Harmattan: A Journey Across the Sahara

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."

For those in a hurry, here is the bottom line on "Harmattan," Geraldine Kennedy's new book: Get it. Beg, borrow or steal it. Read it. You will laugh. You will learn. You will be inspired. Nothing better reveals the spirit and courage necessary to create a new world for the 21st Century.

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

"Harmattan" is an utterly riveting narrative and, in the stunning, seductive world of travel literature, an instant classic, an unforgetable contribution

"Harmattan" tells of the world Geraldine Kennedy and her adventurous friends found on their epic journey across the Sahara. It makes me proud of the special spirit and talents of women volunteers and reminds me why the Peace Corps was the best job I ever had. Three Cheers! (LMR, Former Director of the Peace Corps and Former Ambassador to Norway