Africa From Inside

About the Book

The book is a kind of tour guide for traveling to African countries that are not mainly Islamic, but it does not tell you about all the tourist attractions and advices such as whether it is better to take the train or the bus and whether there is one at all. But it helps you to understand in most situations the thinking, the expectations, and the intentions of the Africans you will meet, and therefore gives you a foundation on which you can decide how to act. In order to make a decision you need information. The more information you have, the more likely it is that you can make a good decision. Therefore, doesn’t it make sense to know not only your point of view, but also the point of view of the other, in this case the African?

It will help you find out that many things you presuppose may not be so obvious to others. For example, most of the people in Europe and America take it for granted that we look in each others eyes when we greet someone or when we talk about important things. If someone does not do so, we judge the person as badly educated or inattentive, or we may think the other person has something to hide.

If you look at the question from the other side though, an African woman who doesn’t look in your eyes when she greets you is giving you respect and showing her self-respect, and the one listening to you without looking straight in your eyes is giving you respect by not interrupting what you’re saying by curious looks. This is only one small example, but there are many. In each chapter a small rule is distilled, many examples given.

Because of this it is much more than a tour guide, a mental tour guide. It’s an indispensable help for people in mixed marriages because they will finally learn to understand their spouse and find out which of their marriage problems are personal and which are cultural. This enables them to deal with their problems on a different level. It’s a help for business people working with or employing Africans in finding out how to deal with their (co-)workers.

It becomes a tool for European/American nurses and doctors inside or outside Africa treating Africans to understand them better and treat them more efficiently. It could be a great help or a basis for teachers and social workers in contact with African children and adults for learning how to understand them, and therefore teach or help them more efficiently.

It could help workers of Western institutions who want to bring any kind of aid to Africa in swimming once they have been thrown in the stormy African social and cultural waters. Missionaries will find it easier to understand and respect the people they want to teach, and researchers will learn quicker how to get access to the people whom they want to study, how they can and avoid misunderstandings and make their studies successful.

Last but not at all least, it is meant to be a tool for Africans to understand why Europeans and Americans act so funny sometimes. The book will help Africans realize what the Europeans presuppose, but which is for themselves not self-evident at all.

About the Author

Roger Sery-Fässler was born in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast as Roger Sery. He traveled to Canada, America, Latin America, and Europe where he studied economics in Germany before getting back to his natural call, sociology and ethnology. He made numerous interviews with Africans who had left their country, as well as interviews with Africans in Africa. He has been living between Africa, America, and Europe for the past thirty years. He currently lives and works in Zurich Switzerland.