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I came to Africa with one purpose: I wanted to see the world outside the perspective of European egocentricity. I could have chosen Asia or South America I ended up in Africa because the plane ticket there was cheapest.
I came and I stayed. For nearly 25 years I have lived off and on Mozambique.(1)____ Time has passed, and I'm no longer young; in fact, I'm approaching to old age.(2)____ But my motive for living this straddled existence, with one foot in African sand and the another in European snow, in the melancholy region of Norrland in Sweden that I grew up, has to do with wanting to see clearly, to understand.(3)____(4)____
The simplest way to explain what I've leamed from my life in Africa is through a parable about why human beings have two ears and only one tongue.(5)____ Why is this? Probably so that we have to listen twice as much as we speak.
In Africa listening is a guided principle.(6)____ It's a principle that has lost in the constant chatter of the Western world, where no one seems to have the time or even the desire to listen to anyone else.(7)____ From my own experience, I've noticed how much faster I have to answer a question during a TV interview than what I did 10, maybe even 5, years ago.(8)____ It's as if we have complete lost the ability to listen.(9)____ We talk and talk, and we end up frightening by silence, the refuge of those who are at a loss for an answer.(10)____
