Book Report #146 - The Worst Date Ever or How It Took A Comedy Writer To Expose Africa's Secret War

The Worst Date Ever or How It Took A Comedy Writer To Expose Africa's Secret War by Jane Bussman

A British woman who wrote garbage columns on celebrities while hating Hollywood (I was about to say "Hollywood culture" but that's too generous) decided to make a change, and while reading Vanity Fair got a crush on a fetching American human rights activist (that's not generous enough) and followed him to Africa. Except he left Africa and said he'd be right back but he got busy and she was in Uganda on her own.

She was writing an article for the Sunday Times on the what was going down, and had to breeze by a remote school to volunteer teach. The whole thing was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants affair, and had allusions to celebrities throughout. How unnerving it was to read must have been a taste of how unnerving it was to actually have gone through it. Huge props to Jane.

In her nosing around, and in between her camera, computer and notebook being stolen, Jane uncovered that the bastard child army guy Kony actually was asking for peace talks and it was the very Ugandan government that was sabotaging them. Furthermore, it was to the selfish Ugandan government's benefit to force 1.6 million people out of their homes and into camps under the guise of security, but instead to take advantage of them and brutalize them. It wasn't to protect them from Kony at all.

The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and meanwhile other countries turn their head and let it go on. It's maddening and sickening and revolting and...let this sentence run in the background because it needs to go on for some time.

Jane discovered that the NGOs are actually unwittingly offsetting the corrupt government's budget by providing aid. Of course, the aid is necessary. It's too bad the system in which it's being delivered is such a colossal mess.

General consensus: Highly readable. Hugely shocking. Vital message (about Uganda, of course, but there's also some stuff about Hollywood that will surprise). Suggest you read it, and get back to me.