In my teens I discovered Africa in Literature. There are a lot of Hunting tales and I ultimately wound up spending a goodly number of years in Francophone Africa where I can still be found today. But for me three books read early on are still the best:
The Turning Wheels, by Stuart Cloete - the story of the vortrekers. There is an overwhelming sense of the vastness and color of the Veld. I read that book when I was 14...some terrible scenes like when a man trapped in a tree by a musk ox has his foot wedge by a branch and the ox licks the sole off he boot and the skin off the foot.....
Out of Africa by Karen Blixen: The first line of the book remains with me to this day: "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills". There was something about Kenya in the pre-WWI era that is just incredibly romantic. The movie was good. The book is timeless........
I too via literature discovered Africa, of which I really had not the slightest idea, in my teens. My English teacher, thru a change of life early on, had decided she would expand our small town minds by making us dissect every word and phrase of the movie. I know it like back of hand, have lived it and witnessed such Lion attack and am forever changed as well as forever grateful.
I watch it ever chance, just like a recent viewing, and watch it as if it were the 1st viewing. Pure LIFE it is.....
Serbus,
Raimey
rse
