Includes index.

How It Started -- Part One - Muzungu: Foreigner -- Welcome to Hell -- WHY: What I knew then -- Fixin' to get Ready -- Boot Camp: You're in the Army Peace Corps Now -- HomeStay -- Pinky, the Teflon Dog -- Haircuts and Chocolate -- Gulu Town -- The Light at the End of Tunnel -- Part Two - It Begins -- Getting to Site -- Shut Up and Listen -- New Digs -- Rain -- The Quest -- You Have Been Lost -- The Teakettle -- Emotional Roller Coaster -- Screams -- A Day in the Life of A Bus -- The Way Things Are Done -- Dry Season, Lizards and FIRE -- Gulu Loves Dolly Parton and The Man in Blue -- What Fresh Hell Is This? -- A loko leb Acholi ma nok nok -- The Six-Month Trough -- The United Nations Comes to Town -- Critters -- But What Are You Doing There? -- Part Three - Settling In -- Eleven Months in Country: Sober Thoughts -- Going and Coming: It came from where? -- Peace Camp -- And Then There Was Ebola -- Sometimes it Works, Sometimes it Doesn't -- Fits and Starts -- Looking Back at Mid-service -- Pillowcase Dresses: Literacy in a New Light -- Ugly Americans? -- Part Four The Final Stretch -- Peter -- A Library for Children -- Hearing Aids DeJa Vu -- Tragedy Strikes -- Texas In the Rear View Mirror -- We've Been Sleeping Around -- Keeping Girls in School -- The Broken Digit -- Fixin' to Get Ready -- A Parallel Universe -- Part Five -- Intermission -- Reassembling -- Where Is Home? -- Jigsaw Puzzle -- No Going Home -- Part Six -- Answers -- The Thing That Started It All -- Casting About -- Heartbeat -- Another Cottage -- Rescripting History -- Lessons from my Mother -- Gifts my Father Gave Me -- The Alchemy of Shift -- What If... -- Apwoyo Matek: Thank you -- A Brief History of Northern Uganda: The Horrors of War.

Nautilus Book Awards, 2022