A L S O__T O D A Y This week in Travel Wanderlust presents a selective guide to the week's travel-related news. T A B L E_T A L K What is the best way to experience Spain? Get advice and share your stories in Table Talk's Wanderlust area R E C E N T L Y Rules of the Wild By Francesca Marciano The seductive subculture of whites in Kenya -- and the addicting allure of Africa's vastness (10/08/98) Maiden voyage By Susanna Stromberg A 19-year-old finds lust and illusion on a Love Boat cruise to Alaska (10/07/98) Family values in Africa By David Kravitz An elephant herd teaches a dad and his teenage daughter a valuable lesson (10/06/98) High on Huautla By Derek Peck Mushrooms are still the best way to travel in this legendary Mexican mountain village (10/05/98) Why I hate B&Bs By Julie Garagliano On the depravities of teddy bears, claw-foot bathtubs, breakfast quiches and shared bonhomie (10/02/98) Browse the Wanderlust Passages archives S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		- - - - - - - - - - - AN INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR FRANCESCA MARCIANO ABOUT AFRICA'S ATTRACTIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS. BY DON GEORGE | Yesterday, Wanderlust published the first chapter of Francesca Marciano's evocative and provocative new novel about Kenya, "Rules of the Wild." Reading that book transported me back to the vast open spaces of Africa and reminded me powerfully how that country had gotten under my own skin 20 years ago, so I leapt at the chance to interview the author when she was in San Francisco earlier this week. For Marciano, an Italian filmmaker who now divides her life between Kenya and Italy, this book represents a double risk: It is her first novel, and her first literary effort in English. Why did you write this book? I've always wanted to be a writer. I opted for the movies because I thought I could get away with more -- there was always somebody else you could blame. Writing films enabled me to make a living out of writing, but deep down I always knew that writing films was not like writing a novel. When you're writing a book, you give people access straight into your head. It's scary, but that's what ultimately you aim for when you decide to write. I wanted to write this book in particular because I figured that after 10 years of living in Africa, I needed to explain to myself what had made me stay. And I wanted to explain it to others as well, because I felt a lot of people were wondering, "What are you still doing there?" Is your main character, Esme, mostly you, or more a composite of other people you know? Esme isn't me. Esme doesn't have a job, she relies on men, she is passive. I've worked since I was 18 years old, and I've always been a control freak. But in a way I would like to be like Esme. I felt these were positive qualities. I didn't want Esme to be a career person. I wanted her to be really vulnerable. In Kenya she can't introduce herself as someone who is doing this or that; she's just there, under the sky, and not even remotely pretending that she has a career or a reason to be there. I think that takes a lot of guts. Do people still fly into Nairobi like this, with no reason or plan except that they feel they need to be there? Yes, I see it all the time. I see people come in and be totally dumbfounded by what happens internally, which is what I tried to explain in the first chapter. I have always thought of this book as a metaphorical geography. I didn't use Africa as a backdrop because I wanted to have a Grand Adventure or an Exotic Backdrop. I wanted Africa to be a metaphor for a state of mind, where you start taking everything off. You clear the background, and there's nothing, and therefore all sorts of things start jumping in the foreground. This is what happens to Esme, and this is what happens to anybody who comes to Africa. Something triggers it, and then they don't want to go away. And there is another thing -- not many other places are left on the planet where you're not in control. Kenya is really one of the few places where you can actually move away from electricity poles, telephones, people, cars, and just go to this space where maybe for days you don't meet another person. That's frightening, because you don't know what's out there. The strength of it is that it's almost coded in our genetic memory that this is how we function, it's what we were wired for. That stalled only very recently, maybe a hundred years ago. And that wiring, when we go back to Africa, somehow starts connecting again. I remember that overwhelming feeling: It was not so much that I was a white man in a black man's country, as that I was a human in -- Nature's country; I was a guest in the wild animals' home. Exactly. I think every continent has an age. You go to Africa and you're this human dot in the background. You go to India and everything is people, and people making things. It's like Africa is the childhood of man, where we haven't yet learned to make anything, and India is our youth, where we're making wonderful things, and there's music and poetry and fabrics and jewelry and architecture. And then you go to the West and it's really old age: All our stuff is used and rusting and all we're concerned about is where we can throw out the garbage. N E X T+P A G E | Losing your European luggage