No comments about Africa Central and South (Michelin National Maps).

1 comments about John Muir's Last Journey: South To The Amazon And East To Africa: Unpublished Journals And Selected Correspondence (Pioneers of Conservation).

1. Muir's journals were good but I didn't care for the introduction to the journals in each chapter by the author. The intro's went into way to much background detail. I would have been fine with less intro.

No comments about Lonely Planet Sur de Africa / Lonely Planet Africa Meridional (Lonely Planet. (Spanish Guides)).

No comments about Nepal - Culture Smart!: a quick guide to customs and etiquette (Culture Smart!).

No comments about The Lost Wilderness: Tales of East Africa.

1 comments about Meeting the Invisible Man.

1. _Meeting the Invisible Man_ by Toby Green is an account of the author's travels in West Africa - specifically Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea-Conakry (officially known simply as Guinea, in West Africa it is widely called Guinea-Conakry to avoid confusion with Guinea-Bissau) - in search of authentic African magic. In 1995 Green became friends with a Senegalese photographer by the name of El Hadji (a devout Muslim), a man who swore that mystics known as Marabouts (pronounced "Maraboo", magical holy men with connections to Islam) possessed the ability to bestow invisibility and invulnerability upon people. Intrigued, Green returned four years later, met his friend, and undertook a journey of several months through these three nations to test these magical claims himself. Seeking Marabouts in the cities and in remote villages deep in the countryside, Green sought to verify if such magic could indeed exist.
   
   These men didn't cast spells it seems but created magical charms or amulets known as gris-gris (pronounced "gree-gree"), items that might contain such items as a piece of burial shroud, the skin of a black cat, cloth once owned by a mute, or verses from the Koran written many times on parchment or paper. These items were generally constructed in secret away from the eyes of Green and El Hadji, often taking days to finish and coming complete with a number of verbal instructions that must be followed (lest either bad things happen to the wearer or the charm be rendered in effective); not wearing a gris-gris during sex was a common rule, as was not using one for evil. If the rules were followed and the owner wore the gris-gris (generally on their waists, attached to the belt, or on their arms), depending upon what the amulet was constructed for, it might bestow invulnerability to knife attacks, gunfire, or even make one invisible (or wealthy, as Green visited a moderately prosperous village that believed it owed its great fortune to the powerful Marabout resident there).
   
   I found it interesting that many Muslims in West Africa believed in Marabouts and in gris-gris. El Hadji and others claimed that there was nothing in the Qu'ran that forbade visiting a Marabout (though not visiting a sorcerer, which was apparently an altogether different type of individual). Additionally, a number of people Green talked to, including Marabouts, claimed that they possessed secret knowledge or secret verses from the Qu'ran itself. The author noted that many Muslims outside the region and some in the region firmly believe that gris-gris is not acceptable in orthodox Islam, though Marabouts have a long history in the region, arriving simultaneously in West Africa with Islam in the eleventh century.
   
   Green began the journey convinced that gris-gris simply could not work, but once he spent time in Africa he seemed to waver some. Once he became immersed in the culture and the people, he began to appreciate the often radically different worldview of many of the locals. He often felt that he and they inhabited completely different worlds, his technological, rational, and materialistic, theirs a world largely alien to him, one that the locals saw populated by devils and spirits, a "place where magic and undiluted faith were so important," where "djinns hang in the air with the heat, and the fear and the illness."
   
   Green also feared that he would be exploited by unscrupulous people. A foolish tubab (white person, whom just about everyone in that part of Africa at least assumed was of course rich) would easily find many Marabouts who would gladly write gris-gris for him for money of course. At first quite a bit on guard against this, Green felt that in his travels he met Marabouts who cared little about money and genuinely believed in what they did.
   
   The author did provide an interesting portrait of the countries, the people, their rituals, their way of life, good descriptions of the terrain and flora, and a sense of the area's problems. He and his companion were quite glad to leave Guinea-Conakry for instance, a place "redolent with fear and despair," an often deeply unpleasant place, its citizens with almost nothing, with what little they had stolen by a corrupt state. He also recounted some of the terrible wars and wretched conditions faced by the refugees in the region (whose plight the West was largely ignorant of), many of whom vanished in the various conflicts, their fate unknown. Though he was hit up by corrupt border guards and police, a great many people though were quite kind to him, welcoming him into their homes with little explanation from him as to why he was there, offering what little food they had and even allowing him to sleep in their beds, their owners choosing to sleep on the floor while they had guests. He had a number of memorable West African experiences, many of them good, such as listening to griots (pronounced "gree-oh," praise singers whose lineage goes back to the old West African empires, still important as repositories of oral history and in performing ceremonies), hearing the kora (a West African harp with 21 strings), and riding in pirogues (the dugout canoes of the region), some bad (such as a bout with malaria).
   
   Oh, did Green find any gris-gris that worked? Was he successful? Read it yourself! I did enjoy the book. Though he included a helpful glossary and an appendix listing important historical figures from the region, I do wish he had incorporated a bit more history into the text. I enjoyed his often amusing interactions with El Hadji and I appreciated the detailed map and the color photographs that were included in the book.

1 comments about WAWA.

1. Thomas Lee Turmam volunteers to teach architecture in Ghana for a year in the 60s after graduating from college. This book is selection of the events he experienced while in Ghana. Some of the events are humorous while others are not. Turman taught at Laney College in Oakland for 30+ years before retiring from teaching in 2003 and he is still a practicing architect.

4 comments about Younger Than That Now: A Peace Corps Volunteer Remembers Morocco.

1. "Pure kif,"the legendary expatriate musician and writer Paul Bowles told me,"is the best thing in the world for a troubled mind." Younger Than That Now chronicles Michael Moran's hallucinatory trip through the labyrinths of Boujad,Morocco,where the Peace Corps volunteer lived and taught from 1981 to 1983. Part lyric,part fact,this book lays bare the inside workings of the Peace Corps and shows how each volunteer,no matter how estranged,struggles to make a difference.Through all the talk, repentance,and endless travel,one thing remains constant:Moran's experience is never PC.



2. I happened to come across this book in Austin, TX. The cover art was interesting and well done, very colorful, and it caught my eye. This guy has quite a tale about being in the Peace Corps in Morocco, among other things. There is a fascinating account of a meeting Mr. Moran had with Paul Bowles. He writes of personal experiences that were sincerely entertaining, and the man knows how to write. There is a sense of surrealism of this period of time, from 1981-1984 or so, that mirrors a similar mood of the early Reagan years. For a testament of the changing world around that time period, "Younger Than That Now" captures it as well as can be done. This book deserves to be read. It's just a great, all-around piece of writing.



3. Michael Moran writes an interesting book about his two years in the Peace Corps in Morocco. Although this book doesn't actually tell you much about the Peace Corps itself (something that Moran actually doesn't seem too interested in, despite his two year commitment to the program), it does show you one way a Peace Corps experience can go -- which is to say, he pretty much turned the two years of "service" into an opportunity for him to travel and have some experiences worth turning into a book later on. What makes this book worth reading is that Moran writes well and does not try to spare himself. He presents himself as a real person who is, at alternating times, naive, determined, pretentious, sympathetic, arrogant, or young. But throughout it all, he is intelligent and honest as he portrays his struggles with Moroccan culture and with his own life, a self-consciousness ultimately represented through his relationship with a Scottish woman, Janet Graves.

   A note: Don't bother to read the synopsis on the back of this book -- it isn't an accurate portrayal of the main themes or struggles of the book.

   I do believe that other Peace Corps writers (such as Thomsen in "Living Poor") allow their experiences to change and influence them. As Moran says in his introduction (excerpted above in the Editorial Reviews), he doesn't think that the PC really changes people, but rather dramatizes their flaws. I believe this viewpoint of his is a result of the mentality he had going into the experience-- he seemed to have been dissatisfied and somewhat lonely in his American life, and was seeking an escape in a somewhat strict and self-righteous way that didn't allow for him to be changed by the culture around him. Ultimately, I'm sure he did change, as we are all changed by our experiences, but don't expect this book to be a telling of how those changes occur. It's simply an interesting read about two years in an expatriate's life, but its honesty and the adventures contained within it will be captivating nonetheless.




4. I too was a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, albeit several years after Moran. This book was passed around amongst volunteers and we all quickly grew sick of his attitude towards his duty and his villagers. I think it gives a bad impression of Morocco, Peace Corps, and the people who have dedicated a portion of their lives to integrating themselves into a different culture. Moran hung out with Westerners, imported his Western girlfriend into his experience, and it seems his only interactions with Moroccans were as his servants or students. One incident really got on my nerves--when his supervisor had a "discussion" with him over what he suspected was a drop of red wine spilled on his shirt. True, on that occasion it happened to be tomato sauce, but his indignance was rather misplaced since he admitted in other parts of the book to going to work drunk and drinking wine on his lunch breaks.

   PLEASE do not read this and think this is what Morocco and Peace Corps are really like.

No comments about Viajes por Europa, África y América 1845-1847 (Viajes).

1 comments about Gandhi: The South African Experience (New History of Southern Africa Series).

1. I grew up in the USA thinking of gandhi as some mystical hero figure. Of course, the movie didn't help. After I read this book I have a different attitude. He was a lawyer turned politician from the upper middle class, as are many leaders. He dealt with all the same things that leaders of people deal with and he did all the same things the rest of them do, including compromise. This includes not pressing the issue of the racism (towards native africans) or classism of many of the Indian merchant-class who had hired him to help them in their struggle against the white government of South Africa. It paints him a bit insensitive towards the suffering that many of the lower class went through as part of his campaigns as well. So, I always like it when a book shows me unusual views of famous hyped up events and people, even if it is only to shatter my own naivite and ignorance.