The project had its beginnings for me in 1982. I was 27, in California, and just starting my career as a landscape architect. Not content with prospects at home, I ran away in search of adventure. I easily found a good job in London but at the onset of the first miserable winter, determined that the money I’d saved was enough for me to up-root myself once again. Heading south, I traveled solo through many of the most remote and exotic parts of Africa, encountering amazing nature, wildlife, mysterious cultures and many warm, welcoming people at a time before mass tourism or mass population shifts toward urban centers had affected the pace of life in much of Africa. I was able to absorb the African life-spirit at its best and felt most connected when I was among rural peoples, interacting with them at their pridefully created earthen homes.

In order to stay as long as possible I took a job at the only landscape practice I could find on the entire continent, in Pretoria, South Africa. It proved to be a good decision, but this was 1983, during the height of apartheid. At first glance the city seemed to have more in common with suburban California than the Africa I had grown to appreciate, but it didn’t take long for me to see the effects of its sorrowful repression. Planning to stay no more than a year, I bought a cheap car to explore the country as much as possible in that short time. What I discovered kept me so intrigued that I found it difficult to stop and ultimately drove down countless thousands of dusty backroads – keeping a visual record with my camera – not only in South Africa but also in five of its bordering countries. If Mozambique hadn’t been in the grip of a devastating civil war, I’d have crossed that border as well.

Mark’s focus soon became the self-built, rural homes of the indigineous peoples that he found to be