Although a work of fiction, the premise for the book, which will be released April 3rd by Harcourt, is autobiographical. It calls upon D'Souza's own experiences with the Peace Corps in a Muslim village in the northern section of the West African Ivory Coast (Cote d'lvoire). “It has factual information, but it's a novel that chronicles the daily struggles of an African village during a time of war,” he said. “It's a story about a young white American relief worker in the West African bush who has an affair with a local woman.
Ivory Coast RPCV Tony D'Souza was finally able to find the peace and quiet he needed in the small canyon community of Dunsmuir to write "Whiteman"
News
By Earl Bolender
Updated: Wednesday, January 4, 2006 11:09 AM PST
Caption: Author Tony D’Souza with a friend.
Surrounded daily by gunfire while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer on Africa's Ivory Coast, Tony D'Souza says he was finally able to find the peace and quiet he needed in the small canyon community of Dunsmuir to write his first novel.
D'Souza, an international award winning short story fiction writer, wrote his book, “Whiteman,” in what was once Dunsmuir's old mortuary.
Although a work of fiction, the premise for the book, which will be released April 3rd by Harcourt, is autobiographical. It calls upon D'Souza's own experiences with the Peace Corps in a Muslim village in the northern section of the West African Ivory Coast (Cote d'lvoire).
“It has factual information, but it's a novel that chronicles the daily struggles of an African village during a time of war,” he said. “It's a story about a young white American relief worker in the West African bush who has an affair with a local woman.
“The war will probably be the most interesting part of the book for people,” D'Souza said. “I didn't want to write about that because that's the Africa we all know. Unfortunately, that became my Africa as well.”
Even before he arrived on the Ivory Coast in May 2000, fighting and religious conflicts between Muslims and Christians was intensifying.
D'Souza spent two and a half years teaching the 700 villagers with whom he lived about HIV/AIDS prevention.
“I taught them about such things as how to use of condoms,” he said.
Life in the village was without the comforts of home.
“There were no toilets, no running water, no electricity,” D'Souza said. “I lived in a mud hut and slept on a mat on the floor.”
To the villagers he taught for those two-plus years he was simply known as “white man,” which became the name of his book.
D'Souza was forced to leave the village in September 2002 when the violence escalated to civil war. But, even then, he was reluctant to leave.
D'Souza said he was visiting a friend's village the day miliary troops took control of the northern part of the country. He walked to the nearest city where he and seven other Peace Corps volunteers holed up in a “safe house.”
“We were confined to a cinder-block hut with no electricity, food or running water for seven days,” he said. “It was a week of scrounging for anything we could get to stay alive.
“It was really awful,” D'Souza said. “You could hear the fighting outside. We had to get out.”
After bribing officials in order to get out of the city, the group packed up everything they could, including a small dog, and headed toward safety, bribing guards at various checkpoints along the way.
“At one point, there were some soldiers who were really tense,” D'Souza said. “They wanted more money, which we said we didn't have. One of the soldiers pointed a gun at the dog, saying he would shoot it. I picked the dog up and said, ‘No you won't. You can shoot me first.' It was a scary moment.”
D'Souza and the other volunteers finally made it across the war zone to a hotel in Ghana.
The Peace Corps closed the Ivory Coast program and many of the volunteers headed back to the states. However, D'Souza stayed, joining other volunteers in Madagascar where they reopened an orphanage.
With his money running out, he finally returned to the United States, staying at his mother's home in Sarasota, FL., but found it hard to adjust.
“I have tried, unsuccessfully, to get in touch with the people I worked with for two and a half years,” D'Souza said. “I don't know what's happened to them.”
But, he has heard the stories from other Americans who have come back from the Ivory Coast.
“The stories were awful,” he said. “Massacres, whole areas that were once great villages, are gone, burned to the ground.”
A fellow Ivory Coast volunteer, who was teaching in California, suggested he come to the west coast to “collect myself.”
D'Souza was able to land a job at Shasta College and began looking for a place of his own to live.
“I headed north and found Dunsmuir in July 2003,” he said. “It was the perfect place, where I wanted to live. It provided me a lot of of relief from the stress I was under. It was off the beaten path. I could relax, fish and write my book.”
D'Souza lived in the old mortuary on Dunsmuir's Sacramento Avenue for 18 months, teaching English composition as an adjunct instructor at College of the Siskiyous in Weed and full time at Redding's Shasta College.
“I worked during the day and wrote during the night,” he said.
D'Souza recently returned to Sarasota to spend time with his mother and sister before embarking on his national promotional tour of “Whiteman” in April.
“The 20 city tour will take me to Shasta College where I will do a reading the first week of May,” he said.
After the United States, D'Souza will embark on a tour of Europe to promote his book.
Born and raised in Chicago, IL, D'Souza earned Masters degrees in writing from Hollins University and the University of Notre Dame.
His short stories have been published in magazines and journals such as The New Yorker, Stand, The Literary Review, The Black Warrior Review, Iron Horse among others. Excerpts from his book, Whiteman, have been published in The New Yorker in September and Playboy will publish another excerpt in April.
“I began writing when I was 22,” D'Souza said. “I wanted to write about my travels. When I was 18 I bicycled from Chicago to Alaska. I have also worked in Scotland and Ireland.”
As a writer, D'Souza said one of the hardest things he had to do when he left the Ivory Coast was having to leave behind his writings.
“I walked out of that hut without my notebooks, journals, pictures, without any tangible memories,” he said. “I had entire, completed stories, ones that were ready to send out to publications.”
Although he did find the time to write while in Africa, he didn't have the solitude he really needed like what he found in Dunsmuir.
“I remember there were flies on my eyelashes and the paper would stick to my arm because of the sweat,” D'Souza said. And then there were people sitting on the floor watching be because they had never seen someone do this before.”
More information about Whiteman and the author can be found at www.tonydsouza.com. The excerpt that was published in The New Yorker can be found by visiting newyorker.com. Under fiction, type in Tony D'Sousa or Club Des Amis.
