"Certain volunteers seem to go to extreme lengths to prove Conrad's thesis that a white man's soul is corrupted by the tropics. They arrive in an exotic culture having read Magnum and Conrad and act as though they had been programmed to disintegrate. I have seen a few volunteers shortly before they resign from the organisation with the same muddy complexion as the fellow who sits at the next table, those same dazed, sunken, and inward-looking eyes, that same careless and rather disgraceful way of dressing...
... that type who has been tossed and twisted in another culture that he can't make sense of, a man at that certain point in his cultural confrontation just before he throws up his hands in surrender and flees."
(Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey On Two Rivers)
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