Oh Uganda: An Intrepid Volunteer’s Perspective by Karen L. Smith
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Non-Fiction, Contemporary
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

In this book, the author recounts her experiences as a volunteer with VSO in Uganda. Using tongue-in-cheek humour and a Canadian’s viewpoint of the Ugandan culture she tells the stories of her daily observations and interactions with Africans.Having agreed to live and work in the bustling city of Kampala, Karen finds herself being sent to tough it out in rural Uganda within weeks of her arrival. There she is forced to live without electricity, running water, a working knowledge of the local Lusoga language or other overseas volunteers for support. Although she has some success at integrating, Karen never fails to find the Ugandan ways amusing, exasperating and even bizarre. Karen describes her everyday encounters ranging from chickens and servants at home to managing an educational project and installing boreholes in the community. Then just when Karen is ready to wrap up her volunteer stint, things take a surprising turn.

Changing the world is much harder than it looks.

Ms. Smith had a marvelous sense of humor that shone through brightly in her memoir. I chuckled as I read about the creative solutions she came up with for all sorts of ordinary problems in Uganda, from keeping most of the bugs out of her bed to asking for directions in an unfamiliar town when her understanding of languages like Lugandan wasn’t good and the people she was talking to knew little to no English. Sometimes the best thing to do in life is to find the funny side of frustrating or unexpected events, and the author definitely excelled at that here.

I did find myself wishing that more time had been spent exploring what the people living in Uganda who knew the author thought of her as a person. There were some delightful passages that shared some of their assumptions such as the idea that all white people and all Canadians are wealthy. These were such eye-opening scenes, and they provided a nice framing for the culture shock that Ms. Smith often felt when she was living in Uganda. If they had occurred more often, I would have happily gone for a full five-star rating.

Some of my favorite scenes were the ones that explored the many cultural differences between Uganda and Canada. Ms. Smith arrived in Kampala with assumptions about everything from how animals should be treated to what the definition of a good teacher should be. Of course, the people already living in Uganda had their own opinions on those topics, too. It amused me to see how everyone responded to being exposed to other ways of looking at the world, especially when the two cultures had wildly different ideas about the same topic. There is so much to be said for expanding one’s horizons and learning about how other people live.

Oh Uganda: An Intrepid Volunteer’s Perspective was a humorous and educational read.

Home Boys by Seth C. Kadish
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Non-Fiction, Contemporary
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

In the year 2000, new therapist Seth C. Kadish is assigned a caseload of Probation boys at a Southern California group home. It’s trial and error, with moments of insight and learning, as Seth attempts to connect with the challenging teens – violent, manipulative Timothy who loves his mother and sister … Ramon, a bouncing butterball of energy and mayhem … odd Ryan who states a desire to be the first man buried on the moon … rapper Joey, jokester Enrique, sweet-natured Manuel … wanna-be gangster Antonio whose father is in the Mexican Mafia … and Rodney, angry and mistrustful, whose sole aim in life is to get back to his drug-addicted mother.

The generational cycle of trauma and abuse can be broken, but nothing in life is guaranteed.

One of my favorite aspects of this book had to do with how many questions I was left holding by the end of it. That may sound unusual but let me explain. I’d expect a work of fiction to resolve most of the conflicts in it, but that’s not how real life works. It felt utterly right to meet these individuals but not necessarily get to know if they lived happily ever after in the years that followed after the author moved on to other work. While I would love to read a sequel that gave updates, I was also satisfied with the idea that not everything in life can be tied up neatly in the end. Sometimes simply meeting interesting people is more than enough.

I wish more time had been spent diving into the backstories of specific residents of Cal Home. Every time it did happen, I was fascinated by the experiences these kids had and how trauma can be passed down from one generation to the next so easily if there’s a tragedy or if the adults in question don’t seek help for their troubles. It was a little odd to compare those scenes to the ones that fleetingly mentioned residents but never gave the audience a chance to get to know them on a deeper level. I think I would have preferred to only be introduced to residents who were going to share their stories.

There was so much compassion woven into this memoir. All of the kids Mr. Kadish worked with had experienced traumatic events, from being the victim of various forms of abuse to losing parents or parent figures at tender ages to seeing other people die from sudden acts of violence. It was impressive to me to see how the author shared examples of the suffering his clients experienced without broaching confidentiality or making excuses for the things they did that lead them to being sent to Cal Home or juvenile detention. Not only did he give wonderfully nuanced accounts of their pasts, but he also made it all seem so effortless even when he had very mixed feelings about particular kids on his caseload.

Home Boys was an engrossing read.