basic health care and uses the villager's own traditions and culture to attract the mothers and babies to her clinic. She instructs the cautious but curious mothers in nutrition, diseases, birth control, etc. and gets them excited about the Healthy Baby Contest where they bring their babies to be weighed.

Ms. Erdman's language is poetic and flowing with a wonderful natural enthusiasm and love of these people whom she has befriended along with the ability to laugh at herself. Her characters are portrayed in all of their humanity including their beliefs and despair. She helps us to understand the terrible situation facing West Africa with the spread of AIDS and we witness the birth of babies and death from AIDS. There is also extreme poverty for the tribe's people while the upper class has plenty of money.

I would highly recommend this book and hope that it will find it's audience.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was the first 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.

[♏ Gina☽ · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author of this amazing book is Peace Corp volunteer Sarah Erdman.

Sarah becomes the first Caucasian to enter the village of Nambonkaha (Ivory Coast) since it was colonized by the French many decades earlier.

Over time, Sarah begins to feel quite at home with the people in her new village. The people also take Sarah in. She learns about the traditions in a village that faces difficult living conditions daily. Electricity is something they dream about and expect to arrive, but it is sure taking its sweet time. Sorcerers are around, and magic is practiced. It is a village where AIDS is a constant threat and when the rains come, people celebrate and run naked to bathe in the cooling precipitation.

As a Public Health volunteer, Sarah hopes to educate the people about safe sex, hygiene, and other issues the villagers face.

Other cultures have always interested me and this book was enlightening regarding the village customs, gender roles, traditions, how the people view life and death, and how they respond to this woman educating them about not only sex but helping them learn how to take better care of infants and babies.

I greatly enjoyed this book. I see that some found it too detailed, but that is exactly what I liked. I wanted to know as much as I could about her experience, the people, and the land known as the Ivory Coast.

[Charmayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel very conflicted about Sarah Erdman's _Nine Hills to Nambonkaha_. Life is a little *too* perfect for the starry-eyed narrator - her integration is almost immediate, barriers (language, cultural and otherwise) are minor, and her projects succeed with only the tiniest of flaws. She was either the poster-child for Peace Corps Volunteers, or she is prone to slightly embellishing. At times, I can share her sentiments and at other times I feel uneasy by her subdued, but nevertheless self-congratulatory portrayal. It borders on (and I know this is the ultimate slap-in-the-face to PCVs) exploitative. Nevertheless, her descriptions of stereotypical life in village (clothing, sayings, market days), are so dead-on that I'm compelled to tell family and friends who are curious about the everyday here, about this book. Take home message - I recommend the book...but as always...suggest you read it with a grain of salt.

[Susan Lewallen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this and thought it was definitely one of the better written Peace Corp Volunteer memoirs I’ve encountered. It won't be for everyone. The author chose to structure the events as they actually rolled out, which is the way a memoir should be told, I think. Given the setting (sleepy rural village, Cote d’Ivoire 1998-2000) this makes for a slow story. I thought it increased the authenticity of the book. I kept reading, not so much to find out what happened but to enjoy the descriptions, related in a fluid, evocative prose. The genuine love that grew in her over the two years came through and I felt her sadness on leaving. I’d have liked a bit more self-reflection on personal lessons learned, but she wrote this immediately on her return and she was rather young then. Curious to know if some of the feelings have changed over time. I don’t know if she’s continued to write – hope so, as she has a great deal of talent.

[Jessica Mezias · Rating 5 out of 5]

Encapsulates the PC experience well

[hanja mcG · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a graceful landing (finish). Where was the structure?! I did learn abt a country I can’t even find on a map

[Susanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Erdman left Côte d’Ivoire the same month I moved to Malawi, as a child. Nine Hills transported me back to the years when ARVs were not available, and AIDS was devastating an entire generation.

As a PCV, Erdman grappled with the fatalism, corruption, poverty, and sorcery that were prevalent in Nambonkaha—topics I grew up discussing at the meal table. I couldn’t agree with everything Erdman wrote, but I appreciated her ability to be reflective as she encountered cultural differences.

Five stars for the content and the writing. By the final chapters, I was crying as the children sang “Au revoir cher amie” and Erdman’s friend finally realizes she’s leaving.

I was intrigued by the tight focus on life in Nambonkaha. It struck me as a deliberate decision not to write about trips to Abidjan, Burkina Faso, and Mali, except as they related to Nambonkaha. And Erdman spends only a few sentences on her life and family before the Peace Corps, remarkably self-restrained.

Finally, I am grateful for the chance to learn more about Côte d’Ivoire.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book, especially one if you are interested in Cote d'Ivoire and the Peace Corps. I found Sarah Erdman's views on some things a little odd though, like how much time she dislikes the facts that soap operas are popular in Cote d'Ivoire spends bemoaning electricity coming to Nambonkaha. Things like this in the book give off a little bit of a white foreigner's desire for "real" exoticism rather than accepting the local people's desires or beliefs.

For example, everyone in Nambonkaha is excited about electricity coming to the village, they've all wanted it for a long time in order to improve their lives, the children can study at night, store food longer, people can have access to time saving devices that make their lives easier, etc. But Erdman spends a lot of time talking about how upset she is that people don't want to continue to live without electricity because of how she romanticizes it, rather than considering most people want it to improve their lives. It would be one thing if some of the local population felt differently, but they're all for electricity. She very begrudgingly comes around to acknowledge this, but it's weird she resists so much something so simple because it doesn't fit to how she wants the village to be, rather than how the village wants to be.

There's certainly something to be said from an international development point of view that there isn't necessarily a reason for countries to extravagantly embrace all aspects of Western culture or model exclusively itself like the US or Western Europe, but her reasons seem to be a bit more personally invested in a story of what Cote d'Ivoire "should be" rather than what her villagers actually want.

But it is a good book, very interesting, especially if one (like myself due to medical reasons) is unlikely to ever join the Peace Corps. :)

[E.M. Epps · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up as research for a story and within a few pages realized it was not what I needed. But by that time, I'd been hooked by Erdman's writing. There are so many ways that a white woman's memoir of her Peace Corps work in an African village could have been irritating or obnoxious. But it doesn't read like *Erdman's* memoir, in the sense of something that dwells on her internal state; rather, it is a memoir of the villagers and their world. It shows what the best anthropology should: that human emotion is universal, but culture can sometimes seem like an uncrossable gap. You can read it to learn about the world, or you can read it for the pleasure of Erdman's prose. Either way, you won't be disappointed.

Abi brings out a pot of *bisap*, that sweet hibiscus drink that puts soda to shame. She figured out early how much I love it and whips it up on the sly to surprise me with it at dinner. She has her seven-month-old tied to her back. The other five children have been cleaning the dishes and studying their schoolbooks by lamplight. Sidibé's son Tidiane places my glass and the four bowls in a neat line in the dust in front of me. I pour theirs first and we all drink it together—smiling a little into our cups. Sidibé reaches into a bag at his feet and pulls out a loaf of fresh-baked sweet bread made by the school director's wife. Still warm. He chews a piece pensively. "It's a good thing you've come," he says. "Before now all we knew of Americans was Mike Tyson and the Baptists down the road. One is a cannibal. The other thinks we're cannibals." Then he turns to me and says, "So far, I think we get along pretty well, don't you?"

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sarah Erdman spent two years with Peace Corps in Cote d'Ivoire from 1998-2000. Most of that time was spent in the northern village of Nambonkaha which she says in pronounced like Nam-bong-Kaa. She sought to bring good hygiene and family planning to a village that had only known traditional ways and animism. I particularly liked how she candidly admits the battle that raged within between wanting to help the village and the recognition that such help could cause them to turn from the traditions they'd known for centuries. When the modern convenience of electricity finally came to the village a week before she left, she grieved for the loss of the moonlight and stars. Having done some travel in Africa myself, I can understand - there's something special about natural light when that's all that is known. I think Sarah did a good job describing her experiences - the highs and lows - and the love she developed for the village and the people. I, for one, have a sense of life in a northern village of West Africa after reading this. A strong four stars, maybe even four and a half.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erdman details the quintessential Peace Corps experience -- adapting to life in an African village means bucket baths and reading by candlelight, yes, but even more difficult is the attempt to integrate into a new community when all one's assumptions and understandings become null and void. After a frustrating year of learning how to communicate with her fellow villagers, and adapt to a slower pace of life, she finally is able to make some real progress in sharing modern health and hygiene information. The only way to share that essential information, she learns, is to be accepted as one of those she would teach. So, the quintessential Peace Corps memoir not only in its tales of scorpions and strange food, but also in the lesson that a Peace Corps volunteer gets far more out of the experience than she expected. A true writer, Erdman also paints beautiful scenery with words. Far better written than the average Peace Corps tale.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erdman relates the stories of the two years she spent as a Peace Corps volunteer in a small village in the Ivory Coast in Africa in the late 1990’s. I had to look up the copyright date after I started the book; was the book taking place in the 1990’s or the 1890’s? It could have been either based on the lives of the villagers. No running water, no electricity. Mothers didn’t know the birthdates or even the ages of their children. Very little reading or writing. No knowledge of birth control or ways to combat disease. Little knowledge of the outside world.

Where should Erdman, assigned to the little village as a health care worker, start? She begins to teach the mothers about their babies, how to help them gain weight, getting them immunized, and gradually begins to help them learn about ways to avoid getting AIDS and about birth control. In the end, she feels a deep sense of accomplishment in her work in the village.

My new favorite travel story.

[Yuting · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and vivid look at life in a small, impoverished african village and their struggle to eek out a meagre living, raise and feed their children and themselves, and survive in an environment that seems to want the exact opposite for them.

The author, through her words, creates a touching portrait that captures the inherent helplessness, fatalism, and life's utter unfairness while bringing out the humanity behind hopelessness, the despair behind despondence, the personalities behind the people of the village.

Through the sharing of her experiences, she unearths a brilliant web of human interconnectedness that permeates so wide and deep in this poverty stricken community that speaks to the vibrant sense of compassion and care the villagers have for one another. They have nothing to spare yet they still give to those without. It is in their culture to give, not hoard.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the common book all the freshmen had to read my first (and last) year at Winthrop University. It was a good choice for a book to bring people together. I have always been passionate about helping the children in Africa who are victims of the civil war going on in Sudan. And this book told the story of a woman who was doing what I did not have the resources to do. Her story was so detailed and she made you feel like you were right there with her while she helped give birth to a child in a ramshackle African home surrounded by disease and filth. We had a chance to meet the author, Sarah Erdman, at the college when she came for a Q&A session and her recollection of stories in person were even better than what she had written down.

[Llalan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the first in the new I-joined-the-Peace-Corps-and-this-is-what-I-did genre, Nine Hills joins Peter Hessler's Rivertown as an example for travel writers to try writing about the people they meet and not themselves. A novel concept (ha). Sarah Erdman, though, does do a fine job balancing a narrative that is one part the West African village and the changes it undergoes in two years, and one part living a life as the total and complete other. A fascinating look at one small part of a huge section of the world I know nothing of.

[Barbara A · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the most beautiful and moving books that I have read in a long, long time. Erdman writes beautifully, and it is not about her at all, except as it relates to the people of Nambonkaha. She fell in love with them, and they her. The development of this unlikely symbiotic relationship unfolds with all its mystery, incomprehension, and finally, acceptance as slowly as the village does. I read the ending through tears, amazed that what I had just read was real and not fiction..

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sarah Erdman is a Peace Corps worker, sent to Nambonkaha, a small village in northern Ivory Coast, mainly to introduce better health to local villages. The main focus of this book are the people she meets and the village of which she becomes a part for two years. It's a wonderful description of village life.

[Sandra The Old Woman in a Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

My literary travels to Côte d’Ivoire are completed. Nine Hills is a memoir written by a Peace Corp volunteer who was stationed in a small northern village for two years just prior to the recent civil war. The book took me deep into daily life of the local people and I appreciated vicariously experiencing the community. There is no riveting plot, but if you are curious about how others live or if you are also journeying around the world in books, this is a good pick for Côte d’Ivoire.

A few words on how I pick books for each country: my first preference for books as I tour the world, is a novel written by a regional author. This isn’t always possible as some smaller countries don’t have many or any options available in English (the only language I’m comfortable reading books in) or available from my library. When that is the case, I can sometimes find used or new books to buy, but I’m also left with picking books from non-native authors. Usually it’s then someone with strong cultural or family roots to a region, but I also occasionally pick books written by visitors to a country, or expats who’ve had extended residencies. Some books are historical nonfiction written by journalists or academics. So sometimes I’m getting an insider’s view of the country, and sometime an outsider’s view. I’ve found this mix to help me understand this world all the better. I’m now down to less than 50 books to complete my journey - every single country I’ve now ‘toured’ is now a real place, with real people and the world is getting smaller and smaller.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. It took me some time but about 2/3 of the way through I really started to feel invested in the trials and tribulations of the village and Guiss, the American medical volunteer. I wanted to see her and the women of the village succeed and learn and I felt thrilled when they did! My one criticism would be that there are certain sentences written in french that aren't translated. As someone who has minimal french skills I would have appreciated those few sentences being translated so that I didn't feel that I might be missing an important part of dialogue. Other than that the author paints a descriptive picture of what village life is like and her experience through the two years that she spent in Nambonkaha.

[Mom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sarah Erdman spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer, working in a village in Cote d'Ivoire as a health care worker. She describes her experiences and the villagers she came to know and love.

I read this book years ago. On second reading, I appreciate the positive attitude Erdman has to Nambonkaha, to the townspeople, to the whole Peace Corps experience. But I found the telling slow, with little narrative structure. Things moved slowly in the village, and the memoir reflects that fact.

If one is looking to learn about daily life for a PC volunteer, this book would be quite helpful. If you're looking for an inspiring colorful book, this isn't it.

[Leher · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insightful read into the life of a peacecorp volunteer, but also the intersection of development studies and socio-cultural anthropology. Found her attempt on an ethnographic study and simultaneous effort to report the effect of her host community and their cultural practices and predispositions on her a relatable experience and an interesting balance. At the end, I was curious to know if she ever returned to the communities she worked with and lived in.

[Vivian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book so much that I hated to see it end. I almost felt as much pain as the author when she had to say goodbye. She accomplished so much...in the beginning, I felt that maybe the Peace Corps did not give these workers nearly enough training. Not everyone could go in as raw and get things done. The author did a good job of laying out the issues with sorcery and the spiritual beliefs without demeaning the villagers. I would highly recommend this book.

[Chloe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for my class, and I’m glad I did! It was fascinating to see how her opinions changed throughout her time in Nambonkaha. The only thing that never really changed about her was speaking up when they gave her special treatment or thanked her for something she didn’t do much for. That was really annoying. By the end, I was attached to the recurring characters and forgot she had to leave. Good stuff!

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book! Her wonderful writing about Côte d'Ivoire brought back so many memories of my time in Kenya (during the same era!). All the way across the continent, but so many similarities in village life. I think this is probably a very accurate depiction of what the Peace Corps is like.

[Mickenzie Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enlightening memoir about the experiences of a Peace Corps worker in Africa. It was both interesting and entertaining to follow her evolution from nervous outsider to valued contributor and friend. This glimpse into the lives of both the author and the villagers was truly amazing.

[Connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it was a slow start and the writing wasnt exceptional. It got better near the end but would have loved hearing more about things with other volunteers.

[Ira Manning · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretty boring. I had to read it for an undergrad class.

[Betty-Lou]

👍

[✨ B e t w e e n S h a d e s o f B o o k s ✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Peace-Corps novel again. I thought it was going to be good but it wasn't. Too much detail and not getting to the point. I'm not going to rant, just simply say, it was bad.