What should Europe learn from Africa?
Asante (thank you), jambo (hello), pole (I’m sorry), mama (woman), mzee (man), siombaya (things are not going badly), polepole (little by little), maji (water), safari (trip) and tutaonana (see you later). These are the 10 African words which, after many years of adventures on the big continent which is so close yet so forgotten, helped the author to survive not precisely in Africa but rather in the hard return to that other world known as ‘civilization’. Jordi Serrallonga, after living with the maasai warriers and the hadzabe hunters, has learned to confront life each time he has left the savannah, deserts, jungles, mountains and villages of Africa to dive once more into the streets, schools, companies and institutions of our self-satisfied ‘civilization’.
Jordi Serrallonga, arqueologist and naturalist, manages the research group of human origins, HOMÍNID, in the Scientific Park in Barcelona. For the last 15 years he has been moving between the Galápagos Islands, Tanzania and Kenya. He is concerned with collecting clues which will enable them to reconstruct our beginnings. He is one of the world’s leading experts in the masais and the hadzabes, two tribes in black Africa, anchored in the past.
