These are the airports that I hang out in, because I like airports.

So some of these things, I'd wander around the streets of Dakar asking people, What's the algorithm? What's the rule for making this?

And I was last week walking on Lafayette Street in Manhattan and got a call from a woman who I didn't know, but she called to tell me that Joyce had passed away at the age of 23.

I'd been round the back. I'd seen bins full of food being locked and then trucked off to landfill sites, and I thought, surely there is something more sensible to do with food than waste it.

Back in about 2000, I was living in Brooklyn, I was trying to finish my first book, I was wandering around dazed every day because I wrote from 12 a.m. to 5 a.m.

The market reforms prompted by the West and I've spent some 15 years traveling around the continent doing research on agricultural markets, and have interviewed traders in 10 to 15 countries in this continent, hundreds of traders trying to understand what went wrong with our market reform.

So, I had been there almost three months, and I was touring around the city going to different squatter areas and Julius was tagging along, and he was bug eyed and at certain points we were walking around, he grabbed my hand for support, which is something most Kenyans would never consider doing.

But the reason I put this up here is because when I was in Africa last year, my wife and I were driving around, we had this wonderful guide, who showed us something that surprised both of us, and it was very revealing in terms of the fascination that comes with the design of animals.