"This is Africa."

Last night I watched what is arguably Leonardo DiCaprio's best film, Blood Diamond. The film deals with the issues in Serra Leone, when the depraved Revolutionaries force innocent children to become soldiers for their cause. I can't help but feel melancholy and overcome by the ending when Danny Archer (Leo) is up on a ridge watching the sunset, and mingling his blood with the red clay dirt. I have been to Africa and it has never left my heart. I feel each time I watch a film like Blood Diamond, a deep well of emotions erupts. I can't help but love the African people. Those I met during my trip to South Africa remain as faces, images in my soul. I long to be back with them, to live simply and to delight in the mere presence of such beautiful human beings. The Africans are free in a way that few Americans are. They are "awake," as Thoreau would say. They take in everyday, every breath and while they may not have our technologies that make due and seem to extract something from their mundane lives that we can't in all our pomp and sophistication. Community is not dead to the African, but it is a corpse in America. We substitute human interaction and dependence for machines and cold social networks. I remember the sheer bliss of being in company of those considered impoverished. They had such a glow and warmth, such a jovial disposition despite disease, castrophrie and atrocities. They had a smile that was real, that could make your soul dance within you like they do to greet visitors.

We are feeble, we who build mighty steel castles in an ever growing metropolis lack what those in a feudal and desolate land have in abundance. If we could but exchange our industry and agriculture for their simple joys and perpetual cheer. Oh I would give up all the treasuries that adorn my home to walk in such love for the rest of my days on this Earth. To be merry even when food is scarce or to find happiness in the midst of terror. To love and trust without fear and apprehension. To mingle that red dirt once more with my sweat and breath that sweet air again. I feel dismayed when I think a day will come when even Africa will become 'civilized' like the rest of the world. That it will sell It's soul for a place in the "rat race."

"TIA: This Is Africa," says Archer. Indeed, Africa may be place full of turmoil and war; but it also is full of the purest and most untainted love I've seen in this world.