Having travelled across West Africa for over 10 years, Peter Biddlecombe's often hilarious account is a highly readable, hugely entertaining introduction to French Africa. In countries such as Togo, Mali, and Burkina Faso, Biddlecome encounters old-fashioned camel butchers, modern witch doctors who run mail-order companies, gold smugglers, and counterfeiters who send their sons to Oxford. He also experiences eerie voodoo ceremonies in the old slave port of Ouidah and Italian ice-cream parlors in the middle of the Sahara desert. And Biddlecombe reveals not only Francophone Africa's politics, business traditions, and culture, but also provides a mass of practical advice on everything from how to eat a water-rat to talking your way through a road block in the middle of an attempted coup.