A few cool quotes/thoughts from Theroux's book:

Theroux describes an experience in the desert region of Sudan north of Khartoum where he comes upon a group of men sitting at a well waiting for the water to be pulled up by a donkey tied to a rope. After they made their dislike for both Bush and Clinton known, they said to Theroux, "Tell Bush we want a pump!" Theroux's written response is perfect: "No, I don't think so: a pump would need gasoline, spare parts, regular maintenance. Ultimately, the contraption would fail them. They were better off hauling water the ancient way, with donkey's, goatskin pails, and goatsin water containers that when filled looked like little fat goat corpses." This response is appropriate as too often the Western aid that is given does little good. We too often try to bring the people up to our standards rather than just providing the necessities for survival that the people can use to better their lives. This is where I like what Sachs wrote in "End of Poverty," where he said that our job (I don't like this term "job" as it could be inferred that this is our mandate, which is not at all true) in the West is not to make them rich, but rather simply to help them rise to the first rung of the economic ladder, where 99% of their time and resources will not be dedicated solely to survival, and then they will be able to continue upward from there. I like that.

Upon arrival in Khartoum Theroux describes the men he sees at his hotel, all international aid workers. He writes, "They were all aid experts, and they ranged from selfless idealists to the laziest boondogglers cashing in on a crisis. In an earlier time they would have been businessmen or soldiers or visiting politicians or academics. But this was the era of charity in Africa, where the business of philanthopy was paramount, studies as closed as the coffee harvest or a hydroelectric project. Now a complex infrastructure was devoted to what had become ineradicable miseries: famine, displacement, poverty, illiteracy, AIDS, the ravages of war. Name and African problem and an agency or a charity existed to deal with it. But that did not mean a solution was produced. Charities and aid programs seemed to turn African problems into permanent conditions that were bigger and messier."

Finally, he chimes in on the topic of tipping, I share his disdain: "Tipping confounds me because it is not a reward but a travel tax, one of many, one of the more insulting. No one is spared. It does not matter that you are paying thousands to stay in the presidential suite in the best hotel: the uniformed man seeing you to the elevator, inquiring about your trip, giving you the weather report, and carrying your bags to the suite expects money for this unasked-for attention...It is bad enough th at people expect something extra for just doing their jobs; it is a more dismal thought that every smile has a price."