Customer Reviews

Americans Do Their Business Abroad: The Peace Corps Latrine Reader

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Warning: Reading this book may cause sudden outbursts of laughter, tears, intense cerebral activity, a heightened sense of cultural awareness, the heebie-jeebies, deep tingling sensations, and/or temporary insanity since readers may experience a longing desire to join the Peace Corps and get in on all the fun.

Why should you read "Americans Do Their Business Abroad?" Because there is no better source on earth of non-fiction that reads like a wild trip to fantasyland, is that good enough for you?

These insightfully sensitive and hilarious stories, written by RPCVs (returned peace corps volunteers), offer us an intellectually stimulating yet highly entertaining window into the wacky world of Peace Corps.

Or if you simply wish to know FIRSThand what's happening in the THIRD world, or SECOND even, don't log on to some pathetically fancy encyclopedia, and please don't bother with the sterile pages of the CIA World Fact Book, just honor America's bravest college-educated volunteers by reading our stories.

We RPCVs volunteered to spend at least two prime years of our lives in the most remote, exotic, and crazy places on earth. We went with the highest-minded and principled intentions (usually) to represent The United States of America (more or less), only to return entirely humbled, but with amazing stories about the godforsaken land(s) where were we fought (and usually lost) the good fight. The very least any American intellectual who was too chicken to join the Peace Corps right out of college can do is buy a collection of our best stories.

Peace, Love, and malaria.
Andrew Herman
RPCV Gabon
1993-1996

This book is full of hilarious volunteer stories that are too outrageous to be made up. Be prepared to laugh out loud as you get a taste of the side of volunteer life that's entertaining but not for the weak of stomach. Every volunteer has experiences that are terrifying, gross or disturbing at the time but hilarious after the fact. This book is full of those stories. Enjoy!

Katie Devine
Dominican Republic 2006-2008

It has been 30 years since I left the Peace Corps but reading this book brought back some of my more humorous memories such as Marshall's 2 hole latrine and the story of the world traveler raking his money out of Martin's latrine. Any former volunteer can relate to the stories here and laugh now even if the authors might not have laughed at the time of the various situations they wrote about.

Anne Kaiser
Togo '76-'79

As a former Peace Corps volunteer, I truly enjoyed reading the short stories included in this book. The book shows that to truly be a successful volunteer, you need to have a sense of humor and be able to roll with the punches. Its a great compilitation and a fun, quick read.

Americans Do Their Business Abroad - The Peace Corps Latrine Reader
edited by Jake Fawson and Steve McNutt, 2007
reviewed by Tom Cooke, April 2009

A good bathroom book has short chapters. It needs to capture the reader quickly, distract his attention, and then let him get on with his business - entertained, educated, inspired, but not hindered. So is that what a "Peace Corps Latrine Reader" undertakes to do? Or does that subtitle suggest instead some kind of how-to book? After all, Peace Corps Volunteers are called upon to do all manner of tasks, community sanitation prominent among them. And nobody really calls their powder room a latrine. A john, a restroom maybe, even a loo. But only the military has latrines. And Peace Corps project descriptions do, of course.

When I ordered this book, I was anticipating a compilation of amusing anecdotes from returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), and even considering some of my own to submit for Volume II. I figured that most would be a couple of paragraphs long - short enough for even an in-and-out bathroom break. I was surprised, then, to find actual short stories. And when I began to read the stories, I was even more surprised to find them to be actual literature. These were not jottings on flattened toilet paper tubes, or hasty transcriptions of funny stories told after a few beers with friends. These were stories by twenty authors who really could write. Already I was intrigued!

But with the longest of the stories running to fifteen pages, some of them were destined to leave rings impressed into my butt. I am not a fast reader. I truly enjoy the mechanics of writing, the choice of words, and their placement in order; and when I read, I do so conscious of the writer's labors. So I read slowly, savoring the melody in the words in addition to the story they tell. Moreover, several of these stories include adventures with international sanitary facilities, typically outhouses. So I felt that reading in bed, comfortable, about latrines was warranted, and less likely to leave marks. These are actually accounts of twenty Peace Corps adventures.

As an RPCV myself, I'm a natural audience for Americans Do Their Business Abroad. Sometimes I recognized myself: wondering anxiously what this adventure would become, struggling to adapt to difficult new realities that I had actually (foolishly?) chosen to substitute for the easy realities I had grown up with. (Sanitary plumbing was prominent among them.) But many of the stories have nothing to do with my own Peace Corps experience. Roderick Jones' harrowing encounter in Nicaraguan contra territory thankfully had no counterpart in my pastoral life in the mountains of Fiji. And trekking across the beautiful uninhabited center of Fiji's largest island was nothing like enduring Argentina's La Yunga in Betsy Howell's account - even if we did get lost, having to sleep one night in the middle of the crude trail on mats of ferns as close as we could endure to a small campfire (for warmth, insect control, and possible repulsion of critters). At least it didn't rain - for nine consecutive days, no less!

But Americans Do Their Business Abroad has a much broader audience than RPCVs. Almost anyone will enjoy reading these stories. Many of them will make you laugh. (The newly-arrived American trapped in a collapsing outhouse with his pants around his ankles while his host family waits outside is just too funny to read about without taking a laugh break.) But not all of the stories involve bathrooms. They're just all amusing stories to read, in a latrine or in bed. This would even be an ideal travel book, perfect for reading during odd intervals of time. The stories may be read in any order, fitting their varying lengths to the varying wait times encountered during travel. And don't forget to read the short author biographies at the back, too - they enhance the delightful stories.

I have only two criticisms with this book. First, it needed slightly more careful editing. All the authors have genuine talent in writing, and the editors selected the stories well. But not all authors can spell. Nor, apparently, can all editors. A misspelling in the middle of a sentence is equivalent to a screechy off-note in a violin concerto. There are several through the book. The other is that the cover photograph is appropriate to one of the stories, but has nothing to do with the other nineteen. I personally would have drawn the guy trapped in the collapsing outhouse and used that for the cover; at least it relates to the title. But neither of these shortcomings is reason to deprive yourself of the pleasure to be had from reading the book.

Now I need to work on my manuscript for the story of how I caused a spontaneous evacuation stampede from my classroom with one nasty, horrible, accidental garlic-fritter-fueled fart, for inclusion in a hoped-for sequel Volume II.

This book will make RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) -- most of 'em anyhow -- double over with laughter. A few stories may raise your hair or churn your stomach, but hey, that's part of the way the Peace Corps enriches one's life! A couple of my favorite stories within: The Allure of Velour, Finger Food, Take Me To Your Leader, Playing the Fool, Learning to Speak. Truth in advertising: I was a PCV in India, 1968-170. P.S. If you want a quick funny PC story "fix" before your copy arrives in the mail, I modestly suggest you check out my own PC tale at www.pen4rent.com/pen4rent /a-different-way.aspx.