The Geography of Desire: A Memoir of West Africa by Linda Gambill, is a richly described chronicle of one woman’s experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in The Gambia, West Africa, beginning 1979.

Linda Gambill, 24, is desperate to leave her current life in Tennessee and follow her dream of joining the Peace Corps. She leaves her menial job and a troubled relationship, and follows her dream of going to Africa. After in-country training she’s assigned a position as health worker in Medina, a devout Muslim village in The Gambia. Typical of Peace Corp tradition, Linda is given a Gambian name, Satou Sillah, but in this review I’ll use her given American name. She begins her two-year term of service with high hopes of making a difference, of helping people live healthy lives.

Almost immediately Linda runs into difficulty. Although she’s been trained in Wolof, a local dialect, most villagers in Medina speak Fula. A few of the villagers do speak Wolof, but Linda knows the importance of communicating in the local dialect, so she tries to adapt to the common language. As a health worker, Linda planned to teach health education in the village school, but soon after she arrives the rainy season begins, and the school closes.

Linda’s Gambian counter-part, called a dresser-dispenser, in charge of a health clinic, is a difficult man, set in his ways. When Linda observes that he doesn’t run a sanitary clinic—hypodermic needles are not sanitized, surfaces are not cleaned regularly—he becomes defensive and belligerent. She is appalled when she learns that half of Gambian children die before they reach the age of five. Linda attempts to teach the local women good health practices, introduce the concept of germs and the importance of washing hands with soap and water, etc., but most of them only speak Fula and don’t understand. She draws pictures as a teaching aid, but is met with laughter—the concept of learning from drawings is strange to them. Linda tries to get permission from village leadership to use a plot of land to start a community garden as a way of supplementing local diets with fresh vegetables, but is given excuses and delays.

The Geography of Desire is an interesting account of a Peace Corp volunteer’s attempt to make a difference in a community with limited resources. I was particularly interested in this book because my husband and I served in The Gambia 1979 -1981, an experience I wrote about in my memoir Tubob: Two Years in West Africa with the Peace Corps. Peace Corps brings in a new group every six months (one group is leaving as another arrives). One of the important differences in our experiences is that as a married woman I had a constant companion, a husband I could confide in and enjoy joint experiences. Although enduring loneliness and frustration, the author made impressive accomplishments and lasting friendships.