At the start of the third leg of The Amazing Race 12 we saw Ronald and Christina squeezed into a tiny Durgerdam hotel room, video floodlights cascading. And some guy in a casual sport coat was squatting on the dingy floor speaking to Ron about "pushing the tissue back into your abdomen.." obviously prescribing services for Ron's bothersome hernia.

By David W. Taylor (Email The Author)
Reality Reel Media
12.02.07

This physician certainly didn't appear of the same caliber as the crack medical rescue teams they launch on Survivor. You know, those beefy Aussies. For all we know this guy could have been the hotel's Night Auditor. Or the Front Desk Clerk. I was nervous for ole Ron.

But I needn't have been. Ron "The Mouth" and Christina have slowly moved from a comical sideshow duo into the top few teams careening into Phil at the Pitstop. While we hear, supposedly, Ron complaining about his strained groin — more lovely voiceover edits (ugh!) — nothing seems to be stopping him. Not even the squalor of the "cradle of civilization."

And now that we're back in Africa among the mountains of rubbish and filth piled freely on public thoroughfares; hobnobbing with thieving taxi drivers, whiffing putrid body odor, eyeing the ubiquitous cattle herd roaming city streets like Rome's cats, and the like, we have the splendid juxtaposition of Kynt & Vyxsin — the relics of the decadent excesses of a thriving Western Culture — affected deeply by a smiling people roiling in flyblown poverty.

Vyxsin wept as she surveyed the landscape: the irony being that the very cultural value system that allows her to be what she is does not necessarily breed the type of simple, heartfelt gallantry she now witnesses, and admires. She is buoyed by people who are simply surviving. Vyxsin, and Kynt, on the other hand, wake up each morning and think not about gracefully overcoming the Human Toil but rather fixate on becoming outlandish characters in a fantasy mind game. In a way this preoccupation with a dazzling self is its own squalor.

Africa, and Burkina Faso, proved a threshing floor for another team, Shana & Jennifer, who were relegated to being the notorious Freddy & Kendra from Season Six, whom — if you forget — turned up their model noses at the third world devastation they witnessed. Kendra especially politically incorrect: commented on the over abundance of "breeding." Though these two won the Race and one million dollars the specter of their "insensitivity" nearly overshadowed their efforts.

So here were Shana & Jennifer on a train to Bingo and holding their noses as the local people strode past them..."What's the perfume you're wearing? It's new?" teases Shana. And, "Hey is that a new outfit?" she barks, glancing at the local bedraggled denizens. Jennifer muses, "It's the Salon d'Afrique." Both gals had their faces torqued in dismay. Shana concluded, "Being on that train it's just beyond dirty...there was just trash piled up; nothing is clean; I could not live this way..."