The natural beauty of Africa does not end in the forest or the savannah. One can follow it right into any place where people dwell. One time some 50 years ago that beauty followed me right into my hospital room. In northern Ghana at the Mole Game Reserve I fell ill with typhoid fever and was rushed to a field hospital staffed by Danish peace corps doctors and Ghanaian nurses. In a fever delirium I looked up one morning to find a row of little eyes staring at me in utter quiet from outside the window of my ground floor room. I was perhaps the strangest thing they had ever seen. Not wanting to be in a goldfish bowl, I invited them in, and they were perfectly happy to play on the floor until the nurses came to shoo them away.

Since then, the faces of little children are always a highlight of a visit to Africa. Their curiosity is plain in the way they hold one’s gaze, and that can blossom into mirth if one returns their attention with a friendly regard.

Whether in groups….

….or pairs

…or by themselves…

…they meet your open door with an open door of their own.

And that warmth can especially radiate from the friendly reassurance of a family around one.