So Many Africas: Six Years in a Zambian Village

by Jill Kandel

Winner of both the Sarton Women's Literary Award and the Autumn House Prize.
In 1981, Jill Kandel traveled to the remote Zambian village of Kalabo. She was a bride of six weeks, married to a blue-eyed boy from the Netherlands. Amidst international crises and famine, she gave birth to two children, bridged a cultural divide with her Dutch husband, and was devastated by a car accident that took the life of a twelve-year-old Zambian child. She stayed six years. After returning home, Kandel struggled to find her voice and herself. This is the story of how she found her way home. Visit her website: jillkandel (dot) com. Available in paperback, e-book and audio format.

Genres: Africa, Nonfiction, Zambia, Memoir, Travel, Biography Memoir, International

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Jill Kandel grew up in North Dakota. She has lived and worked in Zambia, Indonesia, England, and in her husband's native Netherlands.

Her first memoir, "So Many Africas: Six Years in a Zambian Village," (Autumn House Press) won both the Autumn House Press Nonfiction Award and the Sarton Women's Literary Award.

Her second memoir, "The Clean Daughter: A Cross-Continental Memoir, NDSU Press, April 2022 was selected by the Library of Congress as a Great Reads Book 2025!

Reviews

[Inna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guys. My mom wrote this book.
I've read it through it's different drafts - seen it grow and condense and begin to breathe.
And now it's a physical reality that I can hold and my mom can sign.
So of course I'm biased. And speechless. And proud.
But mostly: This is a story that aches and soars and questions. This is a story that is hard and hopeful. It's strange for me, a daughter, to read of my mother's life before me. And I guess I just don't have words to explain how beautifully written it is, and how brave my mom was for starting this raw and honest project fourteen years ago.

[Cherie Kephart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jill Kandel’s So Many Africas is a beautifully written, moving memoir filled with insight and heartbreak. As we travel with Kandel through her six years in Zambia, we venture into lands most readers will only ever know through the written word. Her vivid prose deftly captures Zambian life; the spectrum of daily challenges people face living in such isolated areas. Having lived in a remote Zambian village, I understand the complexities of the culture, the overwhelming disease, death, and brutalities of nature filling each space of every day. Brava to Kandel for reaching deep inside herself and creating a memoir that will not only transport and entertain readers, but most importantly, open people’s eyes.

[Barbara Stark-Nemon · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than a beautifully written memoir of life in a remote corner of Zambia, Jill Kandel’s So Many Africas is a tone poem of a young American woman’s struggle to reconcile her new marriage and burgeoning family with the realities of Africa that are by turns shocking, inspiring, visceral, and haunting. It took this talented and devoted woman half a lifetime to find a means expansive enough and deep enough to pour all that her six years in Zambia meant. We should be grateful that she found her writing community and that So Many Africas found it’s way into words that contain all the music of Jill Kandel’s extraordinary journeys – the one in Africa and the one into her very lovely human spirit. Brava!

[Gianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is it really fair to review a book that takes your words away and leaves you full and aching-happy? Is it even right to form sentences around your tears when they're brought soundlessly on by the living work of another?

But for Jill: Read this book because Africa is given a taste and a smell and a soul. Because things that escape words are grasped at and caught and set free again in letters. It's beautiful and hard and healing and real. So, so real.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

often times you read a book or hear a story of an individual of a first-world country moving and/or visiting a third world country and the recounting of the stories leave you with a sweet-honey taste in your mouth and a thought that "hey, maybe that would be a fun place to move!" but that's not what I got with this book. in hindsight, I think we, as humans, tend to over glamorize the past as "the good old days" and it happens at funerals too where no matter how bad something or someone was, when it is over, suddenly it or they become "the bees knees." I agree that in some cases there is healing in sugar-coating... but I found this book to be most refreshing in its honesty. This book was beautiful, it was honest, and I felt so connected to the heartbreaks as if they were my own. I highly recommend this book, it was simply exquisite in an honest sense only this author has.

[Elisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

So Many Africas is moving, though provoking, challenging. It is real, raw, honest and hard to read at times. I'm glad to have read it. It challenge me, opened my eyes to a world so foreign and far away from where I am, yet her story speaks of the truth of life-it's gritty and messy, but still full of hope. She writes about the hardships of early marriage, of adjusting to someone and someplace new. I'm glad that she's found her voice and has been able to share about her experience. Again, I am glad to have read this book and would recommend it.

[Adele · Rating 5 out of 5]

So Many Africas is a gorgeously written, sensory-rich account of Jill Kandel's six years living in Zambia and her attempt to understand and talk about those beautiful, difficult years. Yet this memoir is so much more than that. It is also a challenge to create listening space for the experiences that wound and astound us without a tidy “happily-ever-after.” And a call to trust the beauty and truth that can come from their telling.

I wrote a full review of this book, which you can read here:

https://wordpress.com/post/adelegallo...

[Lauren]

This book painted vivid pictures in my mind. Beautifully written, with such depth and truth. A truly amazing story, that doesn't simply tell of the horrors, courage, sadness, and wildness of Africa, but explores deep into the heart, questioning the realities of the world and wading through themes of death, marriage, childbearing, disease, third world living, love, sacrifice, and a million more. It hit me to the core. I loved this book.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are two parts to this book: Part 1 is about Jill Kandel's time in Africa. It is a revealing story of a new marriage spent where Jill, as wife, must put up with cockroaches, cooking with the few ingredients available, washing clothes by hand, living in a leaking hut, having few friendships, going to a hospital that as a nurse she fears because of the sparse dirty conditions, and encouraging a husband who loves helping with Zambia's agriculture. That life in her retrospective view was something to get through in order to be a proper wife. But her struggles with who she is comes through as the message of daily endurance.

Part 2 is the years of aftermath. She stuck by her husband and he finally turned enough towards her to realize that she had given him time for what he wanted but she needed to come back to the USA to reclaim herself and do her best in raising her children. This is the segment where she comes into her own as a writer with perspective. Some of this segment gets a bit esoteric./ However, the book can bring anyone to reflect on how much to give and how much to take and how tough it is for a woman to realize and get to cater to her own needs. Well worth reading!

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw a review of Kandel’s book as a “gorgeous memoir,” but I think it is much deeper than that. She succeeds in bringing you into her daily life, full of perfunctory chores and unfulfilled (and often unrealized) longings while living in one of the remotest parts of Zambia. Although her husband was affiliated with a foreign development effort, their lives were more entrenched and affected by Zambia than your typical expat worker. Kandel takes you on a journey through cultural integration with its highs and lows, breathtaking landscapes, magical termite moments, simple delights, and haunting tragedy. I’ve escaped into her world and can’t wait to share it with others.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Need something great to read in the depths of winter? (Or on summer vacation, for that matter?) This is your book.

Don't read this book when you have other things to do -- you won't want to stop. You'll want to sit on your couch and read this book until Africa is more real to you than your own home.

Jill Kandel makes Africa vivid, and she shares her own struggles as a newlywed and an expat with fearless honesty. Her stories of everyday life in Africa, told from her perspective as a young Midwesterner, are movie-picture vivid. The layers of being a young wife, a foreigner and a trained nurse come together in unexpected ways.

Jill Kandel writes gorgeously, and her Africa is alive in my mind, thanks to this book.

[Ingrid Lochamire · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never been to Africa, but I traveled there with Jill Kandel through her poignant memoir "So Many Africas". The author, an American nurse, lived in a Zambian village with her Dutch husband for six years. During that time, she became a mother and she discovered things about herself and her marriage that would shape her life. This is more than a biography. It is a thoughtful, reflective quest to come to terms with all the ways Africa will never leave her. From the book, "And here is a piece of the truth. I left Zambia, but she did not leave me. I came away from Zambia with more than just sand in my hair and dirt between my toes. She had infiltrated my very cells, come along for the ride, settled in for the long haul." I highly recommend this book.

[Danyelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so captivating, I couldn't put it down. When I was forced to, I constantly thought about it until I could pick it up again. This was such a good read and the author pulled me right into her life. My heart ached, my heart soared, and my heart felt like it was right there is Africa circa 1981. I absolutely loved this book and have recommended it 1,000 times over. It truly is a "must read."

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful! Makes me almost brave enough write about my own "Africa".

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honest, genuine, intriguing, and oh so well written. Loved it!

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is excellent - so incredibly well written, honest, and brave.

[Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant memoir. Haunting, lyrical, beautifully told stories of an uncommon life.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed every minute of reading this book, even when it had me in tears. I look forward to reading more from Jill Kandel.

[Sophia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This womans life was very sad. Tragic even. The prose was beautiful but at times I found it a bit dramatic (my newly found inner dutchwoman). But I couldnt relate to her experiences AT ALL because my personality is just so different. She was raised in a healthy household, wanted to make the people around her happy, she married a foreigner because it seemed adventurous, took a short position in africa, got married to a man she hardly knew after only a year, and they went to live almost immediately in another country. Africa seemed more his thing and even from th beginning she didnt seem all that excited about it. She then became a prisoner in a place she didnt want to be. She could have at any time said "I hate this, I want to go home" or "I want a divorce", she could have chosen to move to a city that did have career opportunities for her or tried harder to connect with the locals or learn the language. But it seemed to me that from the beginning this was not the path for her. Ever the anthropologist, I can imagine myself begging to go along on trips, making room in the truck, making notes about the local culture, creating a grammar of the langauge, finding some other social or medical problem, inserting myself forcibly into other expats lives... but instead she talks about how people who came to stay in her house OVERLOOKED her. I think if you are loud enough and personable enough than you dont allow other people to overlook you. I think the author was just rather meek and shy from the beginning. She didnt have the adventure temperment from the beginning. I would have never stayed in a marriage without communication. In fact, this is one of my biggest fears (especially after watching Far from the maddening crowd), that I get married and am forced to compromise my dreams.
I know these things are easy to say, but I do believe that I have lived my life in accordance with the above philosophies. I also think that I would be like this even if I had grown up 50 years earlier. In every age you have spitfire women.
There were times reading this book that I was genuinely ANNOYED with the author for not making more of an effort to integrate into the society and culture. But I also recognize taht I cant hold everyone to my standards and not everyone wants that. For her, this was the best that she could do at the time. I just cant help but feel that the narrative takes on a self-pitying and victim-role-assuming position more often than not. I used to be the kind of person who wanted to see the world as all beautiful and crap, but I think thats just not how it is. The world is hard and rough and people die and you have to find a way to deal with it. I clearly struggled with this, and that says a lot more about me than the author. This review isnt about her, its about my need to self reflect and construct identity.

I am also not religious at all so I really struggled with her constant bible references. They irritated me. They reminded me of Jacksons aunt and uncle who were missionaries in Malawi. Nor did the couple seem particularly introspcectvie in their early years like did it really take you 30 fucking years to figure out how to think about yourself not as individuals? Godver. I only feel so vehemently about it because i very seriously DO NOT want to have this kind of marriage.

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found and read this book because I recently spent two weeks volunteering in Zambia and wanted to better understand the country and its people. I lived near Livingstone, and Jill Kandel lived in a much more remote area, so I thought this would be a good way to get a feel for other parts and people in the same country. What I discovered is that this book is as much about Jill and her relationship with her husband as it was about Zambia per se. Her growing sense of alienation from her home as a transplantee, beautifully documented in the book, seemed mostly about her lack of a feeling of purpose and mission. Her husband Johan had that, as head of an agricultural program that was making tangible differences in the local people's lives. Jill sat at home and took care of the house. She felt at loose ends, did only "drudge" work, and increasingly seemed invisible even to herself. It was a tragedy that she did not find a way to work at the local hospital (since she is a registered nurse), because then she likely could have found the same sense of fulfillment. (She said she was told that US nursing degrees were not recognized in Zambia. She also said she wasn't allowed to volunteer, which I found puzzling, since volunteers with ANY type of medical background were so welcomed during my short stay there.)

That aside, the writing was lovely, and so were the tales about Zambia and the related personal insights. My only discordant comment is that the post-Zambia phase of the book seemed rushed and tacked on compared to the rest.

[AJ Payne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this one aloud to Jun. It took us... a very long time. A couple years I think?

Anyway, I’m torn. I of course liked it because it’s about Africa. It was actually a fascinating memoir of a woman thrusted into early 80s very rural, very poor, Zambia. The survival it took was amazing - I would totally have struggled. So for that, it was good reading.

On the other hand, I was not a fan of the forced attempts at prose and the rambling random chapters. And all the different styles - at turns trying to be plain memoir, then nonfiction about agriculture and rural Africa, and then poetry, and then flashbacks and dreams. I don’t know, books like that are hard to do and I’m not generally a huge fan, but I don’t think in this case it was even done very well. The bottomline is that the author began and continued writing this in her writer's club, and it reads that way - separate chapters written for a writer's club that encourages creativity and various styles, but not a lot of polish.

So, I have to give what I would typically give two stars an extra star for being a unique memoir on a topic I love.

[Emilie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a raw and honest look at a young wife’s life in the African bush. Johan and Jill Kandel, from the Netherlands and North Dakota respectively, moved to the Western Province of Zambia as newlyweds. Johan volunteered as an agricultural expert for the Dutch embassy. Although Jill had a nursing degree from the States, she was not able to obtain permission from the Zambian government to work in their village clinic. Jill describes her life in Zambia as often tedious, discouraging, and lonely. Some of the challenges she faced in Africa included homesickness, unsanitary conditions, lack of modern conveniences, and struggling to learn new customs and languages. Even after the birth of their four children, the Kandels’ experiences with health scares, devastating loss, and guilt caused Jill’s faith to grow fragile. Her inability to communicate her discontentment with her husband only added to her burden. This book shows the strength, hope, and healing that can come after hard times when one keeps faith through the grief and the glory.

[Jean Haberman · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my dreams was to join the Peace Corps and travel to a country where I could share my talents. After reading Jill's account of her six years in Zambia, I really doubt I could have lived through it. Between bats, cockroaches, bat guano running down the walls after a rain, waiting in line for a hunk of meat, often times having no electricity or running water, I would have run home! Especially being a new bride and being left at home alone for days at a time.

I couldn't put the book down during the first half of the book. The second half where Jill is being reintroduced to modern society, was not as interesting. I'm happy that Jill and her husband found a way to listen to each other and respect each other.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to experience what life would be like in Zambia. Hopefully, Jill's husband's work with agriculture left some lasting influence.

[Bridget · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book, filled with gorgeous tales and imagery from Zambia. I've been circling around this book for years, curious to compare Kandel's experience living in Zambia with my own. What a treasure to read her words about I place I hold so dear, yet a place that wrought such self-scrutiny and longing within me. Kandel's experiences brought the loneliness of being an ex-pat into sharp focus, alongside the fascinating and vibrant culture of Zambia. Her characters are wonderfully drawn and the lyrical landscape sings from the page. What I loved most about So Many Africas is how carefully Kandel reveals her younger, more naive self to us with all the tenderness of a trusted, wiser friend. How I can relate to that determined young woman, and how desperately I wish we could have shared a cup of tea alongside the Zambezi River.

[MJ Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this one. Jill's a small town girl from North Dakota. She follows her new husband to Africa where he does missionary work. It couldn't be a more challenging start to a new marriage. The whole time I was reading it, I kept waiting for the metaphorical "other shoe" to drop. Sometimes it did, and thankfully, sometimes it didn't.

I have to say it wasn't at all what I expected either. Given the title, I thought it would be a tale told by someone who went to Africa with rose colored glasses on and learned to love it in all it's many different forms. I don't think Jill owns a pair of rose colored glasses, and I think she saw pretty clearly out of the ones she was wearing. The story is a very honest portrayal of her experiences.

[Rachel Asleson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend reading this memoir to experience Jill Kandel's expressive writing, get the feel of a place remote and lonely. Her chapters hold such vivid language I had to squint through some excerpts to try and avoid the smells, feelings and the utter unfairness - yet linger through some passages to savor her love of life.

I will be giving this book as a gift, as the very first chapter gifted me a gratitude that few writers, or even experience, have.

[AmyJMcF · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the first half of this book: the story, or journal, really, of the author’s 6 years in Zambia. It evoked memories of my own time in Zambia on medical mission trips.
The second half of the book was odd- a mishmash of musings, spiritual searching, and a few letters home. I did not care for this part of the book at all.

[Kari Kraemer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is beautifully written. I will be talking and thinking about this book for some time. I had to read it slowly to absorb everything Jill was writing about Africa. I just loved this book.

[Sari Fordham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book and wrote a review for it a long time ago:

https://collegevilleinstitute.org/bea...

[Linnea · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very poignant story, very raw and real and yet redemptive. A must read for any second culture adult or third culture kid.