Africa Has No Future.

It Has Had A Calamitous Effect On Converted Peoples. To Be Converted You Have To Destroy Your Past, Destroy Your History. You Have To Stamp On It, You Have To Say 'my Ancestral Culture Does Not Exist, It Doesn't Matter'.

Some Lesser Husbands Built A Latrine On The Hillside.

I Often Wonder What Would Have Happened To Me If I Hadn't Made That Decision. I Suppose I Would Have Sunk. I Suppose I Would Have Found Some Kind Of Hole And Tried To Hide Or Pass. After All, We Make Ourselves According To The Ideas We Have Of Our Possibilities. I Would Have Hidden In My Hole And Been Crippled By My Sentimentality, Doing What I Was Doing, And Doing It Well, But Always Looking For The Wailing Wall. And I Would Never Have Seen The World As The Rich Place That It Is. You Wouldn't Have Seen Me Here In Africa, Doing What I Do.

I Wish My Prose To Be Transparent—i Don't Want The Reader To Stumble Over Me; I Want Him To Look Through What I'm Saying To What I'm Describing. I Don't Want Him Ever To Say, Oh, Goodness, How Nicely Written This Is. That Would Be A Failure.

It Isn't That There's No Right And Wrong Here. There's No Right.