Book Reviews - "Mean and Lowly Things"

Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science, and Survival in the Congo by Kate Jackson: A friend of mine in Brazzaville told me that her fellow passenger on an Air France flight from Paris to Brazzaville was a herpetologist working in the Republic of Congo. Her name, my friend recalled, was Kate. I googled Kate and immediately found her book Mean and Lowly Things. (The full quote is credited to Aristotle: "To understand the world, we must understand mean and lowly things".) The book opens with her fascination from childhood with creepy crawlies (I would imagine that you would have to be born with this interest rather than develop it as a discipline), moves to her education as a herpetologist and finally, the most interesting, her two research expeditions to the Republic of Congo to locate scientific samples of toads and snakes.

As travel writing, I enjoyed the book, but I will not encourage my potential Central African gorilla safari clients to read this book before signing on to my tour, lest they end up thinking that a scientist and a tour operator approach trips to the Central African jungle the same way. Dr Jackson's accounts of stupefying African bureaucracy are useful preparation for anyone traveling to these parts - I commiserated with her at many points in her narrative - but she was sadly ill prepared for emergencies which might arise in her profession on location deep in a remote rainforest... like venomous snakebite for example. Perhaps a classic case of self - denial - "it is never going to happen to me" - is a necessary prerequisite for herpetologists. Well, as it happens, Kate is bitten lightly, or believes she is bitten (she has so many scratches or her hands that she cannot identify any puncture wounds), and it is only then that she wonders how to go about administering the anti venom she carried with her or what symptoms she might experience. Hel-lo! Shouldn't a herpetologist going off to the jungle know what she should do? Not only her life but that of her Congolese field assistants who are with her might depend on her knowing. Up to this point in the book, I admired Kate's determination and spunk; I had forgiven her for her earlier admission that she had forgotten some pretty important provisions for her months - long scientific fieldwork in the jungle - like tents. But I couldn't look the other way about the snake bite, even if she finally decided to inject the anti‐venom in her stomach and jeez, that must have really hurt.

27-05-2009