Moja Afrika

»When I was twenty years old, I said to myself: no matter what happens, I will never become a writer, I don't want to be reduced to dry spots of ink on paper. I want to travel, dance, meet people. It wasn't until I had to leave my African farm that writing became my calling. When I first came to Kenya on the eve of the First World War, relations between whites and blacks were excellent. I was often alone, but I never locked the house. I went on safaris tens of miles away from the nearest white man. I loved the natives and they had confidence in me, I liked that atmosphere, I've never felt better.«

For Blixen, Africa is the embodiment of inspiration, she evoked for us its nature, colors, inhabitants; love and the mysticism of nature merged into an idyllic picture of Africa. There she got to know the true nature of ancient times, the primordial nature of humanity, she got to know paradise and then was exiled from it. Unlike most white people, she did not experience the encounter with the black continent as a conflict. Describing that encounter, she wrote: "Whites mostly fight to protect themselves from the unknown and the onslaught of fate. Black people make friends with fate because they are constantly in its hands; it is to some extent their home, the intimate darkness of their huts, the deep mold of their roots."