The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut

Great, if you enjoy this type of humour (which I do, obviously), which I guess is a self deprecating British humour.

Barley starts his book by ridiculing fieldwork, and academic life in general, while explaining that fieldwork is the natural progression from doctorates based on ‘library research'. This, along with selecting a location, takes a chapter, and forms the basis for the full extent of the book.

In selecting a location, Barley had narrowed it down to Portuguese Timor, until just as the academic side of things were getting underway, a civil war broke out. Casting around again, he settled on a little known group of mountain pagans in Northern Cameroon - the Dowayos. A few minor references from French colonial administrators, and some missionary contact established that they were interesting: “skull cults, circumcision, a whistle language, mummies and a reputation for being recalcitrant and savage.” [P13]

The author then sets about preparing for his fieldwork, getting grants, making contacts, collecting equipment, receiving vaccinations. Finally his travels to Cameroon begin.

From there onwards Barley shares his embarrassing situations, his(frequent) faux pas, and misunderstandings. As well as the amusing interactions, it seems the author is just prone to complications and ‘incidents'. He also shares, in a simple form the experiences while undertaking his research.

I can only assume his academic work was in quite a different writing style from the amusing anecdotes here, but it was an excellent for this book - which judged on topic and content might have been a very dry read. This really was anything but a dry read.

There were many excellent anecdotes, but all far longer and more involved than I am motivated to type, so here are a couple of the shorter incidents:

P49/50: The author, with a mild case of Malaria returns to his hut in the village - with the holes in the roof.
Much has been written on the excellence of bats' navigation equipment. It is all false. Tropical bats spend their entire time flying into obstacles with a horrible thudding noise. They specialize in slamming into walls and falling, fluttering onto your face. As my own ‘piece of equipment essential for the field' I would strongly recommend a tennis racket; it is devastatingly effective in clearing a room of bats. Pastor Brown had taken the time to tell me that bats carried rabies. They occupied a large space in my fevered fantasies.

P64: On the local beer.
I had made an early policy decision to drink the native beer despite the undoubted horrors of the process of fabrication. On my very first visit to a Dowayo beer party, this was put severely to the test. “Will you have beer?” I was asked. “Beer is furrowed,” I replied, having got the tones wrong. “He said ‘yes' “, my assistant replied in a tired voice. They were amazed. No white man, at this time, had ever been known to touch beer. Seizing a calabash, they proceeded to wash it out in deference to my exotic sensibilities. They did this by offering it to a dog to lick out. Dowayo dogs are not beautiful at the best of times; this one was particularly loathsome, emaciated, open wounds on its ears where flies feasted, huge distended ticks hanging from its belly. It licked the calabash with relish. It was refilled and passed to me. Everyone regarded me, beaming expectantly. There was nothing to be done; I drained it and gasped out my enjoyment. Several more calabashes followed.

Five stars - worth seeking out, if you like this type of thing.