A Fire on the Mountains: Exploring the Human Spirit from Mexico to Madagascar

Pauline Carey is the author of Magic and What’s in a Name?

During the 1980s, Oakland Ross was a foreign correspondent for The Globe
and Mail. This book about his experiences in both Latin America and
Africa takes the reader to places of danger, such as El Salvador; to
places of despair, such as Sudan; to places of wonder, such as the
rainforest in Madagascar where Ross sighted the rare golden bamboo lemur
calmly eating lunch.

Ross does more than spin a good yarn with clarity and humor. He tells
how countries work and why they don’t work. He tells how cans of beer
are a form of currency in Angola, and why Europe bears much of the
responsibility for the turmoil in Africa today. He tells us that
guerrilla warfare is a lot like the weather—“one day sunny, next day
wham.”

Not all was violence and distress. Ross took part in a voodoo ceremony
in Haiti, met Castro in Cuba, had an amusing exchange with the police
chief of Mexico City, and went out on patrol with the Bolivian navy—in
a country that has no coastline.

There is a lot of information in these pages: an index would have been
helpful. The reading itself is a pleasure, though, as the author takes
us on a personal odyssey through some exotic parts of the world and
gives us fascinating insights into the life of a foreign correspondent.