THE PONDS OF KALAMBAYI: An African Sojourn...

THE PONDS OF KALAMBAYI: An African Sojourn by Mike Tidwell (Lyons & Burford: $16.95; 276 pp.). Tidwell spent two years in Kalambayi, a remote region of Zaire, as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching fish farming to villagers suffering from a lack of protein. His journal reveals a naive, well-intentioned young man undergoing severe cultural shock as he encounters poverty, malnutrition, disease and death. With only a few shovels and wheelbarrows available, digging even a small pond required backbreaking labor, and the natives, exploited by corrupt officials and businessmen, were suspicious of his motives. Tidwell helped to alleviate the suffering of the people he was sent to aid, but he also learned that the fight against overpopulation, disease and hunger in the Third World is even more daunting than it appears.