The Keys to the Congo

The Keys to the Congo and further travels chronicles the author's experiences using excerpts from her Diary and letters she wrote to her family and friends while serving a 27-month assignment in Zaire, Africa from 1988-90. This memoir is to fulfill goal three of the Peace Corps Mission: To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. The author does that by sharing numerous vignettes of situations and experiences she encountered; some very frustrating but in the end fulfilling. The memoir doesn't end with her service in Zaire. After retiring from her challenging job at a Florida non-profit providing services to migrant and other rural poor families, she signed up to work as a Peace Corps Response volunteer in Malawi from 2011-12. Then, serendipitously, she had the opportunity to participate in a mission trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2013 and describes some of the gratifying things she encountered when she re-visited the people and places she had left behind in 1990. Read more