Houses In Africa

When I was 10, I was taken from my quiet, safe corner of old Europe and deposited into an exotic new world.

Nobody who has once set foot on the soil of Africa will ever be quite free of it again. When I first went there, I was young enough to be molded by it. I instinctively understand things that people with altruistic but often misguided intentions spend years fail to: it takes an African attitude to deal with something that is at once both immeasurably ancient and utterly childish. I was an African child, picking up thoughts, feelings and attitudes left lying about like discarded skins of poisonous snakes. I keep the dust of Africa, therefore, as a memory in my heart.