Culture Shock and Adaptation

I realize I haven't gone into the "nitty gritty" details of cultural differences I've been experiencing in Bamako. So, I'm taking my time now to do that since nothing too exciting has been happening since my last post and now that I work 60 hours a week, I have little time to get into a lot of trouble. =)

I might have already discussed this with some of you through e-mails, but one major difference in Mali is the greeting. That was the first cultural difference I noticed. It's always rude not to reply to someone when they say "hi," no matter what country you're from, at least that's what I think. In Mali, they take it to the extreme. Apparently, one of the most offensive things you can do is not to reply when someone says, "hi." I've actually learned the morning greeting in Bambara, one of the few things I know how to say in this language. Morning greetings in Bambara go something like this:

I ni sɔgɔma. (Good morning.)
- Nse [i ni sɔgɔma]. [Good morning to you too. (if the person who asked you was a woman)]
- Mbah [i ni sɔgɔma]. [Good morning to you too. (if the person who asked you was a man)]
Hɛrɛ sira? (Have you had a good night's sleep?)
- Hɛrɛ dɔrɔn. (Yes, I had a good night's sleep.)
So mɔgɔw bɛ di? (How is your family?)
- Toɔrɔ tɛ a la (They are well.)
I ka kɛnɛ wa? (How are you?)
- Toɔrɔ si tɛ. I fana ka kɛnɛ? (I'm well. How are you?)
I "X" ka kɛnɛ? [How is "X" (X is a set of people you may know it can be anywhere from 1 to a million people... ex. "i fa ka kɛnɛ?" = "How is your father?" "i ba ka kɛnɛ?" = "How is your mother?" "Amerikikiaw ka kɛnɛ?" = "How are the people in America?", etc.)
- Toɔrɔ tɛ a la (They are well.)
Ala ka tile hɛrɛ caya (May Allah augment the peace of the day.)
- Amiina. Ala ka dugu hɛrɛ bɛ (Amen. May Allah hear your blessing. )
Amiina (Amen)

It takes forever to go through the repertoire and every morning, you have to repeat the process with any Malians you encounter who say to you, "I ni sɔgɔma."

Another cultural difference is the fact that people get married quite early and men can have up to 4 wives as allowed by Islamic law. Since the country is about 90% Muslim, many of the people practice polygamy. Each woman also has about 7 children. The 2007 estimate was 6.6 children per woman but in 2008, we're projecting a number closer to 7.3 children/woman!!! I would really hate to be a Malian woman - work back breaking work all day, expect to have a husband with a few other wives, be expected to have at least 6 or 7 children, and in the end, live a quality of life that is deplorable compared to what we'd consider acceptable in the developed world. I really feel bad for Malian women... I don't even want one child, let alone 6 or 7! What a nightmare! If I ever change my mind about kids, though, I think I'll adopt a child from Africa. It is true that the average woman has around 7 children but at the same time, they also lose a lot of children to easily curable diseases like malaria. Due to the health conditions here, 1 in 5 Malian children die before it is 5 years old. That means, every single woman in Mali loses at least 1 child and every other woman in Mali loses 2 or 3 children. If a woman with 7 children hasn't lost a single child, that means another woman with 7 children has lost around 3. It was pretty strange for me to imagine. I've talked to some of the women here, especially through my charity program in the villages... but they don't seem to find it that... I don't know... they deemed it as normal. They accepted it as if it were nothing. They told me that it was the "will of God (Allah)". The women I've talked to truly believe that "Allah" has "preselected" certain children to be weak, sickly, and in turn, to die. So if a child is sickly from birth, they sort of assume that "Allah" wills the child to die and if it does (which is probably likely since a lot of people can't afford proper health care, medicine, access to clean water, etc.) they say it was the "will of Allah" for their child to be taken away.

Women here seem to get married really early. I don't know how many times I've been asked, "Êtes-vous/es tu mariée?" (Are you married?) Actually, this gets annoying since some people actually propose marriage to you... though I doubt they're actually being serious. One guy, after asking where I was from, asked if I could make him visit the US. I said I don't have the power to provide a visa to someone because I'm not the US government, only a citizen. But then he meant to get married so he could go to the US with me. Another annoying thing is that the concept of "feminism" or rather, "equalism" doesn't seem to register for Malians. In a culture that practices polygamy, I guess it's hard for them to grasp. Then again, Malians don't necessarily disrespect women, either. In fact, some people have told me that women are highly regarded and revered. Malians say polygamy "balances" out the population because there are more women than men... which is true but not true at the same time. What I mean by that is... yes, there are slightly (and I mean VERY slightly... the actual ratio is something like 0.99 men to 1 woman) more women than men... but women only start to outnumber men in the age range of 65 and older!!! There are actually MORE MEN than women in Mali in terms of people younger than 65... so this theory is completely off and their argument doesn't make sense.... but I guess they feel as though they have to justify for having 2, 3, or 4 wives. Some Malians have only 1 wife, but that's usually because they're very young or aren't Muslim or are too poor to afford more than 1 wife. At least, from what I've encountered. It's a little strange, the whole marriage thing. Within the multi-wives system, there seems to be some hierarchy that I'm all to confused and unfamiliar with. Malians are actually kind of disgusted or shocked at my responses to their questions. When people ask me if I'm married, I say, no of course not. Then they ask, why not? I used to make the mistake of saying "I'm too young to be married now!"
Then they would ask, how old are you?
I'd say 21.
They reply "21, that's not too young to be married. My sister got married when she was 14."
Yeah... so then I say, "I don't want to get married."
They usually have a horrified (?)/surprised look and ask, "WHY NOT?"
"I just don't."
"I don't understand you."
"I want to be independent and I want to travel and do things I want to do without having someone else that I have to worry about."
"But what about children? How will you have children if you never want to get married?"
"I don't want children."
"Why not?" (their expressions get more and more... confused... I don't know the right word to describe it.)
"The same reason why I don't want to get married. Besides, I don't like children very much, they annoy me."
"You are strange."
"Yes, I know."
"Are all Americans like you?"
"No... I wouldn't say all, but I imagine some are like me."

It amazed me how different our worlds were. In America, women who are educated (meaning, they've graduated with at least a B.A./B.S.), especially women from the more... hm... "industrialized" areas of the U.S. such as the Northeast, tend to get an official job and won't get married untin their late twenties or sometimes in their thirties. My mom got married when she was 30! I don't want to get married at all and most of my friends are hesistant about marriage. We think we're too young to be married and have a child. None of us would even dream of getting married in our early 20s. Life should be about fun!!! How can you have a fun when you have a baby to take care of? In Mali, "fun" isn't really something many are really familiar with. In a subsistance culture, there's no time to have fun but they need think of ways to survive, to eat, to live...

The concepts of "beauty" seem to be different here as well. In the U.S., we tend to focus less on skin color or tone. If anything it's an "in" thing to be tan! Most Americans are obsessed with getting tan and we sit outside every summer saying, "Bake me, sun! Bake me!" and some even go to tanning salons during the winter when we can't sit outside to bake. It's exactly the opposite here in Mali. Lighter skin is considered beautiful. So during Malian weddings, women put on a white powder on their faces to make their skin tone seem lighter. I don't know why they do it. It just looks strange and I think their dark skin is beautiful. "Black is beautiful" =) So are all colors. The "color" is of little importance. Although, I hate the colors pink and purple. I guess I might discriminate against someone who has purple or pink skin =P

I came to Mali to improve my French. I'm not sure if I'm making a lot of headway in that since most Malians (~80%) actually speak Bambara instead of French. Maybe just under 50% know French very well. While French is the official language of Mali, with less than half the population being literate, it's just a language for the government, bureaucratic work, etc. So, I've started to learn Bambara from my Malian coworkers.

Education is a major problem in Mali. Less than 50% of the people know how to read or write and the disparities between the literacy rate between men and women is pretty significant. About 53% of men and 39% of women are literate here. It's pretty alarming that in the 21st century, there are still countries where the literacy rate is so low. The conditions here are like those of Western Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. People still die of easily curable diseases like malaria, typhoid fever, yellow fever - diseases that have been eradicated and are obsolete in the "North/West"! It really makes me sad to the depths of my soul to see people here in Mali living in conditions like that. Not just in Mali but the conditions are equally deplorable, if not worse, in several other sub-Saharan African countries. I can't stop thinking about it and I keep thinking about what can possibly be done. Maybe that's why I have insomnia.

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