Harmattan: A Journey Across the Sahara

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Summary: Una Extraordinaria Escritora
Review: La época de la narración nos ubica en 1964 a muy poco tiempo del asesinato del Presidente Kennedy. Cinco jóvenes americanas, partes de los Peace Corps -Cuerpos de la Paz- parten hacia Algeria a desempenarse como maestras. La travesía dura siete semanas y las hace recorrer miles de kilómetros desde Liberia en el Sur hasta Algeria sobre el Mar Mediterráneo. Los Medios de transporte son varios, desde camellos hasta viejos camiones que las obligan a viajar en la caja entre animales domésticos, frutas, muebles y cualquier otra cosa que el conductor del vehiculo decida transportar. El libro no es una narración descriptiva del desierto sino un pormenorizado estudio do los personajes reales en condiciones extremas. Geraldine Kennedy es una extraordinaria escritora que sin ningún esfuerzo y con un riquisimo vocabulario inglés nos lleva por experiencias a veces cómicas y otras llena del dramatismo de las situaciones inesperadas y peligrosas que se pueden vivir en lugares desconocidos y entre pueblos do pensamiento y conducta totalmente diferentes al mundo occidental. Un libro ameno donde los franceses que habitan el desierto son dibujados en toda su fragilidad social

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Summary: Interesting but, at times, irritating.
Review: Ms Kennedy is quite a good writer, and I enjoyed the descriptions of her Saharan surroundings. However, I disliked the heavy focus on the pettiness of the group she was traveling with. I did not empathise at all with any of the women, and sometimes even felt like slapping them all for not making the most of their fabulous opportunity.

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Summary: by CAROLYN HEILBRUN, author of "Writing a Woman's Life."
Review: One of the most exciting books I've read. I savored it like "Kon Tiki" because both seem so wonderfully improbable as undertakings. Read it

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Summary: by BROTHER LEO V. RYAN
Review: Outstanding

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Summary: by BOOKLIST, American Library Association
Review: Their story is truly amazing as, thanks to both naïveté and determination, they accomplish what few men even dare to try. Kennedy transports us back to a time when America was still innocent and five young women could rely on the kindness of strangers in making their way

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Summary: by STEVE GINSBERG, ESCAPE
Review: They had no vehicle, tents, sleeping bags and not much money, but they did have what that first wave of Peace Corps workers in the early sixties had in big quantities: guts, idealism and luck. It was enough to get five American women teaching in Liberia across the Sahara desert without so much as an expedition plan between them. Geraldine Kennedy took off into the world's largest desert with four friends in 1964, bearing the grief of JFK's death into a world in transition. The French influence in Upper Volta, Niger and Algeria was fading and Kennedy skillfully captures the lonely, desperate lives of those stranded French colonials who help sustain the young Americans along the way across the desert. The group runs into a host of obstacles, but perhaps the most brutal was the "harmattan," the incessant wind that blows across the Sahara, lashing the group as it slogged north on trucks, sheep transports, army convoys, oil rigs and taxis. They had to ward off amouous, gun-wielding officials, racist truckers, locusts and friction among themselves. Their Sahara adventure was the highlight of their Peace Corps hitch and landed them on the front page of the "New York Times." Kennedy was the group's leader and as a writer she is at her best when they stop in towns, oases and encampments where they had a chance to settle in for a few days and interact with merchants, officials and missionaries. Unfortunately, the group had little contact with locals such as the Tuaregs or Berbers, and these indigenous nomads are only a peripheral part of the journey. It would have been nice to get more of the cultural and historical backdrop of the region, but the book contrates on the effort, consuming enough, to push through the desert. Part of Kennedy's motivation to write this book was to inspire her children to make their own improbable journeys

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Summary: ATTENTION: READERS!
Review: This book is in stock and available for immediate shipment

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Summary: The woman's adventure story we'd all love to have lived.
Review: This is a book for any woman who has attempted or dreamed of a quixotic quest. The year is 1964 in newly independent Africa when author Kennedy and four fellow Peace Corps volunteers brave the relentless Harmattan winds across the forbidding Sahara desert. The women do not let the lack of money or safe transportation deter them. If they had thought to ask for advice they would have been told that the trip was impossible, but no one asked. The travelers, on summer break from their teaching jobs, are more acquaintances than friends. Each is changed by the experience, but it is through Kennedy's eyes that we watch the desert test and forge the woman she will become. Her lyrical writing, spiced with a wry humor, involves the reader from the first paragraph: . . . . . . . . . ."Zinder was the place on the edge of the Sahara where they kept and told the desert stories. They knew of the men lost­sixteen Arabs in three trucks swallowed last spring­and those spared, praise Allah, to return to Zinder. A strange sort of anticipation permeated life there, a foreboding of misfortune inevitable as the wind swirling dust through the alleys, against the ancient ageless mesquite, under skirts, and over piles of peppers and yams. The Harmattan blew. Resignation replaced hope. Endurance meant survival. Despite the wind, winter was the preferred time for travel in the desert. Death, the people said, accompanied the summer trips of fools.". . . . . . . .As a reader, I immediately signed on for this journey. When the five women leave the desert at Algiers, I felt an exhilaration, a feeling of accomplishment. My life also had been enriched by their journey. For I now too am the keeper of one of the stories told by the old men on the edge of the desert, the story of "desmoiselles formidables."

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Summary: by PATTY PERRIN in the ASHLAND GAZETTE
Review: This is a book for any woman who has attempted or dreamed of aquixotic quest. The year is 1964 in newly independent Africa whenauthor Kennedy and four fellow Peace Corps volunteers brave the relentless Harmattan winds across the forbidding Sahara desert. The women do not let the lack of money or safe transportation deter them. If they had thought to ask for advice they would have been told that the trip was impossible, but no one asked. The travelers, on summer break from their teaching jobs, are more acquaintances than friends. Each is changed by the experience, but it is through Kennedy's eyes that we watch the desert test and forge the woman she will become. Her lyrical writing, spiced with a wry humor, involves the reader from the first paragraph: . . . . . . . . . ."Zinder was the place on the edge of the Sahara where they kept and told the desert stories. They knew of the men lost­sixteen Arabs in three trucks swallowed last spring­and those spared, praise Allah, to return to Zinder. A strange sort of anticipation permeated life there, a foreboding of misfortune inevitable as the wind swirling dust through the alleys, against the ancient ageless mesquite, under skirts, and over piles of peppers and yams. The Harmattan blew. Resignation replaced hope. Endurance meant survival. Despite the wind, winter was the preferred time for travel in the desert. Death, the people said, accompanied the summer trips of fools.". . . . . . . .As a reader, I immediately signed on for this journey. When the five women leave the desert at Algiers, I felt an exhilaration, a feeling of accomplishment. My life also had been enriched by their journey. For I now too am the keeper of one of the stories told by the old men on the edge of the desert, the story of "desmoiselles formidables."