Events in the following pages took place within my first five months in The Gambia. They go from my first encounter with my village—an encounter that left me afraid for my emotional well-being—to my sexual re-awakening after a three-year man fast, to a tragic event that shifted my attitude from myself to others.
Peeling Onions in Africa
by Linda Gambill
“Peeling Onions in Africa” is an excerpt from The Geography of Desire, published in the Winter 2025 issue of Persimmon Tree
The Peace Corps had warned me: as a volunteer serving in the African bush, I would have to endure extreme heat, crippling loneliness, and an excruciatingly slow pace. Every now and then, I was told, some poor volunteer in some isolated pocket of the world would show up for work in their village stark naked. The bush was a lonely place. I might suffer a breakdown. It could happen to anyone, and the Peace Corps couldn’t predict to whom.
I was undaunted. At twenty-five, I’d been dreaming of joining the Peace Corps for over half my life, and as an activity therapist at a psychiatric hospital—i.e., someone who knew a thing or two about mental illness—I was 99.9 percent confident that I was 99.9 percent stable.
Coming Soon in June 2027!
The Old Slave Fort
by Linda Gambill
“The Old Slave Fort” is an excerpt from The Geography of Desire.
Forthcoming to Allium, A Journal of Poetry and Prose, Spring 2027, Columbia College, Chicago
A Girl from Pakau
by Linda Gambill
“A Girl from Pakau” is an excerpt from The Geography of Desire, published in the Fall 2022 edition of Parhelion Literary
As I ironed my bra, sweat dripped from my nose and splotched the lace. I set the iron down on the coals to heat it back up and wiped my head with a rag. I hardly ever ironed my clothes in Tennessee, much less my underwear. But in West Africa, where I was working as a health educator, creatures called toombo flies laid their eggs in laundry drying outdoors.
If you put on an infested garment, the eggs would slither down your hair follicles and burrow into your skin, feeding off your blood until they hatched right out of your flesh. The only way to avoid all this unpleasantness was to iron every square inch of your clothes, frying the little suckers before they could turn you into their personal incubator.