Look like a Monkey

Today I was riding my bike through a remote area on my way into town.  I was riding on a path following two little girls, maybe 7 years old, they didn't turn around to look at me until I was right behind them.  They froze for a second when they saw me with an expression of the most intense fear I have ever seen in another human's eyes, then turned to run away from me screaming too loudly to be able to cry.  They ran for safety to a group of men who were laughing at the scene they had just observed.  The men gave me directions to the main road (I was in fact lost), and as I rode away the two girls seemed to have calmed down, realizing that I probably wasn't going to kill them.  Maybe it was partly they way I was approaching the girls quickly and the fact that I was wearing a strange helmet, but those two girls viewed me almost like a monster.  It was sad and funny.

Its weird that there are different races.  And its weird the way humans react to it.  Isn't crazy that slavery was legal in America a century and a half ago!?  And that the civil rights stuff in America took place half a century ago?  I guess as humans we like to divide ourselves into Us and Them.  Throughout history, Racism has been a popular way of making this division (though I prefer to separate the Them into Yankee Fans).  Its been around forever and will probably always be a part of the human experience.  The children that are so deathly afraid of me in Mali I think say something towards that point.  maybe.  Or maybe its just children being afraid of the unusual.  Which I guess might mean that by hanging out with other races can stamp out racism or something... not really sure...

Anyway, so there is racism.  I guess its people deciding that their race is superior in order to justify the horrible treatment of other races.  One way of doing this I think is by claiming that other races are less evolved/less human.  I think most white racists would say that Black people look more like Monkeys than white people.  And, since I grew up around white people I guess I might have to say.. umm. sure I guess I black person looks more like a primate to me than a white person.  Which I know is the worst thing in the world to say, but bare with me, this story has a point that teaches that tiny ignorant part of my brain a lesson.

So I was hiking around one day and came across some wild monkeys.  Thats pretty cool in itself since I had no idea there were any Monkeys in Dogon country.  In fact, I wouldn't have recognized them as monkeys if the traditional medicine man in my village didn't keep the same kind of monkey as a pet (I figured it came from a different part of Africa).  I was excited to share the story with my friends back at the village since I was really pretty ignorant about wildlife in Dogon Country and interested to learn more.  The most interesting response I got to my incredible story of 'I was walking and saw monkeys' was my friend telling me that they look like me.  The others agreed that white people look like monkeys despite my efforts to claim that it was them that looked like monkeys.  It was all fun and jokes, but some of their arguments were pretty convincing.  

Below is a picture of the Patas Monkey, which I am pretty sure is the type of Monkey that I saw.  It lives across the semi arid regions of Western and Eastern Africa, and are the most common monkey to see in Northern Mali.

My friends in village argued that the monkey looked like me because its nose is long, its eyes a lighter brown (like mine and unlike dark Malian eyes), it is hairy (Malians have hardly any arm/leg hair and much less facial hair then me), and because it is WHITE!  I have to agree.  Now that I look at the image above I think that if that monkey were to be a human he would probably be white.  

At first it was a shock to hear that I looked like a monkey.  My ignorant brain realized that it was dumb to think that black people look like monkeys, but I never even considered that white people probably look primitive to other races.  I guess it was kind of racist of me to think that black people wouldn't be a little racist and think that other races look 'primitive' to them.  The whole point I guess is that Racism and the excuses we have tried to use to justify it are really weird.  I am kind of rambling here since I have been sitting in front of this computer too long (its been over a month since I last used internet and I am letting myself get sucked in), but this was a post I am glad I was able to get up because it was a really cool experienced to be told that I looked like a monkey.  I liked it.  It was humanizing or something.