In 1976, Thomas Goltz, then a naive twenty-one-year-old on the trail of his errant brother, worked his way around Africa putting on one-man Shakespeare performances. This impulsive trip saw him wandering through the cities and villages of East, Central and Southern Africa. His first port of call, after hitchhiking through Eastern Europe and the Middle East, was war-torn Ethiopia. Close encounters followed, with bandits, missionaries, guerrillas, prostitutes, savvy street kids, unrequited loves and, of course, ordinary, Shakespeare-loving Africans.