681. Bill Bryson's African Diary (Bill Bryson)

Synopsis from Amazon Canada:
In this slim, invigorating volume, the author of Notes from a Small Island and A Walk in the Woods sets his dry, Midwestern fish-out-of-water wit on Kenya. For eight days in the fall of 2002, Bill Bryson, accompanied by workers from the international poverty-fighting organization CARE, toured the East African country, visiting various CARE-sponsored projects and meeting the locals. One of these is Dr. Mbua. Among Bryson's interests is the human fossil record, and so an appointment at the National Museum--which "has the finest collection of early human remains in existence"--is arranged. Among its treasures is a 19-million-year-old ape skull returned to its rightful country after 40 years of bargaining with the British Museum, where it was sent for cleaning in the 1940s. Bryson asks Dr. Mbua, a paleontologist, why the museum kept it for so long. "'They coveted it,' she said, smiling serenely, but hinting at levels of darkness in the world of paleontology that I hadn't known existed." In describing why a highway isn't in the shape it's supposed to be in, Bryson drolly notes, "some government official or group of government officials decided to spare Kenyan workers the wearying toil of laying tarmac under a hot sun, and pocketed the money instead." For all his humour, Bryson never takes his eyes off the main point of his journey--that CARE has been a force for good, bringing improvements in the quality of life of poverty-stricken Kenyans, but that much more work is needed. Proceeds from the sales of this worthwhile little book (illustrated with photographs by Jenny Matthews) go to the organization, and hence to aiding fellow humans. As Bryson writes of a farmer he meets, "William Gumbo ... is a happy man and he has a future. Surely every human being is entitled to at least that much."

My rating: 4 stars