By the time I was twenty-five, I was stuck in a dead-end job at the state psychiatric hospital in Knoxville, Tennessee, obsessed by a man who didn’t love me, and smoking pot with my cat. I needed to blast myself out of the South, so I did what I’d been dreaming of for years: I joined the Peace Corps. In 1979 I left for The Gambia, a tiny country in West Africa, where I worked in a devout Muslim village as a health educator and community organizer. During my three years there, I became fluent in Wolof, which allowed me to form close friendships and a deep understanding of the culture. Living in Africa changed my life in ways I could have never foreseen. 

I came back to the States with a husband, and the following year we had a daughter. While I raised her, I studied linguistics, psychology, and photography. I fell in love with photography, and for fifteen years I made portraits and exhibited my personal work in high-end galleries in Atlanta, Kansas City, Denver, and San Francisco. By the time I began writing about The Gambia, twenty-five years had passed since I lived there. It took time to get the perspective I needed.

My little family moved a lot in the beginning. I liked to explore different cities, but after ten years I felt like I’d never come home from Africa. Whereas I once fled the South, desperate to explore the world and my place in it, I’ve since returned. I love the mountains and rivers of East Tennessee, where I live with my husband and our talkative rescue cat.