Book Description

A Peace Corps Volunteer arrives for his first assignment in a remote little pueblo high in the Ecuadorian Andes. On his first night there, the pueblo's only policeman is shot and then transported down the mountain on a stretcher tied to the back of a donkey. So begins the narrative of Jerry Redfield as he shares this account of his joys and challenges as he engages in school construction and community development efforts in Ecuador in the early days of the Peace Corps (1963-1965). Based on his own detailed journal and correspondence sent home, he tells the story of what attracted him to the Corps; his initial training; the people he met; and the many frustrations of dealing with a new culture, customs, modes of transportation and bureaucratic delays. Timely inserts in the book provide a chronology of major political and cultural events that occurred in the United States while he was out and their impact on him and the country upon his return.