Customer Reviews

An African in Greenland

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When author Kpomassie was a teenager in his native Togo in the '50s, he nearly died in a fall, and was pledged by his father to become a priest of the python cult that cured him. While looking for a way around this future, he happened upon a book about Greenland and became obsessed with the idea of moving there and becoming a hunter. Over the course of several years, Kpomassie worked his way across West Africa and Europe before arriving in Greenland in the early '60s. He was possibly the first African to visit Greenland, and was the first black person most of the Greenlanders had ever seen. He became a minor celebrity ("I've heard about you on the radio since you arrived in the south"), as the locals, particularly children and young women, swarmed around the exotic stranger. As he made his way up the coast of west Greenland, he stopped in several towns, where he was invariably taken into someone's home as a guest and treated to fine delicacies like seal blubber and mattak (beluga whale skin).

Kpomassie is an excellent observer, and this book is as good an introduction to Greenlandic culture as Gretel Ehrlich's "This Cold Heaven". Kpomassie is a much more straightforward writer than Ehrlich, and this book therefore makes an easier read. The reader gets to learn about two exotic cultures: Kpomassie's tales of his upbringing in the Mina tribe of Togo is as interesting as his travels in Greenland.

(1=poor 2=mediocre 3=pretty good 4=very good 5=phenomenal)

Modern times mean modern means. Our contemporary adventurers always tote an amazing array of technology with them, or they rely on the backup of millions of dollars worth of equipment. Heading off to the stars eventually will involve the work of thousands of people. We always knew where the first balloonists around the world were, even their altitude. The Vikings never had that advantage, nor did the explorers of the Amazon nor the Micronesians as they sailed across the vast Pacific. Here is a story of a real, one-man adventure that started in the 1960s. A teenager in Togo, West Africa, Kpomassie grew up in an African village family. After a close encounter with a python, he was destined to become a priest in the traditional religion. His destiny was changed, though, the day he found a book on Greenland in a Christian bookshop. Utterly fascinated, he determined to travel to the far north to live with the Eskimos himself. This volume is the wonderful story of how he did it. It took eight years of effort to work his way across Africa to France, then ultimately, to Denmark from where he embarked on a ship to Greenland. Most of the book tells of how he lived, worked, hunted, found romance, ate and drank with the denizens of the frozen north, all told with an African perspective. "...the way we were stuffing ourselves with food and swapping stories reminded me so much of Africa..." (p.118) If "white man looks at the natives and pities them" is not your bag, then this is the perfect antidote. Kpomassie blends in so well, he thinks of staying there for the rest of his life, even learns to eat raw whale meat that splintered like ice in his mouth. You will never find another book like this. Buy it !

This book was published in 1981 and centers on the author's adventures around 1966-67 in Greenland, the ice-covered island the size of Europe with a tiny population scattered along the coast.

Born in French Togoland in West Africa, Kpomassie developed a passionate interest in Greenland after reading about it as a teenager. He left home shortly afterward in 1958 and, having little money, spent eight years working his way through Ghana, Senegal, France, Germany and Denmark before finally boarding a ship for his ultimate destination. It appears he was the first black African to visit Greenland, and his descriptions of his reception on arrival there are among the book's highlights.

Landing near the island's southwestern tip, he traveled slowly up the western coast, staying for long periods of time with friendly families who kindly took him in. He'd hoped to reach the town of Thule in the northwest, but made it only two-thirds of the way before deciding to return home to share his experiences with his countrymen. Though he never reached his final destination or got to live in an igloo like he'd planned, he enjoyed many other experiences such as driving a dogsled, seeing icebergs up close and fishing on the ice.

His descriptions of people and landscapes were impressive, bleak though they were at times. There were many scenes of poverty, squalor, boredom and heavy drinking among the locals. On the other hand, nearly everyone was very open and sharing with him. The writer was a good observer and often compared local practices with those of his own culture to find differences and similarities. He was interested especially in how children were indulged, how the adults got along with each other, treatment of the elderly, beliefs and rituals concerning death, prohibitions on killing certain animals, and so on.

Descriptions of some of the people he met were memorable, as were those of things like riding a dogsled, the local diet, the packs of half-starved dogs running around the villages, the absence of trees, the extreme cold and the polar night. One night, he was astonished to see the aurora borealis for the first time, though the locals were so used to it they didn't bother to look outside.

Most admirable to me were the author's good sense, quiet humor and ability to adapt to each new experience. How can you not admire someone who traveled to such a different place and embraced it? And for the most part, the local Inuit people embraced him. A lesson reinforced by this book was that despite all the cultural and language differences, people are people, and they can find ways to relate so long as they keep an open mind.

A sample of his writing from late in the book, after he planned to leave: "Now that I had been sharing these people's lives for sixteen months, their food no longer disgusted me, and I thought nothing of eating a breakfast of seal fat and dried intestines every morning . . .

"'But we'd be glad to have you with us always!' old Mattaaq kept telling me. 'We know you. Do you want for anything here? We have everything a man needs--seals and fish in the sea beyond counting. You know that, because you hunt and fish with my sons . . . But I understand you very well. After so many years away from them, you don't know what's become of your own folk, and you want to go back and see them, don't you?'

"He may have been right. Do people ever know their true reason for embarking on a long journey? So many causes, motives and impulses intertwine to form the semblance of a reason."

As a parting gift, the author's given a handmade necklace made from the tooth and claw of a polar bear. He writes, "My own grandfather would have made the same gesture with the same intention, using the trophies of a leopard; but he would have chosen a remote spot and a twilight hour, spoken arcane words, and enlisted all those minute preliminaries and accessories which, by swathing this simple act in mystery, would have given it increased significance. But here, in the land of the great cold, the daily ritual was stripped of that display. Here life was hard, and the pursuit of food more urgent than in the tropics."

If there was anything I missed in this book, it was more description by the author of his travels' effect on his own emotions and thinking. He described actions, beliefs and other people well, but wasn't really that introspective.

Though the author returned initially to Togo, eventually he went back to France, took French citizenship and lives there. Judging from this book, his perceptions of what it's like to live in France between cultures would surely be of interest. Unfortunately for those who read only English, it appears that nothing else he's written has been translated from the French.

AN AFRICAN IN GREENLAND is the most remarkable travel journal I have read in a very long time. As a boy in Togo, Kpomassie was injured and while recovering read a book on Greenland that seized his imagination. The book recounts the events that led to this early obsession with Greenland, his efforts to reach the country and his travels in Greenland once he arrived. Kpomassie is a charming and honest narrator. He is at once perceptive, wry and compassionate in his account. He describes his travels and interactions with various cultures with almost anthropological detail and yet he never forgets the people he meets are human, wonderfully flawed perhaps, but human nonetheless. He turns his critical eye on his Togolese upbringing, his time in France, Germany and Denmark and ultimately Greenland. He never neglects to mention his own foibles, in his interactions in the lives of those he meets. (How could he not since he was the first African most of the Greenlanders had seen.) The story is also tinged with sadness for the loss the customs and rituals Kpomassie had hoped to witness in Greenland, the combined poverty and generosity of the people and the inevitable sorrow of ending a journey. It is a fascinating study of Greenland but also a study of a man pursuing a dearly held dream and that is what makes it such a satisfying read.

For anyone interested in unique travels and traveler's perceptions, this book is a must read. Thankfully, the author, Kpomassie, devotes several chapters to his life in Togo; it's essential that the reader see what his life was like in 1940's and '50's sub-Saharan Africa in order to judge the contrast between his edge-of-jungle childhood and the world of freezing waters and rocky crags of Greenland. When I first heard about this book, I thought it impossible for a black west-African to even conceive of such a voyage, let alone have interest in an ice-bound place. But the author--as he narrates--shows that all voyages and voyagers are similar: the idea is born in the young person's mind, he envisions himself there, he makes a break with his homeland and family, he finds key supporters in people inspired by his vision, and his French "adoptive father" becomes the sponsor of his voyage.

Kpomassie takes eight years to get from Togo to Greenland, working in Europe along the way. He is not at all disgruntled with the French (or Germans) the former colonizers of his homeland; rather, his ability to speak French enables him to find good jobs as well as the friends who believe in him. "I landed merely by showing my identity card," Kpmoassie writes, "and found that France is a hospitable nation: despite the storm of ill feeling at the time of our countries' [sic] independence, no restriction was imposed upon our entry into the former mother country" . . . . I felt freer in France than on African soil" (58-9).

I feel certain that much has changed in the relationship between black Africans and Europe in the forty years since the author made his travels. For example, today the contrasts between Togo, France, and Greenland are less obvious because of "modernization" and creeping monoculture. In contrast, it seems to me that in the 1960s--when cultures were still quite different--people took their cultural differences less seriously than we do today, despite the spread of said monoculture and the increase of photographs and documentaries that makes the world somewhat familiar to everyone.

What's really unexpected about this book is that Kpomassie finds a Greenland and an Inuit or Eskimo people, who are--it seems to me--in a cultural upheaval. For one thing, the impact of human activity on the ecosystem is not yet understood. Most alarmingly, the impact of Denmark and Danish people on the Natives of Greenland is not yet calculated; there is a crisis of morality, religion, and of old and new ways that--for me--was at times dismaying. The children and the women pay the highest price for this cultural change.

Somewhere inside this book is a great untold story, a book within a book. If it could be told, it would be by an Eskimo about Kpomassie's effects on the Greenlanders. Also, another subtext to this book is that for the author to leave Togo, he had to have an upheaval in his own life. Kpomassie gives us only the surface of his break with his family and Togoland culture. What we know, in retrospect, is that Togo was having its own cultural upheaval: The young Tete-Michel Kpomassie questioned his family's belief in the snake rituals and the jungle priestesses. His growing fear of family tradition conjoined with his discovery of a book on Greenland, planted a seed in his mind that propelled him out into the cold north, the land of very long, dark winters.

I finished the entire book in 1 night :) Kpomassie is a charming person, both astute and innocent. His clear writing describes life on the isolated island: brawls and dances and drinking, poverty and neglect, snowfall thick as a million feathers, Danish influence and the autumn sickness. His observations of the Eskimos are not tainted by romantic Western misconceptions ... to say the least. This is really 3 travelogues in 1: Greenland, Denmark and the author's native Togo. After reading this, Greenland is on my "must see" list.

Kpomassie refreshingly reveals without a trace of romanticisme the widly different world of the Inuits. From espisodes of intense companionship to loneliness, exhalation and revultion, our African traveler describes a frigid landscape populated with a very colorful culture and personalities. Extreemly engaging Tbetbe-Michel Kpomassie's courageous personality charms us and the world he describes.

This unique and highly entertaining travelogue begins in the west African country of Togo in the late 1950s, as the teenage author recuperates from a near fatal illness. Kpomassie, an avid reader, is enthralled by a book that he discovers at the town's evangelical bookshop, The Eskimos from Greenland to Alaska, with its descriptions of vast territory devoid of trees, eternal cold, hunters clothed in animal skins, and a society that valued the child above all else, which contrasted sharply with Togo's elder dominated society and its numerous tropical forests, blistering hot beaches, and dangerous snakes. He soon decides that his destiny is to travel to Greenland, instead of fulfilling his father's promise to entrust him to the healers that saved his life.

Kpomassie slowly makes his way to Greenland via the countries on the west African coast, France, Germany and Denmark, aided by relatives and benefactors who are impressed with and fond of the soft spoken but determined young man. He finally arrives in the southern Greenlandic town of Julianehĺb, eight years after he left Togo, and is warmly welcomed by the town's Inuit and Danish inhabitants, who are entranced by the gentle black giant.

Kpomassie's descriptions of the different cultures in Greenland, the people he meets, and the unique if not exactly palatable cuisine are entertaining, often warm and humorous, and always evocative and pointedly descriptive. He becomes disenchanted with the culture of southern Greenland, and slowly travels to the even more isolated northern regions, in order to seek the true Inuit people that he read and dreamed about.

"An African in Greenland" is an improbable and unforgettable work of travel literature, which is easily my favorite in this genre. I suppose that my ultimate compliment is that it made me eager to accompany Kpomassie to Greenland, despite its brutal climate and horrid cuisine.

Excellent book about how a person can be self sufficient in achieving their wildest dreams. A word of caution, this book is not for the squeamish. Some of the scenes described in the book may offend a reader not familiar with the customs of the Far North. However, I thought that the book gave me an excellent fresh look at how people live around the world.

One of the most unusual travel books ever written, covering two exotic societies in the eyes of the west: animist West Africa and the eskimos of Greenland. Written originally in french about 25 years ago, and covering events happening in the 50s and 60s, the book starts as Tete-Michel Kpomassie, a teenager in his native Togo, nearly dies in a fall from a tree. After that, his father sends him to a local python cult in the jungle to cure him. In gratitude, the father decides Tete is destined to become a priest in the cult. But Tete has another ideas. While recovering from his injuries, he finds by chance a book about Greenland and became obsessed with the idea of going there. By a sustained effort of will, Kpomassie worked his way through Africa and Europe before arriving in Greenland after several years. Being possibly the first African to visit Greenland, and the first black person most of the Greenlanders had ever seen, he becomes a minor celebrity. He travels up north through the coast of west Greenland, stopping in several villages, where he was invariably taken into someone's home as a guest. He candidly writes about his shock about what he saw as a lack of personal hygiene on the part of the greenlanders as well as their sexual promiscuity. Kpomassie is an excellent observer. The first chapters are wonderful, as he let us see an animist society from the inside. And his travels in Greenland are fascinating too.