Living with Strangers

A debut memoirist’s hopeful and brave coming-of-age story of surviving a turbulent youth—neglected first by her father, then as a teen in foster care—and going on to find a sense of belonging and a new lease on life in a semi-nomadic Kenyan community.

Eager to leave her life as a foster child behind, Robin Rosenbluth travels to a remote village in northern Kenya called Songa in 1973. As a white college student, she arrives in a desert-like environment to teach elementary school to Samburu and Rendille children. While befriending the residents, she learns to live in a mud hut, survive without modern conveniences, skin a cow, and kill a chicken for dinner.

Robin weaves stories about the challenges she faced growing up—her mother’s early death, her father’s abandonment, and her years in foster care—with her account of her time in Songa. As the only Jewish resident in a village influenced by Christian missionaries, she strives to fit in: adapting to the intense heat, endless insects, and close encounters with wild animals. Over time, she develops close friendships with a local teacher and a woman who becomes her surrogate mother, participates in local customs, and makes a place for herself in Songa.

Offering vivid insight into why a love-starved nineteen-year-old from New York City would choose to relocate to the other side of the world, Living with Strangers is a poignant chronicle of one young woman’s search for a place to belong.