David Miles is a man who is happy to share the stories of his life, but, in so doing, he has often been given the same advice: “You should write a book about that!”
At the start of his autobiography, David recounts that the telling of these stories has often been done “in dribs and drabs.” He never managed to create one complete narrative from start to finish—until now. We feel honored that David chose LifeBook Memoirs to help him with this task.
What am I doing here?
David does his best to answer his titular question by recounting his numerous adventures from around the world, specifically while working in his specialist field of waste management.
Originally hailing from Dartford, a town near London in the English county of Kent, David started his working life as a lighterman on the River Thames—in itself, an interesting job. Following a brief stint as a tug captain in Saudi Arabia, he then worked for local government for 13 years before embarking on a career in environmental consultancy and, later, starting up his own waste-management firm. His consultancy work resulted in multiple projects around the world—David worked in more than 20 countries and with numerous governments. It also led him to include the World Health Organization, the United Nations, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank (to name but a few) on his résumé.
Waste not, want not
What Am I Doing Here? is an autobiography that is packed with fascinating and sometimes humorous escapades. These include a story about a dead crocodile being stuffed into the boot of David’s car in the Philippines after his driver rode over and killed it—the driver insisted on taking it home with him for dinner. He later presented David’s wife with the skin, intending that it be used to make a handbag. Unfortunately, the driver had failed to preserve it in any way, and the skin had to be discarded.
A litter-al look at waste management
David is very open about the challenges that he faced on many of his contracts—and how he overcame them. His accounts paint an honest picture of what it was like to work in a variety of environments, including some of the most deprived communities in the world. For example, his description of Smokey Mountain—the name given to an enormous landfill in Manila where hundreds of families lived and etched out a living—is both sobering and enlightening. It is also a stark contrast, of course, to David’s own existence. Some of the stories that he tells in this book remind us that there is a very different world out there to the one that many of us inhabit.
It is clear that David considers himself fortunate to have lived the life he has, which he describes as one “full of life, love, interest, and challenge,” and it was a privilege for us at LifeBook Memoirs to have helped him share it in his informative autobiography.
Written by Ania Kalinowska, LifeBook Memoirs editor
