Dispatches from Paradise

Each year the Peace Corps sends volunteers abroad to assist impoverished countries, experience adventure, lie on white-sand beaches, and get laid. Okay, that may not be precisely how its brochures are worded, but that's the appeal that drew travel humorist John Wood and many of his fellow 149 trainees to the Philippines. Wood enjoys getting into trouble abroad, but this odyssey tests even his capacity. He is greeted immediately with dengue hemorrhagic fever. His first host family is abusive. His second one kicks him out. He commits so many cultural faux pas that they could fill a book (this one, actually). As he struggles to learn how to teach and figure out what to do with the rest of his life, his spirits and his town are ravaged by poverty, illness, tragedy, typhoons, earthquakes, killer pit bulls, and dogscaped testicles ("I see more bouncing balls in one day than a baseball equipment manager does in a season, except these have fleas on them"). Wood's dispatches feature an unforgettable cast of characters: the Monkey People, the Sari-Sari Cowboys, the Pastor, the Red-Flag Man, the Room from Hell, the Red Table, the Celibate 6, and an army of teachers, students, trainers, doctors, and "Team John" who teach him that you're often stronger than you think you are, you can make a difference whether at home or thousands of miles away, and you can endure anything if you surround yourself with loving people who continually ply you with cheap rum and goat intestines. John Wood is the author of two award-winning memoirs: Saigon Tease: So, What Did You Do in Nam, Dad? and How I Killed Off My Ex-Wife and Other Far-Flung Misadventures.