Michael Tidwell, a 22-year-old fresh out of college, arrives in Zaire with an unusual mission: to teach men to fish. Inspired by the proverb "give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime," his Peace Corps placement requires him to teach impoverished African farmers the art of fish farming. The obstacles are substantial: the village men have no equipment beyond shovels and wheelbarrows. Each is exhausted by the demands of government mandated cotton farming and the needs of their sprawling families. But the fish farms will bring much-needed income into starving households and bring protein into the diet of malnourished villagers.

The best thing about this book is its candor. Tidwell integrates into this alien African community surprisingly well, but he does not cover up his many cultural faux pas. The lessons he learns about sharing are particularly moving. When his first "client" harvests his fish pond, Tidwell watches in anger and disbelief as the farmer gives more than half his fish to needy relatives. Doesn't this man understand the point of the pond? he wonders. How will people ever rise above poverty if they insist upon giving away the fruits of their labors? But when Tidwell is called stingy by a beggar, one of the most serious insults in the local language, he slowly begins to loosen his hold on material possessions. But, even though much of the book is devoted to Tidwell's growing friendships in the village, he doesn't shy away from chronicling the uglier aspects of his service, including his developing alcohol problem. The final product is a book that minutely charts the rhythms of life in a small collection of African villages. There is nothing journalistic about this work; Tidwell tells us little of Zaire's history and does not use his village as a springboard for analyzing Africa as a whole. That means this isn't a good book for readers who want to learn a lot about the continent, but people who will be satisfied to explore a tiny corner of it great detail will be high satisfied. ( )