Tété-Michel Kpomassie

When he was a young man, he was collecting coconuts in a tree when he was surprised by a python, and fell to the ground.

The cure worked, but the priestess required a payment - Kpomassie would need to be initiated into the snake cult.

[3] For the next twelve years he traveled, refusing to stay in one place more than six months, and worked his way through the countries of West Africa, into Europe, and finally, in the mid-1960s, found a boat to Greenland.

All the while, he taught himself languages through correspondence courses and made an endless number of friends through his skills as a story-teller and natural charm.

Kpomassie currently lives in Nanterre, near Paris, France, but continues to regularly visit Greenland and his native country of Togo.