Americans are Bad

There are many people in my village who regularly ask me for things or tell me that Americans have not done enough to help Malians. Recently I had a particularly frustrating conversation with a rather influential person in my village about this. I had returned from Bamako a few days early, and he had returned to the village after a long absence as well. When he saw me returning home from a walk one day, he called me over and yelled at me telling me I was rude for not coming to greet him after returning from my trip. People lecture me about this all of the time. As the village toubab, I am expected to be on my best behavior at all time, which means greeting everyone all of the time and telling everyone where I am going at every minute. I don't have the energy to greet everyone after returning from a trip. The average person can walk through the village without being harassed or being asked about where they are going, but I am not the average person, and I understand that, but it can still be frustrating and tiring at times.

At any rate, he lectured me about this, and then he began telling me how wonderful Libya is as a country and how great Gaddafi is as a president. I told him that the only reason he liked Gaddafi so much is because of all of the money he has given to Malians, and this person readily agreed. For a country as poor as Mali, it should come as no surprise that they are endeared to countries that readily give them large sums of money. Gaddafi made it clear during his time of rule that he wanted to be the King of Africa. Giving money to other countries was one great way he attempted to earn this title. You can find endless posts online about this title. Many Malians went to Libya in order to help Gaddafi in the past recent months. Again you can Google the situation to learn more about the violence that broke out there. My neighbor told me that he wished he could go to Libya and help Gaddafi and that Americans were terrible for not helping Gaddafi and that our only interest in the country was for oil, which is another conversation in and of itself. In the past 24 hours, Gaddafi has been killed, making this conversation stick out even more in my mind. It should be interesting to see what people say once I return to village and to see what happens to the country as a whole in the coming months.

After telling me how wonderful Gaddafi and Libya is/are/was whatever part of speech I should use here, he told me that Americans were generally bad people and that Obama was particularly bad. I wanted to yell at him and say, “What do you think I am doing here? Who do you think I am! You know I am from America! Who do you think bought my plan ticket, pays my salary, and who is starting a bunch of projects in your village in order to help you and your fellow Malians improve your life?! Who?!?” After that, I wanted to yell at him some more and ask him how he could say that when he was teaching in a BRAND NEW classroom funded and built ENTIRELY by USAID. I don't see anyone else helping them out as a village. Nobody except for the missionaries who are creating language materials. He is not the first person to say Americans are bad because we do nothing to help Malians. They never say this about other countries though because most Malians are only aware of maybe ten countries in the world. It is hard to blame a country of being lazy and stingy with their money if you do not know they exist. Furthermore, America has this magical connotation of being a beautiful land where nothing bad happens and everyone is rich.

He then pointed to one of my favorite students and said, if she tried to go to America, Obama would not let her in because she was too black. I can handle people telling me that other leaders are great and other countries are wonderful, even if it it based on ignorance, but I do take offense when people rag on America, especially when it is based on ignorance. Even more, I was upset because this is a student I really like and he was making me and other Americans looks like terrible people by telling these lies. The true reasons she would not be allowed in America are because she does not speak English, does not have money to buy a plane ticket; even more, she has no idea that she must take a plane to reach America because she believes she can drive there (in the car she does not have or on a bus she cannot afford to buy a ticket for). She has no passport or visa, has no place to live upon her arrival in America and no money to stay somewhere. She has no job, an extremely limited education and limited skills she could use in applying for a job, and she does not know a single person living in America who would be willing to help her find her way around. So the fact that she is black has nothing to do with the reason she would be denied entrance in America. Her lack of resources and skills or what prevent her from coming to America. But how do you say this to a person without offending her, especially when you are dealing with an irrational person? I just told him we were not going to agree and told him I was going home.

I can't say I really take his opinion to heart too much, but I wanted to write this post to highlight some of my daily conversations and frustrations. Yes, most people generally believe America is a wonderful place and have many misconceptions about the lives of Americans, but there are obviously others who do not think such nice things. If anything, I am surprised by how willing people are to express these attitudes in front of me when they know I am an American.