Shadow of the sun - Ryszard Kapuscinski

"Only with the greatest of simplifications, for the sake of convenience, can we say Africa. In reality, except as a geographical term, Africa doesn't exist."

"When World War II erupted, colonialism was at its apogee. The course of the war, however its symbolic undertones, would sow the seeds of the system's defeat and demise. [...] The central subject, the essence, the core relations between Europeans and Africans during the colonial era, was the difference of race, of skin color. Everything-each exchange, connection, conflict-was translated into the language of black and white. [...] Into the African was inculcated the notion that the white man was untouchable, unconquerable, that whites constitute a homogenous, cohesive force. [...] Then, suddenly, Africans recruited into the British and French armies in Europe observed that the white men were fighting one another, shooting one another, destroying one another's cities. It was revelation, a surprise, a shock."

"The process of decolonisation was to occur [...] at a round table, without great political dramas, ensuring the preservation of that which was most important: the uninterrupted flow of goods and riches between Africa and Europe." 

"Nothing creates a bond between people in Africa more quickly than shared laughter".

"Perhaps the greatest riddle of Africa's cities is how these masses of people earn a living. How and from what."

"But with time I came to understand that seeing a rubbery as a humiliation and an affront is an exmotional luxury". 

"After a day of heat and hunger, one is weak and listless. But a certain stuport, an internal numbness, has its benefits: man could not survive here without it, for otherwise the biological, animal part of his nature would bite to death everything that is still human in him." 

"[...] For the great famine was the result not of a shortage, but of inhumane relations. There was food in the country, but when the drought came, the prices went up and the poor peasants were unable to purchase any."

"The European and the African have an entirely different concept of time. In the European worldview, time exists outside man, exists objectively and has measurable and linear characteristics. According to Newton, time is absolute: "Absolute, true mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature flows equably without regard to anything external". The European feels himself to be time's slave, dependent on it, subject to it. To exist and function, he must [ ...] heed deadlines, dates, days and hours. [...] An unresolvable conflict exists between man and time, one that always end with man's defeat - time annihilates him. Africans apprehend time differently. For them it is a much looser concept, more open, elastic, subjective. It is a man who influences time, its shape, its course and rythm. [...] Time appears as a result of our actions, and vanishes when we neglect or ignore it. [...] It is a subservient, passive essence, and, most importantly, one dependent on man."