First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria: How a Peace Corps Poster Boy Won My Heart and a Third World Adventure Changed My Life

#278
Title: First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria: How a Peace Corps Poster Boy Won My Heart and a Third World Adventure Changed My Life
Author: Eve Brown-Waite
Publisher: Broadway Books
Year: 2009
305 pages

Brown-Waite's account of her Peace Corps and CARE experiences starts poorly but is worth sticking with. Either that or skip to the Uganda section. The memoir reads like two memoirs written at different times and in different styles. The first section, on her Peace Corps induction and placement in Ecuador, is told in what attempts to be a humorous, snappy tone; it reads as immature, brittle, and conversational in a way that suggests that this is the part of the narrative that made her friends tell her that she should write a book about her hilarious experience. The second part, on Uganda, is more mature and considered and holds my attention. Brown-Waite emphasizes her whininess throughout, which contributes a constant, low-grade irritation to the story. She does not really answer the questions most interesting to me, such as whether her earlier anxiety and panic returned, and if not, how she understands this. I'd also have liked to know more about her relationship with her husband in the domain of foreign service. Did she want to go to Uganda? She seems to have consistently worked in social and human services, but the interior process--what she thinks and feels about it, why she's moved to do it, the effects of moving closer to her husband's world view--are largely unspoken.

I have a hard time identifying with the author, though we have some experiences and interests that are similar. However, for whatever reasons, my overseas service has been different from hers. I spent over a year without television, a car or bike, treats from the US, or new clothes. I ate vegetables and powdered chicken soup with rice because I had no oven and the meat looked creepy. I had no cappuccinos. I was also in a second world country, so the cultural contrasts were not as great. Sometimes that congruence was the problem, and I would make assumptions I wouldn't have made had it been more divergent. I'm not suggesting that I was better at having my experience than she, but rather describing it because I did not miss or fantasize about US luxuries, so it's hard for me to understand many of her areas of preoccupation.