It Happened On the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace - Hardcover

Barcott, Rye

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1608192172 ISBN 13: 9781608192175

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2011

Synopsis

In 2000 Rye Barcott spent part of his summer living in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. He was a college student heading into the American Marines, and he sought to better understand ethnic violence - something he would likely face later in uniform. He learned Swahili, asked questions, and listened to young people talk about how they survived in poverty he had never imagined. Anxious to help but unsure what to do, he stumbled into friendship with a widowed nurse, Tabitha Atieno Festo, and a community organiser, Salim Mohamed. Together, this unlikely trio built a non-governmental organization that would develop a new generation of leaders from within one of Africa's largest slums. Their organization, Carolina for Kibera (CFK), is now a global pioneer of the movement called Participatory Development, and washonored by Time magazine as a 'Hero of Global Health.' CFK's greatest lesson may be that with the right kind of support, people in desperate places will take charge of their lives and create breathtaking change. Engaged in two seemingly contradictory forms of public service at the same time, Barcott continued his leadership in CFK while serving as a human intelligence officer in Iraq, Bosnia, and the Horn of Africa. Struggling with the intense stress of leading Marines in dangerous places, he took the tools he learned building a community in one of the most fractured parts of Kenya and became a more effective counterinsurgent and peacekeeper. It Happened on the Way to War is a true story of sacrifice and courage and the powerful melding of military and humanitarian service. It's a story of what America's role in the world could be.

About this title

About the Author

Rye Barcott founded the renowned non-governmental organization Carolina for Kibera (CFK) with Salim Mohamed and Tabitha Atieno Festo while he was an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After graduation, he served as a Marine for five years on active duty. In 2006 ABC World News named then Captain Barcott a Person of the Week and Person of the Year for his dual service to Kibera and the Marine Corps. As a Reynolds Social Entrepreneurship Fellow, he earned master's degrees in business and public administration from Harvard University. He is currently a member of the World Learning Board of Trustees and a TED Fellow living in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Reviews

Barcott, cofounder of the nongovernmental organization Carolina for Kibera (CFK), recounts the demands of serving as a Marine Corps officer while running a nascent nonprofit in this overwrought memoir. In 2000, as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina, the author traveled to Kenya's notorious slum Kibera, in Nairobi, to study ethnic violence. The experience brought his "terribly privileged" background into relief, and Barcott—along with Tabitha Atieno Festo, a nurse, and Salim Mohammed, a community organizer—launched a nonprofit to ferry resources to local leaders in the hopes that they could directly promote development and prevent violence. A year later, with CFK barely launched, Barcott was commissioned as a Marine Corps officer and began an exhausting "balancing act" as he struggled to maintain oversight of CFK while deploying to Bosnia, Djibouti, and Iraq. The author's account of his military service is strained and riddled with inconsistencies: despite his desire "to lead Marines in combat," he angled for an intelligence billet; despite believing the Iraq war was "unjust,"' he volunteered to deploy. Barcott's service to Kibera and his country is laudable, but his memoir promises more insight and candor than it delivers. (Apr.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1608192172
• ISBN 13: 9781608192175
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352