Product Description

Having travelled across West Africa for over ten years, Peter Biddlecombe's often hilarious account of a long and lingering liaison dangereuse with the sixty per cent of the continent that is French-speaking is a highly readable, hugely entertaining introduction to the je ne sais quoi of French Africa. In countries such as Togo, Mali and Burkina Faso, Biddlecome encounters old-fashioned camel butchers, modern witch doctors who run mail-order companies, gold smugglers and counterfeiters who send their sons to Oxford. He also experiences a delicious foie gras of places: from eerie voodoo ceremonies in the old slave port of Ouidah to Italian ice-cream parlors in the middle of the Sahara desert. And Biddlecombe reveals not only Francophone Africa's politics, often bizarre business traditions and culture, but also provides a mass of practical advice on everything from how to eat a water-rat to talking your way through a road block in the middle of an attempted coup.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #272553 in Books
• Published on: 1994-01-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Review
'This astonishing book is all highlights, an incident on every page' - DAILY MAIL

About the Author
Peter Biddlecombe is a travel-hardened businessman and the author of four previous, gloriously funny accounts of global business trips. He lives in Waldron, Sussex when he is not hanging around the airports of the world.

Customer Reviews

Long on laughs, but a bit shorter on insight
I very much enjoyed Biddlecombe's style, particularly the many funny anecdotes. One that sticks out in my mind is his description of the hordes of unbelievably tenacious street vendors in Dakar (the same vendors are "breaking out" all over Europe these days, he tells us, and he's right). The author's experiences in a wide range of French-speaking African locales, from Kinshasa to Bamako, give him a special perspective; it's rare to find an Englishman (or for that matter anyone) who's so well versed in that part of the world. He illustrates each country and city with a story from his many business trips, his meetings with government and private sector leaders, and his interactions with common people.

The thing is, one loses something by relying on French to get by, even in cosmopolitan cities like Abidjan or Dakar. The actual majority of people in these places do not speak French, so one tends to interact with a relatively small subset of the population. (In the Congo this subset is estimated at 30-40 percent; in Chad it's only 5-10 percent.) This is not Mr. Biddlecombe's fault of course, but the reader should keep in mind that there is much more to the societies being presented than their educated elites.

An enjoyable read into French Africa
This book looks at Peter Biddlecombe travelling around the french part of Africa, or "Francophone Africa" as he calls it. Reading this book in 2004, after it was written in the 80's, and being only 18 I occasionally struggled to understand some of the political references he makes to other countries and the live style that occured in the UK then, however I also learnt a lot.
This book was well written giving great insight into the culture of many of the people in French Africa. Each chapter covers a different country however links are made between the too making it flow much better than in some of his other books.
The only problem with this book was the quantity of french. Many of the conversations he has are in French, not very difficult french but french none the less. I expected this due to previous books I have read of his and managed to muddle my way through. I would not recommend this book to someone who knows absolutely nothing of the French language unless they are willing to miss out the odd paragraph or two.
Overall, however, it was an excellent read.

Ici on learns un peu
I surprised myself: I did enjoy this book. It was a last minute desperate purchase for no other reason than that I wanted to fill in some time.

Now, I never know if the facts are right in this sort of book: I got rid of all the books I had by one travel writer that I swore by when I discovered that most of his characters and conversations were invented. However, I got the feeling that these encounters were based on truth.

Unlike the previous reviewer, I didn't find conversations were in French - the French tended to be mainly when the author was telling the story or putting across his opinions: even then, they tended to be very brief. But they were annoying for a different reason. Mr Biddlecombe would be giving his thoughts and then suddenly interject un morceau de Francais. First time, it struck me as mildly amusing; then it became arch. Finally, it bugged me a lot.

Reading this book enlightened me more, however, than Michael Palin's Sahara, for example, because I didn't feel that situations were being set up 'off-camera', so to speak.

Best insights? The reasons francophone Africa has better relations with the country of its mother language than anglophone Africa has. I also found the Togo and Senegal sections particularly interesting.

One other downside - the frequent use of 'African' as a generalisation, not only by those he meets but also by him. For a book that so excellently demonstrates the difference between cultures, countries and individuals (the people he meets in Zaire, for example) this seems a little bit lazy and insulting.