Cows, Chars and Beautiful People: The Itinerant Ecologist Series (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9782959028373)

A return to France after a further three years of living and working in Senegal sees the Itinerant Ecologist (Malcolm) and his ever patient wife (Véronique) decide to take several months' sabbatical to relax and catch their breaths in the beautiful French region of the Bugey. But the gods of travel never rest and, within a few months, Malcolm is preparing for a work mission to a new continent and, for him, the new country of Bangladesh. His initial ten-day input turns into work for an entire decade initially running the monitoring and research activities and then stepping into the vacant team leader role at the UK's flagship project: the Chars Livelihoods Programme.

It is in Bangladesh that our couple discovers just what poverty means. It is also where they learn how hard people are prepared to work to climb out of poverty, if only they can be given the opportunity. They discover the beauty of the human spirit even in such a dire situation as life on the moving sands of the Jamuna River chars (temporary islands).

As the fourth and concluding volume in the Itinerant Ecologist series, follow our engaging couple as they build a new life together in Dhaka (where workers hang off rooftops with only a rope around their waist) and Bogra (where they occupy 'the Castle of the North'). Come with Malcolm as he strives with his multidisciplinary team to help some two million people obtain a better life and climb slowly but surely out of poverty. While work activities predominate their lives, nature is never far away with golden jackals in the roadside grass, dolphins in the rivers and monster frogs in the puddles.

The couple's love of France is always bubbling in the background as they haggle over and eventually purchase their dream home of Coeur de Rose in the tiny village of Rix, thus opening a new chapter in their lives as B&B hosts.

Malcolm's humour seems to pop into almost every sentence he writes and it should be clear to all his readers that he simply adores writing.