When I was a kid, the winters in upstate New York seemed to never end. Gray, dreary, frigid and snowy, the long black nights meant a lot of time spent indoors. Passing those long hours required a lively imagination and I certainly had one.  My mind would often venture to far off exotic places I had heard of.  And one place just about every kid had heard of was Africa. 

Even though much in Africa has changed since I was a boy, it still exerts a powerful grip on the imagination.  To be sure, the massive continent has equally massive problems—corruption, war, famine, poverty, pollution, poaching, and now, radical Islamists spreading terror across a broad swath of the continent. But, even with all this, there are places in Africa that can still bring out the kid in you.  (more…)