0:00:00.000,0:00:02.000
I'm a storyteller.

0:00:02.000,0:00:05.000
And I would like to tell you a few personal stories

0:00:05.000,0:00:10.000
about what I like to call "the danger of the single story."

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I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria.

0:00:14.000,0:00:17.000
My mother says that I started reading at the age of two,

0:00:17.000,0:00:22.000
although I think four is probably close to the truth.

0:00:22.000,0:00:24.000
So I was an early reader, and what I read

0:00:24.000,0:00:27.000
were British and American children's books.

0:00:27.000,0:00:30.000
I was also an early writer,

0:00:30.000,0:00:34.000
and when I began to write, at about the age of seven,

0:00:34.000,0:00:36.000
stories in pencil with crayon illustrations

0:00:36.000,0:00:39.000
that my poor mother was obligated to read,

0:00:39.000,0:00:43.000
I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading:

0:00:43.000,0:00:48.000
All my characters were white and blue-eyed,

0:00:48.000,0:00:50.000
they played in the snow,

0:00:50.000,0:00:52.000
they ate apples,

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and they talked a lot about the weather,

0:00:54.000,0:00:56.000
how lovely it was

0:00:56.000,0:00:58.000
that the sun had come out.

0:00:58.000,0:01:00.000
(Laughter)

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Now, this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria.

0:01:03.000,0:01:07.000
I had never been outside Nigeria.

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We didn't have snow, we ate mangoes,

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and we never talked about the weather,

0:01:12.000,0:01:14.000
because there was no need to.

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My characters also drank a lot of ginger beer

0:01:17.000,0:01:19.000
because the characters in the British books I read

0:01:19.000,0:01:21.000
drank ginger beer.

0:01:21.000,0:01:24.000
Never mind that I had no idea what ginger beer was.

0:01:24.000,0:01:25.000
(Laughter)

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And for many years afterwards, I would have a desperate desire

0:01:28.000,0:01:30.000
to taste ginger beer.

0:01:30.000,0:01:32.000
But that is another story.

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What this demonstrates, I think,

0:01:34.000,0:01:37.000
is how impressionable and vulnerable we are

0:01:37.000,0:01:39.000
in the face of a story,

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particularly as children.

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Because all I had read were books

0:01:43.000,0:01:45.000
in which characters were foreign,

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I had become convinced that books

0:01:47.000,0:01:50.000
by their very nature had to have foreigners in them

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and had to be about things with which

0:01:52.000,0:01:55.000
I could not personally identify.

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Things changed when I discovered African books.

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There weren't many of them available, and they weren't

0:02:01.000,0:02:03.000
quite as easy to find as the foreign books.

0:02:03.000,0:02:07.000
But because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye

0:02:07.000,0:02:09.000
I went through a mental shift in my perception

0:02:09.000,0:02:11.000
of literature.

0:02:11.000,0:02:13.000
I realized that people like me,

0:02:13.000,0:02:15.000
girls with skin the color of chocolate,

0:02:15.000,0:02:18.000
whose kinky hair could not form ponytails,

0:02:18.000,0:02:20.000
could also exist in literature.

0:02:20.000,0:02:24.000
I started to write about things I recognized.

0:02:24.000,0:02:28.000
Now, I loved those American and British books I read.

0:02:28.000,0:02:32.000
They stirred my imagination. They opened up new worlds for me.

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But the unintended consequence

0:02:34.000,0:02:36.000
was that I did not know that people like me

0:02:36.000,0:02:38.000
could exist in literature.

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So what the discovery of African writers did for me was this:

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It saved me from having a single story

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of what books are.

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I come from a conventional, middle-class Nigerian family.

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My father was a professor.

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My mother was an administrator.

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And so we had, as was the norm,

0:02:58.000,0:03:03.000
live-in domestic help, who would often come from nearby rural villages.

0:03:03.000,0:03:07.000
So the year I turned eight we got a new house boy.

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His name was Fide.

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The only thing my mother told us about him

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was that his family was very poor.

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My mother sent yams and rice,

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and our old clothes, to his family.

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And when I didn't finish my dinner my mother would say,

0:03:22.000,0:03:27.000
"Finish your food! Don't you know? People like Fide's family have nothing."

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So I felt enormous pity for Fide's family.

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Then one Saturday we went to his village to visit,

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and his mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket

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made of dyed raffia that his brother had made.

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I was startled.

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It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family

0:03:46.000,0:03:49.000
could actually make something.

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All I had heard about them was how poor they were,

0:03:52.000,0:03:54.000
so that it had become impossible for me to see them

0:03:54.000,0:03:57.000
as anything else but poor.

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Their poverty was my single story of them.

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Years later, I thought about this when I left Nigeria

0:04:03.000,0:04:06.000
to go to university in the United States.

0:04:06.000,0:04:08.000
I was 19.

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My American roommate was shocked by me.

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She asked where I had learned to speak English so well,

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and was confused when I said that Nigeria

0:04:17.000,0:04:22.000
happened to have English as its official language.

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She asked if she could listen to what she called my "tribal music,"

0:04:26.000,0:04:28.000
and was consequently very disappointed

0:04:28.000,0:04:30.000
when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey.

0:04:30.000,0:04:33.000
(Laughter)

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She assumed that I did not know how

0:04:35.000,0:04:38.000
to use a stove.

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What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me

0:04:40.000,0:04:42.000
even before she saw me.

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Her default position toward me, as an African,

0:04:46.000,0:04:50.000
was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity.

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My roommate had a single story of Africa:

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a single story of catastrophe.

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In this single story there was no possibility

0:04:58.000,0:05:02.000
of Africans being similar to her in any way,

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no possibility of feelings more complex than pity,

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no possibility of a connection as human equals.

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I must say that before I went to the U.S. I didn't

0:05:11.000,0:05:14.000
consciously identify as African.

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But in the U.S. whenever Africa came up people turned to me.

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Never mind that I knew nothing about places like Namibia.

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But I did come to embrace this new identity,

0:05:23.000,0:05:26.000
and in many ways I think of myself now as African.

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Although I still get quite irritable when

0:05:28.000,0:05:30.000
Africa is referred to as a country,

0:05:30.000,0:05:34.000
the most recent example being my otherwise wonderful flight

0:05:34.000,0:05:36.000
from Lagos two days ago, in which

0:05:36.000,0:05:38.000
there was an announcement on the Virgin flight

0:05:38.000,0:05:43.000
about the charity work in "India, Africa and other countries."

0:05:43.000,0:05:44.000
(Laughter)

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So after I had spent some years in the U.S. as an African,

0:05:48.000,0:05:52.000
I began to understand my roommate's response to me.

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If I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa

0:05:55.000,0:05:57.000
were from popular images,

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I too would think that Africa was a place of

0:06:00.000,0:06:04.000
beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals,

0:06:04.000,0:06:06.000
and incomprehensible people,

0:06:06.000,0:06:09.000
fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS,

0:06:09.000,0:06:12.000
unable to speak for themselves

0:06:12.000,0:06:14.000
and waiting to be saved

0:06:14.000,0:06:17.000
by a kind, white foreigner.

0:06:17.000,0:06:19.000
I would see Africans in the same way that I,

0:06:19.000,0:06:23.000
as a child, had seen Fide's family.

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This single story of Africa ultimately comes, I think, from Western literature.

0:06:27.000,0:06:29.000
Now, here is a quote from

0:06:29.000,0:06:32.000
the writing of a London merchant called John Locke,

0:06:32.000,0:06:35.000
who sailed to west Africa in 1561

0:06:35.000,0:06:40.000
and kept a fascinating account of his voyage.

0:06:40.000,0:06:42.000
After referring to the black Africans

0:06:42.000,0:06:44.000
as "beasts who have no houses,"

0:06:44.000,0:06:48.000
he writes, "They are also people without heads,

0:06:48.000,0:06:53.000
having their mouth and eyes in their breasts."

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Now, I've laughed every time I've read this.

0:06:55.000,0:06:59.000
And one must admire the imagination of John Locke.

0:06:59.000,0:07:01.000
But what is important about his writing is that

0:07:01.000,0:07:03.000
it represents the beginning

0:07:03.000,0:07:06.000
of a tradition of telling African stories in the West:

0:07:06.000,0:07:09.000
A tradition of Sub-Saharan Africa as a place of negatives,

0:07:09.000,0:07:11.000
of difference, of darkness,

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of people who, in the words of the wonderful poet

0:07:15.000,0:07:17.000
Rudyard Kipling,

0:07:17.000,0:07:20.000
are "half devil, half child."

0:07:20.000,0:07:23.000
And so I began to realize that my American roommate

0:07:23.000,0:07:25.000
must have throughout her life

0:07:25.000,0:07:27.000
seen and heard different versions

0:07:27.000,0:07:29.000
of this single story,

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as had a professor,

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who once told me that my novel was not "authentically African."

0:07:36.000,0:07:38.000
Now, I was quite willing to contend that there were a number of things

0:07:38.000,0:07:40.000
wrong with the novel,

0:07:40.000,0:07:44.000
that it had failed in a number of places,

0:07:44.000,0:07:46.000
but I had not quite imagined that it had failed

0:07:46.000,0:07:49.000
at achieving something called African authenticity.

0:07:49.000,0:07:51.000
In fact I did not know what

0:07:51.000,0:07:54.000
African authenticity was.

0:07:54.000,0:07:56.000
The professor told me that my characters

0:07:56.000,0:07:58.000
were too much like him,

0:07:58.000,0:08:00.000
an educated and middle-class man.

0:08:00.000,0:08:02.000
My characters drove cars.

0:08:02.000,0:08:05.000
They were not starving.

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Therefore they were not authentically African.

0:08:09.000,0:08:12.000
But I must quickly add that I too am just as guilty

0:08:12.000,0:08:15.000
in the question of the single story.

0:08:15.000,0:08:19.000
A few years ago, I visited Mexico from the U.S.

0:08:19.000,0:08:21.000
The political climate in the U.S. at the time was tense,

0:08:21.000,0:08:25.000
and there were debates going on about immigration.

0:08:25.000,0:08:27.000
And, as often happens in America,

0:08:27.000,0:08:30.000
immigration became synonymous with Mexicans.

0:08:30.000,0:08:32.000
There were endless stories of Mexicans

0:08:32.000,0:08:34.000
as people who were

0:08:34.000,0:08:36.000
fleecing the healthcare system,

0:08:36.000,0:08:38.000
sneaking across the border,

0:08:38.000,0:08:42.000
being arrested at the border, that sort of thing.

0:08:42.000,0:08:46.000
I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara,

0:08:46.000,0:08:48.000
watching the people going to work,

0:08:48.000,0:08:50.000
rolling up tortillas in the marketplace,

0:08:50.000,0:08:53.000
smoking, laughing.

0:08:53.000,0:08:56.000
I remember first feeling slight surprise.

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And then I was overwhelmed with shame.

0:08:59.000,0:09:02.000
I realized that I had been so immersed

0:09:02.000,0:09:04.000
in the media coverage of Mexicans

0:09:04.000,0:09:06.000
that they had become one thing in my mind,

0:09:06.000,0:09:09.000
the abject immigrant.

0:09:09.000,0:09:11.000
I had bought into the single story of Mexicans

0:09:11.000,0:09:14.000
and I could not have been more ashamed of myself.

0:09:14.000,0:09:16.000
So that is how to create a single story,

0:09:16.000,0:09:19.000
show a people as one thing,

0:09:19.000,0:09:21.000
as only one thing,

0:09:21.000,0:09:23.000
over and over again,

0:09:23.000,0:09:26.000
and that is what they become.

0:09:26.000,0:09:28.000
It is impossible to talk about the single story

0:09:28.000,0:09:31.000
without talking about power.

0:09:31.000,0:09:33.000
There is a word, an Igbo word,

0:09:33.000,0:09:35.000
that I think about whenever I think about

0:09:35.000,0:09:38.000
the power structures of the world, and it is "nkali."

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It's a noun that loosely translates

0:09:40.000,0:09:43.000
to "to be greater than another."

0:09:43.000,0:09:46.000
Like our economic and political worlds,

0:09:46.000,0:09:48.000
stories too are defined

0:09:48.000,0:09:51.000
by the principle of nkali:

0:09:51.000,0:09:53.000
How they are told, who tells them,

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when they're told, how many stories are told,

0:09:56.000,0:10:00.000
are really dependent on power.

0:10:00.000,0:10:03.000
Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person,

0:10:03.000,0:10:07.000
but to make it the definitive story of that person.

0:10:07.000,0:10:09.000
The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes

0:10:09.000,0:10:12.000
that if you want to dispossess a people,

0:10:12.000,0:10:15.000
the simplest way to do it is to tell their story

0:10:15.000,0:10:18.000
and to start with, "secondly."

0:10:18.000,0:10:22.000
Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans,

0:10:22.000,0:10:25.000
and not with the arrival of the British,

0:10:25.000,0:10:28.000
and you have an entirely different story.

0:10:28.000,0:10:30.000
Start the story with

0:10:30.000,0:10:32.000
the failure of the African state,

0:10:32.000,0:10:36.000
and not with the colonial creation of the African state,

0:10:36.000,0:10:40.000
and you have an entirely different story.

0:10:40.000,0:10:42.000
I recently spoke at a university where

0:10:42.000,0:10:44.000
a student told me that it was

0:10:44.000,0:10:46.000
such a shame

0:10:46.000,0:10:49.000
that Nigerian men were physical abusers

0:10:49.000,0:10:52.000
like the father character in my novel.

0:10:52.000,0:10:54.000
I told him that I had just read a novel

0:10:54.000,0:10:56.000
called American Psycho --

0:10:56.000,0:10:58.000
(Laughter)

0:10:58.000,0:11:00.000
-- and that it was such a shame

0:11:00.000,0:11:03.000
that young Americans were serial murderers.

0:11:03.000,0:11:07.000
(Laughter)

0:11:07.000,0:11:13.000
(Applause)

0:11:13.000,0:11:16.000
Now, obviously I said this in a fit of mild irritation.

0:11:16.000,0:11:18.000
(Laughter)

0:11:18.000,0:11:20.000
But it would never have occurred to me to think

0:11:20.000,0:11:22.000
that just because I had read a novel

0:11:22.000,0:11:24.000
in which a character was a serial killer

0:11:24.000,0:11:26.000
that he was somehow representative

0:11:26.000,0:11:28.000
of all Americans.

0:11:28.000,0:11:31.000
This is not because I am a better person than that student,

0:11:31.000,0:11:34.000
but because of America's cultural and economic power,

0:11:34.000,0:11:36.000
I had many stories of America.

0:11:36.000,0:11:40.000
I had read Tyler and Updike and Steinbeck and Gaitskill.

0:11:40.000,0:11:43.000
I did not have a single story of America.

0:11:43.000,0:11:46.000
When I learned, some years ago, that writers were expected

0:11:46.000,0:11:50.000
to have had really unhappy childhoods

0:11:50.000,0:11:52.000
to be successful,

0:11:52.000,0:11:54.000
I began to think about how I could invent

0:11:54.000,0:11:56.000
horrible things my parents had done to me.

0:11:56.000,0:11:58.000
(Laughter)

0:11:58.000,0:12:02.000
But the truth is that I had a very happy childhood,

0:12:02.000,0:12:05.000
full of laughter and love, in a very close-knit family.

0:12:05.000,0:12:09.000
But I also had grandfathers who died in refugee camps.

0:12:09.000,0:12:13.000
My cousin Polle died because he could not get adequate healthcare.

0:12:13.000,0:12:16.000
One of my closest friends, Okoloma, died in a plane crash

0:12:16.000,0:12:19.000
because our fire trucks did not have water.

0:12:19.000,0:12:22.000
I grew up under repressive military governments

0:12:22.000,0:12:24.000
that devalued education,

0:12:24.000,0:12:27.000
so that sometimes my parents were not paid their salaries.

0:12:27.000,0:12:31.000
And so, as a child, I saw jam disappear from the breakfast table,

0:12:31.000,0:12:33.000
then margarine disappeared,

0:12:33.000,0:12:36.000
then bread became too expensive,

0:12:36.000,0:12:39.000
then milk became rationed.

0:12:39.000,0:12:42.000
And most of all, a kind of normalized political fear

0:12:42.000,0:12:46.000
invaded our lives.

0:12:46.000,0:12:48.000
All of these stories make me who I am.

0:12:48.000,0:12:52.000
But to insist on only these negative stories

0:12:52.000,0:12:55.000
is to flatten my experience

0:12:55.000,0:12:57.000
and to overlook the many other stories

0:12:57.000,0:12:59.000
that formed me.

0:12:59.000,0:13:02.000
The single story creates stereotypes,

0:13:02.000,0:13:05.000
and the problem with stereotypes

0:13:05.000,0:13:07.000
is not that they are untrue,

0:13:07.000,0:13:09.000
but that they are incomplete.

0:13:09.000,0:13:13.000
They make one story become the only story.

0:13:13.000,0:13:15.000
Of course, Africa is a continent full of catastrophes:

0:13:15.000,0:13:19.000
There are immense ones, such as the horrific rapes in Congo

0:13:19.000,0:13:21.000
and depressing ones, such as the fact that

0:13:21.000,0:13:26.000
5,000 people apply for one job vacancy in Nigeria.

0:13:26.000,0:13:29.000
But there are other stories that are not about catastrophe,

0:13:29.000,0:13:33.000
and it is very important, it is just as important, to talk about them.

0:13:33.000,0:13:35.000
I've always felt that it is impossible

0:13:35.000,0:13:38.000
to engage properly with a place or a person

0:13:38.000,0:13:42.000
without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person.

0:13:42.000,0:13:45.000
The consequence of the single story

0:13:45.000,0:13:48.000
is this: It robs people of dignity.

0:13:48.000,0:13:52.000
It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult.

0:13:52.000,0:13:55.000
It emphasizes how we are different

0:13:55.000,0:13:57.000
rather than how we are similar.

0:13:57.000,0:13:59.000
So what if before my Mexican trip

0:13:59.000,0:14:03.000
I had followed the immigration debate from both sides,

0:14:03.000,0:14:05.000
the U.S. and the Mexican?

0:14:05.000,0:14:09.000
What if my mother had told us that Fide's family was poor

0:14:09.000,0:14:11.000
and hardworking?

0:14:11.000,0:14:13.000
What if we had an African television network

0:14:13.000,0:14:17.000
that broadcast diverse African stories all over the world?

0:14:17.000,0:14:19.000
What the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe calls

0:14:19.000,0:14:22.000
"a balance of stories."

0:14:22.000,0:14:25.000
What if my roommate knew about my Nigerian publisher,

0:14:25.000,0:14:27.000
Mukta Bakaray,

0:14:27.000,0:14:29.000
a remarkable man who left his job in a bank

0:14:29.000,0:14:32.000
to follow his dream and start a publishing house?

0:14:32.000,0:14:36.000
Now, the conventional wisdom was that Nigerians don't read literature.

0:14:36.000,0:14:38.000
He disagreed. He felt

0:14:38.000,0:14:40.000
that people who could read, would read,

0:14:40.000,0:14:44.000
if you made literature affordable and available to them.

0:14:44.000,0:14:47.000
Shortly after he published my first novel

0:14:47.000,0:14:50.000
I went to a TV station in Lagos to do an interview,

0:14:50.000,0:14:53.000
and a woman who worked there as a messenger came up to me and said,

0:14:53.000,0:14:56.000
"I really liked your novel. I didn't like the ending.

0:14:56.000,0:14:59.000
Now you must write a sequel, and this is what will happen ..."

0:14:59.000,0:15:02.000
(Laughter)

0:15:02.000,0:15:05.000
And she went on to tell me what to write in the sequel.

0:15:05.000,0:15:08.000
I was not only charmed, I was very moved.

0:15:08.000,0:15:11.000
Here was a woman, part of the ordinary masses of Nigerians,

0:15:11.000,0:15:14.000
who were not supposed to be readers.

0:15:14.000,0:15:16.000
She had not only read the book, but she had taken ownership of it

0:15:16.000,0:15:19.000
and felt justified in telling me

0:15:19.000,0:15:21.000
what to write in the sequel.

0:15:21.000,0:15:25.000
Now, what if my roommate knew about my friend Fumi Onda,

0:15:25.000,0:15:28.000
a fearless woman who hosts a TV show in Lagos,

0:15:28.000,0:15:31.000
and is determined to tell the stories that we prefer to forget?

0:15:31.000,0:15:35.000
What if my roommate knew about the heart procedure

0:15:35.000,0:15:38.000
that was performed in the Lagos hospital last week?

0:15:38.000,0:15:42.000
What if my roommate knew about contemporary Nigerian music,

0:15:42.000,0:15:45.000
talented people singing in English and Pidgin,

0:15:45.000,0:15:47.000
and Igbo and Yoruba and Ijo,

0:15:47.000,0:15:51.000
mixing influences from Jay-Z to Fela

0:15:51.000,0:15:54.000
to Bob Marley to their grandfathers.

0:15:54.000,0:15:56.000
What if my roommate knew about the female lawyer

0:15:56.000,0:15:58.000
who recently went to court in Nigeria

0:15:58.000,0:16:00.000
to challenge a ridiculous law

0:16:00.000,0:16:03.000
that required women to get their husband's consent

0:16:03.000,0:16:06.000
before renewing their passports?

0:16:06.000,0:16:09.000
What if my roommate knew about Nollywood,

0:16:09.000,0:16:13.000
full of innovative people making films despite great technical odds,

0:16:13.000,0:16:15.000
films so popular

0:16:15.000,0:16:17.000
that they really are the best example

0:16:17.000,0:16:20.000
of Nigerians consuming what they produce?

0:16:20.000,0:16:23.000
What if my roommate knew about my wonderfully ambitious hair braider,

0:16:23.000,0:16:27.000
who has just started her own business selling hair extensions?

0:16:27.000,0:16:29.000
Or about the millions of other Nigerians

0:16:29.000,0:16:31.000
who start businesses and sometimes fail,

0:16:31.000,0:16:35.000
but continue to nurse ambition?

0:16:35.000,0:16:37.000
Every time I am home I am confronted with

0:16:37.000,0:16:40.000
the usual sources of irritation for most Nigerians:

0:16:40.000,0:16:43.000
our failed infrastructure, our failed government,

0:16:43.000,0:16:46.000
but also by the incredible resilience of people who

0:16:46.000,0:16:49.000
thrive despite the government,

0:16:49.000,0:16:51.000
rather than because of it.

0:16:51.000,0:16:54.000
I teach writing workshops in Lagos every summer,

0:16:54.000,0:16:57.000
and it is amazing to me how many people apply,

0:16:57.000,0:17:00.000
how many people are eager to write,

0:17:00.000,0:17:02.000
to tell stories.

0:17:02.000,0:17:05.000
My Nigerian publisher and I have just started a non-profit

0:17:05.000,0:17:07.000
called Farafina Trust,

0:17:07.000,0:17:10.000
and we have big dreams of building libraries

0:17:10.000,0:17:12.000
and refurbishing libraries that already exist

0:17:12.000,0:17:15.000
and providing books for state schools

0:17:15.000,0:17:17.000
that don't have anything in their libraries,

0:17:17.000,0:17:19.000
and also of organizing lots and lots of workshops,

0:17:19.000,0:17:21.000
in reading and writing,

0:17:21.000,0:17:24.000
for all the people who are eager to tell our many stories.

0:17:24.000,0:17:26.000
Stories matter.

0:17:26.000,0:17:28.000
Many stories matter.

0:17:28.000,0:17:32.000
Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign,

0:17:32.000,0:17:36.000
but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize.

0:17:36.000,0:17:39.000
Stories can break the dignity of a people,

0:17:39.000,0:17:44.000
but stories can also repair that broken dignity.

0:17:44.000,0:17:46.000
The American writer Alice Walker wrote this

0:17:46.000,0:17:48.000
about her Southern relatives

0:17:48.000,0:17:50.000
who had moved to the North.

0:17:50.000,0:17:52.000
She introduced them to a book about

0:17:52.000,0:17:55.000
the Southern life that they had left behind:

0:17:55.000,0:17:59.000
"They sat around, reading the book themselves,

0:17:59.000,0:18:05.000
listening to me read the book, and a kind of paradise was regained."

0:18:05.000,0:18:08.000
I would like to end with this thought:

0:18:08.000,0:18:11.000
That when we reject the single story,

0:18:11.000,0:18:14.000
when we realize that there is never a single story

0:18:14.000,0:18:16.000
about any place,

0:18:16.000,0:18:18.000
we regain a kind of paradise.

0:18:18.000,0:18:20.000
Thank you.

0:18:20.000,0:18:28.000
(Applause)