NAGORSKI: What is it that keeps drawing you back to Africa?

KAPUSCINSKI: I am fascinated by history in the making. Any history–of Europe or the world–is always dramatic and bloody in the beginning. The same is true for Afri-can history: it is being born in pain, suffering and conflict. I’m fascinated not only because I know Africa and consider it my second home, but also because Africa is undergoing profound changes.

Which are the most important changes?

When I first came to Africa, there were mainly colonies, and everywhere there was the rush to independence. There was hope, the expectation that independence meant automatic prosperity. Those optimistic expectations were soon dashed. The 1970s and 1980s were the grimmest period, a time of the great drought and great hunger. This didn’t only mean that people died of star-vation; it also meant the disintegration of traditional tribal structures.

Many Westerners see Africa as a continent of hunger, wars, incredible brutality and AIDS.

This image is very unfair. Africa is extremely diversified and rapidly changing. There’s a group of countries that are in deep crisis. There are countries that no longer function as states–or are on the verge of disinte-gration. Somalia has disintegrated. Angola has been undergoing progressive disintegration for years. Sierra Leone has also disintegrated. In countries like Liberia, Si-erra Leone, Angola and [the former] Zaire, wars are being waged by warlords who occupy areas with diamonds, gold and other precious metals. But at the same time, there are countries that are developing very well, like Ghana, Senegal and the Ivory Coast. Mozambique, which has emerged from 20 years of civil war, is making impressive progress. You have to differentiate.

Many people in the wealthy industrialized nations talk of ““compassion fatigue,’’ of their frustration that so much aid lands in the wrong hands.

When planes land in the southern Sudan, the food is taken away by these savage rebels, the private armies, and only the remnants go to those who are truly hungry. As they say in Africa, ““Those who have the guns eat first.’’ But the aid partly gets through. If you stop it, there will be nothing, and many more people will starve. Real hunger prevails in relatively small areas, and in most cases we man-age to deal with these situations. But thedeveloped countries haven’t succeeded in overcoming poverty.

Isn’t this something for the Africans themselves to do?

Of course it is. But you have to remember that Africa is the only [war-devastated or impoverished] continent in postwar history that never had a foreign-aid program like the Marshall Plan or the Alliance for Progress.

You write that Africa is almost a different planet.

The elites are becoming similar–the educated middle class, the people who travel abroad–and are becoming Westernized. But the bulk of the population is still deeply rooted in its traditions–which I don’t think is bad. We people of Western civilization are individualists; we strive for individual success. But the African is a man of the family, of the group. He feels secure only as a member of a community. In Africa’s harsh climatic conditions, it was only possible to survive in a community; individuals on their own perish. It’s only in Africa that you can appreciate the extent to which people in developed countries have liberated themselves from nature. There [in Africa], man is still largelya prisoner of nature. It’s a continent of deserts and rainy seasons–and of that African equipped with only a hoe who has to wage a daily struggle with nature in order to survive.

Aren’t you one of the last romantics when it comes to Africa, constantly courting danger and living in the poorest villages?

I am a bit like a missionary–and many missionaries feel very good in Africa. That’s the only attitude possible; otherwise, the conditions may be just too tough. Or else you can lead an artificial life with air conditioning and a refrigerator. But that’s not Africa. If I’m to live in a luxury hotel, I prefer to do so in Paris. If I go to Africa, it’s because I want to see how people live in a different culture. That’s what fascinates me.