Third-World Happiness

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.