{"id":27787,"date":"2021-03-02T12:24:07","date_gmt":"2021-03-02T18:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=27787"},"modified":"2021-03-02T12:24:07","modified_gmt":"2021-03-02T18:24:07","slug":"book-report-a-ginger-on-a-mission-by-lynn-daake-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/02\/book-report-a-ginger-on-a-mission-by-lynn-daake-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <i>A Ginger on a Mission<\/i> by Lynn Daake (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/agingeronamission.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\">I bought this book at an undocumented trip to ABC Books (sometimes, as I mentioned, if I only end up with one or two books, I don&#8217;t make a special Good Book Hunting post for it since the hunting, in those cases, wasn&#8217;t particularly good).  I spotted it in the local author sets, and I asked Mrs. E., the proprietrix, if it was Mama Daake.  We know the Daakes from church, and the younger Mr. Daake, whose children received our boys&#8217; Mega Bloks collection and still receive odd Mega Bloks from time to time when they turn up at Nogglestead, is not married to Lynn.  So I thought it might be his mother, but, no, it&#8217;s his sister or sister-in-law.  So bear that in mind, gentle reader: I know the family, and younger Mr. Daake is very large; although very good natured, I would not want to give him offense by savaging his sister or sister-in-law&#8217;s book.<\/p>\n<p>With that disclaimer out of the way: The book is what it says it is.  The subtitle is <em>My Trip to Egypt<\/em>, so it&#8217;s essentially culled from her diary\/journal of a two week mission trip to Egypt.  Daake is not a professional writer, so really the text is a bit of a cleaned up version of a journal which focuses on the travel aspects of the trip and the siteseeing a bit with only a little description of the mission work (cleaning up a park in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hurghada\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">Hurghada<\/a>).  You get some detail about the work, but a lot more of the time is spent on where the group is going in their non-work time, the souvenirs they seek, what they&#8217;re eating (a lot of Western chain restaurants), and impressions of the city.  Also, a quest for hairbraiding.<\/p>\n<p>So.  It was a fairly quick read, the first thing I finished since <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/22\/mission-accomplished-2\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">finishing the Winter 2021 Reading Challenge<\/a> (this book could have fit into the <em>In a Different Country<\/em> and <em>Memoir<\/em> categories).  It doesn&#8217;t go into a lot of detail, it&#8217;s not particularly spiritual (although it does cite scripture a couple of times).  So it kind of fits into the normal person biographies that I tend to read, but this one is contemporary.<\/p>\n<p>I do wonder, though, how much of mission tripping is mission tourism industry, though.  I mean, they paid money to go to a tourist city on the Red Sea to work half days on a project not directly tied to a sister church&#8211;although they do an activity with a local Coptic church and attend a service or two with them.  They&#8217;re not directly proselytizing but just setting an example.  So whether they&#8217;ve brought anyone to Christ through their example is uncertain&#8211;the author would like to think so, but I&#8217;m from a wee bit more cynical world.<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, it&#8217;s the second book recently I&#8217;ve read set in Egypt (the other being <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/22\/book-report-the-judgment-of-caesar-by-steven-saylor-2004\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>The Judgment of Caesar<\/em><\/a>).  Which might have been why I jumped on it so quickly.<\/p>\n<p>I also flagged a couple of things for comment.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Local Cuisine<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The final dish was a beef dish.  It had beef made three different ways.  One was an interesting site [sic].  They [sic] way that it is made is that the beef is ground into a hamburger consistency and seasoned.  Then it is formed around a shish kabob skewer and grilled.  When it comes off the skewer and served, it looks like a piece of dog dookie with a hole in the middle of it.  I think I was the first one to try it because of its visual appeal, and it actually tasted pretty good.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Strangely, I have recently been thinking of the word <em>dookie<\/em>.  When I was growing up in the projects, it was the slang term of choice for human scat, but it&#8217;s not one that my boys have been exposed to&#8211;certainly, I don&#8217;t tend to use it any more.  Then, I was thinking perhaps it was the word <em>duece<\/em> pronounced incorrectly originally.  Of course, I didn&#8217;t search for it on the Internet, because, c&#8217;mon, man, that will not be good for my appetite ahead of my next meal and for the kinds of ads I would see for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n<p>But sometimes I spend perfectly good brain cycles during the day thinking of things outside of Philosophy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Shared Mall Experience<\/strong><br \/>\nWhile visiting a mall, she notes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>You can even drop your kids off at Magic Galaxy where they can ride a roller coaster, drive bumper cars, or play with over 90 video games while you spend your time shopping.  On the 4th floor there is a little tram where you can drop off your kids to ride the tram while you are shopping.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Although the local mall&#8217;s arcade does not have that many video games, for a while, it did have a little train that would ride around one small segment of the mall.  We used to have our car serviced at the shop by the mall, so I sometimes took my boys up there and we would walk around the mall while we were getting the cars&#8217; oil changed.  So we rode on the train a couple of times during its brief presence at the mall.  Since we were the only ones who rode it that I ever saw, it did not last long.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I&#8217;ve Seen Photos From Other Angles<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Seeing the signs meant, &#8220;yes, we&#8217;re really are going to be able to not only see the pyramids but touch them, and even go inside one&#8221;.  Then, all of a sudden, there they were.  We rounded a corner and the pyramids came into view.  They were majestic and stood high above the city buildings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A lot of photographs make it look like they&#8217;re out in the middle of the desert, but I have seen photos of the pyramids showing them in the middle of the city.<\/p>\n<p>Related:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As we started to drive away from the Sphynx and pyramids, Rafik told us that we would be headed to lunch.  I was expecting to drive into Cairo to the mall, but we didn&#8217;t.  Instead we pulled over right across the street from the pyramids.  We were eating lunch at a KFC\/Pizza Hut in Giza.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Martial Artists Can Relate<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Juju and I bonded over martial arts and kickboxing.  He showed me some of the moves he knew, and then I taught him a few more.  We were having a blast throwing kicks and punches in the middle of the mall while our friends were shopping.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is true in life: When you find out someone studies martial arts, particularly another type, you ask to see something that you can try out on the people in your school.  Or, if you&#8217;re like me, you read a pile of books on it to learn dirty tricks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sounds More and More Like America<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Vanda called Mariette and told us that their block had no power.  Ish!  We all laughed and decided it was an Egyptian sendoff.  We didn&#8217;t have electricity when we left Hurghada, and new we weren&#8217;t going to have electricity as we left Cairo.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Springfield area had rolling blackouts during the winter storms a couple weeks ago.  I have been trying to get the phrase <em>They&#8217;re not going to like the nineteenth century they&#8217;re voting for<\/em>, but it might as well be <em>They&#8217;re not going to like the third world country they&#8217;re voting for<\/em>.  Either works, I suppose.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>At any rate, again, an interesting book.  I enjoyed it and learned something, but it&#8217;s not a professional work, and if you&#8217;re not used to that, you probably won&#8217;t enjoy it as much.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I bought this book at an undocumented trip to ABC Books (sometimes, as I mentioned, if I only end up with one or two books, I don&#8217;t make a special Good Book Hunting post for it since the hunting, in those cases, wasn&#8217;t particularly good). I spotted it in the local author sets, and I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27787"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27789,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27787\/revisions\/27789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}