Behind The Desk (The Soccer War pg 135-151)

The life of Kapuscinski while being a journalist was a risky but a very active one. Kapuscinski, had the opportunity to presence real conflicts and real countries at wars. I believe he was a very brave person, and therefore he was a very good journalist. I thought about the feelings he described while passing through the roablocks, and I concluded that if I were in that position I would not have the guts to stay still and I would definitely show a lot of weakness. I enjoyed reading the way he described his situations while being on the hands of the UPGA. "The Irony of the situation was that I would die out of responsibility for colonialism; I would die in expiation of the slave merchants; I would die to atone for the white planter's whip; I would die because Lady Lugard had orderes them to carry her in a litter." This quoation is a perfect explanation of what was crossing Kapuscinski's mind, he perfectly describes the situation, and what the UPGA was doing with him and his Peugeot.

On the other hand, I found it very interesting that Kapuscinski could not work behing a desk. I never thought about offices and desks as an influence on who you are, but after reading Kapuscinski's descriptions I realized, desks do make a lot of differences in you life. It is very true that a small desk demonstrates you have a low paying job, while a big fancy desk shows you have an important job in whatever job you work on. I found it very special that Kapuscinski gets so desperate in his desk because this demonstrates how he has the strength to become a real journalist. I mean a real journalist by a person who lives each moment he is about to document, and not a someone who sits all day long waiting for information to come in. "When my editor became convinced that all his efforts had been in vain and that there was no way to get me doing office work, he decided to do something with me. It would be best if I went somewhere." This quotation resumes everything I just talked about, and how he proves to his boss what job he was born to do.