Quote

I was a farm kid from the plains of South Venezuela, from a very poor family. I grew up in a palm tree house with an earthen floor.

I went to a number of foreign countries, and during whenever I went, I would try to go to an orphanage or a home for children. And I was seeing thousands of kids around the world that needed homes.

I did stuff for three years in Kabul that I found exciting, and a lot of that was fixing roofs, talking about sewage installation.

I fell in love with Africa and began helping people fix things there.

I have continued to work at different things, and rebuilt my home all by myself. I did it for the sake of satisfaction at doing something. I did it because I happened to be where I was.

I got a little house in East L.A. and did the gardening. I was doing some acting here and there, doing my own thing... getting back to reality.

I grew up in a small place and left it when I was quite young and entered the bigger world.

Being from Africa is the best thing that could have ever, ever happened to me. I cannot see it any other way. All of my fundamental principles that were instilled in me in my home, from my childhood, are still with me.

Until I was six years old we lived in the projects, then my two brothers and three sisters and I moved to a three-bed that my mother's father built.

As a small child in England, I had this dream of going to Africa. We didn't have any money and I was a girl, so everyone except my mother laughed at it. When I left school, there was no money for me to go to university, so I went to secretarial college and got a job.