Bill Bryson's African Diary - Bill Bryson [15]
As for me and the rest of us in our party, well, we’re very grateful too—grateful to the CARE people in Kenya for showing us around, and to you for your support. And best of all, not once in the week did we get rubbed with dung.
CARE SAYS THANKYOU ...
. . . for buying Bill Bryson’s African Diary. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading it.
This book was made possible through the generosity and hard work of many people—from CARE staff and the Kenyan communities they serve, to the staff of Broadway Books and Transworld Publishers.
And, of course, this book would not have been possible without Bill Bryson, one of the world’s finest travel writers, who withstood a punishing schedule to produce his first book on Africa, the royalties from which he is donating to CARE.
THE FACTS ABOUT POVERTY
Today, nearly half of humanity struggles to survive on less than $2 a day. More than 30 countries are gripped by armed conflict. AIDS threatens to take as many lives as all the wars of the twentieth century. Our world is indeed faced with complex challenges.
Yet every day, CARE sees victories over poverty that are neither captured by global statistics nor covered on the nightly news: A farmer in Malawi who grows enough food to feed his family. A young girl in Afghanistan who becomes the first in her family to attend school. A healthy child who is protected against preventable illnesses such as polio.
While people in poor communities face daunting odds, they also possess the determination and capability to improve their lives and bring us all closer to a world where poverty has been overcome.
CARE
CARE is one of the world’s leading international poverty-fighting organizations. With more than 55 years of experience, CARE understands the depth and scope of poverty. And we have no doubt that something can be done about it. Our integrated programs in more than 60 countries not only provide immediate assistance to families in need, they also work with communities to create long-term solutions to poverty.
We believe that together we can make the world better, more stable and safer for all. We take this goal seriously. So it’s not enough to simply alleviate the symptoms of poverty. CARE works with communities to find the source of the problem and solve it. For good.
MOVING AHEAD WITH CARE
Our efforts to overcome poverty depend on the support of people like you—people who care about the world in which they live. With your help, we can create lasting, positive change in communities around the world.
CARE is an effective and efficient steward of your investment. We direct 90 percent of our expended resources toward an array of poverty-fighting programs. And on average, for every $1 in private support raised, CARE can leverage another $5 in support from public sources.
To learn more about CARE and how to join our efforts to overcome poverty, please visit CARE’s global homepage, www.care.org.
ALSO BY BILL BRYSON
The Lost Continent
Mother Tongue
Neither Here nor There
Made in America
Notes from a Small Island
A Walk in the Woods
I’m a Stranger Here Myself
In a Sunburned Country
Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words
Go to the Next Page to Read Chapter 7 from
Bill Bryson’s At Home
Coming in October 2010
An Excerpt from Bill Bryson’s At Home
THE DRAWING ROOM
I
If you had to summarize it in a sentence, you could say that the history of private life is a history of getting comfortable slowly. Until the eighteenth century, the idea of having comfort at home was so unfamiliar that no word existed for the condition. Comfortable meant merely “capable of being consoled.” Comfort was something you gave to the wounded or distressed. The first person to use the word in its modern sense was the writer Horace Walpole, who remarked in a letter to a friend in 1770 that a certain Mrs. White was looking after him well and making him “as comfortable as is possible.” By the early nineteenth century, everyone was talking about having a comfortable home or enjoying a comfortable living,