Just Keep Pedaling
A Peace Corps Volunteer in Uruguay
Just Keep Pedaling is a fast-paced book about life in a slow-paced town. Connie Ness was the first and only North American to live in the tiny pueblo of Baltasar Brum in Uruguay, the second-smallest country in South America.
Ness writes honestly about her conflicted feelings toward the rewards and disappointments of living and working in a culture with different ideas on time and personal responsibility, and about the frustration and isolation of trying to communicate in a different language. In the end she discovered, as so many Peace Corps volunteers do, that doing service work in a developing country is not a one-way street. Her time in Uruguay was a soft clash of cultures, with a little bit of each rubbing off on the other.
Reading Connie Ness’s generously illustrated and engaging account in Just Keep Pedaling is like listening to a friend who just returned from a two-year adventure.
Just Keep Pedaling is illustrated with over 80 photographs that help you see Uruguay through the author’s eyes. These photo galleries were created to enhance your experience—whether you read the book as a Kindle or a paperback. Kindle readers can view the images in full color, and paperback readers will find more photos that did not get a spot in the book. If you have not read the book, the photo galleries will be like reading a CliffsNotes version.
The photos are grouped by the four parts of the book—training, getting started, the big project and the radio program. Click on a photo to enlarge it for a better look and to read the caption.
Visit the Galleries
The book’s photo galleries paint a picture of life and work as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uruguay.
Maybe it’s partly because I knew Connie, could see and hear her as she struggled with Spanish, wrestled with impatience and frustration – and adopted six cats, a flightless parrot and two lambs – but I love her story, even if it’s a quarter-century old. As I read, I really felt I was living (indirectly) the Peace Corps experience.
In a fine storytelling style, Connie describes the people of Baltasar Brum pueblo, population about 2,000, their daily rituals, her efforts to improve their lives – and the recurring doubts that she was achieving much.
—Chuck Haga, Columnist for the Grand Forks Herald, Grand Forks, ND
“I just finished reading the exploits of Connie Ness in the Peace Corps. It is a wonderful story. At the end I was crying not only during the Epilogue but also during Elio’s letter to her parents! It is a very forceful story. It is amazing the level of detail she must have put into her notes to be able to document activities and feelings as well as other’s activities, compassion and aid to her 25 years after the fact.”
—RP
“I enjoyed it. It moved right along. To me, the best parts of her book had to do with a) her feelings as expectations were or more often were not met, and b) descriptions of the material and value contrast between what she had been used to and what she encountered.”
—BS