Like last month’s selection, this book is
also a memoir by a British author. This one, however, is not designed to be
humorous, but honest. It is indeed that. Daisy Waugh has written a very candid
description of her life as an altruistic English girl who in the early nineties
spent six months in Isiolo, northern Kenya. Why Isiolo? That is never really
explained except by the fact that she knew someone who said she could probably
find a short-term teaching position there. That was apparently reason enough.
In any case, she pitched up in Isiolo,
was immediately disenchanted with her British contacts, and found lodging with
a Peace Corps Volunteer, whom she grew to hate and whose foibles—physical and
moral—she criticized incessantly. In fact, criticism and demeaning of others
seems to have been the purpose of the book. Isiolo’s inhabitants came across as
grasping, mean, bickering, and ultimately caught in sad dead-end lives.
The poverty of Kenya was well documented.
Although she claimed to have controlled her temper and behavior, Daisy pulled
no punches in calling them like she saw them. Her cast of characters was
replete with stereotypes—earnest British aid workers, humble missionaries,
questioning volunteers, and bemused world travelers—but also a host of locals: street
salesmen, schoolgirls, market mamas, fellow teachers, small businessmen, petty
civil servants, drunk watchmen, and concerned neighbors.
Initially, Daisy was quite lost in this
community. As a young white woman, she did not fit into African or Islamic
roles. To her credit, however, she was conscious of such differences and tried
to find a way to recognize the cultural strictures of the society she was in,
but still retain her own sense of individuality. In this she was only partially
successful. She had nothing to do for months, so essentially just wandered
around. By the process of sheer proximity and by learning some Swahili and
Somali she began to fit in, or at least became less of a distraction.
She made a few friends, but the cultural
divide was always there. There was little common ground and the ever-present
expectation that she, as a rich foreigner, should be a source of largess. Yet
in spite of all this and in defiance to the negativism that was somewhat offset
by bemusement chronicled throughout the book, Daisy concluded that her time in
Isiolo was well spent and indeed a great contrast from the same dullness of a
small English village.
In sum, although the blurbs called this
recitation “charming and sympathetic,” I thought it was self-absorbed,
exploitative, and sad.
