Yong - 3/26 - Whiteman by Tony D'Souza

Expand my previous picture and you can get a nice look at the mess that was my desk after 10 months of teaching. Expand this one and you can see the deck that I drove out to Michigan to help my friend Elmer build. Pretty massive, ain't she? He's the brains behind this outfit; I'm just the dumb muscle.

And in the foreground is Tony D'Souza's Whiteman, which I started at home and finished here in Michigan. I read some of it while sitting on the deck (on a 2'x3' piece of scrap plywood) yesterday. Yes, it's a library book. No, I won't be home before it's due. But I can renew once over the internet! Anyway, Kayan loves Africa, so I was inspired to read a little about it. Tells the story of a young American guy who spends three years in Africa as a relief worker for a dysfunctional--no, make that nonfunctional--organization called Potable Water International: his daily life, his early struggles, loneliness, romantic misadventures, wisdom, war. Basically, he does everything except anything related to drinking water. And that's okay. It's actually pretty grand. Beginning was a little un-grabbing, but middle and end are strong. Gives a pretty good inkling of what it'd be like for a whiteman--which is basically what we'd be--to spend some time in complete immersion in the Dark Continent, for those of us who didn't have the strength to try something like Peace Corps ourselves.