In the year 2000 I landed home, for my mother’s funeral, and found myself in the small steamy office of some security official at Mombasa airport. I did not have a yellow fever certificate. A group of red-eyed bureaucrats had cornered me as I picked up my luggage. I tried to plead, using my mother’s [...]

Always use the word ‘Africa or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that ‘People’ means Africans who are not black, while ‘The People’ means black [...]