Toubab: An American Doctor in West Africa

Dr. David Levine went to The Gambia, a tiny country in West Africa, to do volunteer medical work for a year. He was assigned to the emergency department of the major hospital in the country. What he found in Africa: family, firm friendships, fascinating people and cultures, frustrations, tragedies and triumphs, is the subject of this book. Adopted by a Mandinka tribal family, he lived in the slums of the capitol and in a remote village. He traveled to Sierra Leone, a country healing from the wounds of a ten-year civil war. Traveling to Guinea with a traditional Mandinka musician/historian, he encountered crazed taxi drivers, art, music, ballet, and angry police. He contracted malaria not once, but three times. He was honored as the first white person in living memory to visit a remote village in the hinterlands of Mali. Here is a journal, packed with photos, that will take you on a journey to remote areas of a fascinating part of the world with a depth not often revealed to outsiders.