As I prepare to reenter the cacophonous riot that is Africa, I find myself scouring the resources available, the words that have been written describing these indescribable lands, the words of Rimbaud, Greene, Naipaul, Meredith, and so many others who have had the courage to journey, to describe, to entreat all others to their inner madnesses. And one of the best of modern times is Paul Salopek, the Pullitzer Prize winning journalist for the Chicago Tribune, master of prose, dancer of words and worlds....
From writer and journalist Paul Salopek's collection, entitled The Twenty-third Parallel
From writer and journalist Paul Salopek's collection, entitled The Twenty-third Parallel
The twenty-third parallels north and south—what map makers call the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn—girdle the Earth roughly three thousand miles apart, bracketing the warm belly of the planet. They hold between them some of the poorest, least stable and most culturally diverse nations in the world.
The bulk of humanity lives in or near this immense subtropical belt—about two-thirds of the world’s six billion people. It is a place of numberless villages and exploding mega-cities. It is the source of the greatest human migrations in history. Its face is younger. Its colors are brighter. Its sky is a paler blue. By sheer weight of numbers alone, it is where our common future is being scripted.
