The third goal of the Peace Corps is about bringing home what you learned—carrying the culture and customs of a foreign land and sharing them with Americans to increase their understanding of the country where you served.

I have not forgotten you, dear readers. I’ve wanted to be in touch for a long while, but I let too much time go by and my silence began to feel heavier and harder to break. It’s a little like not calling your mom because you’re ashamed it’s been too long since you last called. Well, here I am Mom, shamefacedly breaking the silence. Much has happened since I last checked in. I took a mental health break from writing and worrying about agents, and the rapid shrinking of the tra

A personal story published in New Lines Magazine about my improbable friendship with a woman who was abducted as a little girl from my...

As I work on my book about one village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I like to weave in a bit of politics and history about the Central African nation. I came across this fantastic, short video about the atrocities of Belgian King Leopold II's rule over the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908.) The summary lays out it: In 1904, Chief Lontulu laid 110 twigs in front of a foreign commission. Every twig represented a person in his village who died because of King Leopo

I wrote a blog post earlier this year about these tenacious Catholic nuns in my old Peace Corps village in the Congo, Kamponde, who were...

This post started off as an update on the Coronavirus in Congo — and I will get to that — but it's hard to ignore the other pandemic in...

When I was in Kananga and interviewing some Congolese NGO workers who were treating some of the child soldiers from the Kasai uprising,...

This is a longer version of a story I wrote for Stanford Medicine, when asked to give my perspective on why the measles outbreak in Congo...

The two sisters who head up the competing Catholic orders in Kamponde are very different in their approaches — but the same in their...

I hadn’t been in Kamponde more than 10 minutes when one of my students from long ago approached, welcomed me back with a double-fisted...

The Okapi is the national animal of Congo. I'm getting back to Congo-related stuff after taking a break. I've been working on a post about the Kamwina Nsapu uprising and clashes with government soldiers (the main reason Caitlin could not go) and needed to step back for a bit. Some 5,000 people were killed during the two-year conflict and it still hangs heavy over the region, an eerie vapor of suspicion and anger that you can almost touch. It's complicated — and hard to write

The little shop in Kamponde where I got my laptop charged using solar panels. (Photo: Beth Duff-Brown) I was among the hundreds of thousands of Northern California residents who were without power last week. I got off easy; power went out on Wednesday night and was restored by the time I got home from work on Thursday. Really no big deal. Some food had to be thrown out; but I could charge my phone in the car and had plenty of batteries and bottles of water. Pacific Gas and El

Within minutes of arriving in Kamponde, there were a handful of people I immediately asked after. Among those were two of my former...

The quick update I gave to my Kickstarter Family

Day Four in Kinshasa. We have confirmation of our Congo Airways flight to Kananga on Friday. That is the city about 60 miles north of...

Day Two in Kinshasa and though we’re stuck here until Friday — we got bumped from the flight to Kananga in central Congo today — I’m...

One of  the handful of side projects I'll be working on when we get to Congo in two weeks (!!) is showing up at schools and helping...

Nick and I will be headed to SFO airport in three weeks from today for our long-awaited journey to the Democratic Republic of the...

Some of you have so kindly asked what you can send along with me to the village. As I've told those of you who have asked: Your initial...

This is the original page for a Kickstarter project launched in 2016 to fund my trip and potential documentary about my nearly...