On collective grief

I left for Burkina Faso on August 16^th, 2014, shortly after the death of a childhood icon of mine, Robin Williams.  A few days after the flood of appropriately theatrical grief for Williams, I departed with images of Aladdin hugging the genie and Patch Adams surrounded by children fresh in my mind.  Those images had what I presume was their intended effect on me.  Even the pictures of a zany fruit-bat were not easy to view without moist eyes.  Don’t get me started on that scene with Matt Damon. 

Yesterday, I logged into social media to find that the actor who breathed life into one of my all-time favorite characters had passed away.  Spock had an incredibly penetrating view of humanity.  His disposition was critical and hopeful.  Sounds like somebody you know?  I predictably spent some time yesterday looking at old clips of my most memorable Spock moments.  I nostalgically reread quotes that I had memorized many years ago. 

One thing I noticed after the deaths of Robin Williams and Leonard Nimoy, and the subsequent grief on social media, was the obvious fact that not everyone gets this treatment.  This seemingly innocuous observation allows us to ask who we grieve publicly and why we do it.

When I first learned about what occurred, it took time to react.  I found, to my own amazement that I truly felt the need to grieve somebody that I did not know.  It is unnerving to see an idol, who made you laugh/think/cheer/etc., revived because they are dead.  Even saying that last sentence in my head as I write this, is a little unsettling. 

Grief itself is just unsettling.  It reminds of our own eventual mortality.  Another’s passing affects us and try as we might sometimes, we cannot fight it.  It reminds us that we are never fully autonomous.  We can be undone by other humans who are not even alive.  And strangely, we wouldn’t give up this sort of ordeal for anything.  Imagine the inhumanity of not feeling grief when people die.

Thinking about grief, in terms of recent events, entails thinking about how we collectively grieve.  I have found myself wondering how often we think about our grieving process itself.  Do we realize how arbitrary our grief conventions are and how we take them for granted?  For example, we know that other cultures grieve differently than us.  Some give gifts to the bereaved.  Some cultures, such as Fiji Islanders, treat death casually in everyday conversation.  Some are very stoic and others extremely emotional.  We even see degrees of this kind of variation within our cultural paradigms.  Some cultures have incredible support for those who are grieving whereas many places the U.S. give you two days of leave from work.

It has struck me as odd that we do not seem to think of grief as being a constructed and prefabricated process when we exist in a culture that dictates prescribed stages of grief.  How many books are in print to help guide you through these stages? Put another way, we freely dispense and internalize the ideas of reaching certain contrived landmarks in a specific order so as to grieve normally.  Is that really the natural way to grieve?  Especially if entire cultures do it differently?  This sort of question is where you can see the construction of grief.  In some sense grief, as a process, is structured by culture.  Grief might appear to be a nearly universal experience but how we do grief varies considerably.

Keeping that in mind, think about what we do together when we grieve.  There are no laws that govern proper funeral/wake attire.  But I bet you wear black or dark clothing to funerals.  Probably a suit or dress, right?  Not everyone on the planet does this.  But it would be at least odd and probably disrespectful for you not to do so.  So you uphold the behaviors of grief that you know.  There is certainly nothing objectively more grief-like about black than, let’s say… grey.  Or, as morbid as this may seem, why not do red?  Black is just a convention.  It is merely a pattern of behavior which people tacitly accept.  Observations such as these tell us that our grieving process is institutionalized.

What sociologists mean by the word institution is something more abstract than the everyday meaning of the word.  We tend to think of institutions as formal entities such as hospitals, schools, prisons, the military, etc. that serve public needs within strictly defined parameters.  The sociological meaning is habitual action that serves a social function.  Since different cultures appear to handle grief differently, it is accurate to describe the public grieving process as “doing grief.”  We have learned behaviors that we display and we have conventions by which we appear to abide most of the time.  There are also private grieving mechanisms, but for this post, I am concerned with the ones we see.  The ones we observe others doing and willing follow suit.  I am interested in the public institutional grief.

This sense of the word institution implies patterns and expectations of behavior.  And though this seems mundane, it is extremely powerful.  We can reasonably expect certain behaviors of people we do not know.  We even grieve together with people that we do not know for people that we do not really know.

This framing of the institution of grief reminds me of an anthropological concept of the imagined community.  As I understand the term, it refers to the community building elements of social and cultural constructs.  That sounds a bit abstract so let me give a couple of examples. 

The community of a college or university is an imagined community.  I do not mean that it does not exist.  But I do mean that there exists a tacit connection between all current and former students of that college.  Even your graduating class is an imagined community.  You likely do not know every member of these communities.  But it is still a community.  It is certainly not a physical community, you are all scattered to the winds.  Whatever connection you have with all individuals of this community is, in a sense, imaginary.  You never actually connect with many of them.  Even with a concrete entity, such as a sufficiently populated school which has a physical location, there are elements of an imagined community. 

This concept can be understood elsewhere.  Consider sports team fanbases (other fandoms can apply, such as comic book fanbases).  Do you know every other fan of your favorite team?  The answer is almost certainly no.  However, would anyone ever doubt that you are a community?  You perform some of the same rituals and you certainly aspire to a common goal: victory for team.  You can connect with total strangers at bars and stadiums because of this one commonality, and share in each other’s delight and disappointment.  And this community, while made up of real people, exists in the collective imaginations and habits of its members and nonmembers.

Some sociological institutions, in this view, are certainly functions of imagined communities.  There is no way that you know everyone in the western world who wears black dresses to funerals.  But that doesn’t stop you for doing what you imagine that everyone else does.

Stay with me on this next one.  Societies and nation-states appear to be imagined communities, unless you know every member of your country.  Nations are certainly constructs with rules and enforced boundaries but they also exist in our collective imagination.  They are clearly demonstrated as imagined when you poll people about the values that define their nation.  No two people have the same vision of this entity called the nation-state. 

However, nations are bounded and defined by laws and other formal practices.  But what about societies?  Laws and somewhat tangible institutions such as governments and public services are not the crux of societies.  Plenty of societies on this Earth exist without these.  But all societies do have conventions.  For example, even commonplace biological functions, such as the treatment of human waste are very conventionalized.  Most of us don’t think about all the steps we must take to deal with biological processes and how these steps are constructed.  However, I presume that you are aware that urination/defecation do not actually look or even work the same everywhere in the world. 

Putting that all together, societies are necessarily imagined communities.  That is to say, they are not physical entities.  You can no more touch a society than you can touch your imagination.  They are epiphenomenal.

So, how do we get these abstractly imagined societies?  Put another way, what are the building blocks of a society?  I presume your first thought was people.  Yes, in some sense (although I think an argument can be made that animals have societies too), but the people have to do things, I presume.  Babies in a nursing wing of a hospital are not a society.  The people have to move toward common goals or do some of the same things.  This is where the sociological institution is useful.  Institutions (patterns of behavior that serves social needs) are the necessary attribute of societies.  What makes a “strong society?”  When everyone follows the same social conventions, right?  When everyone has the same sense of purpose and the same sense of how to bring about that purpose.  This is to say, societies are imagined communities that share collective corporate action.

When it comes to building/maintaining a society, I offer that public grief is a powerful tool for doing so.  It represents our collective corporate action that transcends political, ethnic, gender, class, etc. boundaries.  We feel and demonstrate our sadness together.  We can easily imagine the other members of our imagined community doing the same.  We are not generally (I presume) compelled to action by anything other than some social pressure and our own desire to participate.  We simply want show that we too are grieving.  In apparent solidarity.  Willingly. 

I think that collective grief serves cultural and social functions.  We (individuals) did not gain anything by posting pictures on social media.  The departed certainly gained nothing from the attention.  But many of us did this.  And we grieve(d) people we do not know, even if only for a short while.  Why?

I think the answer is that this is a form of cultural propaganda.  It helps the individual punctuate and define their cultural heritage.  We express precisely who we are allowed to be affected by.  It helps us remember and reinforce which stories influenced our young lives (the stories which helped us build our senses of morality, fairness, justice, etc.).  It helps us to define our collective values.  We proudly flaunt them and agree with each other.

It seems that collective grief is an exercise in culture building and cultural maintenance.  The human condition is indeed strange such that the deaths of others are used to define the values for the living.  However, if we are going to do anything at all about the passing of those who touched our lives, what better way to honor them than to prop them up as cultural icons?  Among these bittersweet displays over the next few days, take a moment to consider what it means and what message you are sending when/if you are honoring Nimoy.  And do keep in mind that “… the more we share, the more we have.”

Out of the frying pan and into the forest

Hello again.

Before we get to the content, I have decided to change my blog format slightly.  I am not going to worry about journaling every nearly single day like I have been.  Instead, I will focus on writing interesting things as they come up.  This is due to a few reasons.  First, I don’t actually like feeling the need to write down mundane stuff every day then picking and choosing later what to write about.  Second, I have noticed more feedback when I write entries in terms of telling a story or two, rather than listing my activities.  Finally, I like the idea of this blog becoming me just writing about what strikes me in my research or otherwise.  I think this is better than having a disconnected blog with some posts being list-like journal entries and others with me ranting about unrelated things.

Now for yesterday’s adventures:

I took a break (I normally do text translation or elicitation with Bakary on Saturdays).  This is partly because I needed it.  I was feeling very warn down and wasn’t very inspired to do much in the afternoons.  I also did this because I need time to prepare for getting a better handle on the tones and figuring out exactly how I want to structure my dictionary.  I felt guilty for not working though.  I guess this means I belong in academia?  And I took a nap.  I missed naps.  When and why did I stop being five?

I met a new American friend the other day in Bobo when I went swimming at a hotel pool.  I decided to invite her to go with me, Zaki, Bakary, and Kadit to see a protected forest.  Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.  It rained a bit yesterday morning and I experienced the sweet enjoyment of serendipitous timing.  It was cooler than it had been and it was even nicer under the park canopy.  The scenery was distinct compared almost anything I have seen in months.  It was exactly what I needed for a break.  The stroll was refreshing and invigorating.  The smells and sights overwhelmed my senses as we leisurely ambled along the path.  The air itself felt green and pungent.

First, lemma take a selfie!

Who is that sexy beast?

Jeanne and me

Zaki

Kadit

Jeanne and our guide

Bakary

Painting on a wall near the park entrance

What the trail looked like toward the beginning

Now for a bunch of vegetation and canopy shots.

This was toward the end of our trail

It was a bit a like a jungle movie bridge

A little too much like one, actually

The clearest picture I could take from the swaying bridge

But I thoroughly enjoyed myself

We all did

On the way back, we stopped at the Senufo (an ethnic group) cultural museum.  I was not allowed to take pictures inside, but the outside is pretty amazing too.  I will start with the inside and outside walls surrounding the museum compound.

These are pictures of the compound with various statues.

And the outside of buildings.

My digital camera appears to have finally started to die on me (I have owned it since 2005).  All these pictures were taken with my iphone.  Not bad, right?

How to talk about fat people

CW: abusive language

…as a normal person

You are a caring individual.  In your ideal world everyone is safe, happy, and healthy.  That is why fat people bother you.  Nobody is satisfied being large and you need to tell them this.  The following suggestions will help you express your worries to fat people everywhere.

Mention that you care about fat people’s health.  Offer health tips, like be healthier.  And stop being fat.

Telling someone what is wrong with their body just shows that you care.  Concern is best expressed through spontaneous advice.  Express your concern for your fat acquaintance’s health frequently, in case nobody has noticed their body in the past hour.

State that fat people should eat less and move more.  That is the one piece of information they are lacking.  Dignify them if you see them outside by staring at them.  Better if you motivate them by shouting at them while jogging.  Best if you praise them with gestures depicting their size or struggle.    

If a family member is big, suggest that they join your gym.  Don’t bother asking if they are a member of one.  The evidence of them being fat proves they do not care about their health like you do.  At the gym, encourage them by saying that they will notice results soon.  The point of exercise is to become visually healthier.  But if you see a fat stranger, let them know that their presence does not help your fitness routine.

Assist people who unaware of what they are eating.  If you see a large person eating fast food helpfully explain to them that they are eating fast food.  If a fat person is eating nutritious food, let them know you are onto them.  Why are they pretending to eat healthy?

If you really care about a fat person, mention a diet program.  Any diet program.  Do not ask about their current eating habits.  Diets are healthy and, statistically speaking, diets work.  Talk about a change in eating habits.  It is good that you mentioned these things because nobody else has.  

 

Any individual’s largeness is actually about you.  You don’t want to see big people.  They hurt your eyes.  They have no business being at a public beach in swimwear.  They should be more considerate about existing in public space.  By not existing in public space.  And it is definitely their fault that you need to say something to them.  And take their picture.

You are not attracted to fat people.  This is the same as telling them this.  It is important that fat people know that you don’t want to fuck them.  To make sure they understand, mention that nobody will have sex with them.  If the fat person is a woman, inform her that the only way she can have sex is to be raped.  Tell them you would kill yourself if you looked like them.

Comment on pictures of larger people stating that these people are overweight or obese.  This is a medical fact because they appear big.  The state of one’s health is easily determined by a glance.  It’s how doctors do it.

If you know someone who is dating a fat person, ask them how it works.  It’s not like they can just have sex, right?  Your imagination cannot handle these thoughts. 

Tell attractive fat people that they have handsome features or a pretty face.  They could have so many dates if they lost a little weight.  Or compliment them.  Say they carry their weight well.  Their shirt is slimming.  If you have a friend who is fat, say they are not fat.  Because they are good looking.

Tell fat people that they would feel better and find clothes easier if they weren't fat.  Why doesn't this person care about department store sizes?  It is too bad that this person let them-self go.  You are sad for them.  You are worried about how other people judge them, that’s why you help them evaluate their situation.

Make products and advertisements that make everyone aware of how not skinny they are.  Everyone’s body is incomplete without losing some of it.

Refer to fat people as: tubby, fat-so, (beached) whale, pig, slob, sloth, wide load, smelly, elephant, thunder thighs, glutton, lard ass, porker, Buddha, bacon, sweaty, blimp, hog, blob, heifer, sow, (moo) cow, hideous, jumbo, fatty, Shamu, dumpy, hippo, gross, mammoth, enormous, chunky, massive, Jabba the Hut, cumbersome, corpulent, colossal, rotund, dirty, messy, and ugly.

…as a commentator/critic

If a public figure is big, question their credentials.  How could someone have a medical degree and be large?  Worry about their presence causing acceptance of people like them.  Talk about the fact that having a job where they are seen glorifies fat people as normal people. 

Reviews about a woman’s singing or acting should always include comments about their appearance or weight.  If a fat person does anything in Hollywood do not talk about their performance.  Focus on their unacceptable body.  But if a fat person is funny make sure everyone knows that it is because they are fat.  Unless they are too fat.

If a fat person can also do other things besides being themselves, this is noteworthy.  If they can dance, talk about how it defies physics and biology.  People who are fat and do normal things are unbelievable or shocking.  Or say they are a role model for being fat and doing their job.  It is incredibly brave to do that thing in a body like theirs.

When making political statements or drawings, use largeness as a symbol for the oppressor(s).  A bank or a corporation should be a massive person.  Or a person/pig hybrid.  Make sure that fatness implies being fat at the expense of others.  Large people and greedy people are synonymous.  Everyone knows that fatness is immoral.

…as a writer

Fat jokes are just funny.  So are fat characters in movies and on TV.  Everyone understands that we laugh at fat people, for being fat and doing fat things.  Use doughnuts or cake in your jokes.  If you want to be original mention fast food and gigantic portions.  Diabetes is a funny subject as well.

If you are writing fat characters, make sure they are slovenly.  Or villains.  Fat slovenly villains are best.  Make their fatness part of their downfall.  Villain or not, they should fall and fart.  More than once, so you know how fat they are. 

In your romantic comedy, make sure that drugs or magic turn fat people into skinny people.  This is what fools the protagonist into thinking that person is attractive.  Your main character should struggle to learn to love a fat person.  The lesson is to learning to ignore a person’s body.  This fat person needs to appreciate your protagonist’s hard work at liking them.  If any characters in your script are attracted to bigger people, this is a punchline.  Because that is ridiculous.

If the character is a man, there should be a joke about him having breasts.  Comparing men’s bodies to women’s bodies is the ultimate insult.  If the character is a woman, compare her to a man.  Only men are allowed to be whatever size they want.

If the character is fat and black, this should be extra funny.  They should be from the South.  They should eat fried chicken, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and any kind of corn.  At every meal.  And hit their fat kids.  Child abuse is only funny when someone is fat and black.  Make certain they yell a lot.  Loud gluttonous violent black people ensure a well-rounded cast.

…as a good person

In light of the body positive movement, make products and advertisements that target fat/curvy people by telling them they are real men/women.  They have real bodies, unlike skinny people.  Feeling good is great when you can make money off it.

As an enlightened journalist or company spokesperson you will help people move past fat shaming.  People being fat doesn't matter to you and everyone will know this.  Use advertisements or pictures featuring suggestive large women.  Use a modest title, such as: “This collection of powerful/inspiring photographs will smash/shatter stereotypes about fat people forever/immediately.”  Make sure that people see how revolutionary you are.  You are being so liberal right now.

If you are attracted to a fat person, say that it is because specifically because they are fat.  This way the person knows to be flattered by your benevolent attention to their normally disgusting body.  If a fat person is lucky enough to have sex with you, caress their belly so that they know their size isn't important to you.

If you are a medical professional, treat people’s fatness as the cause of all symptoms they are experiencing.  You do not need to investigate the symptoms.  A fat person’s condition automatically results from their body size.  A fat person with a sore throat needs to exercise more.  Losing weight should help with those allergies.

…as a born-again skinny person

Act the way you think a skinny person should act.  Convince fat people to try that new fitness program.  This one is the one will work, unlike those other bullshit ones.  Refer to fat people as lazy.  It’s fun to be on the other side now.

Food choices should be considered ethical behavior.  Say you were bad today because you ate a bad thing.  Offer condolences to fat people eating things they have no business eating.  They can always eat the anatomically correct food next time.  If a large stranger is shopping for produce or eating vegetables congratulate them for picking the right food.

Tell your story of triumph over the fatness to fat people.  Your personal measurements are helpful.  And look how good your self-image is now!  Make sure everyone knows that your self-esteem is amazing.  That’s why you keep saying it.

If you want to inspire people, show them how fit you are.  Start a page/blog/site where you post pictures of your awesome results.  The people need your sexy inspiration.  And post many quotes about hard work, perspiration, and happiness.  Because you care.

Our trouble with mass violence

“Religious extremists try to kill dissenters and control governments.  Atheist extremists write books and give lectures.”  For years I have confidently repeated this mantra.  In my lifetime, I have not seen one example of someone citing their nonbelief as a reason to justify murder.  I have seen and read about plenty of religiously inspired killing.  I am unsure whether or not this confidence should waver. 

In light of the recent Chapel Hill shooting, some folks have suggested that it was based in the perpetrator’s antitheistic views.  Police initially suspected that it was a mere parking dispute.  This looks dismissive but it is not entirely unreasonable.  Such incidents are not without precedent.  However, further evidence of previous encounters between the departed and this killer have challenged this view.  The people were shot in the head, like executions.  The parking dispute is more likely a catalyst, not the underlying issue.  I am still not clear on whether or not this was racially/religiously motivated as I am unaware of evidence which would confirm prejudice.  However, I presume to be stating the obvious when I say that a hatred of specifically Middle Eastern Muslims is too common in the U.S. and it is certainly not specific to non-believers.  This noticeable trend appears to be some of the basis for calling this attack was racist or Islamaphobic.  Come to think of it, do you such a specific and thorough killing really just about parking?

Some have suggested or stated, as others have erroneously done before, that modern atheism is to blame.  Lines of accusation and rebuttal which have become routine in theist vs. atheist debates occurred in the wake of these murders.  People accused Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins of inciting violence.  Atheists pointed out that there is no Atheist bible which justifies such behavior.  This is true that non-believers do not have a particular book that we all adhere to but there are some that are widely read.  And it is among these pages that you can find quotes such as… “Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.” –Sam Harris. 

We see the defense that quotes were taken out of context, which is especially strange in this case because quotes like the one above were already sufficiently explained.  People say that accusers cannot understand complicated ideas.  Many atheists sound like every religious apologist ever.  We see again, albeit with unexpected population, what happens when people try to blame members of a label rather than certain pathologies.

I think this recent event is a setting in which to bring up an observation that I have been mostly silent on.  I think it is time to talk about killings where we might know the motives, but wish we didn't.  I would like to pose the immediately following question with my own answer and explanation.

Why is it that when people commit acts of mass violence, we do not consider their justifications to be true when they give them?

I think it is because we are unwilling to accept our own culpability and unwilling to examine our own beliefs.  Allow me to start with a few examples.

-We try to find other reasons even when fundamentalist terrorists explicitly tell us that they killed for religious reasons.  We say that it must have been economics, or politics, or any other possible factor.  If it were religion then we are also potentially influenced by similar ideas.  How uncomfortable.

-When some dude says that he killed people because he was rejected by women but feels entitled to them, we say he was mentally ill.  It couldn’t possibly have been misogyny.  It couldn't have been the influence of a culture that treats women as flesh for men’s consumption.  That would mean that we also participate.

-When a person says they shot up their school because they were driven to it by bullying, we say they had social issues.  Clearly the years of torment at the hands of their peers couldn't be the issue.  That would suggest that we are responsible too for not doing enough to stop the daily suffering of these individuals.

Even as other factors were surely involved, I do not think we should ignore people’s admissions.  But we do.  We can’t fathom that these humans can be thinking mostly like ourselves.  Allow yourself to consider how we deal with any other criminal or immoral/unethical behavior.  When someone robs a house and gets caught, we accept their account of why they committed the crime.  If a parent’s religious beliefs drove them to not accept their child’s transgender identity and not provide what the child needed, we accept that their religious beliefs were part of the problem.  When a person murders their spouse, we accept their admission that they did it for insurance money.  Why should we treat mass murder any differently?

I would like to suggest that this is an attempt to remove ourselves from the equation.  It says a whole lot more about us than it does the murder(s).  We don’t want to think about how we might also exhibit potentially troubling tendencies.  We don’t want to criticize the institutions that we know.  So we shift the blame to something that we can say has nothing to do with us, like mental health.  Appeal to an afterlife hits very close to home and at the very core of some many peoples’ worldview.  An admission that we still have enough misogynistic bigotry within our various cultural and social structures to lead to violence is a startling realization.  It is extremely uncomfortable for people who would rather pretend that sexism doesn't exist and persist in the delusion that we have already achieved gender equality.

The thing is, none of these cases involve people with mental health issues or uneducated or impoverished people, as apologists would have you believe.  Notice how the public expertly diagnoses American killers as mentally ill, even with no prior history on which to base this claim.  The individual was evaluated by experts who found nothing.  People just assume he was mentally ill and interpret the lack of evidence as evidence of his craftiness.  That’s not exactly following a rational line of thinking.  Among the people who committed the atrocities on September 11, 2001, were highly educated people.  These were men who knew exactly what they were doing.  Bin Laden even made explicit his goals.  And I couldn't help but notice that when someone expressed that “god is great,” while killing cartoonists, we still say that the motive is unclear.

Let me use a quote from another person who is narrowing in on this same observation.  I should state that I disagree with the assertion of a mental health issue regarding Elliot Roger.  This quote is in reference to people who appear to be motivated by outright misogyny.

“Certainly, mental health is a critical part of the equation in these cases. Not all lonely masturbators set out to commit mass murder. Most pose a far greater threat to tissues than women. But we should be alarmed that these outlier men are driven by attitudes that are everything but outlying. We should be concerned when a mass murderer’s — or attempted mass murderer’s — manifesto reflects widespread beliefs. The rants about girls not going for nice guys and the bile directed at women for being slutty? It’s all utterly familiar. Take away the actual threats of murder and these remarks could just as easily have come from an unremarkable college virgin, hapless online dater or Salon commenter — sorry, but it’s true! — as Moynihan, Rodger or Sodini. In fact, you can even leave in the threat of violence and still have something uncannily resembling what many women encounter daily online, if not also in the real world.”

When you watch killers' videos or read their writings: their reasoning, minus the calls for death, seem all too ordinary.  People hope for paradise and wish to privilege their religion above any other paradigm.  People are upset because their romantic life is not what they want.  Other peoples’ hatred drove bullied people to the breaking point where they just wanted it to stop.  These motivations are almost pedestrian.  I think that is our issue.  
These killers are laying their individual thought processes bare for us, but we are not listening.  And why would we when they seem so similar to us?  We cannot fathom that they might think like us.  Maybe it says something bad or troubling about our values.  For now, I will ask you how many more incidents must we suffer before we examine ourselves?

BF Journal: 1/25 - 2/4

1/25 – 2/4

On the night of the 25^th the crew and I went out for a couple drinks.  The crew is Bakary, Zaki, and Kadit.  It was nice to spend some time together where we were not thinking about work or arranging meetings with other people.  This reprieve was nice but short lived.  My days have been filling up quickly recently. 

I finished my first pass at translating my first text.  I need to back over it sometime to make sure what we did translate is consistent.  This recently completed round involved my consultant’s translations of words that he could translate (or approximate) plus my best guesses at the meanings for certain grammatical particles.  It is rough still.  But I am excited to have started the village history text.  For the next week or so I will be working with my consultant to get our transcription as accurate as possible.  This is the least fun part of the process, but it is absolutely crucial if I am to gain a more sophisticated understanding of this language’s morphophonology.  And the phonology for that matter.  It is unlikely I have it all figured out after a few months.

Fun note: while transcribing the history, my consultant consistently laughs at the person we recorded.  It is mostly about his pronunciations like /s/ à [] (the sound “s” realized as “sh”) and others.  Incidentally, my consultant does this too, he just doesn't realize it.  Some of what makes him laugh is that our historian repeats himself a lot.  It’s is tough to know for sure which words he means to repeat for emphasis and which are just his style.  All of it is transcribed though.  Bakary also calls him bouche de cola.  At first I thought he was insulting him by calling him “soda mouth.”  Presumably referring to his teeth.  However, I have since been corrected.  It likely refers to the cola nut preferred by elder people in this culture.  Perhaps it was a reference to what the historian does frequently, maybe he has one in his mouth during the interview, or perhaps my consultant was referring to his teeth being worn down.  

However this past week and a half has not been all work. 

We went to a club and nobody was dancing.  On a Saturday.  With dance music.  On the plus side I had time to ask my companions about the artists and song titles.  I will be the most knowledgeable guy from New Hampshire regarding West African Pop music before you know it.  This is very important for things.

I have been quickly learning exactly how technologically privileged I am.  I noticed that I was getting frustrated when people didn’t know how to use devices or programs that I completely take for granted. 

A good example; I asked Valentine to take a picture of me and Bakary a while back with my camera.  I said push this button when you think the picture is right.  The camera was pointed at her feet and she said all she could see was her feet.  No problem, I thought.  I explained: Il faut assurer que l’appareil est parallèle de la terre pour nous voir, c’est directionnel.  “You have to make sure that the device is parallel to the ground to see us, it is directional.”  She stares at me blankly.  Okay, I rotate the camera in her hands to show her that she needs to point it at us.  I go back to Bakary, and she tries to look down at the camera again (like a phone, perhaps), thereby pointing it at her feet.  Je vois les pies encore.  “I see my feet again.”  This photo never happened.  My recollection of the French is probably not perfect.

Bakary tried to call a family member with my phone by using the calculator app.  He can read French, which is the language my phone is set to.

The person I met with to potentially teach me how to use R (this did not happen) did not know how to use facebook.  I don’t recall exactly why that came up.

The systems administrator at the hotel across the street (I bought a weeks’ worth of internet usage from them during a particularly long internet outage) did not know how to use my MacBook to get me setup.

You get the idea.  None of these situations say anything bad about anyone, except possibly me, if I got impatient.  It sometimes feels to me like I am living with either three year olds or elderly people.  But should it?

Anyways, I hope to have some actual cool stuff for you all in coming posts regarding village history or maybe some videos.  We shall see what I can actually upload and such.