"I no longer know if I take photographs in order to travel, or if I travel in order to take photographs. Carrying a heavy backpack on my shoulders has taught me not to rush too much and to pause, to look more and to shoot less. I only photograph what I like, and nothing moves me as much as a portrait. The photos in this book seek to tell of the beauty, sweetness, and dignity with which the Africans respond to injustice, misery, and disease," thus writes Fabio Caramaschi, author of the photos and texts in this book-voyage along the Zambesi River all the way to the lost valley of the Tonga, where one manages to catch a glimpse of how Africa was before us. This is an intense, delicate, respectful book, which suggests the ancestral memory of a different life-one in which time is measured with the rhythms of nature, not man's neuroses-and in which the wisdom of the elderly is the authoritative guide of younger generations and where magic still resides. Photographer, director, and teacher, Fabio Caramaschi lives and works in Rome, and as soon as he is able to, he travels around the world, seeking in every way to appease his endless desire to tell, with words and images, the stories of the people he meets.