Andrew Purvis, who reported a good chunk of this week's cover package on Somalia, may have been destined for his assignment in Africa. When he was a boy, his paternal grandfather, a chemical-company executive, filled his head with great tales about his work and travels throughout the dark continent in the 1920s, while his maternal grandmother, who lived in South Africa, filled his mailbox with wooden spears, shields, even plastic Zulu dolls. When Purvis turned 21, he started out on a year of thumbing across Africa, riding mostly on transport trucks and camping out alone or staying with Peace Corps volunteers....
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