Peace Like a Monkey: And Other Tales of Life in Tanzania

In her collection of essays, Peace Like a Monkey, Marya Plotkin brings her experience living and working in Tanzania home to the U.S. Her humor, empathy, tenderness, and insight bring East Africa to life for readers. Her visit to a nail salon turns into a lesson in the challenges of delivering health care in an impoverished country then into a story about the importance of personal connection. She and colleagues disregard the cynical wisdom that the person who appears to be injured by the side of the road may be a robber waiting for a sympathetic passer-by, and prove that the urge to be kind should prevail. She loses a valued book, only to find it months later, far from the place it went missing, and spins a tale of its travels that illustrates the flow of things and people in a world that values connection above all else. And then there is the monkey.