Hello from Namibia! At last I have made it to long dreamed Africa, visiting my sister who is living here for a while. I am experiencing a very different life from home: my sister has children whereas I do not, and we are enjoying the school holidays together. First, a few days in the interior seeing giraffe, elephant, rhino, zebra and antelope in a brown savannah, where trees were caught in perpetual autumn under a too-hot sun. The rains hadn’t come last winter and the sky remained empty of clouds.
Then, we drove to the cool coast where the Atlantic breaks against the Namib desert and salt is harvested in white industrial pyramids amid cormorant and flamingo that gather on the brackish waters. 
My opportunities to travel the world are limited, and even when I do, how deep can my immersion be? But stories, they open up the worlds and times to me I cannot travel and stay. They challenge my assumptions, broaden my mind, develop my compassion.
I recently listened to Jaspreet Kaur's "Brown Girls Like Us" on BBC Podcasts. As she told her story she challenged me to reflect on the times I have othered others. She freed me from the squirming embarrassment of those recollections because I am one of those she appreciates have learned - are learning - how not to make unintended micro-aggressions. She generously opens up her world, her experience, culture, beliefs, family, friends, childhood, her present life. She demonstrates how much we have in common in our human experience, the silenced childhood emotions, the fears we took too long to face, the parents we took too long to understand, the joy of reaching the now and the curiosity for the years that lie ahead.
Jaspreet’s was not the first story I have immersed myself in from another culture, and it won’t be the last. She has been added in my heart to countless others who have opened up new worlds to me, including those that have let me live in the past and in extraordinary possible futures. They offer me a kaleidoscope of lenses through which to look and feel. I am the left richer for it, and am ever grateful. These books, whether fiction or true-story or somewhere in between, provide doorways I can return to again and again and to all those writers I say thank you for taking the courage and time to welcome me in.
