Remembering My Childhood On The Continent Of Afric

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Remembering My Childhood on the Continent of Africa Summary This story is an excellent example of comparing and contrasting. It is about the childhood of David Sedaris, award winning author born in New York and raised in North Carolina. The story is about him comparing his life to his significant other Hugh. David compares his childhood in North Carolina to Hugh’s childhood in Africa. He even compares his collie and cat to Hugh’s 2 horses and pet monkeys. Throughout the story he compares how they do the same activities, but the way the activities play out are way different. Their lives were different in so many ways, yet in a way eerily similar. Hugh has went through things no kids should have to, from witnessing a dead man hanging from a light pole after a trip to the theatre or a pig assassinated on a class field trip. These are things that most adults couldn’t handle let alone a young pre-teenager. The story starts out with a field trip to an Ethiopian slaughterhouse. Who with a sane mind would send a bus full of 11 year olds to a slaughterhouse? The trip didn’t end on a happy note either. One of the slaughterhouse’s owners put the pistol to a little baby piglet’s head and shot him execution style. Such an experience a little 11 year old’s mind can’t comprehend. To watch such an innocent little baby get shot in such a manner has to be traumatic. For some reason these experiences makes David jealous. Maybe because us as a people always want what we don’t have, that when we have it we all of a sudden it in undesirable. He compares Hugh’s slaughterhouse experience to the lackluster field trips he had as a young boy. Of course the more interesting trip will take place in Africa. Hugh got to travel all over the world due to the fact that his father was a career officer for the US State Department. Hugh has lived in many exotic places, from Ethiopia to the

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