Harry Charalambos Triandis was born in 1926 in Greece. In his twenties he left his ancestral home for Canada, where he did his undergraduate studies at McGill University. He moved on to the University of Toronto for further studies before going down to Cornell University in the US for his doctoral work. Triandis is important here not because he went on to occupy several noteworthy positions in the American and international psychology fraternity, including serving as president of the International Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology. His importance stems from the fact that in one of his books he actually mentions Africa. It is not a flattering mention. This does not mean that those who do not mention Africa do not hold views about it; but, having had the courage to utter the word, Triandis offers us something to which we can directly respond. In the book in question, Culture and Social Behaviour, published in 1994, this Greek-born and Western-educated social psychologist relates an interesting story about the first time he visited India in 1965. It is a tale about a hotel in Mysore, recounting an inconvenience caused by an amusing cultural misunderstanding and an ensuing happy ending. The point of the story is that ‘we are not aware of our own culture unless we come in contact with another one’ (Triandis 1994: 3). After narrating the anecdote, Triandis writes: