Paul Theroux & The Bread Van Affair
In 1964 Paul Theroux, an outspoken, American, Peace Corps Volunteer in Nyasaland, was declared persona non grata by Dr. Hastings Banda for supporting Yatuta, who was accused of attempting to overthrow the government. Theroux delivered a letter from an exiled opposition leader, David Rubadiri, to Chisiza in Tanzania. He also carried a coded messages from Chisiza to a “Greek fellow” in Blantyre. According to an account by Theroux in Esquire Magazine, when Theroux delivered the message on October 16 to the Greek baker, who was en route to delivering his bread to Ntcheu, the baker “trembled and went pale".” : guessed the Greek baker had been caught, interrogated by the Malawi Criminal Investigation Department about bread van”, and exposed Yatutas whearabouts and Theroux's involvement. Banda told the American ambassador that he had proof Theroux was plotting to kill him, and demanded the volunteer be sent home. He found out later that in his final day, instead of finding bread waiting in a van, Chisiza found Malawi soldiers, who ambushed and killed the revolutionary gunman from Tanzania where he was plotting against Banda. Paul Theroux was thrown out of the Peace Corp for his role in Malawi and is now a renowned novelist.
Read more about this topic: Yatuta Chisiza
Famous quotes containing the words paul theroux, theroux, bread, van and/or affair:
““Mustn’t grumble” was the most English of expressions. English patience was mingled inertia and despair. What was the use? But Americans did nothing but grumble! Americans also boasted. “I do some pretty incredible things” was not an English expression. “I’m fairly keen” was not American. Americans were showoffs—it was part of our innocence—we often fell on our faces; the English seldom showed off, so they seldom looked like fools.”
—Paul Theroux (b. 1941)
“It was strange: two personalities coming together can create a third, with each being different, yet together making up one they are surprised at separately.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“Our fathers wrung their bread from stocks and stones
And fenced their gardens with the Redman’s bones;”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“English general and singular terms, identity, quantification, and the whole bag of ontological tricks may be correlated with elements of the native language in any of various mutually incompatible ways, each compatible with all possible linguistic data, and none preferable to another save as favored by a rationalization of the native language that is simple and natural to us.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,—these eat up the hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)