Trendy

It's all the rage. When I started telling people of my good fortune to go to Mozambique a friend replied, "I can't believe how popular Africa is right now." Another friend said she thought Africa was just taking its rightful place on our radar.

Perhaps I am here partly because Africa has become trendy. But without the trend of my twenty-something, thirty-something-year-old friends shipping off to this mysterious land I doubt I would have thought of going myself.

We tend to notice life when it touches us directly. I'd seen others' power point slides from Liberia and Ghana and read stories about people in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Rwanda, people I'd not met. I wanted to do away with the degrees of separation.

For better or worse I seem to do my best learning when I can see it for myself: the undeveloped coastline, the gender gap, the ready supply of fresh grapefruit, the thinness of those afflicted with HIV/AIDS. Surely if I see it with my own eyes I will have a better understanding. What I am gaining is a better grasp of how little I know.