African Reading Challange - What is the what

What is the What
by Dave Eggers

I almost stopped reading at page 50, then again at page 100. I hated the book at page 200. It was a great read, but the story was just so horrible. Each time I decided I wouldn’t read anymore, I read more, and in the end I really like it.

It is the story of Valentino Achak Deng, he is a refugee from southern Sudan, the ethnic conflict and problems that happened before what are hearing in Darfur. In the mid-1980s he flees his village becoming one of the “lost-boys.” His journey takes him into Ethiopia, before the refugees are thrown out, then back into Sudan, and finally he ends up in a the semi-permanent refugee camp in Kenya. He dodges malaria carrying mosquitoes, gun carrying soldiers and rebels, camel riding murahaleen (militias), crocodiles that eat people and 4000 other children on the move.

I think the part I found so hard, is the same thing that made the book so good, Valentino Achak Deng’s problems didn’t end when he got to America.

The story is gripping and heartbreaking, it is filled with adventures, tragedy, triumph, and suspense. And no one knows what is the what although several times Deng comes close.

“You didn’t tell us the answer: What is the what?
My father shrugged. “We don’t know. No one knows.”