I liked the food, the music, the warmth of the culture, the easy conviviality and drawling repartee. Most of all, I liked the storytelling. It was an integral part of life here, an art form respected at all levels of society, and the stories themselves got so wild and improbable. They burned with a strange fever, and made a mockery of the usual standards of cause and effect. They were a window into a place and a culture where contradictions hung in the air like swamp gas, and eccentricity was as natural as rain.
