Nearly 800 pages about the why, wherefore and how of the 20th Century's quickest, most personal and - possibly - least understood genocide. Obviously, it is not a fun read. But neither is it (surprisingly) particularly heart-wrenching, on a gut emotional level. Considering what is being discussed, this work almost astonishingly scientific. When one reads about the butchering of close to a million people within the span of 100 days, carried out in broad daylight in the very communities where the victims lived, oftentimes by those next to whom they'd lived for years, almost always with an arms cocktail that included rifles, grenades, machetes, nail-studded clubs, spears, bows and arrows, and even more basic implements like bicycle handlebars - when any thinking, rational human being contemplates this reality, it tends to boggle the mind. Even numerically: it is the literal equivalent (in the number of victims) of three (3) September 11ths every single day for over three months. In a country of 8 million people. Proportionally, given the population of the United States at the time, that would mean 23 million deaths in the US. Geographically, over a territory roughly the size of Vermont. How does one find enough imagination to conjure up such images and then even begin to make sense of them?

Okay, I more or less agree with his main thesis here: that sympathy, political correctness, and lots of money have not effectively developed African countries economically, and have often prevented that development from happening. Corruption, a lack of civic rights, and repeated squandering of economic opportunities have kept much of the continent living in extreme deprivation; similarly, honest and outspoken critics of the current system are a rarity, from inside or outside of it.

But I was a little disappointed with this one. Primarily, it is light on substance. He says he wants to make it a work for the general reader (i.e. not drown the main points in technocratic jargon), but almost the entire work is backed up solely through anecdotes, sweeping generalizations, and highly contentious opinions passed off as facts. For example, he claims that one of the three main reasons why African aid rarely achieves its objectives is due to the "culture" of Africans. This assertion is dispatched in a breezy nine pages of stories, reflections based on personal experience, and cherry-picked quotes from Africa-lovers (and haters). He is far better (as a former World Bank official) in the "The Trouble With Foreign Aid" chapter, where he sticks to his field of expertise and buttresses his contentions with hard statistics and sound theory.

This is a true slab of Hollywood cheese, in epic proportions. Highly enjoyable, as long as you know what you’re getting yourself into. Hackneyed, clichéd, surprisingly aimless with little sense of real dramatic build-up – all of which adds up to a fairly enjoyable ball of corn.

First, the characters: cartoonish, clichéd send-ups of the usual adventure story tropes. The rugged, George Hamilton-orange, disillusioned Quatermain, who of course still has a heart of gold. The naïve, proud, fair damsel-in-a-foreign-land, Mrs. Curtis (think A Passage to India’s Anna Quested, with none of the moral confusion). The simple, often silly, but still good hearted native assistant. The Captain Kurtz crazy-man encountered deep within the Heart of Darkness.

Happy New Year, in Kinyarwanda. To 2008 being better than 2007. New beginnings, including with this site.

There are now some links buried on the bottom of the right-hand side; just some places I go to read and hear things that are interesting. I'll keep adding more. But I was inspired to do that when I ran across a link for Awesome Tapes from Africa earlier today. I went to Ghana about five years ago, and probably my biggest regret is that I didn't buy a whole suitcase-full of tapes before I left, because with the exception of some Daddy Lumba mp3's I found on Soulseek, I've never been able to locate much in the way of real African music, either here or in Europe. I mean the stuff people in Africa actually listen to (which varies so widely in quality), not just the lucky few who travel around the world, are well marketed, play venues in Paris and New York, and are heavily marketed by Western record companies.