Quotes from Kenneth Cain

For us, Cambodia was an election amid minor eruptions of political violence from a decrepit Khmer Rouge, just dangerous enough to add an edge to the otherwise bacchanalian proceedings. We thought Somalia would be similarly exultant, but instead we're inserted directly into combat. This is a hot war. It's hard to make peace in a society of nomadic warriors who like to fight, and twenty thousand UN and U.S. soldiers are failing.

The lake was part of one of those insane irrigation schemes leading nowhere, built by forced labor under the Khmer Rouge. Judging by the height of the dam, a lot of Cambodians must have died during the construction.

But this time I don't care. I'm here for six months to make my money and then she can fuck off. No way am I going to take any more abuse or give any extra effort to my work. As a matter of fact, I'm going to be a bad employee. I'm going to relish being one of those workers who lingers at the watercooler and disappears just when you need them. Bad idea for her to start out on the wrong foot with me.

When the French were here, they began cutting down the trees. Haiti's dictators finished the job, leaving the topsoil to run into the ocean. All that splendid mahogany furniture in Paris salons and this is the result: a bald brown island with a muddy coast.

Welcome to Haiti, Doctor. We need people like you here.' If you need people like me, it's because of people like you.

I push through the seething crowd to the UN car. The driver takes me past the slums by the harbor, up the hill to the lush suburbs where the rich, light-skinned Haitians live, far above poverty.

An American Special Forces guy greets me at the airport. If you liked Beirut, he says, you're gonna love Mogadishu. I only half understand the reference and the implication. There's so much fighting in the city today, he says, that we have to shuttle incoming UN staff from the airport to the office compound via Black Hawk helicopter. Jump on, son, welcome to Somalia.

hate Nairobi. It's dreary and chilly and always rains, and the high crime rate doesn't help. They'll pull a gold chain right off your neck in broad daylight and there's nothing anyone can do. The cops are more corrupt than the thieves. We call it Nairobbery.

This is a UN bus?' I ask. One of the Somali guys with the guns comes up behind me. As I stand there in the aisle, ready to punch the silent fat guy in the head, the Somali gunman, nodding and smiling, says to me, 'Yeah, UN, UN.' 'Three kids armed with AK-47s, that's some way to greet people,' I tell the fat guy. 'Yeah,' he says, 'welcome to Mogadishu.

I'm not ready to let the youthful part of myself go yet. If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill the part of yourself that is naive and romantic and idealistic - the part of you that you treasure most - to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity intact?

The problem is that no matter how good your intentions, eventually you want to kill someone yourself.

I was hell-bent on being an effective humanitarian in Cambodia and Somalia. But a naïve fog is finally lifting. Revealed is a train wreck of illusions, the depravity of someone else's war, the futility of a competence stillborn there. To understand this you have to become this.

Iwent to school with African-American girls during my entire adolescence in Michigan and never noticed them as potential girlfriends, never even wanted to meet them. How did that happen? I'm nine thousand miles from home and a pernicious wall of segregation I never noticed in high school suddenly materialises. A young man should travel.

Israelis are a mix of North African, Levantine, and Eastern European, which inflames the politics but does amazing things for the women.

If blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs.

That's my lesson in courage from Cambodia. The larger the threat, the more profound the doubts, the deeper you have to dig to find faith and conquer your fears.

But she also taught me that a woman should be prepared to walk away and take care of herself. I can do that now. I've discovered what had been missing in my life and can never go back. My role in the success of the election is small but I've been a part of something huge.

Radio messages report rampant rumors of Khmer Rouge attacks. There is a curfew imposed at dusk. Every corner along the main road is occupied by tanks and armored personnel carriers, soldiers everywhere. The road to Vietnam is crawling with military, and everyone is nervous. But rather than being afraid to go outside, I find it thrilling. I've stepped into a TV show and any misadventure can be undone with a flick of the remote.

I'm bored with the routine of a late breakfast of mangos and toast, a long day lying hot and sweaty under a palm tree, and an evening of 'African cultural dance' staged for the tourists by disenchanted locals, followed by a nightly poolside barbecue of big hunks of dead zebra and antelope. This is the Hotel Intercontinental's idea of the African coastal experience. I have to get into town.

walk out to the middle of the road and look both ways, trying to determine in which direction town might be. To the left, nothing but dry fields. To the right, the same. No shade, no life. Just the blazing Kenyan sun in front, and behind me, at the hotel, a cruel pantomime of Africa played out in blackface, replete with rich, tanned Euro-travelers demanding afternoon cocktails from illiterate Kenyan waiters in bow ties and white jackets.

Then I think, what the hell, a flight from Newark to Jamaica takes as long as the walk to this village did, so yeah, I do live near Jamaica. Their eyes light up with excitement. One of them runs out and returns minutes later with a cassette tape. It turns out that James is the only one in the commune who owns a cassette player and his friend is the only one to own a tape, and it's Bob Marley's Legend.

But what does a woman expect for her money? Why do we need to first be made to feel comfortable, flirted with, seduced? Why do we need to create the false sense of emotional ties? Why couldn't we just say, okay, that cave over there, we go in, we fuck, hand over some money, and go on with our lives? Why do I feel so guilty? The feeling that I have used and kicked to the curb another human being won't leave me.

At daybreak on the first day, thousands of Cambodians are already calmly waiting outside my polling station. They squat on the ground, silent and patient. We didn't expect this at all. We thought they would fail to understand how democracy works. We thought they would be afraid of the Khmer Rouge. We thought they would passively accept their fate. We were wrong.

The UN Human Rights office was once the Soviet Cultural Center, but few Cambodians ever went in there. They were too afraid of the Soviets to want to learn about their culture.