The Ringtone and the Drum: Travels in the World's Poorest Countries Paperback – October 16, 2012

Great read. Weston transports the reader to a dynamic region of Africa that gets sparse attention despite a rich history which is intertwined with the cultural development of Europe and the Americas. Weston weaves a wonderfully readable narrative uncovering thick histories and spectacular cultural beauty in a region that has had so much taken from it and made its imprint on all corners of the Atlantic.

Good portrayal of the countries described. Depressing but realistic.

"West Africa is nobody's idea of a dream holiday destination" - so opens The Ringtone and the Drum by Mark Weston; Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso and and Guinea-Bissau are the world's poorest countries. Mark's wife Ebru is persuaded to accompany him on this trip, to a part of the world where you can neither retreat into the comfortable cocoon of a Western hotel chain to get a breather, nor is detachment possible - your physical and psychological distance is stripped away and you are dragged into the pulsating mêlée.Guinea-Bissau is a small, poor, forgotten country where very few tourists or business people come, and this 'Eden' was disrupted by slavery and colonialism, and where nowadays poverty's cruelty permeates everyday life; malaria is still the biggest killer. Touring Guinea-Bissau in a "sept-places" (seven-seater) Peugeot, Mark and Ebru meet all manner of folk, both indigenous and in-comers, who have settled there, from Evangelists who are spreading the word to other Westerners; and there is a tremendous amount of historical information that permeates the text. Details of the drug running that the Colombians specialise in, the trade in shark fins.... as a reader it feels a special experience to have shared in so many encounters.Next stop was Senegal and even getting there involved such hazards: potentially negotiating a no-go area, where decades old rebellion still festers; or taking any of the West African Airlines, most of which are banned from European airspace because of safety issues. Heading on to Dakar, the capital of Senegal, the couple seems to really warm to the city although there was a very scary encounter that Ebru goes on to elucidate below. And I must say, at TF, we were transported to a place that is a "happy blend of Mediterranean France, sub-Saharan Africa and the coastal cities of Morocco and Algeria"....Sierra Leone is again really poor, with one ATM in the whole country, few medical facilities and a capricious world of diamond mining that attracts many of the inhabitants, both native and incomer. Diamonds account for half of Sierra Leone's exports. Did Johnny and Lucy, incomers hoping to make their fortune, ever leave the country with more than they came with, we wonder?And the final country, Burkino Faso is totally land-locked and is beset with tremendous poverty. The mean age is young, and one in three women on average will produce a child every year (compared with Spain where it is one in forty); and it is here that the author is brought low by the condition known as Soudanite, a fearful state of mind brought on, in essence, by the stresses of the culture and by the psychological impact of the way of life in West Africa. In fact Ebru was so concerned at one point, that she hid their penknife in case he became delusional - very frightening to imagine. This condition seems to come about because of a way of life that is so alien to Westerners, the constant harassment, the invasion of personal space, the roaring temperatures that suck the life-blood, compounded by the harmattan wind, and the ever pervading "guilt" that travellers to the area start to feel. As a result the couple decided to shorten the planned 6 month sojourn by a couple of weeks.As a reader of this book, I shamefully admit I first had to look up the countries to see exactly where they were. The author has done a compelling job of bringing this part of the world to life, in all its rawness, interwoven with snippets of historical background and geography, and he has a wonderful style of writing that really flows. All things considered though, I just KNOW that I am a soft traveller and therefore it has been a delight to visit a part of the world, through words and personal experience, that that many of us are ever unlikely to ever visit.

Once upon a time... the earth was divided, very roughly, into three "worlds." The "first" world was the developed countries of the West, which also included Japan and Australasia. The "second" world was the Communist countries, and the "third" covered everything else, from India to Singapore, Chile, Congo et al. The "deck" continues to be reshuffled, there are new winners and, alas, those in decline. New classifications are developed, usually by various academics, in an effort to define this motion. A few countries were (and are) considered so dysfunctional that various labels, from "fourth world" to "failed states" have been applied. They are the "lumpen-proletariat" of countries. Reporters rarely go there, and thus not much is known in the West about them. Mark Weston, and his wife, Ebru, selected three, for extensive visits, utilizing (usually painfully) the local transportation, taking the time to talk with the people that serendipity provided, and continually confronted (also painfully) the grinding poverty and desperations of the lives of the inhabitants. The three countries are Guinea- Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Burkina Faso. And in the process have produced a remarkable and profoundly informative book.For example, how many people outside Guinea-Bissau know that it has not had a functioning electrical power grid for TEN years? Small, gas-powered (when it is available!) generators produce electricity locally, and only intermittently. Weston had done his "homework" before arriving, and weaves the country's history into the narrative of his travels. Amilcar Cabral led the independence struggle against Portugal into the `70's, and was killed in dubious circumstances. Joao Bernardo Vieira, "Nino" ruled the country for 23 of 35 years after independence, was assassinated, and Weston quotes one of the fighters for independence: "his rule was worse than the Portuguese." Guinea-Bissau was pushed into cash crops, like cashews, and suffers the vagaries of the "global economy," usually on the down side. Alcoholism is rampant. Weston tells the tale of "Mame", living on the coastal islands, who had two husbands, numerous children, and is "shell-shocked" (though he does not use that term) as a result. Mainly the only other whites in the country are evangelical missionaries, rightly called "fundamentalists" by Weston, seeking to harvest souls, with their "closed-loop logic." Weston also provides a scathing portrait of the slave trade which very heavily impacted this area, and draws the conclusion that much of today's dysfunctional society is a result. The United Nations has declared the country the world's first "narco-state," since South American drug-runners have developed the country into a convenient way-station to their European markets.The roads and the security situation are so bad that an overland trip to Sierra Leone is ruled out. They backtrack to Senegal, and fly. Once again, Weston provided me much history I did not know. Sierra Leone was founded by the British, as a home for the American slaves who had fought on their side during the American Revolutionary War. For ten years it was racked by civil war, led by Sankoh within the country, and supported by Charles Taylor in neighboring Liberia. It was a war of savagery so severe that British troops eventually intervened and ended it. Diamonds are their natural resource "curse," as the author says. He and his wife visit the "wild East" of the country, and describe one of the diamond operations. Along the way, he talks with a Lebanese businessman, of whom many have been the "engines of commerce" in the region (and naturally are involved in the illicit profits that diamonds can provide). "Juju," that old, proverbial "black magic" is a pervasive power in all these countries, and the most primitive forms and beliefs co-exist within the most Westernized of natives. The author and his wife spent over a month in the capital, Freetown.Finally, there is Burkina Faso, formerly "Upper Volta." Again, the reader is treated to a national history that few are probably aware of... Thomas Sankara, who tried to be, and perhaps was the only African national leader who eschewed personal aggrandizement in the interest of his country. Weston refers to him as a Che Guevera... I thought more of Ho Chi Minh. Sankara was murdered by his best friend, Compaoré...who has ruled, unloved, like the step-father, for 33 years. Weston visits Sankara's unkempt grave. The author also relates the unmitigated savagery of the 1898 "pacification" campaign of Paul Voulet, a true "Kurtz," as in Conrad's  Heart of Darkness .Also woven into the book are the observations of others travelers, journalists and social critics including Frantz Fanon, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Mungo Park, Shiva Naipaul and Graham Greene. The book is well-written, with fresh prose and original observations such as entering a town through "a moat of black plastic bags." Mark Weston is a perceptive and empathetic observer, who prescribes no easy nostrums. Observing the grinding poverty, and being constantly confronted with a completely different frame of reference (like attributing so many events to "juju") does have a personal impact that the author describes, from doubting one's own rationale, Western beliefs to a paranoid episode in Senegal (were the drug-runners from Guinea-Bissau after him?). Eventually Weston succumbs to a form of the "soudanité" a French word used to describe the impact of the harsh physical and human environment on Europeans, and departs Burkina Faso prior to the scheduled time.For my Amazon reviews I have developed a special category for books that are superlative on all "axis" from the writing style to the information conveyed, and are also "must" reads for an educated reader. Such a book is this one. 6-stars.

Recently I have been on a travel book reading splurge, and obviously some of the books have been better than others. As a genre, it has become a bit infested with gimmickry: it is not enough to travel, you must travel on a unicycle or follow some eighteenth century route in a powdered wig. This is a totally honorable exception. Mark Weston seems without ego: he travels through some harsh, desperately poor places in a spirit of pure curiosity, sympathy and patient observation. The historical background details regarding countries like Sierra Leone are quite shocking to those who do not already know them. The Westons' capacity for tolerating discomfort without whining is humane and touching. They never once feel like privileged tourists looking at the local people as if they were an anthropological study: they are always fellow humans, living among people they often warm to and care for. This is a fascinating, touching and deeply humane book.

This ‘branco’ bumped along on the trucks, buses & ferries with Mark & Ebru. I visualised the food on the vendors stalls and breathed in the humid air. I sighed with relief when they found a generator that worked & even enjoyed a glass of Cana with them. The description of the hawkers made me smile, I rolled my eyes at the devout religions, jujus & herbalists. The pain of history and the cruelty of poverty made me flinch!Thanks for letting me jump on board I feel like I have visited Sierra Leone, Guinea Baddau & Burkina Faso, what a journey, I loved it!

This is not the type of book I would ordinarily seek out but was given a copy as I know Mark socially (we play soccer together on a regular basis) For me it was unputdownable! He has a way of educating the reader on a range of topics that is somehow entertaining, well that's perhaps not the right word as this is often harrowing stuff. After reading it I certainly felt I had a better understanding of the complexities of what makes these fascinating countries what they are today. He really gets under the skin of some of our planet's poorest regions and helps you to understand how they got to be like this. As a travel writer he takes you there vividly, his observations are candidly honest (he could have easily left out the very personal struggles and mental anguish that curtailed the trip by a month) and sometimes unbearably funny (check out his thoughts on the West African bus services!) His insights on dealing with 'in your face' poverty on a massive scale and the guilt he felt being a privileged westerner who could get out whenever he chose were well handled. So too were subjects like the evangelical Christian and Muslim clerics' struggle for people's souls with the dark shadow of Ju Ju never too far away. I must admit to being skeptical on the subject of witchcraft (as probably the author was too before his trip) but in the context of the book the reader can see how it can still maintain a hold on people and not just West Africans - at one point Mark himself wonders if he is not the victim of some juju spell! His 'how to' guide for wannabe African dictators/despots would almost be funny if the outcomes weren't so blatantly tragic. He also graciously acknowledges his wife Ebru as the unsung hero of the book, a demonstration I think of the writer's humanity which, by the way pervades this splendid if challenging book.

I knew next to nothing about this part of the world before reading this honest and gripping travelogue. I found Weston's knack for combining personal details with wider political history really engaging - he has a grasp of the big picture without ever making it seem dry or abstract. At times, it reminded me a little of Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia, in its cast of unique, haunting characters - from sad bicycle-riding waiters to pragmatic juju practitioners on market stalls - and vivid physical descriptions that put you right there with the author and his wife - endless, uncomfortable taxi rides, phantom assassins and unbearable, inescapable heat. Highly recommended.

An amazing book, chronicling the author and his wife's journey through West Africa. Full of rich detail, interesting insights and vivid description (the picture he painted of some young boys begging for scraps in a dusty Burkina Faso town left an image in my mind long after I'd closed my Kindle), this book is a must for any travel loversHighly, highly recommended.