Here's an entry I started writing a month ago.

I want to write about something I’ve been thinking about for awhile, here. But it’s basically the topic of What Is Wrong With Africa, which is kind of a big question, so I’ve hesitated to put my scattered thoughts to paper before I really knew what I was talking about.

Unfortunately, I’m impatient, and have realized that I’m NEVER going to know what I’m talking about when it comes to the big, general, theoretical issues. Just the amount that my views on this subject have changed (especially over the last year) is evidence of how unsure I am about the political, social, and anthropological conclusions I make here. Certainly, I know that when I was younger I didn’t think there was anything wrong with Africa. It was just another continent that I didn’t know much about, maybe wanted to visit one day, and was stressed about learning the countries of for my Social Studies quiz. Gradually my conception of Africa became knowledge of the history of the slave trade, people living in huts, tribal dances, exotic masks, and, of course, crushing poverty. I come from a liberal school system and a liberal family, so don’t think I was ever under the impression that Africa wasn’t as good as the other continents. We the colonizers/slave traders/globalizing forces had screwed them over, and now they were all really poor and at war with each other, but they had rich traditions and cultures and would eventually catch up to the rest of the world, but it was our fault they were behind so maybe we should give some money to Oxfam at Christmas, yeah? Okay.

In high school things became a little more complicated. I knew that we were all too naïve and ignorant about Africa, but I was too naïve and ignorant to know what we didn’t know. (Get it?) I was pretty sure that everything good in my life came from the capitalist oppression of the third world and that most of the riches in the world had been extracted from the labor of poor men and injustice against women. (Still don’t think I was too far off about this.)

Obviously it’s one thing to think abstractly about a continent, and another thing to get to know a country intimately. Coming to Dakar last fall to study abroad showed me just how much I didn’t know.

Here is where I’m going to change from talking about ‘Africa’ to talking about ‘Senegal’. (And I’m going to link to This Blog: Stuff White People Like instead of going on a rant about how people (Americans and white people in general) refer to Africa and not the individual countries. I know I’m guilty of the same thing, so I’m making an effort to notice and stop.)

I don’t think I really understood the idea of ‘cultural differences’ until I came to Senegal. I tend to think of them as just a difference in language and history. Every country has different ways of dancing and singing and storytelling, but fundamentally we’re all the same: We want the same things, we feel the same emotions, etc. But I’m realizing that that doesn’t seem to be true. In the U.S., time is money, and we live very much in the future. Our goals might be long-term or short-term, but we tend to focus (obsess?) on making money and getting things done and advancing and progressing. In France it was pointed out to me that Americans don’t know how to go on vacation. Even when they do, they’re constantly working (Dad, I’m looking at you!) or planning their vacation full of museums and outings and, well, plans. Whereas the French go on vacation just to lounge around on the beach and relax. (I don’t necessarily think this is true, and if it is it’s certainly a generalization about the French. But when someone pointed this out to me it did make me realize that Americans are really bad at relaxing. We just don’t know how.)

Here in Senegal, they don’t live for the future, nor do they dwell in the past. The Senegalese families I’ve lived with and visited seem to live entirely in the present. From reading American self-help books, you would think that a country that lives in the moment would be very self-actualized, and fulfilled, and would have achieved some sort of clarity that we as time/money/future-obsessed Americans can’t seem to grasp.

And in some ways, yes, the Senegalese seem happier than us. That is, they seem to, on the whole, spend less time sweating the small (or big) stuff than us. However, that is not to trivialize the fact that on average their lives are far more ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ than ours. The fact that children die of preventable diseases or that women are denied equal rights is not something to be envied but to be fought against. And I was appalled to realize that Senegal is basically an illiterate country, in that even those who can read… don’t. Reading for leisure or pleasure is basically not done, and with your host family glued to their television 24/7, Dakar can sometimes seem like a free-thinking person’s dystopian nightmare. I think the reading is simply not a cultural value the way it is in the U.S. For one thing, Wolof was not a written language, and there are very few books in Wolof. As I mentioned previously, reading in another language is so much harder and less rewarding than reading in your first language. I mean, would you read the books you read for fun if they were in Spanish and French?

Although I feel as though I understand more about the cultural differences that originally surprised me, that doesn’t mean I accept them. Many NGOs work on translating books into Wolof, and founding village libraries or bookmobiles. It might not be directly saving lives, but I think encouraging children to read (in any country) is one of the most worthwhile things you can do in this life.
So that’s my spiel on cultural differences, I guess. And how I still don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, but now I have a lot MORE to talk about.