the happy wanderer

Something to make up for aesthetics and the long entry ahead. lol
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Currently reading: The Constant Gardener.

I got up to Ch.3 (they’re quite long! for a non-reader like me) before coming to Berkeley and then I put the reading on hold because of chem. Then yesterday, I picked it up, dust it off, and started reading again.. from the beginning haha.

Some quotes that I’d previously highlighted.
(BTW, this book is a <3 story.. but that’s a very minor part. It’s about humanitarianism in Africa. Specifically, Kenya.. and how corrupt the diplomacy there and everywhere else is. How all the aid business looks excellent on paper, but not quite so in practice. ) Anyhow~~

A scene describing the irony of a diplomat’s residence on some special day:
“… the national flag will be flying in the garden, the sprinklers will be turned off, the red carpet will be laid out, black servants in white gloves will be hovering, just as they did in the colonial times we all piously disavow. And the appropriate patriotic music will be issuing from the host’s marquee.”

Excerpt describing a slave girl whose beloved master? owner? madam? was murdered:
“Only Esmeralda was not weeping. Instead she wore that wooden look that whites mistake for chulishness or indifference. Woodrow knew it was neither. It was familiarity. This is how real life is constituted, it said. This is grief and hatred and people hacked to death. This is the everyday we have known since we were born…”

I’m realizing these clips aren’t as significant out of context lol… oh well~ I like posting these up. hehehe

Here’s a bit I chuckled at in Cafe Strada…
“Mildren had a permanent pout. Seated at his desk he looked like a naughty fat boy who has refused to finish up his porridge.” kehhehee

Completely irrelevant, but cute

Okdoke, so here comes a super duper long quote. I was gonna just put a bit, but then I kept skimming and it’s altogether pretty worthy to be blogged. … Maybe I should just convince you (whoever) to go and read this…. I’m making a big deal cause I honestly don’t read much, if at all. And I actually find this stuff very useful for my awareness and time.

Tessa asking about what Woodrow thought about the documents she’d provided to him about all the corruption, etc..

“Why can’t you do anythign about them?”

Woodrow, hating how he sounds: “Because we are diplomats and not policemen, Tessa. The Moi government is terminally corrupt, you tell me. I never doubted it. The country is dying of AIDS, it’s bankrupt, there is not a corner of it, from tourism to wildlife to education to transport to welfare to communications, that isn’t falling apart from fraud, incompetence and neglect. Well observed. Ministers and officials are diverting lorry-loads of food aid and medical supplies earmarked for starving refugees, sometimes with the connivance of aid agency employees, you say. Ofcourse they are. Expenditure on the country’s health runs at $5 per head per year and that’s before everybody from the top of the line to the bottom has taken his cut. The police routinely mishandle anybody unwise enough to bring these matters to public attention. Also true. You have studied their methods. They use water torture, you say. They soak people, then beat them, which reduces visible marks. You are right. They do. They are not selective. And we do not protest. They also rent out their weapons to friendly murder gangs, to be returned by first light or you don’t get oyur deposit back. The High Commission shares your disgust, but still we do not protest. Why not? Because we are here, mercifully, to represent our country, not theirs….”

“And you have British business interests to represent,” she reminds him playfully.

“That is not a sin, Tessa,” he retorts… “Commerce is not a sin. Trading with emerging countries is not a sin. Trade helps them to emerge, as a matter of fact. It makes reforms possible. The kind of reforms we all want. It brings them into the modern world. It enables us to help them. How can we help a poor country if we’re not rich ourselves?”

“Bullshit.
Specious, unadulterated, pompous Foreign Office bullshit, if you want its full name… Look around you. Trade isn’t making the poor rich. Profits don’t buy reforms. They buy corrupt government officials and Swiss bank accounts.

…So it’s file and forget. Right? The mother of democracies is once more revealed as a lying hypocrite, preaching liberty and human rights for all, except where she hopes to make a buck.”