Books, Mangos, The Daily Sun, and Barbarians

Peace Corps Volunteers have very limited choices when it comes to entertainment. I can take the 1 1/2 hour trip into town and browse the internet (as I'm doing today), but that's not always a viable option. So we read. We read a lot of books. I've already gone through 12 books, and I'm almost done with#13.

Some of you back home in America have asked if there's anything I need, anything I would like you to send me. Well, books! So I'm going to write down a tally of the books I've read and the books I'd like. If you can find it in your heart to send a poor Peace Corps Volunteer the gift of reading material, it would be much appreciated.

So here's the list of books I've read:
1) "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" (Hunter S. Thompson)
2) "The Destruction of Black Civilization" (Chancellor Williams)
3) "The Spread of Islam in the World" (Professor Thomas Arnold)
4) "Dark Star Safari" (Paul Theroux)
5) "Catch 22" (Joseph Heller)
6) "Slaughterhouse Five" (Kurt Vonnegut)
7) "Siddhartha" (Herman Hesse)
8) "Invisible Man" (Ralph Ellison)
9) "Animal Farm" (George Orwell)
10) "Breakfast of Champions" (Kurt Vonnegut)
11) "The Devil in the White City" (Erik Larson)
12) "On the Road" (Jack Kerouac)
13) "Middlesex" (JeffreyEugenides) *still reading this one*

Next up.... "The Sound and the Fury" by Faulkner, and then Gandhi's autobiography.

Here's a list of the books I'd like to read. If any of you "rich Americans" would like to send one or two along, just post a comment so people don't buy me the same books.

The Great War For Civilisation (Robert Fisk)
American Taboo: A Murder in the Peace Corps (Philip Weiss)
The Long Walk To Freedom (Nelson Mandela)
Guns Germs & Steel (Jared Diamond)
Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller)
Tropic of Capricorn (Henry Miller)
The Dharma Bums (Jack Kerouac)
Visions Of Cody (Jack Kerouac)
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)
Heart Of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
In Cold Blood (Truman Capote)
Hell's Angels (Hunter S Thompson)
Confessions of an Economic Hitman (John Perkins)
Collapse (Jared Diamond)
Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe)
King Leopold’s Ghost (Adam Hochschild)
Henderson The Rain King (Saul Bellow)

I think those would keep me occupied for a few months....

In the villages, nobody reads books. The closest thing you'll find are people reading newspapers....some are pretty decent newspapers, like CityPress and the SundayTimes. However, the most popular newspaper in the country is The Daily Sun. There are no words to express how insuffrably bad this newspaper is. It bills itself as "The People's Paper" and I find everybody reading it, but it has about as much journalistic appeal as The National Enquirer. It makes The NewYork Post look like The New York Times. Some of my favorite headlines are,"I Boiled My Brother's Brains!" (about a young man who killed his brother and boiled his brains as "muti" in effort to give him special powers) and "No Sex So Die!" (that one speaks for itself). I believe that th Sun has actually hired a copy editor to proofread the paper every day and then make it worse. I have a new name for it: The Sunion.

So on Monday I saw the following headline: "Horror Mango Death!" .....so, obviously, I had to check it out. To give you an example of the content of the article, I will quote it directly (capitalization was in the article as-is): "ALL THE LITTLE GIRL WANTED WAS THE SWEET TASTE OF A RIPE MANGO. WHAT SHE GOT WAS THE BITTER TASTE OF SUDDEN DEATH!!!"

And as sad as the story is, I busted out laughing when I read it. My friends and I here have some mango jokes floating between us, and so I sent along that quote to a few of them. Today I checked my email, and this gem was in my Inbox, from my friend Hossam, a.k.a. "Hossam The Barbarian." Out of all of you readers, only 10 or so will get the genius of this message.

"All the little girl wanted was the sweet taste of a mango. what she got was the bitter taste of sudden death!

The barbarian sniffed the air. Someone had entered his domain, someone had violated the sanctity of his lair, his kingdom.

He gave a mighty roar, a bellow which shook the earth. The world was still for a moment afterward as every animal held its breath- in hopes that they would not be noticed, in anticipation of the coming death. The barbarian waited, too, for the sound of fleeing. Kutani, u ta hlota.

Instead he heard another sound, the sound of the foolish trying to be slick; the invasive beast waas trying to creep quietly onward. The gave a feral, fearful grin. He left his spot and went forth, silent but deadly, he moved through the jungle. He was coming. The forest knew it. The locals knew it, he could hear their drums; mu-ra Kong, wa ta.

He burst forth from the foliate and landed directly in front of the intruder. It was one of the small black beasts that were overrunning thie land like rabbits that bred uncontrollably. Its small black, hairless body quivered in fear, causing its excessively thin limbs to rattle dangerously. For a brief moment, the barbarain felt pity; then he saw the mango it had been trying to steal.

The barbarian gave a mighty roar and, lightining fast, drew his sword Bogobe. The beast fell to the ground, quivering. "We are suffering," it cried. "I am asking for 1---" the barbarian roared again to silence the creature. Why could they not simply ask politely in the first place? Why were they always invading his sancutary and tyring to take what was his?

The barbarian raised Bogobe above his head, prepared to shove it into the infidels throat. Then he stopped and grinned, fearfully, ferally. He had a better idea, an even more bitter death in mind.

Vim Scour was hungry. he would take this violater, this sinner who tried to take the forbidden mangos without asking, and feed it to the pig."

We Peace Corps Volunteers are a strange bunch. Call it "village-fever" if you will.