Africa is huge and one of my favorite places to travel. The continent offers a variety of landscapes from jungles to vast, open plains, to beaches and coral reefs, to deserts, and even glaciers on its tallest volcano, so there are plenty of places to write about. I set part of Bijou and Zeke’s story in the Sahara desert and some mountains, but for Mponyaji and Kanzi, Bijou’s parents, the setting is farther south in the Congo. That’s where I saw the snorkeling elephants searching for minerals and heard some stories about the Ninke Nanka and Mkele Mbebe. I didn’t see them no matter how hard I looked, but I did run across some lowland gorillas while I searched.