Shannon Wheaton is a Peace Corps volunteer doing a 2 year post in Senegal, West Africa. Her new home is a mud hut in Keur Souleye, a village with no electricity, running water or paved roads. Follow Shannon through the highs and lows of her job in this remarkable story.
Running in Flip-flops is a first person narrative written in the style of a workplace blog. Most employers are furious when employees write a blog about their day job and hate any negative comments being put into the public domain. Shannon speaks frankly about her 2 years working as a volunteer for Peace Corps as she details all that is wrong with her post in Senegal.
Rather than a rose tinted picture of good work with the natives, Shannon tells it how it is. This story is full of realism and lists all the pitfalls of living a very basic life in a village within a third world country. This story is full of emotion as to how Shannon actually feels, day in, day out. It is a great story to read during your rest break at work because it gives such contrast between your day job and life with Shannon’s.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Running in Flip-flops because of how real this story felt as though you were one of Shannon’s co-workers sharing a gripe about the job. This novel has that vibrancy that workplace blogs have and you really feel that you are in the loop. Shannon is such an open character and you learn not just what she does but how it all feels inside. You go through the constant mood swings with her and understand how rough she feels spending her time in the village.
The decision by Abigail to write this story as a first person narrative/workplace blog was correct. This focus made you feel you were getting the inside track and Shannon was speaking to you in confidence. You felt as though she was not supposed to be saying these things but she trusted you. It was all cleverly done and I felt as though I was living the part. The fact that Shannon was a girl and I am a middle aged man made no difference to my enjoyment of this book. We all dress, eat, sleep, work and even go to the toilet, making small changes depending on where we are.
This book gave a lot of information about the culture and language of Senegal. It really gave the reader the feel of the place in the way the story was told. As Shannon grew to understand the culture and logistics of the region, as a reader I felt the same. The atmosphere within the story was great and I felt I was sharing the mud hut in Keur Souleye with Shannon. Her tale was so easy to relate to that I now have to hold back a smile when I handle black African passengers on my coach at London Heathrow Airport!
The ending of this book is good and it is like when you come home from a holiday. A period of your life has passed, you take away memories but know that the people in that location carry on their parallel lives. Shannon has these same feelings about Senegal and the last chapter puts it all into perspective for her. I finished the book and thought that was nice for her, finding it hard to believe Shannon was not a real person but a fictional character.
I am really glad I stumbled across Running in Flip-flops. I thought it was a great novel that explored a very different world to mine. It was a pleasure to read and I found it very interesting and refreshing. It has all the success of reality television but in a book. It is great to get such an insight into peoples’ lives and work away from the sparkling holiday travel brochures and corporate publicity material. Running in Flip-flops is a very good read and I will vote it the top score of 5 stars. Well done Abigail for writing such a convincing book, I imagined I was there!
Running in Flip-flops is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook and was written in 2011.
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