by Robert Brain
By European standards the Bangwa of the West Cameroon have a very strange system of personal friendships Dr Brain, during a year's anthropological study with the tribe, observed that for the Bangwa. a man's best friend is chosen through the accident of birth. He argues that this system with its ritual and ceremony has much to offer Western culture. 'Much has been written of human aggression - but little of altruism: the smile, not the clenched fist, is an example of instinctual behaviour.'