Former Mayo Employee Now Works in Botswana to Build Reading Culture

When Andrea Malenya moved to Botswana, leaving behind her Mayo Clinic job and her Rochester home for a stint as a Peace Corps volunteer, it was strictly viewed as a short-term thing. 

She never imagined that the South African country would become her home. Nor that her work would revolve around her love of books and helping to instill a culture of reading in the country. 

But what started as a two-year commitment to the Peace Corps has now become a 12-year sojourn, the last five with the Botswana Book Project, a nonprofit founded to increase literacy and address what has been called a "book famine" in the country.