Ben East Books

Tag: Peace Corps

  • Peace Corps Retrospective

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    Ben East
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    A compilation of posts recalling my Peace Corps service in Malawi (1996-1998). Crossing Paths with Paul Theroux in Malawi I’ve always felt a strong connection Paul Theroux, due largely to our shared legacy as Peace Corps Volunteers in Malawi. When I expressed reluctance about taking an assignment teaching English there in the 90s, the recruiter suggested I read My Secret…

  • Crossing Paths with Paul Theroux in Malawi

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    Ben East
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    I’ve always felt a strong connection to Paul Theroux, due largely to our shared legacy as Peace Corps Volunteers in Malawi. When I expressed reluctance about taking an assignment teaching English there in the ’90s, the recruiter suggested I read My Secret History, part of which was inspired by Theroux’s experience teaching English in Malawi in the…

  • CURRY PATTA, JUNGLE OATS, AND PEACE CORPS

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    Ben East
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    My wife keeps a curry plant to flavor her beautiful Indian cooking. Our boys have taken to snapping off the greenest leaves and eating them raw. Their chewing fills the air with a sharp, fresh scent. Yesterday, the plant was brought indoors—frost—to spend the night on our low kitchen table. When the boys found it…

  • Ben East or Ben East?

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    Ben East
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    The University of New Haven posted this article today: WEST HAVEN, CONN. — Look up Ben East on Amazon and adventure books pop out at you. But it’s not THAT Ben East – an American outdoorsman and writer throughout much of the last century – that we are talking about. We’re talking about Ben East,…

  • Sea Never Dry on Second Award List

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    Ben East
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    Leapfrog Press announced their fiction contest results for 2014.  My manuscript for Sea Never Dry was named a semifinalist.    Thick with spies and fetish priests, Internet fraudsters and the  orphans turning a buck on Ghana’s e-waste ash heaps, Sea Never Dry centers on the conflict between Western development efforts and lucrative criminal activity in the developing world.  Read More Congrats to the…

  • Shortlisted for International Book Prize

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    Ben East
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    The Dundee International Book Prize announced their short list for 2014.  Sea Never Dry, my novel about dirty cops and drug trafficking in West Africa, made the list.  Thick with spies and fetish priests, Internet fraudsters and the Ghanaian orphans turning a buck on Accra’s e-waste ash heaps, Sea Never Dry centers on the conflict between Western development efforts and…

  • Review (Honduras) – Paradise in Front of Me

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    Ben East
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    Paradise in Front of Me – Realizing Life’s Beauty in an Unexpected Place – by Kevin G. Finch (Honduras 2004–06) The recurring image in Kevin G. Finch’s Paradise in Front of Me is that of an impoverished Honduran child looking up at a locked schoolhouse door. Shut out again. The author and the residents of El Paraíso repeatedly find…

  • GREEN

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    Ben East
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    When the Peace Corps recruiter called to offer Pete Seward a position teaching English in Malawi Seward asked, “Where’s that?” “Africa.” Seward thought about that.  Where the application had asked for geographical preferences, Seward had written: “Anywhere in the Pacific.  Definitely not Africa.”  So he reminded the recruiter of this. “I do see that.  But,…

  • Review (Niger) – A Dry and Thirsty Land

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    Ben East
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    A Dry and Thirsty Land: The Misadventures of a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa – by Bryant Wieneke (Niger 1974–76) Mr. Wieneke’s engaging 60,000-word memoir contains all the stuff of Peace Corps legend, from encounters with exotic insects and large snakes to bouts of diarrhea and Malarial fever. It also contains a large dose of the question:…