Zenzele: A letter for My Daughter

I've been watching the BBC's The Number One Ladies Detective Agency and reading Zenzele: A letter for My Daughter and have really enjoyed getting a glimpse of day to day life in Botswana on Zimbabwe, resp.

Pretty much everything the BBC does, I like.  So I wasn't surprised that I got sucked into the show.  The first episode of season one was my favorite because it is setting the scene for the story and shows the main character as a child growing up and learning from her father to love and appreciate her country. The music and scenery are beautiful and the characters are easy to love.  I can't wait for the second season.

Zenzele is a wonderful book written by a mother to her daughter as the daughter goes off to college in Europe.  The mother is fearful that her daughter will lose herself in the Western world and become embarrassed by her African heritage. 
I wish I could describe how reading her thoughts makes me feel.  I know it is fiction, but based on what I'm sure are real feelings because it strikes me as truth.  It makes me feel inadequate and fired up all at once. I've edited my rambling down to these few sentences because paragraphs later I was still trying to get to the point.  What I do know: Africa captured my imagination and a chunk of my heart and finding great literature and movies that let me get lost in a different place is so fun.  What it'd be like to be from such a great continent I'll never know, but I envy them in a way I can't explain.

See the goat on the back of this motorcycle?  Dinner perhaps?  I decided instead of some savory demise, he was just out for a nice ride with his family.

{all images taken May 2011}