Africa Quotes
496 quotes
"You know you are truly alive when you’re living among lions."
"Last year I built a Courage Machine, but I thought it might be noisy and was too afraid to turn it on. So I coated it with glue, covered it with cat hair, mounted it on my wall, and started claiming it was an exotic animal I killed on a Safari in Africa. I'd like to believe people believe me, on account of it being so strange that it has to be true."
"Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing."
"They say that somewhere in Africa the elephants have a secret grave where they go to lie down, unburden their wrinkled gray bodies, and soar away, light spirits at the end."
"I don't fancy colors of the face, I'm always attracted to colors of the brain."
"In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves."
"Wilderness gave us knowledge. Wilderness made us human. We came from here. Perhaps that is why so many of us feel a strong bond to this land called Serengeti; it is the land of our youth."
"What i took away from witnessing the broken climbers in Moshi was this: *Everything is easy until it isn't.*"
"[Margaret Thatcher] told us that its about time that we engaged South Africa in constructive engagement, and that is perhaps the best way to get rid of apartheid. I took her advice and invited De Klerk to this country. I think she was a fine example of a very courageous political leader. She is admired greatly by a majority of countries in Africa."
"[Margaret Thatcher] will forever command my respect and admiration, not only for her leadership in the UK, but for her leadership on global matters."
"Although she was always a steadfast critic of apartheid, she had a much better grasp of the complexities and geo-strategic realities of South Africa than many of her contemporaries. She consistently, and correctly, believed that much more could be achieved through constructive engagement with the South African government than through draconian sanctions and isolation. She also understood the need to consider the concerns and aspirations of all South Africans in their search for constitutional consensus."
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of Lady Thatcher and the people of the UK during this difficult time."
"They went further, and reached the stage of eating little children. It was not unusual to find people [selling] little children, roasted or boiled."
"When the poor first began to eat human flesh, the horror and astonishment that such extraordinary meals aroused were such that these crimes formed the topic of every conversation... But eventually people grew accustomed, and some conceived such a taste for these detestable meats that they made them their ordinary provender, eating them for enjoyment and... [thinking] up a variety of preparation methods... The horror people had felt at first vanished entirely; one spoke of it, and heard it spoken of, as a matter of everyday indifference."
"Nothing was more common than this kind of thing, and it would be difficult to find in the length and breadth of Egypt... anyone who has not been eye-witness to such atrocities."
"A merchant friend of mine... had seen five children's heads in a single cauldron, cooked with the choicest spices."
"I presented to the king of this place... a quantity of salt which he accepted and he sent to me two most comely slave girls. A few days later I was in his presence and he said to me: "I sent those girls to you, so slaughter and eat them! Their flesh is the best thing we have to eat. For what reason have you not slaughtered them?" I replied: "This is not lawful for us.""
"They have shambles for human flesh as we have of animals, even eating the enemies they have killed in battle, and selling their slaves if they can get a good price for them; if not, they give them to the butcher, who cuts them in pieces, and then sells them to be roasted or boiled. It is a remarkable fact in the history of this people, that any who are tired of life, or wish to prove themselves brave and courageous, esteem it great honor to expose themselves to death by an act which shall show their contempt for life. Thus they offer themselves for slaughter, and as the faithful vassals of princes, wishing to do them service, not only give themselves to be eaten, but their slaves also, when fattened, are killed and eaten. It is true many nations eat human flesh, as in the East Indies, Brazil, and elsewhere, but to devour the flesh of their own enemies, friends, subjects, and even relations, is a thing without example, except amongst the Anzichi tribes."
"I sent my boy for six handkerchiefs, thinking it was all a joke ..., but presently a man appeared, leading a young girl of about ten years old at the hand, and I then witnessed the most horribly sickening sight I am ever likely to see in my life. He plunged a knife quickly into her breast twice, and she fell on her face, turning over on her side. Three men then ran forward, and began to cut up the body of the girl; finally her head was cut off, and not a particle remained, each man taking his piece away down to the river to wash it. The most extraordinary thing was that the girl never uttered a sound, nor struggled, until she fell. Until the last moment, I could not believe that they were in earnest ... that it was anything save a ruse to get money out of me... When I went home I tried to make some small sketches of the scene while still fresh in my memory, not that it is ever likely to fade from it. No one here seemed to be in the least astonished at it."
"A woman [is sold for the price of two goats]. A man [brings the price of three goats], or four if he is plenty large... If there is as much to eat on a man as on three goats, he brings the price of three goats... as the point of view of the final purchaser determines the price, and the consumers are cannibals, the price of a man is generally determined by the amount of meat on him."
"A young Basongo chief came to our Commandant while at dinner in his tent and asked for the loan of his knife, which, without thinking, the Commandant gave him. He immediately disappeared behind the tent and cut the throat of a little slave-girl belonging to him, and was in the act of cooking her when one of our soldiers saw him.... This cannibal was put in irons, but [shortly after his liberation] he was brought in by some of our Hausa soldiers, who said that he was eating the children in and about our cantonments. He had a bag slung round his neck, which on examining we found contained an arm and a leg of a young child."
"Mr. Harris has already intimated to you in a letter of his that while he was down at Jikau, ... a horrible case of murder and cannibalism on the part of rubber sentries occurred in this district. It was of a shocking nature, and has greatly distressed us. On Sunday morning, May 15, just after eight o'clock, I had gone across to Mr. Harris's house, ... when two boys rushed breathlessly in, and said that some sentries had killed a number of people, and that two men had gone by to tell the rubber white men, and that they also had some hands to show him, in case he did not believe them... Shortly afterwards the two men came along the path, and we heard the boys calling to them to come and show us; but they seemed afraid, and so we went out quickly and overtook them, and asked them where the hands were. Thereupon one of them opened a parcel of leaves, and showed us the hand and foot of a small child, who could not have been more than five years old. They were fresh and clean cut. It was an awful sight, and even now, as I write, I can feel the shudder and feeling of horror that came over me as we looked at them, and saw the agonised look of the poor fellow, who seemed dazed with grief, and said they were the hand and foot of his little girl. I can never forget the sight of that horror-stricken father. We asked them to come into the house and tell us about the affair, which they did, and the following is the story they told us—"The father of the little girl said his name was Nsala, and he was a native of Wala, which is a section of the Nsongo District... On the previous day, although it was three days before they were due to take in the rubber, fifteen sentries came from Lifinda, all except two being armed with Albini rifles, and they were accompanied by followers. They began making prisoners and shooting, and killed Bongingangoa, his wife; Boali, his little daughter of about five years of age; and Esanga, a boy of about ten years. These they at once cut up, and afterwards cooked in pots, putting in salt which they had brought with them, and then ate them.""
"Only twice in the course of my trip have I had conversation with a man who actually admitted having eaten human flesh, though I have spoken to many who have seen it done, and both of them spoke of the present prohibition [of cannibalism] with regret and utterly without shame or real consciousness of wrongdoing, as one speaks of the "drink" prohibition of the United States! One of them, an old man whom I fell into conversation with later, on the road between Wei and Tappi... told me that among his people, the Jocquellehs, a woman's flesh was highly esteemed and that in the old days it had been the custom to give the upper part of the body to the crowd but that the thighs were reserved for the Chief."
"As recently as 1950, a Belgian administrator was served a meal of "porcupine meat" that he found remarkably delicious. Not until he had finished was he told that the meat came from a young girl."
"In 1961 in Uganda, a man offered to sell me human fingers that had been smoked. When I declined in horror, he offered to return with a smoked slab of a young woman's buttocks, a truly "choice cut", as he put it."
"Members of the civilian population, including those captured by the militia, had to witness acts of anthropophagy, mutilation, amputation and decapitation.... Thus, in the tshiota [initiation house], in front of the civilian population often forced to watch, they cut off the penises of many men, including village chiefs they considered traitors, who had just been beheaded, and sometimes then held a ceremony to eat them after preparing them, which, according to their belief, gives them power, or threw them into the fire.... In another case, a woman at the tshiota witnessed militiamen eating the abdominal part of her son, who had just been decapitated."
"A boy captured in Kamonia territory, Kasaï province, in December 2016 by the militia and forcibly assigned to chores explains: "They sometimes brought us human thighs that we had to cook, and cans of blood." ... Finally, a 14-year-old girl forcibly integrated into the Kamuina Nsapu militia in May 2017 in the province of Kasaï Oriental explains: "The militiamen cut off the genitals of soldiers who had been killed, but it was more often the genitals of senior soldiers that they cut off. Then the genitals were grilled and eaten. The boys cut off the genitals and gave them to the girls. The victims' blood was drunk..."."
"Some witnesses described seeing people cutting, even cooking and then eating human flesh, including penises cut from living men and corpses, notably of FARDC members, and drinking human blood."
"We are relatives at the village and yet we become strangers in the city"
"I have loved no part of the world like this and I have loved no women as I love you. You're my human Africa. I love your smell as I love these smells. I love your dark bush as I love the bush here, you change with the light as this place does, so that one all the time is loving something different and yet the same. I want to spill myself out into you as I want to die here."
"Africa is crying out for entrepreneurial leaders & for leaders who are entrepreneurial."
"The people come to understand that wealth is not the fruit of labour but the result of organised, protected robbery. Rich people are no longer respectable people; they are nothing more than flesh eating animals, jackals and vultures which wallow in the people's blood."
"To some believers, being on the pill or using a condom is a nonverbal way of telling God to go to hell."
"Among other possibilities, money was invented to make it possible for a foolish man to control wise men; a weak man, strong men; a child, old men; an ignorant man, knowledgeable men; and for a dwarf to control giants."
"Being rich or famous is the only profound thing that some people have ever said."
"For a sane person to sincerely be happy that someone has succeeded, they have to either be profiting or likely to profit from that person’s success, or be that person."
"He emerged out of the lake, the declining sun drenching him with aureate light, the droplets on his body iridescent in their beams. He walked confidently toward her, almost every inch of his sculptured body exposed in his black swimsuit. Each sharp contour of muscle glistened, each limb unfolded with lithe grace as he approached, his eyes riveted on her. Coral watched spellbound, a yearning surging up within her, eager and expectant. The air around them trembled with infinite anticipation."
"Gradually the mist had lifted, and the sun burst forth, a ball of fire radiating the sky with unnaturally incandescent hues. Coral was reminded of the strident brushwork and wild colours of the Fauvist paintings that filled her mother's gallery, which Coral had always loved. The scene was now set for the show to begin: the drama in which the broad, breath-taking landscapes of Africa were the stage and the animals the actors."
"Not a few millions of parents strongly hope that their own children will step in by instantly becoming their own parents’ foster parents, if and when the parents reach their second childhood."
"As children in a small village in Sierra Leone, my friends and I dreamed of travelling the world like the missionaries who opened our village school. As a British subject, I dreamed of walking the streets of London. I imagined my self in the United States of America visiting the places where the cowboy movies were made."
Francis Mandewah, FRIENDSHIP: A True Story of Adventure, Goodwill, and Endurance
"A premature death does not only rob one of the countless instances where one would have experienced pleasure, it also saves one from the innumerable instances where one would have experienced pain."
"My horizon lightened, I see an old woman. Who is she? Where is she from? Bent over, the ends of her boubou tied behind her, she empties into a plastic bag the left-overs of red rice. Her smiling face tells of the pleasant day she has just had. She wants to take back proof of this to her family, living perhaps in Ouakam, Thiaroye or Pikine.Standing upright, her eyes meeting my disapproving look, she mutters between teeth reddened by cola nuts: 'Lady, death is just as beautiful as life has been."
"Most sane human beings who are over the age of six usually act or react not as per what they genuinely feel or really think but in accordance with the expectations of those around them."
"The most upsetting thing about Society’s attitude towards disabled people is that many millions of disabled people became disabled while trying to please Society, the very same bitch that secretly regards them as subhuman."
"Some of us were brought into this troubled world primarily or only to increase our fathers’ chances of not being left by our mothers, or vice versa."
"Patriotism is the narcissism of countries."
"Greed is a contagious mental illness without which civilization as we know it would not have been possible."
"Many a survivor of a plane crash who is or was against cannibalism and had never eaten human flesh once found themselves in a situation where they had to either eat human flesh, or go the way of all flesh."
"Many if not most slaves would have each readily jumped, and many if not most slaves would each readily jump, at the opportunity to be a master, if such an opportunity presents or had presented itself."
"Just like how most if not all poor boys look up to and aspire to someday be rich men, most if not all underdeveloped and developing countries look up to and aspire to someday be developed countries."
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