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Recommendations and Reviews
Poverty and Promise:
One Volunteer's Experience of Kenya
Publisher's Weekly Review
Though Brown decided to return to America before finishing her two-year contract in Kenya with U.K.-based international relief organization VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas), she relishes her recent experiences there in this compassionate, affecting memoir. She describes her work for TICH (Tropical Institute of Community Health and Development), the programs they try hard to implement, and the hours she and her colleagues spend in training. Impressed with her natural surroundings, Brown endures overbearing heat and celebrates the country’s intrinsic grace (“I see more than dustiness, more than landscapes made hazy by the sun’s glare”) while witnessing the harsh living conditions, constant hunger, disease, crime and corruption plaguing its citizens; young men repeatedly try to befriend her, hoping to marry and emigrate to the United States. Though ultimately unnerved and overwhelmed, Brown conveys her story honestly and effectively, upfront about her fear and frustration, as well as the rare occasion for hope. Book proceeds go to support programs in western Kenya. (July)________________________________________________________________
Midwest Book Review
It takes a special type of person to volunteer – to do something for another with no compensation. "Poverty and Promise: One Volunteer's Experience of Kenya" follows Cindi Brown as she speaks about her days as a volunteer in rural Kenya, where many of the luxuries taken for granted by Americans are simply unheard of. A touching story filled with little triumphs over great adversity, "Poverty and Promise: One Volunteer's Experience of Kenya" is highly recommended for community library memoir and biography collections.
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Julie Conover, Host and Producer, Passport to Adventure TV, www.PassporttoAdventure.com
"An inspiring journey of the soul, and a rare insight into the lives of Kenyans. The author shares her emotional struggles dealing with overwhelming poverty; and with the cultural stereotypes and doubts that keep most of us from ever embarking on such a courageous journey."
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Rita Golden Gelman, Author, The Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World, www.ritagoldengelman.com
“A compassionate memoir of the highs and lows of volunteering internationally. The reader is swept into the author's love, anger, frustration, and deep connection to the poor, the sick, the brave, and the caring people of a troubled Kenya. A compelling read!”
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Jillian Robinson, Author/Photographer, Change Your Life through Travel: Inspiring Tales & Tips for Richer, Fuller, More Adventurous Living, www.FootstepsAdventures.com
"If you've ever dreamed of volunteering in a country like Kenya -- a place that is at once heartbreakingly beautiful and rife with suffering -- Cindi Brown's Poverty and Promise is a great place to start. An honest portrait of the good and the bad as one woman strives to make a difference in a foreign land."
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In office cubicles everywhere, thousands of us daydream about leaving it all behind to do something that will make a real difference. Marketing executive and mother Cindi Brown went out and did it, and she came back with a great story to tell. Poverty and Promise is a refreshingly honest read with plenty of spirit, humor, and heart. Georgia-born Brown is a lively narrator who takes a curious and openhearted approach to her new life in Kenya, where she goes to work as marketing and IT advisor for the Tropical Institute of Community Health (TICH). Her stay transpires in a way that takes her from elation to desperation, sometimes in the course of one sweltering afternoon.
Poverty and Promise contains plenty of great travel tales; from Brown’s stint as driver through Rwanda to her attendance at a Sikh wedding and a slum funeral, and including trips to the Kenyan countryside and Zanzibar. There is more: an examination of how a Westerner can really help Africa, or help anyone, in a way that will have lasting effects – especially relevant in light of Kenya’s recent turmoil. Poverty and Promise, the book, is part of Brown’s solution; all proceeds fund the non-profit she founded to support TICH’s effort to build the new Great Lakes University of Kisumu and to educate leaders who will lift Africa out of poverty.
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Mike Perko, Ph.D., CHES, FAAHE, Associate Professor & Chair, Department of Health Science, University of Alabama
In Poverty and Promise, Cindi Brown weaves a tale evoking the abject poverty and bleak conditions suffered by Kenyans who look for political justice, but who have yet to find it. The author’s stories contain a resilient and simple message of hope and love. Her first-person account of what starts out as a volunteer effort, but soon turns into a life-changing journey, will make the reader realize how small the world really is, and what differences can be made when just one voice is heard. Since reading Poverty and Promise, I CANNOT HELP but listen to and care about every news report on Kenya.
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Tamara Berry, The Brewer-Berry Agency
Be prepared to find much more than you bargained for in this front-lines look at life as a volunteer in Kenya. Between detailed descriptions of the people and those doing their best (and sometimes not-so-best) to help them rise above poverty, the author maintains a sense of awe that transports the reader right to her side. The story follows the length of her journey and gives a candid description of her struggles as she gives up everything she knows to work in Kenya. The author refuses to back down from her experiences or the people she meets, instead using her pain, fear and sense of humor to reveal the truth about what is out there and what we can do to help.
Whether you seek a boisterous journey to the Congo, heart-wrenching visits to the district hospital, a vacation to Zanzibar or simply a better understanding of Kenyans in general, this book can and will take you there. In her first book, the author not only opens the doors to her own heart, but she will open the door to the heart of every reader as well.
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Wendy Muckle, Exec. Dir., Ottawa Inner City Health
Author Cindi Brown recounts details, helping the reader understand the experience of volunteering internationally, and she accurately describes the challenges of working in development. The author beautifully describes the selfish aspect of development work, where we need to feel we are making a difference. However, what we bring of value is sometimes not what we expected or what they expected from us. Brown also effectively demonstrates the fatigue that comes from constant requests for money and help, as well as the internal conflict between wanting to help and occasionally wanting to be left in peace. The author’s description of those moments when differences of color, nationality, income, education and gender drop away, and the author and her colleagues and friends connect as people, are quite moving. While Brown is forced to deal with clashes of beliefs and the threat of physical violence, it is clear her journey and love affair with Kenya is far from over. This wonderful book will make great required reading for my medical students.
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