“Africa has a reputation: poverty, disease, war. But when outsiders
go they are often surprised by Africa’s welcome. Visitors are
welcomed and cared for in Africa. If you go you will find most
Africans friendly, gentle and infinitely polite. You will frequently
be humbled by African generosity. Africans have in abundance what we
call social skills. These are not skills that are formally taught or
learned. There is no ‘click-on-have-a-nice-day’ smile in Africa.
Africans meet, greet and talk, look you in the eye and empathize, hold
hands and embrace, share and accept from others without twitchy
self-consciousness. All these things are as natural as music in
Africa.Westerners arriving in Africa for the first time are always struck by
its beauty and size – even the sky seems higher. And they often find
themselves cracked open. They lose inhibitions, feel more alive, more
themselves, and they begin to understand why, until then, they have
only half lived. In Africa the essentials of existence – light,
earth, water, food, birth, family, love, sickness, death – are more
immediate, more intense. Visitors suddenly realize what life is
really about. Africans are in the habit of catching your eye as you
pass, raising an eyebrow in greeting, and a flicker of a smile starts
in their eyes. A small thing? No. It is the prize that Africa
offers the rest of the world: humanity.”– Richard Dowden, in “Africa, Altered States, Ordinary
Miracles”
