Last Lorry to Mbordo

Is it possible that a nation's ability to make peace is more important than its ability to make war? Will we reach a point in the history of humanity when survival depends on the skills of peace making and not war? Is it possible in some far future time we will come to understand that what really mattered in the history of a nation's life was not its ability to make war but its ability to make peace? We are just starting on this process of learning how to make peace. In war outcomes are seldom predictable and true consequences are known, if ever, only years afterwards. The outcomes of our tentative efforts to make peace seem even less predictable. No nation can match the United States in good intentions. But results are all too often the opposite of what we intended. This novel is about living and working in West Africa. It is set in the country of Sakra. It is not a sociological tract, nor is it fantasy. The protagonists are fictional but the situations in which they find themselves are similar to those that might be encountered by volunteer teachers in any one of the new nations of West Africa. The story line revolves about three dominant themes that correspond roughly to the early, middle and latter chapters of the book. The first of these themes is the manner in which outsiders adjust to and develop a sense of their role in a foreign culture. Alice, a lady of 62, Peace Corps volunteer, and retired from the Washington D.C. public schools; is the focus of the first part of the novel. She is assigned to teach Mathematics at the University-College of Mbordo. Her struggle to adjust, survive, and learn to enjoy living in West Africa is a study in strength andperseverance. Other protagonists are introduced, at first only as incidental to Alice's often traumatic journey from alienation to a level of mutual human acceptance. In the middle chapters the story line shifts away from Alice's problems to the second major theme of interaction