Listen to this: "The rain let up, and now there was the thick contentment that comes after a storm, everything tranquilized and heavy, the world freighted with dripping vegetation and buzzing with insects.I always reminded myself on these occasions never to leave Africa-- as if terrified I might inadvertently forget and accidentally drift off the continent. I suppose I knew even then that if I did, an essential part of my connection with the earth would become forever detached, like a soulless body or heartless lover. Africa has been my primary relationship for most of my life, defining, sustaining, and unequivocal in a way that no human relationship had ever been, with the exception of my parents , whom, in any case, I could never separate from this soil."
Or how about this priestly advice given at her wedding, "'The first year is hard, and after that it gets worse," he said, his mouth so close to my ear that I could smell the red-dust-infused scent of his river-washed, sun-dried clothes. I laughed at him, excusing his sentiment as the meaningless words of a celibate East European who has lived too long in the Zambian bush. 'No really, it's true,' he insisted, 'I should know, I've been married to God for fifty years.'"