The longer I live, the more I get to understand that I am just passing through – a migrant – on this wonderful Earth of ours. I spent my childhood in migration with my parents on the three continents of Europe, America, and Asia. The bigger part of my diplomatic career, in labour migration, I spent on a fourth one, Africa. And not even in my retirement here in Nairobi do I get to be a sedentary local. In summer of 2023, Bilha and I visited an old Swiss friend and his Zimbabwean wife in their retirement in the
Let’s take the 3.2 million years since Lucy took us down from the trees and stepped away from our chimpanzee ancestors as one day, 24 hours. About nineteen and a half hours ago with Homo habilis, the Stone Age began. Homo sapiens evolved one and a half hours ago. And those that left Africa did so only 27 minutes ago. Considering that this is 60’000 years, it is still a very long time. To put it into perspective: In the same anthropological time measurement of one day since Lucy, my own lifetime is only the last 1.97 seconds of
