Trust Me, They Aren't All Terrorists!

"Ablaye, what time is it?" Mamadou asks me.
"It's quarter past four," I reply.
"Uh huh? Well, Ablaye, it’s been a good chat, and now I have to get off to afternoon prayers. You coming?"
"What? To pray?” I ask, with the half-feigned curiosity that is part of the pattern of any Malian conversation, speaking simply because keeping the conversation going is a good thing to do.
"Yes, to the Mosque! How come you never come to pray at the Mosque like a good Malian?"
I cycle through the half-dozen or so answers that I’ve stored in my head for use when I will inevitably need them, as this exact conversation is common currency for me. For convenience's sake, though I know full way it will not suffice, I settle on the simplest: "'Cause I'm not a Muslim."
"Yes, but now that you are here in Mali, in our village, you can become more like us and go to our prayers."
"Right, but I've told you before, I'm Jewish. Our prayers are not the same and I'm not even allowed to pray in your Mosque, even if I wanted to. Allah says so."
"I understand, but being a Jew is bad. Now you are in a Muslim village, you should become a Muslim like the rest of us. When you go home to France or Germany or wherever you live, you can be a Jew again."

I started having conversations that went more or less exactly like this about a year ago, when people noticed I went to the Tabaski service and was standing off to the side with the children, rather than praying with the two-hundred-odd adults. That was when my neighbors in Niantanso realized that not only wasn't I praying with them, but I was really not praying with them. I don't thing anybody took it as a genuine offense, but rather as yet another thing the dumb rookie white kid was screwing up. But as time went on, and word got around that the white kid was getting a tan – speaking Malinke, eating rice and sauce with my hands, working in the fields and adamantly refusing to be the only one to be resting at any given time – people began to wonder why I was doing everything else right, except being a Muslim.

Now here in the Peace Corps, we put a heavy emphasis on integration and cross-cultural understanding. This is not to say that we are expected to make ourselves indistinguishable from our Host Country Nationals (HCNs). It merely means that we strive to remember that those denizens of the Underdeveloped World (there's some good PC vocab for ya) aren't backwards, they are just unworldly. They have not been raised, as we in the West were, with Political Correctness and Universal Tolerance drilled into the deepest core of our noggins.

Therefore, to be told be my neighbours, or strangers I meet in busses and at egg-sandwich stands, that being a Jew is bad and being a Muslim is good is not really an offensive statement at all. If anything, it is a statement of fact. Talking to a good friend of mine recently, I was told that contrary to the popular global belief, true Islam is a kind, tolerant religion that does not wish harm on any person. This, by extension, implies that since one is supernally harming oneself by not being a Muslim, it is the Muslim's duty to do what they can to help others rectify their misguided ways and avoid an eternity in the place where "even the peanut and okra sauce is made of fire!" I've been given more or less this same line of logic before from Hell-threatening Christians or stalwartly scientific Atheists, and it is almost always delivered to me in a hostile change-or-die diatribe. Here, the approach is more along the lines of "It would be nice if you were a Muslim, and we really don't want you to burn in Hell, but heck, we don't listen to you about not drinking river water, so we don't expect you to heed our 'Muhammad-isms.'"

The only time I really hear any sort of aggressive conversion-based talk is when it involves a culture-based activity, like the aforementioned Mosque exchange, or when it involves financial importunities. Regarding the former, these conversations don't really bother me since they usually just lead to interesting theological conversations comparing Judaism and Islam. The latter is what most often irritates me: "You should give me your camera. You can always buy another one, but I'm poor."
"You want me to just give you the camera for free? You don't do anything in return??"
"I can give you blessings. . . Allah will reward you greatly in the afterlife! See, blessings have Allah attached to them, so they are much more potent than money."
"Oh, well in that case, if Allah can give me such a great reward, may Allah also provide you with a camera."

Back in May, when I took a brief trip back to the states for my sister's wedding, one of the most often asked questions was "What is it like living in a Muslim country, especially you being a Jew?" More often than not, people were surprised by my answer: it's totally cool. Islam has gotten an international reputation that it does not deserve. I believe that there are still a large number of people who are aware that true Quranic Islam does not support the Extremist tactics that so often make the news, but in Mali, all the Islamic stereotypes do not just prove to be bent or unfaithful, they fall as flat as can be imagined. Some people think there is a general dislike among Muslims towards Jews for whatever political and religious differences there are. Malian villagers generally know practically nothing about Judaism, and have no basis to form any opinions. In fact, the only people they tend to take up a major conflict with are Extremist Muslims. Any Malian Muslim will resolutely insist that nowhere in the Quran is permission ever given to kill. Those who do murder in the name of Allah or anything else are flat-out not Muslims. I have also heard such declarations made about those who do not pray five times a day and those who drink alcohol, be it the fermented palm wine or the watered-down rubbing alcohol which is the alcoholics' beverage of choice out where I am. If you are Muslim or not, that is your own business, but if you are going to be a Muslim, either get on your knees or get off the prayer mat. (I have often thought, half-jokingly, that Mali would be fantastic as a fascist nation. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, you are either doing things according to the status quo, or you are doing it wrong. This follows with religious observance, wood-chopping or garden-weeding techniques, and even day-to-day behavior. A friend of mine once observed that our Regional Peace Corps shuttle driver was too hostile and uncourteous when he came through the village. I told him that the driver was a bit of a tough guy and was sometimes unfriendly, even by American standards, until you get to know him. My friend was indignant: "He should not even be allowed in this country if he is not going to greet people and bring them gifts from the city! If you cannot be friendly, you do not deserve to be in Mali!").

The only time I have ever heard Allah’s name invoked in a hostile way was the other day when I was walking through the bus station in Bamako trying to find a good bus ticket. My party and I were followed for 20 minutes by a man who kept insisting that we give up our search for a nice, reputable bus and take his smoking Jalopy on the seven hour ride to Sikasso instead. We kept refusing, and finally got good tickets on a good bus, and as we left the vulture in our dust, he hollered after us “May Allah kill you allll!!!”

As to specifically Jew-Muslim issues, they are virtually nonexistent. Most people just don't know enough about Jews for any issues to exist. I have many times had to explain the pro-Israel side of the Mid-East conflict, which some people know about from listening to Radio France International, and for those of you who keep up with such foreign affairs, I'm sure you don't need to be told whose version of the conflict is being aired over French frequencies. Even in this case though, there is generally no association made between Israelis and Jews. I was once having a conversation with an Imam who, after listening to me tell him all about Judaism, of which he knew almost nothing, told me he knew of an ethnic group in Israel, naming the French word for "Jew." When I told him that they were the same people as the Bamabara word I had been using, he got very excited. "You're one of those people?? Wow, your people are the greatest! You are so smart, and you have such powerful positions in the world, and I hear you invented the cell phone..." and proceeded to tell me and everyone around why Jews are some of the most estimable people in world history.

Having described my general impressions of Islam in Mali, I should also go on to disclaim myself by saying that most of this is based on my observations of my village, which may not be the best litmus test to make general statements with. According to the census, Mali is about 90% Muslim, but a large number of these Muslims are mainly so on paper, observing very few Muslim laws, and still following a lot of the old Animist rituals. They will also say they are Muslim because Atheism is not considered a legitimate answer and Animism is not considered a religion but merely a collection of rituals and customs. This pattern holds especially true in my village more than many. The devout and observant Muslims lament the lack of fellow devotees, the miniscule turnouts at the Mosque, the drinking of the isopropanol/water cocktail. This seems to be the result of an paradoxical combination of steadfast conservatism and adherence to the traditional African beliefs, and (so-called) enlightened secularism, where, as in much of the rest of the world, people are praying before the Neon Gods and leaving behind Allah, who is just not as much fun as sex and beer. This is another one of the excuses I utilize to get out of my "Muslim obligations" ("My own host family doesn't fast for Ramadan, why would I?") but I do feel bad for using it, for reminding those who truly do care of the increasing nails in the coffin of their traditions. Secularization and general abandonment of faith: now there's something a Malian Muslim and an American Jew have in common.

And since the timing is right, happy Thanksgiving and Tabaski to you all!

Quick update, for those who can't get enough of me

I came to Kita, a small city east of my village, with grand plans of spending lots of time in the internet cafe, uploading photos, updating my blog, and sending messages out to all my friends. Instead, I spent the last weekend enjoying a big Halloween party, enjoying my time with Americans, and waiting out a citywide blackout that cut off internet for a day. Oops. That just means that instead of my normal witty insight and informative social observation which I know you all relish and enjoy, you're instead just stuck with a short and hasty "I'm still alive" letter to tide you over until my next trip out of town for Thanksgiving, which will happen a week early here so that w can have time to also celebrate Tabaski, the Muslim "Thanksgiving/Yom Kippur" holiday, with our host families in our villages.

In the meantime, as just a brief update before my bus leaves, the last few weeks have seen the end of the rainy season, and the start of harvesting. People spend the days gathering all their friends together to break off the corn, dig up the peanuts, and cut the rice and millet for harvest. This is another example of how Malians turn hard labor into a fun day in the field by making it a social event, egging each other to work harder and race each other, joking and jeering all the while. I myself hosted one such event, though rather than getting 30 men to come in and harvest two or three hectares of corn, I gave a bunch of little kids candy to come and work my quarter-hectare crop and husk all the corn. After leaving it on top of my porch roof to dry, and then putting all the cobs in a sck and beating them with a heavy log to break off the kernals, I ended up with about 100 kgs of corn, plenty to feed myself and my pet monkey for a good long time.
In the midst of all this activity, the funding came through for my first big funded project, a major step up from the smaller-scale, though equally important work I've been doing so far like teaching people how to chemically treat their wells to clean the drinking water or engaging in endless futile conversations about the importance of washing hands with soap before eating and after using their bare hands to wipe themselves on the toilet. This project involves hooking up a battery to the electric millet-pounding machine so that electricity can be efficiently stored and bought by people in the town, serving as an income-generator for the credit and loan association in the town which owns the machine, as well as a way for locals to do everything from welding broken farming equipment to storing food in refridgerators to watching the latest Jay-Z videos on their DVD players. I figure that the fact that I am not doing a strictly water/sanitation project as my work focus normally is, is made up for by the fact that I will get oodles of good street cred from the locals, who to this day often still see me as a fun little white boy to point at.

As of now, I am hanging out in Kita, waiting to get a bus home, following the wild and raucus Peace Corps Halloween party held here. In case you're wondering, I cut out cardboard boxes and dressed up as The Whereabox, the figurative message box PCVs send SMS or emails to when they travel alerting staff as to their whereabouts. In other words, you have to be a PCV to get the joke. Photos will come later.

Meanwhile, it's time I headed out, so until Thanksgiving, Peace!