The title of John Stackhouse’s book on overseas development is an awkward one. His work is awkward, too: an uneasy mix of travel memoir, critique of global economic policies, and benevolent Western look at the curious customs of the Third World’s poor.

Stackhouse spent the 1990s travelling through some 40 countries as the Globe and Mail’s development writer, exploring successes and failures in the so-called developing countries of Africa and Asia. His experiences form the background for this book. Despite gut-wrenching poverty and disease and authoritarian regimes, Stackhouse finds hope in small, locally initiated projects based on land and water rights, women’s equality, trading co-ops, and democratic school boards.

But Out of Poverty suffers from a lack of context and vision. As each chapter jumps to a different country, Stackhouse’s style of mixing personal tales – of battling mosquitos and pothole-ravaged roads – with stories of international aid projects gone awry grows tiresome. Stackhouse also leans toward the paternalistic: his satirical look at third world transportation delays comes off a tad arrogant, as if VIA passengers in Canada have never felt the need to scream bloody murder.

These flaws are unfortunate, for Stackhouse has a good eye for the bizarre and ironic. He is most provocative describing the surreal contrasts of his travels: he finds a great abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables in famine-ravaged Somalia, comes across Saskatchewan-like, Canadian-funded wheat fields that have displaced traditional peoples in Tanzania, and discovers the largest Roman Catholic church in the world – in Côte d’Ivoire.

But the focus on the details means the bigger picture is often neglected. The colonial legacy of “developed” countries is pretty much glossed over, as are the often malevolent roles played by institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, which are treated here as bumbling but largely benign. Stackhouse does present some inspirational tales of community development; hopefully, readers will be able to withstand the sometimes bothersome journey to get to them.