AN AFRICAN IN GREENLAND

by Tete-Michel Kpomassie ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 30, 1983

A native of Togoland, educated (mostly self-educated) in French and brought up in a traditional African compound as one of 27 children born to his father's eight wives, Kpomassie at 16 (in 1958) read a book on the Eskimos and immediately felt a strong affinity for those happy, open-looking inhabitants of a land of unimaginable cold. How he decided to run away to Greenland to escape becoming a priest of the python cult makes a full-flavored story in itself, as does his eight-year journey, working his way through Africa and Europe. Arriving at last in Julianehab ""with only the vaguest idea as to just where I should stay in that vast land,"" this tall black man is met by cries of terror from the children while adults compete clamorously to put him up. The subsequent procession through town, with his triumphant hosts followed by townspeople, children, and the local police, ""made me think of the Lilliputians surrounding Gulliver."" Next morning the children's free behavior at table strikes him as a scene ""worthy of Brueghel""; and on a visit to the old folks' home later that day, he reflects on how much more authority ""our elders"" have in Togo. Such is his range of references. As the idle life and casual ""morality"" in Julianehap come to ""disgust"" him, he pushes north in search of ""real"" Eskimos who hunt seals and paddle kayaks and sleep in igloos. Kpomassie never does reach Thule, but his travels as far north as Upernavik find him fishing through ice and seal hunting with nets; burrowing in the snow for a stormy night on what should have been a three-and-a-half-hour dogsled journey; sleeping with his hostess in Jakobshavn when her father obligingly takes her husband off on a four-day hunting trip; partaking of a feast at which a fresh-killed seal is spread on the floor and the women tear out the raw lungs and liver for ""hors d'oeuvres""; and at last, in Upernavik, staying in the last of the village's turf dwellings where he shares the crowded sleeping shelf with an adult family of four. (""I've heard about you on the radio since you arrived in the South,"" says his indigent elderly host.) An open, easy traveler,' Kpomassie accommodates to the ubiquitous stink of urine, drunken husbands, ""nauseating"" seal blubber, and temperatures of minus 40; he regrets the erosion of native traditions (including that of sharing seal with starving neighbors) but embraces the people, enjoys the splash he makes everywhere in his dogskin finery, and finds the Eskimo customs ""gentler"" than those of his own people. His keen, appreciative, vibrant account affords readers the rare, oddly layered view of a traditional African with a half-French mind observing Danish Eskimos a few hundred miles south of an American air base.

Pub Date: June 30, 1983

ISBN: 0940322889

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION