| dc.description.abstract | On the Banks of the Karakoro offers readers intimate details of life in Mauritania, a little-known West African country saddled by the Sahara and underdevelopment. Heartbreaking, visceral, honest, and hopeful, the account of my experience as an English teacher with the Peace Corps is part memoir, part travel narrative, and part ethnography. Set in Kankossa, a town divided by the Karakoro, a seasonal river, I utilize every opportunity--my teaching experiences, fascinating characters, history, politics, and travel--to ingratiate the reader to the adust country and to explore, as I learn about them, the flashpoint issues of our time such as Islam, Al Qaeda, racism, colonialism, democracy, globalization, and development work. While so much of the world focuses its attention on Africa's "problems" from distant offices, meeting rooms, and assembly halls, I illuminate the wildly rich dynamics of Mauritanian life from within mud walls, between trash-laden market streets, in vegetable gardens, and under Bedouin tents in a style that neither sensationalizes the experiences nor looks away from unpleasant realities. | |
