July 2011
141 posts
June 2011
357 posts
Dress (or at least, attempt to dress) in a manner you would want to be perceived.
456. Don't dumb it down.
“Individualism is highly prized in Europe, and perhaps nowhere more so than in America; in Africa, it is synonymous with unhappiness, with being accursed. African tradition is collectivist, for only in a harmonious group could one face the obstacles continually thrown up by nature.”
—The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski
“
In all of Africa, each larger social group has its own distinct culture, an original system of beliefs and customs, its own language and taboos, and all of this is immensely complicated, intricate, and mysterious. That is why anthropologists never spoke of “African culture,” or “African religion,” knowing that no such thing exists, and that the essence of Africa is its endless variety. They saw the culture of each people as a discrete world, unique, unrepeated.
Meantime, the unschooled European mind, inclined to rational reduction, to pigeonholing and simplification, readily pushes everything African into a single bag and is content with facile stereotypes.
” —The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski