An African Anthropologist Looks at Europe: The German Obsession with Dogs

Flavien Tiokou Ndonko, Cameroun

Schools, books, television, newspaper, radio, embassies and individual contacts with Europeans touring or working in Africa are ways through which most Africans learn from Europe. Most European countries are presented in a very positive but one sided way: nice building, nice schools and universities, scholarship and well paid job opportunities, high technologies applications, tourism practice. All these have contributed to develop and promote the myth of the white man as a rich man. Even African citizens going to or coming from Europe are perceived as people who have escaped poverty, since Europe is a place where life is thought to be easy and where one can quickly become rich. From this construction, most African who actually experience life in Europe are shocked. The surprise comes from the fact that the Europe they discover is never the one they have imagined, thought of or heard about. The presentation will focus on how I discovered a Europe of dogs, where people seem to belong to dogs and not dogs to the people.