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"There I was, standing alone, unable to cry as I said goodbye to Sidime Laye, my best friend, and to the revolution that had opened the door of modernity for me". This text gives the story of a quest for a childhood friend, for the past and present, and for an Africa struggling to find its future. In 1996 Manthia Diawara, a distinguished professor of film and literature in New York City, returned to Guinea, 32 years after he and his family were expelled from the newly liberated country. He is working on a documentary about Sekou Toure, the dictator who was Guinea's first post-independence leader. Despite the years that had gone by, Diawara expected to be welcomed as an insider, and was shocked to discover that he was not. The Africa that Diawara found was not the one on the verge of barbarism, as described in the Western press. Yet neither was it the Africa of his childhood, when the excitement of independence made everything seem possible for young Africans. His search for Sidime Laye led Diawara to profound meditations on Africa's culture. He suggests the solutions that might overcome the stultifying legacy of colonialism and age-old social practices, yet that will mobilize indigenous strengths and energies.