A review by therealnani
The Village of Waiting by George Packer

4.0

I withheld a star because I'm mad at George Packer. He disappointed me in the end and the irony is not lost on me. The recurring motif in this memoir is that of the Whites as a false hope in Africa, and this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for our author. But it is easy for me to feel righteous from where I sit, in American comfort with no real concept of what it is like to spend almost two years in a poor West African village, peeling back the layers of the ill effects of European colonialism. As disappointed as I am, I also recognize that I have an unfair expectation of Fo Georgie, that as the story progressed, I made him nobler in my mind than any human probably should be.
This memoir is the most clear, understandable, and practical analysis of the complicated, fraught and dysfunctional relationship between Africans and non-Africans I've read.