(Page 188-204)

Kapuscinski wants to write a book defining political terms, but every time he begins something new happens and he has to stop. This reporter had to travel very often to witness all the important events that occurred. The world was changing very fast, and he had to be faster. Anyways, he is able to define various terms: silence, black, spirits, hierarchy, locked up, fortress, state visit, and life. For each one of this words he had an anecdote or a real life situation that defined it perfectly. Silence was the most shocking, I had never realized the fact that when something bad is taking place silence accompanies, specially when talking about a country. "Silence is a signal of unhappiness and, often, a crime" (page 189). The only way to cover up horrible things is by using silence which is hand to hand with repression.

On the other hand, I found the description of spirits very interesting. We had spoken about what a soul is, in English class, and I was very pleased with this new point of view. "The body is only one element in a person's death: full death occurs only after the spirits have been destroyed or expelled..." (page 192). In our discussion we gave more importance to the body than the spirit, this Africans believe we have many spirits and they are more important than the body.

At the end of this chapter, Kapuscinski told us more about how his life goes. He is like a nomad, who has no home, he only travels around the world. He leads a lonely life because he has no time to create a place he can call home. But at the same time he is satisfied with his type of life: first, because he could quite and he doesn't, and second, he is an adventurous man.

The chapter "Boots" talks about the war between Israel and Palestine. Kapuscinski says that every citizen has to participate in a war. "War cannot be a matter for the army alone, because the burden of war is too great and the army itself will not manage to support it" (page 202). The Arabs didn't even know what was going on. They lived their normal daily life while the soldiers were fighting to survive.

The chapter has the name "boots" because Kapuscinski says that the boots the soldiers are wearing say what the soldier went through, for example "Terrible dusty boots- there was heavy fighting." (page 203). I think this is a very interesting observation.

I related Kapuscinski's analysis of this war with our current situation in Colombia. Our soldiers are confronting the guerrilla and they are having a very hard time, meanwhile we live normally and worry about insignificant things. Most of us are not even aware of what is going on and ignore the situation completely. This is very sad because I agree with Kapuscinski when he says there is no way we can win a war if the whole nation is not involved.