Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Susie Rheault author of My Wild and Precious Life: A Memoir of Africa.

Susie is a psychologist with a specialization in organizational development and leadership effectiveness. For the past 30 years she has worked with senior executives across the private and public sector globally.

Since 2007, Susie has been a Special Advisor for the Clinton Foundation Health Access Initiative supporting field ofices in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland. In each of these countries, she has trained local staff to accelerate HIV testing and treatment uptake using a grassroots team-based approach. She also coached senior leaders to enhance their effectiveness and achieve their goals.

In 2011, she and her husband Gil Williams joined forces with Tanzanian schoolteachers, William and Sarah Modest, to launch Precious Project.

Susie is deeply committed to improving the lives of the most vulnerable children, women and community members in Nshupu, Tanzania, where she and Gil live for half the year.

Norm: Good day Susie and thanks for participating in our interview.  What do you consider to be your greatest success or successes so far in your career?

Susie: Without a doubt my work in Tanzania has been the most important success in my career. We have rescued children from malnutrition, neglect and abandonment. We have given them an education and a chance at life.

Nothing I have done in my corporate career can compare.

Norm: What has been your greatest challenge professionally that you overcome in getting to where you're at today?

Susie: Coming to see and understand this sheer scale of suffering in the developing world has been and continues to be a huge challenge. In addition, it has been challenging to figure out how to make change happen while being culturally sensitive. Too many international development efforts fail because they have been too prescriptive and not locally owned.

Norm: What motivated you to become interested in improving the lives of the most vulnerable children, women and community members in Nshupu Tanzania?

Susie: This was never an abstract undertaking to me. It came out of seeing the extent of extreme poverty in the area and its impact on women and children.… Barefoot kids carrying wood and water and never seeing the inside of a school, women working as casual field hands having to deposit their babies in a hole dug in the dirt so the babies would not crawl away during the work, houses so grim it is hard to even call them that.

Norm: What is the Precious Project all about? How did it get started and what do you hope to accomplish with it?

Susie: The Precious Project started in 2010 with a small orphanage for nine children and has grown to a primary school that educates 300+ students and a home for 22.  

Precious started with two Tanzanian schoolteachers who saw the lot of children in the village who were not able to go to school.

William and Sarah quit their jobs and started the small orphanage, funded only by periodic gifts from a local church. Now that Precious in Tanzania has a partner organization in the US, funds have been made available to grow the project and to offer much more in the way of services for the children.

The project offers support for Women’s Empowerment groups, models sustainable farming practices and the school has achieved Number One ranking on the district. Our long-term aspiration is to build a secondary school of the same caliber so we can continue to offer education to the most vulnerable children in the area.

Norm: What were some of the biggest lessons you have taken from your time in Africa?

Susie: To have an impact you have to act like an anthropologist not an expert. Be in learning mode so as to understand cultural practices and priorities. Remember that involvement brings ownership so don't come with prescriptions. And lastly expect for there to be surprises of all kinds, both positive and negative.

Norm: How did you adapt to living in Africa?

Susie: Not easily. We have encountered countless varieties of waterborne bacteria. We worry about malaria even as we have suspended taking the antimalarials as they are not meant for long-term use. And we know that if we have some acute medical conditions such as appendicitis we are not in a spot where medical care is accessible or reliable.

Norm: Going back and forth from Africa to the US must be challenging. How do you manage that cultural transition?

Susie: I have done this back-and-forth trip so many times now that I am somewhat accustomed to the huge change both coming and going. The biggest difficulty coming from equatorial Africa to Yankee New England is the lack of open and friendly greetings. Sometimes people in New England will walk across the street so as to avoid having to say hello, whereas in Africa passing by people is invariably the occasion for friendly exchange.

Norm: What special challenges to women and girls face in Tanzania?

Susie: Tanzania, like many developing countries, is highly patriarchal. Women may not inherit property and their chances of finishing secondary school is under 20%.

The adolescent fertility rate in Tanzania is the highest in the world! The president just last year reaffirmed a ruling that Tanzanian high school girls may be stopped and tested in secondary school at any time to see if they are pregnant. If the test is positive they are expelled from school that day and forever.

This in the face of the knowledge that many sexual encounters for young girls are hardly consensual. Sexual violence for both girls and women is not uncommon, with wife beating quite culturally embedded.

Norm: What motivated you to write My Wild and Precious Life?

Susie: I have kept a journal since the age of 12. Journal writing helps me to remember and to process my life's experiences, especially the new ones and the difficult ones. So much of my time in Africa was filled with unique experiences and challenges that my journal became an essential coping mechanism. People who read excerpts or letters home urged me to write a book and that is what prompted me to start to work on this memoir.

Norm: What is rural life like in Tanzania?

Susie: Rural life in Tanzania is characterized by subsistence farming with rain dependent crops, no social safety nets and generational poverty. Tribal and clan customs remain strong as does the influence of traditional healers or “witch doctors.”

Norm: Could you tell us a little about the book and what were your goals and intentions and how well do you feel you've achieved them?

Susie: My goal was to tell my life story with a focus on the learning and experiences I had in Africa.

I also wanted to link those experiences with my itinerant childhood as an Army brat. I think those were well achieved although it was challenging to suspend the narrative about the progress of Precious when it is still going strong.

Norm: What do you hope will be the everlasting thoughts for readers who finish your book?

Susie: I hope they will be moved to take risks in their own lives and to follow their dreams.

Norm: What projects are you working on at the present?

Susie: I would like to follow this book with an extended epilogue telling the stories of the children as they grow older.

Norm: As this interview comes to an end what question do you wish that someone would ask about your book, but nobody has?

Susie: I'd like to be asked more about the AIDS epidemic and whether or not any of the work that we did at the Clinton Foundation has made a difference.

Norm: Thanks again and good luck with all of your future endeavors