In April 2012 Peace Corps evacuated its volunteers in Mali. The experience was traumatic to say the least. I could not help but feel like I had abandoned a village that had done so much for me. To avoid misery I opted to travel for a few months and ignore any thoughts concerning the village I loved. Upon my return to America in July my Aunt told me it was probably time to reflect on the Mali experience. The following essay is the result...
I
lived in a village in Mali where the words 'worry' and 'think' are
the same. Whenever I got caught lounging around staring into space
my neighbors would tell me to stop think/worrying. It seems that humans
everywhere avoid letting their minds wander too much. We don't like
boredom and try to keep our minds and bodies engaged. Sometimes
this means working for the sake of survival and security, and other
times it means engaging in behaviors aimed at satisfying deeper
desires.
Maslow's
hierarchy of needs illustrates this dichotomy. Needs towards the bottom
of his pyramid deal with survival and security, and are satisfied
using intelligence. Imagine
having been adopted by a hunter gatherer community in Papua New
Guinea as a toddler. You would have fully adapted and figured out
how to survive because that is what the human brain can do. Humans
are clever! You would have learned to forage the jungle, build
tropical shelters, and hunt for lunch. You wouldn't know how to
type, do algebra, or drive a car. You also wouldn't know how to
plant and harvest millet, build an igloo, use a cell phone, or milk a
cow. The vast variety of human livelihoods say a lot about the
brain's ability to learn. In terms of survival of a species, it is
an evolutionary weapon that has let humans adapt and flourish in diverse
environments, meeting our needs of survival and security.
Towards
the top of Maslow's pyramid are issues dealing with deeper
psychological needs (which affect survival indirectly). Paradoxically,
such needs are caused by intelligence. Apparently, our evolutionary
weapon comes with side affects. They include needing love, respect,
esteem, creativity, morality, and some of those other desires listed
atop the pyramid. Fortunately, humans have strategies for satisfying such needs.
By
observing a simpler life from an outsider perspective as a Peace
Corps volunteer in rural Mali, I learned to recognize human behaviors
aimed towards satisfying these psychological needs. At first, I thought
they reflected Malian culture, but later realized that such
behaviors actually reflected the essence of all human culture. To
describe this realization, this essay will discuss five behaviors I
observed in Mali that, when compared to American culture, sparked
change in the way I think about the human experience.
GREETINGS
Any visitor to West Africa
comments on the exaggerated greeting process. It requires a variety
of questions about one's well being that must fit according to the
time of day, what genders are involved, and whether or not there are
outsiders involved. Handshakes are the standard, but even they can
be tricky when greeting women or when a man continues to hold on to
your hand well after the greetings are over and you are in normal
conversation mode. African greetings are strange when viewed from an
American perspective, but when viewed from a human perspective, all
greetings make a lot of sense.
I
like to pretend that my area within Mali (Tomokan speaking) wins the
gold for the longest greetings. So screw all those other visitors to
Africa who claim to witness the craziest ways of saying hello. I win
because Malians themselves say so. There is a joke in that in
Tomokan speaking villages, locals will greet even the cows. It is
also said that Tomokan speakers consider it bad luck to not be the
last person to finish a greeting, meaning that greetings get dragged
on by grunts and mumbles. Where most of Mali does a casual (yet
still very extended) Bambara greeting, Tomokan speakers follow a
formal order of questions and answers. They also greet in unison
between groups of people, something I have never heard in other
cultures. For example, I could approach a group women from another
village and say “E wana.”
Naturally,
they would respond in unison with “ho, a wana.”
“Are
you at peace?” I would continue.
“Yea”
they would respond.
“Are
your families at peace?”
“Yea”
“Is
everyone healthy?”
“Yea”
“E
wana”
“Are
you at peace?” they would start their questioning.
“At
peace.”
“Is
your family at peace?”
“At
peace.”
“Is
everyone healthy?”
“No
one is sick.”
“A
wana.”
“Ho,
A wana.”
“Ho,”
we would finally finish up.
That
is long, right? Visiting another village for a day could mean hours
and hours of this exact dialogue repeating over and over.
Although
I feel like I never quite mastered the art of Tomokan greetings, I
do realize their importance. Rules for greetings are specific and even
after many months in my village I would be laughed at for accidentally
saying “good afternoon” at breakfast. Such difficulties made me
nervous about greetings and I thought it may be best to avoid them.
Then I learned the most important rule of Malian greetings, which
is, don't skip them. No Malian would be offended if I said “good
afternoon” instead of “good morning,” but they might be if I
ignored them. With this lesson, greeting for the sake of engaging
with people became a part of my daily routine. It was the most basic
way of demonstrating empathy and respect with hopes of earning
acceptance. Greetings are first steps towards satisfying needs of
belonging, respect, and morality.
Americans
greet friends and sometimes strangers, and even though they are much
shorter and more casual than African greetings they still serve the
same purpose. They help satisfy psychological desires. They provide
easy to use framework for introductions that later lead to friendly
relations. The friendships you have with your friends probably all
began with something along the lines of "hey, how are you
doing?" and continue to be reinforced with such greetings.
Giving and receiving greetings sparks friendships, demonstrates
respect, and can greatly improve the psychological well being of a
community or an individual.
All
cultures use greetings as a behavior to satisfy psychological needs.
Even some animals greet (dogs sniffing each other's), probably for the
same reasons as us. So, If you aren't greeting people the way
evolution dictates mammals should, you are no better than an ugly
amphibian.
LAUGHTER
Greetings can open the door for
humans to develop friendships and have a sense of belonging, but to
take full advantage and advance friendly relations, more creative
approaches must be employed. A popular option is humor. Cracking
jokes and laughing are not needed for survival and security, but are
very important for satisfying psychological needs. They are human
universals that form bonds between individuals and explore human
needs dealing with creativity and morality.
A
little girl was following me around one evening in my village. I
went to greet some neighbors with her tagging along, and when I was
invited to take a seat around a typical “cold” season fire, she
sat down timidly next to me. I hung out trying my best to eek out
some sort of conversation with the family.
“So
do you have a wife?” my neighbors asked me.
“No.”
“You
don't have a wife?”
“hmm..
yea, I have four wives.”
“you're
a liar,” they laughed.
“No I am not. You guys are liars.”
Then
the little girl sitting farted, and my neighbors started cracking up. I felt bad because my little friend was embarrassed. I
told the family to stop laughing at the girl. They kept laughing at
her and I noticed a few tears forming at the corners of her eyes.
The poor girl was probably sick and struggling digestively. But she
stayed loyal to me and did not get up to leave. Finally, the laughter
settled and I wondered if I could get the conversation going again or
if it would be cool just to sit around the fire in silence without
confusing Tomokan being thrown at me. Then, the girl farted again
and I busted out laughing along with everyone else.
No
matter who you are or when you were born, you belong to a culture
that thinks farts are funny. Though it represents humor at its most
simple form, it still strengthens emotional bonds between people, and
it still gives people an opportunity to explore their creative and
moral needs. But how exactly?
In
terms of satisfying needs of love and belonging, it is simple to see
a function for humor. I laughed with my neighbors at the little
girl's expense. By doing so we shared emotions and had a genuine moment of understanding. These are moments where humans
feel love and belonging. And those are important feelings that we
crave and need to satisfy if we expect to live happy. With repeated
laughter between individuals, more mutual understanding develops,
and certain friendships grow, opening up many opportunities for one
to satisfy their psychological needs of love and belonging.
How
does humor allow us to explore our needs of creativity and morality?
In the novel “A Stranger in a Strange Land,” the Martian human
trying to understand human culture has a break through moment when he
sees a monkey at a zoo hit and steal something from another monkey. He
realizes that humor is employed to cope with bad things and not to
celebrate good things, and laughs for the first time in his life.
Like my neighbors laughing at the little girl with gastro-intestinal
issues, laughter is often a response to a bad thing. The human world can
be an awful place at times, but humor gives humans an excellent tool
for finding irony in bleakness and turning it into a healthy behavior
known as laughter. Since humor involves determining a wrong, it
helps humans satisfy needs of morality. Since humor also involves
finding irony in a wrong, it helps humans satisfy needs of
creativity. Consider the following examples.
It is normal in Mali for opposing ethnicities to poke fun at each other
by saying things like “You eat too many beans” or “you are my
slave,” which, taken literally, sound like strange and awful things
for humans to be saying, but taken with a sense of humor, act as a
way to generate laughter and happiness. Mali is a diverse country
where ethnic tension is not uncommon. However, with humor,
different ethnicities find common ground. The recipe to diffuse
ethnic tension between two individuals in Mali goes something like
this: greet, tell your acquaintance that you are his master, recognize
why the statement is wrong, see the irony of the wrong statement, and
share a laugh together. Two individuals involved in such a
confrontation promote peace, friendship, morality and creativity, which are
ingredients essential for human well being.
Another
example I experienced in Mali frequently was adult laughter caused by
children's fear of a white person (i.e. myself). Even though it was
horrible that children were running away from me in terror, it was
also hilarious, and much appreciated by groups of cackling mothers,
who, by witnessing the child's fear, could use humor to bond with
one and other and develop their needs of creativity and morality.
They would see the child's fear as a wrong (morality). They would see the
irony of me being a white person who the child sees as a monster
(creativity). Then they all generate simultaneous laughter and appreciate
each other for being around and sharing the moment of humor (love,
belonging, respect).
Sharing
laughter with Malians was a big part of becoming comfortable in my
village. Anywhere in Mali really, by cracking jokes and laughing
with locals, your level of acceptance would skyrocket. Just by being
a white guy hanging with very poor Malians, the levels of irony were
strong enough that simple efforts at humor would snap tension with
laughter. The main rule I followed in terms of generating laughter
and making friends: make fun of people. This would result in
laughter mostly because it must have been hilarious to hear a white
guy trying to speak Tomokan, and also because it would be so
unexpected. Teasing somebody would open me up for attack, and once
I started to receive fun insults from Africans the irony would be too
great and there would be people literally rofling. Without humor,
integration would have been impossible in my village, and I would not
have never satisfied needs of belonging.
Humor
is a crucial part of being human. Without it humans would struggle
to satisfy desires regarding love, belonging, morality, and
creativity. Next time you hear someone fart, go ahead and share some
laughter, because evolution has programed it into our system and it
would be a shame to fight it. Our world would be Hell if humans did
not let wrong things make them laugh.
FAMILY
To save its family members, a
gopher will expose itself to a perceived predator, crying out an
alarm, and ultimately sacrificing its life. At first, it does not
seem like proper survival behavior in terms of being fit and passing
on genes. What the gopher is doing though, is making sure he is the
only one to die so that its offspring and siblings (who have very
similar DNA) can survive and reproduce. What a wonderful
evolutionary trick! All mammals, in fact, care for their off spring
and generally have a notion of family. Of course, us humans are
probably the best at it. More than any other species, humans utilize
the family unit to satisfy both survival needs and psychological
needs.
Part of the definition of being
a mammal is that infants are cared for by parents. Without this
concept rooted deep into the mammalian behavior code, species would
not have been able to evolve into the intelligent beings that exist
today, because large complex brains need a lot of nursing and care.
Without parental care, human off spring would not survive to one day
reproduce and pass on genetic traits, meaning that family, as a human
characteristic, is needed directly for survival and security. Of
course, family has evolved into more than just a way for infants to
survive. Like the other behaviors discussed in this essay, it also
serves to satisfy psychological needs (the indirect way of ensuring
survival and reproduction). With unconditional love being shared
between all members of a family unit, humans use family as a way to
satisfy our deepest desires of love and belonging.
Demonstration of love is very
differently in Mali. Highlighted by polygamism, arranged marriages,
and extremely high birthrates, the Malian family lacks the sense of
intimate love that Americans value. Instead, Malians satisfy needs
of family love and belonging by incorporating many people into their
circles of unconditional kindness, something American culture lacks.
By examining these contrasting styles, we'll see the advantages and
disadvantages each have in satisfying human needs (both physical and
psychological). Also, we'll see similarities, which indicate the
importance of family for the well-being of all human cultures.
I never witnessed intimate love
between Malians. I could never tell who was married to who. There
was no hugging or kissing between friends or partners. There was no
such thing as dating. Marriages were generally prearranged
(sometimes involving girls as young as 15 or 16).
Children miss out on intimate
bonds with their parents. Malian women average about seven births in
their lifetimes (one of the highest in the world). The result is a
country where half the population is below the age of 15. Children
get neglected because there are too many chores for the women, and
too many children to keep an eye on. A man may say they want as many
kids as possible so that the family can do a lot of work, be big and
influential, and allow the family name to spread, but they forget
that more kids means more mouths to feed, less opportunity for
education, and more chances for neglect.
These facts sound horrifying
from an American perspective. In America you are suppose to fall in
love with your partner and your kids should be showered with
affection so they can grow up with confidence. Why is Malian culture
not the same?
Since life is relatively easy in
America, family creation aims to satisfy needs of love and belonging,
but since life is freaking hard in Mali, family creation aims to
satisfy needs of survival and security. A couple in Mali may not
provide each other the intimacy most humans crave, but they do provide
support in other areas. A man provides the relationship with
property and farmland. A women supports the relationship by fetching
water and cooking. Malians aren't necessarily looking for someone to
love, but for someone that can ensure a healthy family.
The parent child relationship
in Mali also aims to provide health and survival more than love.
Historically, the most successful Malian families were the ones with
most children for working the fields, caring for elderly parents, and
maintaining family ideals for generations. Hence, the prevailing
family culture was one of many births limiting parent-child bonding,
as a sacrifice to minimize health and survival risks. If Malians
experienced romance the way Americans did, jealousy and breakups
could destroy the support networks that people rely on for immediate
survival needs, namely food. And If Malians experienced child
rearing the way Americans did, their would be less young people to
provide for those unable to work their fields.
Admittedly, changes need to be
made if Mali expects to be able to take advantage of the modern
world. Opportunities in education and work pull people away from
traditional attitudes, while population explosions and diminishing
resources are creating tremendous disadvantages for large families.
To overcome the new circumstances, Malian attitudes on family will
need to shift. Hopefully, Malian culture can do this without losing
its certain advantages.
In what ways do Malian families
have an advantage in satisfying psychological needs? The answer has
to do with extended versus nuclear families. In America, nuclear
households are preferred, while Malians have the entire extended
family living in close quarters. Tomokan uses an extensive
vocabulary to refer to relatives. Two words for “aunt” and
“uncle” exist, depending on which side of the family they come
from. Specific words clarify if a sibling is younger, older,
brother, sister, or from a different wife (half sibling). There are
even family members that don't exist in America like my husband's
other wife, or my dad's other wife. Since everyone lives in such
close proximity, and because of extremely high birth rates, families
seem to be enormous. For the family to function, everyone
participates in chores. Children herd the animals, men coordinate
construction projects, and the women determine who cooks when, and
everyone goes to the fields during rainy season. Grandparents work
less, to show elderly respect. This kind of community work extends
to more distant relatives and even to neighbors who are not relatives
at all. A small Malian community has to help everyone out, and this
usually means treating everyone like family. It is required to
invite those around you to “come eat” even if they are strangers.
Basically, it seems that the entire village functions as a family,
where nobody goes without as long as a neighbor can help out. The
fact that the entire village had the last name 'Arama' is truly
indicative of this (no worries villagers would marry their girls to
other villages and marry girls from other villages into their family
so incest was avoided). Even I was treated as a family member. I
was given the name Embe Arama and was given anything that any other
neighbor or family member deserved, like food. To give back I tried
to help with chores, but since those efforts often came up short (I'm
lazy!), I would buy good food for my Malian family.
With so many people in such
close quarters experiencing intimate love may not be as uncommon as I
made it sound earlier in this section. Holding hands is popular
among friends. There is usually physical contact being made between
individuals when they are eating, resting, or socializing. With so
many kids everywhere, it is normal to pick up a random one and carry
it around (satisfying the same kinds of needs as when I pet a random
dog). Gift giving is popular, no matter how small the gift or how
insignificant the occasion. So even though I could not have had a
girlfriend in my village, I feel like I did have plenty of intimate
exchanges. Malians are in many ways the most loving people I have
ever met. They demonstrate unconditional kindness to anyone willing
to be a part of the family, and incorporate plenty of physical
contact while hanging out. American culture does not do this.
American and Malian are two styles of family, both trying to satisfy
needs of love and belonging (and survival).
One thing that American and
Malian families do have in common, is that they symbolize moments of
great achievement where a maximum number of psychological needs are
met. Ask someone to look back on their life and describe their
happiest day, and they often recount their wedding day or the birth
of a child. Both Americans and Malians make a big deal of weddings
and births. For such occasions there are ceremonies, gifts, good
food, blessings and dancing. They are moments where the individuals
involved satisfy psychological needs across the whole spectrum.
Words like respect, love, achievement, and morality are just some of
the ways to describe needs satisfied in weddings or births. Getting
married and having kids is an undisputable 'purpose of life.' It is
our biological purpose. Both cultures can agree that creating a
family is among the greatest achievements an individual can hope to
accomplish in a lifetime.
Conservative attitudes about
family exist in Malian culture as an insurance policy for survival.
The results are advantages and disadvantages in attempting to survive
and satisfy needs of love. In terms of achievement though, family
creation serves all cultures in a universal form. It functions as a
goal almost anyone can accomplish, representing the most universal
human purpose.
PRAYER
Everyone we know will someday
die. Humans reflect on this fact, and are also very aware that their
own being on Earth will come to an end. It's terrifying, but also an
important part of being human. Realizing mortality is the epitome of
self-reflectance, and fuels our attitudes on religion and
spirituality, which are used to satisfy some our deepest
psychological needs.
Burial
sites are early indicators of humans practicing spiritual behavior.
The earliest undisputed human burial site dates back to 130,000 y/a,
but since it is suspected that Neanderthals buried their dead, and
since evidence suggests that some non-humans (chimpanzees and
elephants) even throw leaves and branches over their dead, burial
likely goes back to before the first humans! This means that
spirituality has had time to evolve itself deeply into the essence of
the human experience. Paleolithic Venus figurines suggest widespread
existance of complex animist religions between 35,000 to 11,000 years
ago. Unlike other efforts to calm human anxieties (such as all the
other behaviors I've discussed) religion requires imagination
resulting in diverse spiritual behaviors evolving independantly from
each other. As humans transitioned into the neolithic age, and
civilization allowed certain cultures to supercede others, certain
religions began to displace others. As humans continued into more
modern times, the rapid spread of information allowed certain
religions to blow up, others to dissapear, new ones to appear, and
non-religious spirituality to pick up a following.
How
does Mali fit onto this history? Indigenous beliefs in Mali were
traditionally animist. Most focused their spiritual energy on the
idea that the spiritual world is the same as the physical world
around us and souls can be found in non-human and even non-living
things. Animistic attitudes in Mali have now been mostly displaced
by Islam, though the country still has many villages clinging to
animistic traditions. There is also a very tiny christian minority.
Malians
take their religion very seriously. Eating pork and drinking alcohol
are very taboo, blessings are constantly being offered, fasting
during Ramadan, celebrating Eid Al-fitr at the end of fasting, and
sacrificing some sheep to commerate Abraham's obedience to God during
Eid Al-Adha are occasions for Muslim Malians to celebrate life. Most
importantly though, is the frequency of prayer. Five times every day
the men go to a mosque (women would pray in the home) and focus their
thoughts on connecting with God. That
is a significant chunk of the day dedicated towards leaving the real
world and exploring the metaphysical world. Such efforts are done to
achieve psychological needs of esteem, morality, creativity, purpose,
acceptance of facts, and lack of prejudice. Such achievements
potentially provide peace of mind and genuine happinness. Without
prayer to distract and reassure struggling villagers, the standard of
happinness in Mali could plummet dramatically.
Developed
countries are not as openly serious about religion, but spirituality
is still very important for satisfying the same psychological needs.
In America something like 75% of the population believe in a personal
God and something like a 30% attend religious services at least once
per week. Such numbers leave plenty of room for other forms of
spirituality. Religions based more on philosphy have gained huge
followings. Studying science offers another way of exploring the
metaphysical (spiritual) world. Also, people hike, fish, ski, jog,
canoe, and engage in all sorts of other activities that one could
interpret as spiritual. Such activities may not exist in Mali, but
serve the same function as Muslim prayer. They are used to leave
daily realities behind and realize the presence of something greater.
No
matter how you choose to get your spritual fix, it acts as a cultural
behavior universal amongst all cultures, a cornerstone of the human
experience. Throughout homo sapien history we have had this inkling
that our perceived realities are insignificant in contrast to the
potential truths of the universe. To cope, humans use spirituality.
Praying five times a day to Allah or catching a fish in Montana,
spirituality can help achieve some of the highest needs in Maslow's
hierarchy. It is the ultimate clincher of self-enlightenment.
However, religion has also been abused and taken humanity in the
wrong direction at times so it is important to use spiritual
techniques correctly.
PLAY
Since the brain is almost too
smart for its own happiness, it is mentally painful for a human to do
nothing. The mind must be kept busy to keep from think/worrying. In
America, we try our best to keep the mind distracted, and with TV and
internet, it really isn't hard. In Mali, different forms of play are
employed, and serve to benefit well-being in many ways. First, work
could be done through play, meaning it acts as a behavior helping to
satisfy basic survival needs. Secondly, playing allows us to explore
our social relations the same way laughter does, strengthening our
sense of love and belonging. Thirdly, achievements made in play can
be powerful enough for an individual and satisfy desires of
confidence and esteem. Lastly, games push humans into realizing
their deepest desires of self actualization, by exploring creative
and moral strategies in the pursuit of victory. By demonstrating how
Malian play is related to American play (sans internet), we'll see
how such behavior is instrinsically human.
Playtime
while working the field is directly connected to satisfying immediate
survival needs. Farming all day sucks, but it has got to be done for
survival, so by singing or playing you forget it sucks. I spent one
day in particular farming with a group of kids aged 5-15. The work
for the day was to collect the beans in the millet fields that were
ready for harvest. It was like a treasure hunt for the kids, weaving
around the tall millet stalks looking for yellow bean pods. I walked
around trying to help out, while the kids enthusiastically collected.
They were continually asking me to donate the beans I found to their
collection, and so I realized that the kids had turned their chore
into a competition. At the end of the morning, the oldest kid
counted up the beans and determined who collected the most. He then
climbed to the top of a tree announcing each person's ranking in a
playful ceremony.
Incorporating
music into work also helps motivate. When women prepare millet for
cooking, it first gets pounded (Malian mortar and pestle). As the
women alternate rapid turns pounding the millet in the mortar they
start clapping on the off-beats and interesting rhythms develop.
Singing is also popular to pass the time while working the fields.
This activity is the source of not only very popular West African
music, but, due to slavery, the roots of most American music. By
making a competition out of bean harvesting and incorporating music
into daily chores, playing helps humans attain their basic survival
needs. However, playing is generally geared for deeper desires.
Sports,
for example, do not help achieve basic survival needs at all. They
generally don't nourish you or give you security of the home. Still,
all 15 million Malians are soccer fans. In towns kids can grow up
playing on competitive teams (and get good enough to earn Mali a
third place finish in 2012 Africa Cup of Nations!). In villages,
where soccer balls are rare, variations of kids running and kicking
something around still occur. So did variations of kids running and
throwing something around. When I introduced kids to the frisbees I
had, variations of kids running and smacking each other with frisbees
became popular. In a non-formal setting, playing soccer could
satisfy psychological needs of friendship and belonging, since it is
an activity shared by a group where teamwork and respect are
practiced. On more formal occasions, sports like soccer can produce
great sense of confidence and achievement during moments of hard
earned success. A game winning goal feels like heaven! Furthermore,
by exploring the game's fairness and strategy a soccer player can
even satisfy his psychological needs of morality and creativity.
That is a lot of feel-good being generated by a silly game!
Wrestling
was very popular in my area too (more popular than soccer even, since
the cost for buying a soccer ball is infinitely more expensive than
the cost of wrestling). Kids would be encouraged to wrestle
each other as soon as they started walking, and adults who were very
good competed at festivals to see who was the ultimate badass. In
the same way as soccer, psychological needs satisfied through
wrestling can range from developing friendships to genuine moments of
self-actualization.
Besides
sports, there are many other forms of Malian play. The most
interesting was music and dance. Singing and dancing are more
game-like in Dogon villages than what most people are used to. What I
saw most frequently in my rural Dogon village, were circles of girls
singing, clapping, and taking turns entering the circle. The idea
wasn't to dance in the circle, but to perform a trick in beat and do
it better than anyone else who enters the circle. Tricks include,
short sprints, spinning as fast as possible, windmilling an arm as
fast as possible, or setting up a tug of war competition between two
sides of the circle. In a society where gender roles extend all the
way to playtime, it is the wrestling (or soccer) alternative for
girls. Less organized dancing occurred with music on the radio or
when I played music through my iPod and speakers. On such musical
occasions even boys could not help but move to the music. Humans
enjoy dancing, probably because freely moving body parts according to
sound is such a simple way of exploring creativity.
The
list of games human games is infinite. In Mali, playing with kids,
card games, board games, horse racing, foot racing, playing musical
instruments, carving, sewing, riding motorcycles, climbing trees,
along with many other activities, were done sometimes for survival,
but also for simple fun. Even games Malians had never heard of
before were a lot of fun, making it an interesting experience to
introduce chess, baseball, and frisbees to my friends.
How
about American culture? What American activities constitute as
playing in order to satisfy psychological needs? Playtime while
working is as common as it is in Mali. I have had many menial jobs
where listening to music, singing, or inventing a game helped satisfy
my immediate survival (paychecks and groceries). Also, even though
soccer and wrestling are not America's most popular sports, football,
baseball, basketball, tennis, golf, swimming, and track and field
serve the same purposes. Americans listen to music, sing, dance, and
play musical instruments. Music is so readily available that many
Americans can't imagine life without an iPod. Americans play an
incredible variety of board games and card games too, not to mention
video games and surfing the web. The truth is, Americans have so
much leisure time that much of our lives are dedicated to games and
music.
Styles
of play vary slightly between Malians and Americans, and Americans
may have more time to engage, but for both cultures, playing seems to
be a crucial part of living a happy life. For a Malian, playing may
seem like too much effort after having spent 12 hours hoeing millet
fields in 100 degree heat. You would think a Malian would want to
just sit and relax when there is down time. Clearly, playing must be
an important part of being human. The fact that almost every human
knows what soccer is, demonstrates the universality of playing games.
Such a global phenomenon is dictated less by culture, and more by
human needs. Friendship, belonging, respect, achievement,
creativity, and even morality work their ways into the network of
sports and play. A game is an all encompassing behavior that sets up
a mini world where you work to overcome all sorts of adversity to
reach a goal. Think about an American or Malian parent pushing his
kid to play football or wrestle, claiming that it will build
character. What that parent is really trying to say is "it's a
way to satisfy my kid's psychological desires."
LESSONS
Since all cultures engage in
behaviors meant to generate mental well-being, lets accept that every
human ever struggles with happiness and purpose. Without addressing
the psychological needs that our intellectual complexity demands (by
greeting, praying, joking, playing, etc.), humans get depressed. How
can this fact help us improve human well-being? The trick may not
necessarily be to engage in as many of these activities as possible,
but more to develop a lifestyle that allows the individual to pursue
the behaviors that best suit him or her.
To
turn psychologically satisfying activities into an actual life style
is not easy, just like it is hard to answer somebody wondering "what
the hell do I want to do with my life?" In America, there are a
lot of paths someone may take to feel like they are maximizing
efforts to satisfy psychological desires. In Mali, there are few.
Most Malians grow up in their village of birth, work the fields,
raise a family, and hopefully live to be an important village elder.
During this time there is plenty of greeting, joking, praying,
studying, teaching, and dancing, but there are very few people that
grow up to be politicians, comedians, priests, university students,
teachers or dancers.
Embe
Moussa Arama is a good Malian. As the oldest son of an important
rural family he had all the advantages a Malian could want. Although
lacking in political charisma, his lifetime of hard work earned him
healthy crops and extensive herds of sheep and goats, not to mention
a couple of cows and donkeys. His rural wealth, in turn, earned him
three wives and seventeen children all who benefit from his care.
His generosity and piety earned him respect from other villagers and
influence in local politics. He even hosted two Peace Corps
volunteers in his village, providing them food and shelter, which
gave him a surge of wealth and political importance.
Embe
is now something like 40 or 45 years old. Though his list of daily
chores is still extensive, his seventeen kids make it possible for
him to skip the tough fieldwork, and so he is kind of retired in a
sense. Despite his success with family, wealth, and politics, he has
regrets. Embe has never left Mali, though he has been to most of the
major cities in Mali. He does not speak any European languages,
though he does speak three Malian languages. And he is unable to
read or write, though he has begun studying the Arabic of the Koran
and learning basic literacy.
The
life style chosen by Embe is a typical one for a Malian. It keeps
himself and his family fed and sheltered, and it also satisfies most
of his psychological desires. This is done through spirituality,
travels, connections with Peace Corps, wealth, and political
influence. We can imagine how his lifestyle has let him explore human
needs of belonging, family, friendship, confidence, respect,
morality, creativity, problem solving, and lack of prejudice. He is
happy and proud and all he had to do was follow the traditional rules
of his culture.
Although
a lifestyle such as Embe's may be the best most rural Malians can do
in their pursuit of happiness, I did have the pleasure of meeting a
few individuals who, despite tremendous disadvantages, found other
ways of pursuing their passions. For example, Embe's little brother,
Abdoulaye. Besides being the fifth born instead of the first born,
he grew up with identical circumstances as Embe, yet his life path
turned out radically different.
School
dominated Abdoulaye's life. He could have easily never discovered
his passion for knowledge, but luckily, his father sent him to
elementary school. Abdoulaye loved school and was far smarter and
got much better grades than all his peers. However, after 9th grade
there were no schools nearby to continue studying. Any other Malian
would have returned to normal village life satisfied with basic
literacy. Of course, Abdoulaye was not done. He asked his father if
he could be sent away to high school.
This
decision must have been a very difficult one for the father. His
oldest son Embe was growing up just fine without education. Other
villagers were furious at him for even considering sending one of his
kids to high school. After all, to send Abdoulaye to live in a town
with a high school would not only cost him a large chunk of his
income, but it would leave the family shorthanded for chores and
fieldwork. The likelihood of Abdoulaye going to high school should
have been zero. In the end though, Abdoulaye and Embe's father
proved to be an extremely open minded parent.
Once
enrolled, the future was completely within Abdoulaye's control. He
excelled in high school and did not slow down. After a year of
brilliance in Mali's main University in Bamako, he applied for a
scholarship to study engineering in a foreign University. He got the
scholarship, and spent the next six years of his life in China.
I
had the pleasure of meeting Abdoulaye upon his return from China. He
was something like thirty years old. He spoke French, English, and
Mandarin, to go along with the three Malian languages he learned
growing up. A degree in Engineering from a University in China had
landed him a government job in Mali's capital, Bamako. After a quick
visit to the village of his youth (when I met him) the plan was to
settle down and live the lifestyle of an upper-class third-world
citizen.
A lot was sacrificed for
this result. A significant gap exists between him and the family he
left behind. There are no wife or children around. And his
government job in Bamako is less secure than farm work in the
countryside considering Mali's current political turmoil. He weighed
his options though, and must have felt that the sacrifices were
needed for him to best satisfy his psychological desires and live a
happy life.
The
choices made by Embe and the choices made by Abdoulaye are so
remarkably different. They both do what they see as the most
important activities in their quest for happiness and purpose. Would
Abdulaye have been as happy if he had never been allowed to go to
high school? Maybe. It's unlikely though, because of his apparent
genius. Someone with such an incredible mind craves to satisfy the
deepest needs in the human psyche. While love and family satisfy
most people's psychological needs, a genius like Abdoulaye needs to
push his life into an entirely different direction to explore his
psychological desires.
There
is another individual living in my village who's story in worth
discussing. He did not choose family, prestige, or education, but
instead money.
Gei
is the outcast. I never learned his last name, but I can guarantee
it is not Arama, the name of all other people in the village. He
does not speak the local language, and communicates using Bambara or
French, Mali's linguas francas. Nice clothing demonstrates that he
is from the city and not from the country like all the other
villagers. He has no wife in the village, so has to do all household
chores including washing clothes and fetching water (women's chores).
By using a far away water source for these chores, he avoids
feelings of un-welcomeness.
A
local medicine man brought him to the village several years ago to cure an
illness. After recovering, Gei discovered something else available
to him in the village, and opted not to leave.
There
is a single vehicle in the village, and it produces business for the
owner and for Gei, who was hired as the vehicle's driver. Money is
made. Five days per week Gei takes a van crammed full of people and
their goods to markets as far as 50 km away and back. This system
pushes Malian transportation to its limits. I'm pretty tolerant with
the hassles of third world transportation, but when it came to Gei's
system, I preferred to take my bike to market and be physically
exhausted than to put up with the discomfort of his mini bus and the
hassle of trying to not get ripped off. Because Gei will rip you
off! He drives fast, finds plenty of customers, and makes sure they
pay as much as they are possibly willing to pay. He once did not
wait for me to come back from my shopping because his van was full
and he had money to make.
Gei
is certainly well do to. He can afford to buy things at market and
try to sell them back in the village. He eats decent food at the
markets. He owns nice clothes, shoes, and a cell phone. Even tea
and cigarettes make little diiference on his budget. Of course, his
choices have also come with sacrifices. Instead of fulfilling
desires of love and belonging, he prefers to pursuit psychological
desires of esteem and self actualization. Strangely, the more he
succeeds in his finincial endeavors, the more he fails at being a
part of the community.
At
this point I've talked about the family man (Embe), the intellect
(Abdoulaye), and the businessman (Gei). They each weighed their
options and chose a path they saw as the best way to fulfill their
psychological desires. Not everyone can find such success.
Determining what passions to pursue is difficult enough. Many, for
whatever reasons, choose not to pursue their passions. Mostly
though, people are unlucky and never get the chance to turn their
passions into a lifestyle.
Fortunately,
the modern world delivers opportunities previously unavailable. Even
for Malians, the world has become small and possibilities are opening
up. Malian villagers know that their is more to the world than
harvesting millet. They come across many rich foreigners.
Information spreads even to the most remote villages through phones
and radio. Young men and women leave their villages during the dry
season and see the infrastructure of towns and cities. Some travel
all the way to Bamako, or Abidjan in Ivory Coast. They find jobs and
buy luxury items. If a villager wants to learn to sew they can take
lessons. If they want to dance they can participate in festivals.
If they want to be politicians they can network with employees at
local mayor offices. If they want to make money there are plenty of
markets with costumers. And If they want to be an engineer they need
only talk to Abdoulaye, and he will let them know that anything is
possible.
