Chapter 1. Snippet. Trials Elsewhere.

About a year after my arrival in the Gambia, I was sitting at a bar with a young, wide-eyed intern who stared at me while I told stories about how my friends and I ended up in a tribal court upcountry. When I finished, she paused for a breath and said, 'Wow, I hope I have an adventure like that while I’m here.'

'Oh, that’s easy. Just do something stupid.' I guess that’s the essence of it: do something stupid. Don’t all adventures or at least interesting stories start that way? They sure don’t start due to the motive power of “good clean living.” Carrying the Ring into Mordor wasn’t calculated to increase Frodo’s “health and wellness.” Heroes of the stage and screen have higher causes — or at least coercion — forcing them to do asinine things: love, blackmail, God and country, whatever. There’s always some cause, some purpose or power that allows us, the viewers, to forgive the hero for making what’s really just a jackass move.

I had no lofty reason, no higher cause. My only defence for agreeing in three seconds to quit my job, strap myself to an airplane and hurtle myself across the Atlantic to a country I’d never heard of, for an organization I hardly knew of, comes down to the fact that I was tired and feeling a bit daffy.

Trials Elsewhere: Stories of life and Development in West Africa