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Hi,

My name is Jim Parker and I am the author of ‘The Dung Beetle Diaries’. Understandably I suppose, I’ve been asked many times as to the origins of the title. I spent last year in southern Sudan serving as a United Nations military observer (UNMO), while wearing a Canadian uniform. You might imagine the many esoteric companions, human and otherwise, that were part of that African environment. And yes, one of the most populous and exotic – to this small town Canadian boy – was the dung beetle. Over time and I as watched them fling themselves into the air and against our buildings, as well as roll their huge dung balls aimlessly (To me) and endlessly around, I started to feel a certain empathy for and understanding of these butt-ugly creatures.

What if one were to consider their golf and baseball-sized dung balls to be Mother Earth? And what if their seemingly aimless pushing of these orbs of pooh was similar to humankind’s mindless treatment of Mom Earth? Of course you can make many more analogies out of the dung, un-aerodynamic bodies, flinging, eating dung, mother laying eggs in dung, Dad pushing Mom around in the dung ball . . . . you get the idea. So over a glass of cheap scotch, it came to me! I saw the whole world in all of its confusion, sadness, glory and hopelessness in those roving balls of dung! “How apt”, I thought. I have to travel to the other side of the world and a sad, neglected part of the world at that, in order to find the philosophical analogy of life.

So, that is the history of the spawning of The Dung Beetle Diaries. I will endeavour to make them worth your time to read, with a unique view of the world tainted and tempered with a mixture of humour, cynicism and introspection.

Read my blogs to become a member of the ‘Dung Beetle Diarists’. That’s right, become a Dung Beetle First Class . . . .

Cheers

Jim