If You Have a Wife Bring Her With You

Paul Woods spent 1972 as a VSO teacher of English at a government secondary school in Kaltungo, in north-east Nigeria. Based on letters he wrote, interspersed with flashbacks to the days of the early missionaries in Kaltungo and fast-forwarding to the present day, he describes the trials and tribulations of a volunteer teacher, including linguistic and cultural misunderstandings, a farcical public execution, tribal warfare at a school football match, supervising exams, catching cheats and preparing lesson plans retrospectively for a government inspection. Books ordered for the school library take forever to arrive. He also highlights the difficulties of life in a remote village, contending with no water and electricity, fighting off poisonous snakes, buying milk from nomadic Fulani tribespeople, and choosing between goat and dog meat in the local market. A grand tour of West Africa by motorbike takes him via the former territory of breakaway Biafria as far as Bolgatanga in northern Ghana.