I need to conduct myself differently in different communities. In my experience, the journalistic conventions - you know, I'm the reporter, you're the subject, the interviewee - actually tend to hold steady much more consistently in rural Africa than they do in the American inner city.

I need to conduct myself differently in different communities. In my experience, the journalistic conventions - you know, I'm the reporter, you're the subject, the interviewee - actually tend to hold steady much more consistently in rural Africa than they do in the American inner city.

Memoir is a weird genre for a reporter. You end up investigating your own memories, reporting out your past.

The differences between the received wisdom, the standard version of events, and the facts on the ground may be subtle or they may be stark, even profound.

Rich white people show up in a poor country to pursue their leisure-time fun, get served by black and brown people, and live in relative - or absolute - comfort. In the water, that situation can get turned on its head, though. Local kids learn to surf, know the breaks, and take most or all of the best waves, fuming turistas be damned.

Hawaii is the birthplace of surfing, and many Hawaiians or part-Hawaiians surf, but in the rest of the United States it's a pretty white sport.

I'm trying to find out what's actually true, which is nearly always something, if not a world of things, that you can't read in books.