On cultural values.

Recently I’ve found myself getting more and more frustrated, discouraged, worried, and sad about the state of Côte d’Ivoire and the possibility of having strong infrastructure, education, health services, etc here. Teachers aren’t paid on time, often for months. There aren’t enough teachers. If there’s not an English teacher, or even a month teacher, high school students just don’t get that subject that year. There aren’t enough classrooms. High school students and teachers don’t have toilets that work. (They are disgusting, let me tell you.) There are holes in the walls between classrooms, and the classes themselves are very large, maybe 50 students in a class. “What is this?” I ask myself. A lack of funds due low tax revenue, because many people live day-to-day? Wasteful spending? Habits that don’t lend themselves to improving the situation? Really, all play their part. And I should add that, contrary to popular opinion here in Côte d’Ivoire, we have the same problems in poor neighborhoods in the States. Jonothan Kozol does a great job of painting the picture of poverty and the resulting (lack of) education in America in his book Savage Inequalities.

I feel like I do see things here that people can improve upon, but they don’t. If funds were better spent by the local and national government, could we see better services for Ivoirians? Why are there five librarians in the library where I work, and the bookshelves and books are still covered with dust? Why do a couple librarians show up to work when they want, and this is tolerated? Even when the librarians are at the library, they hang out and chat. And I ask myself, “Isn’t there work to be done?? Aren’t there many things to be improved upon?? Why are we just hanging around?? And if we don’t need five librarians, isn’t a position cut and those funds used to improve the library?”

However very recently I began to look at the slow pace of “development” in Côte d’Ivoire in a different way. I was flipping through a book of art of the Sefou, a people from what is now northern Cote d’Ivoire. The art tells a lot about the people: there were masks for dances, statues of pregnant women, headdresses for initiation ceremonies. It appears to me that they are a very spiritual people; what the art painted for me was a beautiful, rich culture. Then I began thinking. Different cultures have different values. Would we expect the Native Americans of long ago to succeed quickly in the world of Western business and modernization? It’s just not who the people seem to be. Their values are not productivity, creating the latest technology, and pushing the limit.

Looking at the history of the States, we have always been a people who are serious about pushing and fighting to get what we want, and to get more of it. People were frustrated that they couldn’t live as they wanted to, so they took a hellacious voyage to an unknown land and settled there. Then we said to the British, “We feel like you’re controlling us too much, and it’s annoying. We’ve had enough.” So a slightly ragtag militia launched a war against the military of a world power – and we won. Then there’s the Oregon Trail, the Gold Rush, and the idea of Manifest Destiny. Slavery was an effort to maximize profits. Even marginalized groups like women and blacks carry the mentality and launched fantastic and impressive movements to demand their rights. It’s like we don’t stop at anything to have what we want. Our mentality is the bigger the better; we want more, more, more. We deserve it all. And to get it, we push and fight and sacrifice, and push and fight and sacrifice some more.

It’s social Darwinism, in a way. The world leaders are those who carry certain values. Even the French lost their status as a world power after World War II, and from what I saw during my time there, they value the enjoyment of life, for example in terms of food, vacation time, or an afternoon spent at a café. They are not a culture who do the “push and fight and sacrifice.”

As I looked at the pictures and read about the meaning behind the various pieces of art, I became sad again. And I thought to myself, “You’re getting so angry and so frustrated with Ivoirians… You expect them to have the same mentality as you. We’re asking a culture that lived off the land for all their needs and had what we would call ‘tribal practices,’ (dances, initiation rites, etc) to adopt totally new values, to change their way of life.”

This morning I went to buy a little bag of attieke (dried cassava root - It looks like couscous) from a local vendor on a little dirt path near my apt. I had this moment of seeing Africa at its beauty - women cooking, children playing with each other and not with toys, a man sawing a piece of wood. Then I went to the Teacher Training College where I work, where we push paper, have meetings, and make schedules. I wish that this place wasn't colonized - that Côte d'Ivoire is a country wherein the women cook and the children play and the people are self-sufficient with what they grow from the land. I'm talking in ideals, but it just seems like the simple beauty of this place and its people and their way of life is slowly being replaced with our modern focus on business deals and having the newest and greatest and best next thing. I'm trying now to appreciate the simple moments here, the real beauty of what this place is: sitting with my colleague's 2 year old son by the fire as dinner cooks, sitting with another colleague's niece as the sun sets, chatting with my neighbors who sell fruit and food on the side of the little path near our house. Despite my worry about this country, I feel a certain peace when I take a moment to take in its physical beauty and the spirit of its people.