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Reviews for Tro-tros and Potholes
-The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
-The Peak
From the Author’s Foreword
 Taking this trip to West Africa in 2001 was, in essence, an attempt for
me to get back in touch with my roots, albeit not in quite the Haley-esque
sort of way that might first spring to mind. Getting away from the consumer
society in which I lived and worked, and back to the places and things
that made my adrenalin rush and my creativity flow, was the goal.
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“A Coastline of Fortresses”
 What kind of
impact must such a legacy have on a nation? I wondered. On my visits to
South Africa in the 1990s, I was horrified to realize that almost every
black South African that I queried had been directly touched in some way
by the long-reaching arm of the National Party’s apartheid government.
Everyone had a brother or an aunt or a neighbour that had been jailed,
beaten or even killed. There were so many stories to tell, and all within
a thirty-year span. In my mind, I can imagine that the people who grew
up in the Gold Coast era of Ghana would have had similar stories to tell,
and unfortunately spanning a much larger time frame. Generation after
generation would have dealt with the presence of slave traders in their
midst, or even worse, tribesmen who were cooperatives for the traders,
earning some copper or gold in return for handing their own people over.
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"10 Things I Love About Africa"
 1.
Mangoes -- cheap and plentiful.
2. The precocious children who travel in packs of 5 or 6,
greet me with a Bon Soir, and shake my hand as they pass by. (These same
precocious children usually end up annoying me when, after giggling and
whispering for a couple of minutes, they come back to ask me for money.
Please refer to 10 Things I Hate About Africa, to be published at a later
date).
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“The Receiving Line”
 As dusk approached, the sound of the drums alerted us to the start of
the performance, so we made our way in the direction of their sound. I
was led to the center of the village by the two or three children that
were hanging on to each of my arms. They had been attached in this way
since we’d first arrived. Funny, because I think if this had ever
happened to me at home, I would have shaken them off like pesty flies.
Here, it seemed so very charming, and I felt somewhat honoured to have
this entourage. When I would stop with Mikhael to observe or talk with
someone, the kids would trace patterns up and down the backs of my hands
with their fingers, following the lines of my prominently blue and bulging
veins. They could not see the flow of blood so vividly in their own skin.
It must have seemed quite odd.
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