Africa is a lovely place - much lovelier, more peaceful, more resilient, and, if not prosperous, innately more self-sufficient than it is usually portrayed. But because Africa seems unfinished and so different from the rest of the world, a landscape on which a person can sketch a new personality, it attracts mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince the world of their worth. Such people come in all forms, and they loom large, White celebrities busybodying in Africa loom especially large. I watched Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie recently in Sudan, cuddling African children and lecturing the world on charity, and the image that sprang to my mind was of Tarzan and Jane.
- Paul Theroux, "The Rock Star's Burden," in Figures in a Landscape, p.210-11
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