Back to Africa – a journey –

“Before embarking on his journey through West Africa Ferdinand Dennis, who was born in Jamaica, imagined he would be a dispassionate chronicler of what he observed. But from his arrest on arrival in Liberia onwards, he found himself involved, entertained and disconcerted in the most unexpected ways.

Here he describes travelling from Liberia through Sierra Leone, Guinea, Senegal, Cameroon, Nigeria and Ghana, feeling African by ancestry yet not belonging, accompanied by a young white radio producer. Vividly recreating the atmosphere of each country, he reports on their politics, culture and way of life against a historical background. And he relates revealing often amusing encounters with all manner of people from scholars to taxi drivers, presidents to prostitutes, their conversations ranging over such diverse issues as democracy in Africa, living rough on the streets of Freetown, and the different legacies of French and British colonialism. The result is a fascinating, throught-provoking record of a journey of personal discovery through an Africa ripe for change.”