Theroux's prose painting of two African missionaries

[Dennis Lewis]

In reading "Dark Star Safari," Paul Theroux's account of his overland
trek across East Africa, I particularly liked this observation:

[Theroux, riding the train from Mwanza to Dar es Salaam, has picked up
a beer in the dining car and is headed back to his compartment.]

... On the way I spotted two aliens, the only other ones on the train.
They were pale and blotchy and sunburned, a young man and woman,
probably in their twenties, though their bulk made them seem older.
They were, it turned out, the sort of podgy, cookie-munching, Christ-
bitten evangelists who pop up in places like Mwanza with nothing but a
Bible and a rucksuck and the requisite provisions: cookies and cake
and a hymn book in Swahili.

I discovered this because the train windows were open for any
available breeze, and once when the train slowed down I heard my name:
Paul.

Good God, had they seen me? Were they going to mention that their
parents liked my books and what an amazing coincidence it was that
they were meeting me on a train?

No, for the man was saying, in a pedantic way, his mouth filled with
cookies, "Paul tells us in Galatians ..."

--------------------
Theroux, Paul. "Dark Star Safari." (c) 2003, Houghton Mifflin Company,
Boston and New York, p. 243.