#africa

We pull on to the road, where our only company are the wandering cattle, who have become commonplace as traffic lights. Lethargic and listless, they look like they've been roaming the roads of Guinea since the dawn of time. And no doubt they will continue to long after we're gone. ↗

— Tom Hiddleston

#guinea #unicef #africa

I'm sorry I started all this by trying to fly and I'd take it back if I could but I can't, so please think of it from my point of view: if you die I will have a dead brother and it will be me instead of you who suffers. Justin thought of his brother on that warm summer day, standing up on the windowsill holding both their futures, light and changeable as air, in his outstretched arms. Of course, Justin thought, I'm part of his fate just as he's part of mine. I hadn't considered it from his point of view. Or from the point of view of the universe, either. It's just a playing field crammed full of cause and effect, billions of dominoes, each knocking over billions more, setting off trillions of actions every second. A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and my brother in Luton thinks he can fly. The child nodded. A piano might fall on your head, he said, but it also might not. And in the meantime you never know. Something nice might happen. ↗

— Meg Rosoff

#africa

The continent is too large to describe. It is a veritable ocean, a separate planet, a varied, immensely rich cosmos. Only with the greatest simplification, for the sake of convenience, can we say 'Africa'. In reality, except as a geographical appellation, Africa does not exist. ↗

— Ryszard Kapuściński

#africa

So, in "Melting Pot" the children (about a third of whom were kids of color) sang the line, "America was the new world and Europe was the old," in one stroke eradicating the narratives of indigenous persons for whom America was hardly new, and any nonwhite kids whose old worlds had been in Africa or Asia, not Europe. ↗

— Tim Wise

#national-myths #racism #africa

Molecular evidense suggests that our common ancestor with the chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between 5 and 7 million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#africa

Les personnages de nos autres vies sont des fantômes que la littérature fait revivre. ↗

— Olivier Weber

#africa #colonialism #french-writer #literature #report

What a child does not know and does not want to know of race and colour and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker's rack. Kibii, the Nandi boy, was my good friend. Arab Ruta (the same boy grown to manhood), wo sits before me, is my good friend, but the handclasp will be shorter, the smile will not be so eager on his lips, and though the path is for a while the same, he will walk behind me now, when once, in the simplicity of our nonage, we walked together. ↗

— Beryl Markham

#colonial-society #discrimination #inequality #africa

Anathema didn’t only believe in ley-lines, but in seals, whales, bicycles, rain forests, whole grain in loaves, recycled paper, white South Africans out of South Africa, and Americans out of practically everywhere down to and including Long Island. ↗

— Terry Prachett & Neil Gaiman

#africa

Watu wa kulisaidia bara la Afrika hawatatoka Amerika au kwingineko. Afrika ni tatizo letu. Watatoka Afrika kwenyewe. ↗

— Enock Maregesi

#africa

The boxer had two black eyes. But that’s to be expected, since he was from Africa.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#black-eye #boxer #expectations #africa