There are those among us who are settled, comfortable in their careers, content with their families. Their days are structured, familiar, routine, each ones passing inching them closer to financial security and the freedom of retirement. And then there's Maarten Troost, a Dutch-born, Canadian-raised, American-educated wanderer who, restless and aimless in the wake of graduating from college, enthusiastically follows his girlfriend, Sylvia, to Kiribati, a nation of 32 atolls sprawled out on the equatorial Pacific. What he finds there is both fascinating and terrifying.
Though Sylvia has a job in development work for the island nation, Mr. Troost finds himself an unemployed observer of one of the hottest, inhabitable places on Earth. Devoid of anything that the West would call infrastructure, restaurants, airplanes, malls, the Kiribati he encounters is impoverished, tribal, notionally independent and largely content with itself and its lot. Not that this means he is accepted by the locals who, when they take notice of him at all, seem bemused by his revulsion to certain of their practices. Of course they relieve themselves in the ocean; there are no bathrooms. Oh, and if you're Troost and you happen to be swimming in said ocean at the time, well, just make sure you're not down-current.
From the dogs that devour one another for food to the gigantic, tropical bugs that infest every imaginable nook and cranny, Mr. Troost's unsparing descriptions of the challenges of adapting to Kiribati life are both entertaining and laugh-out-loud hilarious. But while a thick sheen of humor glosses this memoir of life among a society alien to Westerners, there's also an intellectual gravitas here that elevates this piece out of simple escapism. His criticism of the U.S.'s ruthless exploitation of Pacific islands, using them for nuclear tests and as dumping grounds for radioactive waste, is pointed, as is the scorn he directs at the administrations of island nations like Nauru which have been all-too-eager to sell off the vitality of their islands in exchange for international cash which they squander. But the most enduring lesson here concerns the incredible adaptability of human beings who can not only persist in vastly different climates, they can adjust to polar-opposite lifestyles. Nothing that we have is necessary. Nothing that we have is essential. We just think of our toys, our civilization, that way because we are imbedded in it. Remove us from it and we do not wither. We change and, in doing so, we discover a great deal about ourselves.
Wonderful, droll, and vivacious work. (4/5 Stars)
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