A native Californian, Melvin E. Page was born at the very end of the Second World War. His fascination with Africa began while he was an undergraduate at American University. Only later, in graduate school at Michigan State University, did he begin writing about the First World War on the continent. A former Fulbright Scholar at both the University of Malawi and the University of Kwazulu-Natal – his researching and writing about Africa has spanned six decades. Having lived and worked in Eastern and Southern Africa, and traveled more widely, his reflections examine both of the essential touchstones of his professional and personal life: Africa and his writing about the continent and its peoples. Thus his recollections grow out of both his private and public writing spanning more than a half century of his life with Africa, featuring critical excerpts from each in telling his story. His writing about the Great War and Africa also feature in several TSL publications: Chiwaya War Voices: Malawian Oral Histories of the Great War in Africa, two volumes Chiwaya War Echoes: Malawian Oral Histories of the Second World War in Africa T. Cullen Young, Nyasaland Operations during the World War, 1914-1918 Hector Livingstone Duff, Nyasaland in the World War, 1914-1918 Anne Samson and Sergio Netto, eds., Fiction as Memory: The Great War in Africa Anne Samson and Robert Coyle, eds., African Gallantry Awards