I myself took to pcp because (a) I saw in it a sort of "ethnography of
the mind" which coupled prettily with the ethnographies of groups I deal
with as an anthropologist, (b) it gave me a scholarly excuse to say things
I had been thinking for a long time before I had heard the name Kelly, and
(c) it seemed to have a "she'll be right" inclusiveness for all sorts of
odd ideas - "in its house were many mansions" like. I have since kept
finding you a pretty easy-going lot.
Of course I am only a tourist in pcp. Perhaps beneath the locals'
surface friendliness and happy ways lurk fiendish voodoo rituals and
endemic pestilences and a presidential guard most brutal and repressive.
On the other hand there are so many other tourists on pcp island that I
often wonder what the real natives actually look like. Maybe some of those
people in bright cottons doing those fun-looking dances are tourists too,
'going native' with no more idea of what the actual natives look like than
I have. I do hope Bill Chambers merely got in with the wrong tour-group
and hasn't really got your native customs right. If he has, let me know so
I can run and hide.
Harry Oxley
Harry Oxley
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