Achebe and the Unknown

One problem I have with Coetzee's waiting for the barbarians is that you don't really get a good description of anything. For instance we really don't know much about the narrator's people just as much as not knowing much about the barbarians. The only diffrence explained is that their ways of living seem to be different. But the way the narrator's people see the barbarians, is as those people who annually come by town to trade that are dirty and reek of all the time. This is where Achebe's arguement comes into play depending how far along in the book you been through, that you really don't get a good view of Africa and what their people are all about just what one town feels about a group with nothing good to say about them; just like we seen in Conrad. Also the way the narrator describes the "barbarian girl" he keeps in his room that he has pity for because his people tortured the Barbarians AKA Nomads is seen as a person to feel bad for and that is what the Megistrate(narrator) is getting at. He stands up for these Nomads knowing that their must be more to them than they know about. This arguement yet again brings up the arguement of seeing a story from one point of view, you really don't have a sense of everything going on especially in this case with the Barbarians.