Loose lips sink ships.
It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.
The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
You know reviewers, they are the wind in their own sails.
Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.
Let me claim that Africa and I kept company for a while and then parted ways as if we were both party to relations with a failed outcome. Or say I was afflicted with Africa like a bout of a rare disease from which I have not managed a full recovery.