After being away for some time, facing Africa again calmed me down. Its people, with their merciful yet powerful ultimatums toward the white man, extended a kind of friendship I could not resist.
The way Africa’s children accepted me at once—like a mother, like a companion—was a reflection of the trust and understanding that surround their lives.
The vitality you rarely encounter elsewhere in the world is here, alive in every corner: in the sea, in the desert, in the smallest village. While the rest of the world drifts in other directions, Africa’s storms remain raw, natural, introducing you once again to the essence of the world with all the wildness of nature.
The children here are different. The sky feels wider, yet closer. Raindrops are larger, and somehow warmer. Illness is harsher, but healing comes easier.
Chaos rules the streets, yes, but the minds remain calm. The oceans are still ruled by the moon, and that remains deeply mystical.
Here, a walk does not end in narrow alleys but in wide valleys. And at the end of the day, to understand Africa requires the ability to stand utterly alone in the middle of it.
During a storm where we stood face to face with death, it was the Africans’ closeness to the storm—their refusal to treat it as foreign—that saved us. Somehow, everyone’s gaze here carries the same force, the same depth of sea and storm, forest and desert.
Aloha Africa!