This work is based on my belief that it is useful, if not necessary, to know under what influences we grew up. I cannot imagine my life without the troubles and the tragedies. Not to say that I would not wish to have been spared some of the lessons life taught me, but these made me who I am now, and being alive has, altogether, been the most exciting thing yet. I often feel that I am lucky: J'ai de la chance. I have taken chances as well, wandering so far that I now live almost on the other side of the world from the village of my birth. Yet I don't feel a stranger in a strange land--just richer, filled to the brim, and still true to the girl child I was.