The Sex Lives of Cannibals

I don’t remember what exactly led me to this book. But I am glad it did. The book is a highly entertaining memoir of a couple of years spent in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, formerly the Gilbert Islands.

Reading about constant power outages, eating dog, no air conditioning, sewage in the water at the beach, and constant heat shouldn’t be nostalgic, but it is for me, since at one time or another I’ve encountered each of these things. For those who haven’t had the luck of living in third-world countries, it might all seem a little horrifying. But Troost makes it seem all funny; adapting to the idea of having the vet spay your pet on the kitchen table, or to the notion that there’s poisonous critters all around you, or that the ground is littered with human remains if you just know where to look, is where a lot of the humor in the book comes from.

The people of Kiribati come across as the sort of cheerful insane that has to be a cultural adaptation to the fairly miserable conditions in which they live (their tropical islands are better described as infertile coral atolls with no surface water). And Troost himself and his girlfriend Sylvia come across as gamely adapting, indeed, almost to the point of no return.

The book does turn serious at times, particularly when discussing the general cluelessness and waste centered around the various well-meaning NGOs and governments, the medical conditions, and one particularly touching chapter on the remnants of World War II strewn about the island. But most of the time, it’s just funny passages you want to read aloud to whoever happens to be standing near you.