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Rating: 
Summary: An hilarious clash of reality
Review: A real funny ground work diary. From shock to shock, the author discovers that services and activities considered as granted are not so in other places. Bureaucracy to the most absurd limits, supposed to be modern culture imposed to a tribal mood (as a beauty miss election almost in the forest) and even the return to the civilization are oportunities for amazing and funny histories. It is a real way to discover "the others" that are, at bottom, so close to us (as when the boss of the tribe excused for not accompanying him back to U.K. because as every one knows it is afreezing weather, there are dangerous animals as the dogs in the catholic mision and cannibals abound (exactly the same told by his mother in U.K.) All in all, I was expecting for some conclusions on the disaster of imposing our way of development on tribal and undeveloped countries and other way of doing it but maybe this was not the book for such kind of thoughts.
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Summary: What about the women?
Review: While I enjoyed this book very much, and found it both humorous and enlightening, I was left with some curiosity and concern about the female tribespeople. Barley never delves into the lives of the women, nor comments on the fact that the women are treated as commodities and excluded from most ceremonies and celebrations. I couldn't help but think that a female anthropologist would have come away with an entirely different view of the Dowayo. Barley's hilarious description of Cameroonian dentistry, however, was enjoyable enough to outweigh the whiff of sexism which put a slight damper on my enjoyment of the book.
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Summary: Accesible anthropology
Review: You've got to love this book. I'm an anthro type anyway, but if I wasn't this book would still be highly entertaining and a great experience. It's about a self-deprecating British anthropologist who goes to Cameroon to do fieldwork among a little-known tribe called the Dowayo. While he's there, he encounters strange foods, a crazy old missionary, an impossible French-speaking Dowayo assistant, illness, personal injury, beer parties in the fields, paranoid Dowayo men, and a host of other things that will alternately make you wince and laugh out loud. For anthropologists, this is an amusing look at what it's REALLY like in the field, with none of the "blood and guts" left out. For the lay reader, it's a look at what anthropologists actually do, and a highly educational one at that. If you think anthropology is all about dead white men condescending to attend a "native" ceremony now and then, this book's a kick in the head. I loved it.
Rating:
Summary: Accesible anthropology
Review: You've got to love this book. I'm an anthro type anyway, but if I wasn't this book would still be highly entertaining and a great experience. It's about a self-deprecating British anthropologist who goes to Cameroon to do fieldwork among a little-known tribe called the Dowayo. While he's there, he encounters strange foods, a crazy old missionary, an impossible French-speaking Dowayo assistant, illness, personal injury, beer parties in the fields, paranoid Dowayo men, and a host of other things that will alternately make you wince and laugh out loud. For anthropologists, this is an amusing look at what it's REALLY like in the field, with none of the "blood and guts" left out. For the lay reader, it's a look at what anthropologists actually do, and a highly educational one at that. If you think anthropology is all about dead white men condescending to attend a "native" ceremony now and then, this book's a kick in the head. I loved it.
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