# I find parts of Africa cultural practices annoying **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 15, 2014, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397 "2014-10-15T13:23:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/61 "2014-10-17T07:51:25Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > A question for anyone participating in this thread. Who thinks that the practices under discussion here apply to all Africans? The real question is: **Who thinks that combining the practices under discussion here into a single topic implies something meaningful about Africans _as a group_ or about some hypothesized continent-wide “African culture” _in general_?** And if the answer is “Nobody”… …then why are we using that label to discuss them? After all, we could have perfectly good separate threads about each of these very problematic public-health issues without muddying the waters by dragging in different issues with different contexts, different causes, and different remediation strategies. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/62 "2014-10-17T08:06:34Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > …then why are we using that label to discuss them? No matter what label you wish to use, someone will come by and say it isn’t specific enough. I don’t see why the thread title needs this level of detail when we’ve already talked about many different regions in Africa in this thread alone and specified where they are. And because we’ve talked about many regions, it makes sense to specify we are talking about Africa specifically ie. Not Eurasia, where many practices are similar, but many are not. In other words, a line has to be drawn somewhere. We’re just quibbling on where that line is. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/63 "2014-10-17T08:27:21Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > No matter what label you wish to use, someone will come by and say it isn’t specific enough. I don’t see why the thread title needs this level of detail when we’ve already talked about many different regions in Africa in this thread alone and specified where they are. But we don’t need a specifically geographical label at all. The OP is attempting to discuss three, or more like two and a half, separate public health issues: - unhygienic funerary practices that help spread Ebola; - hunting practices that help spread Ebola; - sexual practices that help spread HIV. The first two can meaningfully be discussed together but the third doesn’t really have anything to do with them, except at the generic level of “people r dumb”, as **Hector** pointed out. If you imagine that just because all the people you’re talking about are classified as “Africans” it somehow ties together this combination of issues as a meaningful single thread topic, try imagining it in a different cultural/racial context and see how silly it would be. E.g., you wouldn’t start writing an OP about high death rates from illegal abortions in Latin America, throw in a spike in HIV infection rates from barebacking parties in New York and Montreal, and title your thread “Troubling health issues in parts of New World cultural practices”. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/64 "2014-10-17T09:07:54Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > Other than these particular practices are being done in Africa and are the ones under discussion. When they happen in Eurasia and are the ones under discussion, then we’ll call them ‘Eurasian cultural practices’ to distinguish them from the ones in Africa. The implication is that they’re Africa-wide or at least prevelant over large parts of the continent, and that isn’t the case. It’s a regional practice. Nor is sitting up with the dead or even kissing the dead body a strictly African practice. > [@](#): > > That the practices themselves are similar or identical isn’t particularly relevant. I doubt anyone here would have a problem of dissing their own stupid cultural practices as well, if that is your issue. It’s not the dissing of the practice I object to, it’s the labelling of particular regional weirdnesses as continental. > [@](#): > > I guess we could say the “Liberian cultural practice at grid reference xyz, as done by Tribe X and implemented by Joe M’bok on Saturday the 15th of May (variant 2A of tribal practice Z)” if you really want to be pedantic. Or you could just say “The Liberian practice” and be succinct and accurate enough. Without being disingenuous. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 9:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/65 "2014-10-17T09:09:17Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Except that you won’t, of course. You’ll talk about the separate cultural practices of Indians bathing in the Ganges and Chinese people consuming tiger organs as medicine. It won’t even occur to you to assume that just because these two customs happen to be found on the same geographical continent, it makes sense to talk about them as part of a continent-wide phenomenon. And you’ll be right, of course: it doesn’t make sense at all. > > Any more than it would make sense to talk about, say, alcohol abuse among Inuit people in the Canadian Arctic and Vodou exorcisms among Haitian immigrants in Florida under the label of “North American cultural practices”. > > But many people seem completely oblivious to the fact that it’s just as meaningless to talk about immensely diverse cultural practices in different parts of Africa as if they were part of some kind of common continental culture. It’s as though the fact that all Africans live in Africa makes other people somehow bizarrely incapable of distinguishing them as historically, linguistically and culturally separate groups of people. > > Hmm, come to think of it, I seem to remember there’s some other characteristic almost all Africans share, but I can’t quite put my finger on it… Oh well, never mind, probably nothing to do with this odd phenomenon. Exactly. Well put. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/66 "2014-10-17T11:56:42Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Ground beef can be prepared safely by proper trimming of raw beef to remove the exterior surfaces where nasty little things like E Coli can survive and grow. But usually the meat is ground without such precautions and is dangerous if undercooked. You’re dining in the wrong places. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/67 "2014-10-17T12:10:08Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > The implication is that they’re Africa-wide or at least prevelant over large parts of the continent… No, “parts of” does not mean “all of”. These are different phrases. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/68 "2014-10-17T12:30:07Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > No, “parts of” does not mean “all of”. These are different phrases. > > Regards, > > Shodan Yeah, but they are pretty transparent tools for saying “I can’t be bothered to learn about this enough to talk about it coherently, but I’m going to run off about it anyway and hope nobody notices.” Lumping all of Africa together is not a fine point being nitpicked. When we have people from Kenya being harassed for Ebola, it’s about time for us to learn a little geography. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/69 "2014-10-17T12:48:12Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Silly “gotcha” attempt fail. For one thing, most peasants, however ignorant of modern scientific theories they may be, already have thousands of years’ worth of accumulated knowledge about agriculture and breeding ingrained into their culture. > > More crucially, if you read my post more carefully you’ll notice that I was talking about what types of ignorance it’s **TRIVIALLY EASY** “for education to cure”. No, it would **not** be “trivially easy” to teach people about farming and breeding if they didn’t already know about them. Of course, even people totally ignorant about farming and breeding can acquire knowledge about them over time (and of course, that’s exactly what prehistoric humans eventually did). > > But that’s not the sort of “trivially easy” education that **Grumman** was mistakenly asserting is all it takes to make people understand the fundamental concepts of modern medical theories of infection by microbial pathogens (unless they’re, you know, stupid or something). I wasn’t trying any “gotcha” technique at all. I was simply asking you to further define what you meant, because it seemed to me that you were saying that ignorant peasants were too stupid to learn anything that didn’t involve an immediate cause and effect. While I see from your other posts you didn’t mean that, I think that it might be easier to teach than you imply. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/70 "2014-10-17T13:27:27Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > No, “parts of” does not mean “all of”. These are different phrases. Yeah, but in an OP where the one thing is one part, and the second thing is in a very distant, other, unrelated part, it then becomes very clear that, in fact, one is wanting to talk about those endpoints and all the bits in between as a unified entity. That one considers there to exist such a thing as _an_ _African_ culture, in an inclusive sense. Or why would one bring up things that occur in two _completely separate_ cultures? To emphasize: there is _nothing_ that the culture of Zimbabwe has in common with the culture of Liberia and doesn’t have in common with cultures outside Africa. So _why_ link those two? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/71 "2014-10-17T15:15:46Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Lumping all of Africa together is not a fine point being nitpicked. As I mentioned, saying “parts of Africa” is exactly the oppposite of saying “all of Africa”. > [@](#): > > When we have people from Kenya being harassed for Ebola, it’s about time for us to learn a little geography. In what way did the OP harass Kenyans? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/72 "2014-10-17T15:55:04Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Anything that gets a chapter in the Old Testament cannot reasonably be called “modern medicine”. What chapter in the Old Testament describes anything that could reasonably be called “modern medicine”? CMC fnord! ---
**Author:** ![Lemmytheseal2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/82dd89/32.png) [@Lemmytheseal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemmytheseal2)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/73 "2014-10-17T16:22:20Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Yeah, but they are pretty transparent tools for saying “I can’t be bothered to learn about this enough to talk about it coherently, but I’m going to run off about it anyway and hope nobody notices.” > > Lumping all of Africa together is not a fine point being nitpicked. When we have people from Kenya being harassed for Ebola, it’s about time for us to learn a little geography. I’ve often said that it seems like Americans (and not only Americans, by the way) see the world as divided into white people, black people, Mexicans, Chinese, and Terrorists. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/74 "2014-10-17T16:26:54Z")
> [@Lemmytheseal2](#): > > I’ve often said that it seems like Americans (and not only Americans, by the way) see the world as divided into white people, black people, Mexicans, Chinese, and Terrorists. That is so not true. I have never seen a TAI Fridays. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/75 "2014-10-17T17:47:18Z")
> [@Lemmytheseal2](#): > > I’ve often said that it seems like Americans (and not only Americans, by the way) see the world as divided into white people, black people, Mexicans, Chinese, and Terrorists. Well there are also black terrorists. ---
**Author:** ![swampspruce](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampspruce/32/261_2.png) [@swampspruce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampspruce)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/76 "2014-10-17T20:01:18Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Lumping all of Africa together is not a fine point being nitpicked. When we have people from Kenya being harassed for Ebola, it’s about time for us to learn a little geography. So what do you suggest? I already know a bit about geography, geology and anthropology so does your blanket statement apply to me as well? Obviously, using an entire continent as a basis for describing a cultural norm is too vague. We are clearly beyond using a single country and in any case, those state lines are blurred by tribal land divisions anyway. West Africa, West Sub-Saharan Africa, Or should we specify which groups and cultural mores specifically? ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/77 "2014-10-18T04:30:40Z")
Here is a non-African funeral practice that was spreading disease, but the disease is now extinct: > **[Kuru (disease)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease))** > > Kuru is a rare, incurable, and fatal neurodegenerative disorder that was formerly common among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. Kuru is a form of prion disease which leads to tremors and loss of coordination from neurodegeneration. The term kúru means “trembling” and comes from the Fore word kuria or guria ("to shake"). It is also known as the "laughing sickness" due to the pathologic bursts of laughter which are a symptom of the infection. > It is now widely accepted that kuru was transmitte... > [@](#): > > The victims are usually those people who follow the practice of family mortuary cannibalism.[10] In some parts of Papua New Guinea, bodies of those who died from kuru were dismembered in order to feast on the internal organs. “Often they would feed morsels of brain to young children and elderly relatives.”[10] > > Kuru is believed to be caused by prions and is related to Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD).[11] It is best known for the epidemic that occurred in Papua New Guinea in the middle of the twentieth century, and earlier.[12] Although it is considered a transmissible prion disease, there is some evidence that the origin of the outbreak was due to eating a human (or a corpse) with sporadic CJD, thus implying a common pathophysiology.[1] Now the last victim is dead, and presumably not had their brain eaten so this disease is gone. I actually find it kind of cool, but imagine if you said funerary cannibalism is ok as long as well cooked but do not eat the brain, and people kept at it. Same deal. Anyway since I made this topic I have read they believe patient zero for this particular ebola outbreak was a small child that either was bitten by a bat, or consumed or touched bat feces or consumed bat meat. Then when the child died at the child’s funeral eight people were infected with ebola due to the rites and went on to infect everyone else who has it. Now it is hard to fault them, but people currently bribing officials to kiss a corpse have no excuse. And having experience in a high corruption country where corruption is even present in the most mundane things, it occurred to me that the government workers are probably as inhumane and disrespectful as possible to dead ebola victims bodies. Why? Well of course to get bribes, they usually even have tiers of bribes, if someone looks middle class they can pay for more respectful treatment, if someone looks RICH they can pay to have their dead relative delivered wherever. So I could absolutely see the issue being made worse not better by those looking for their palm to be greased. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/78 "2014-10-18T04:52:56Z")
> [@WilyQuixote](#): > > I’m pretty sure the value of bush meat is tied to the desirability of a particular species? Not all meat is equal. > > The term “bush meat” appears to be linked in hunted wildlife in Central and West Africa. I don’t think the term is used anywhere where it would be considered a delicacy. Sure is, I live in Trinidad and have seen signs in Port Of Spain for “Bush Meat Sold Upstairs!” “Bush Meat Inquire Within!” etc. It is more popular around Christmas and New Years, it is often illegally hunted, and is far more expensive than other meats raised on farms. People don’t eat it for the flavor, they eat it because of cultural beliefs about it conferring luck(like black eyed peas) or vigor or sexual potency. Of course it isn’t chimpanzees, but mostly agouti or monkeys or various other creatures. I’m not aware of any disease associated with it locally, except for the usual with not properly cooked meat. (There are unpublicized places selling endangered sea turtle meat, again it is expensive and eaten for beliefs in magical abilities. My BIL’s ex wife bought her daughter some when she was sick, she was like you want to know where I got it and I said I’ll pass.) [http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/Wild\_meat\_boom\_from\_Venezuela-115574734.html](http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/Wild_meat_boom_from_Venezuela-115574734.html) ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/79 "2014-10-18T05:20:17Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > When you consider that large numbers of people in educated wealthy nations including our own still prefer to avoid using condoms when having non-monogamous sex, and even deliberately refuse to vaccinate their children against potentially fatal diseases, it shouldn’t be so surprising to you that many people in far poorer countries who have a lot more excuse than we do for succumbing to ignorance and superstition make some bad decisions about disease prevention too. Sure, those people are extremely fucking stupid. Considering vaccination rates go down the more wealthy the population(in the USA) they don’t even have the excuse of honest ignorance, they have twenty devices running web browsers in their house they could use to google. Or if you have an example of me defending anti-vaxxer nutjobs please post it. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397/80 "2014-10-18T05:36:15Z")
> [@grude](#): > > Or if you have an example of me defending anti-vaxxer nutjobs please post it. 😕 Where’d that come from? Nobody accused you of **defending** anti-vaxxer nutjobs or any other reckless disease spreaders. It’s just that you seemed excessively **baffled** by the particuar reckless disease spreaders in your OP: > [@grude](#): > > argh why won’t people give up cultural practices that are proven to cause disease to spread? […] > > Anyway my point was why people won’t give up cultural practices to stop spreading disease […] Which is why I pointed out that if we have so many wealthy and educated first world people irresponsibly ignoring contagion risks, we shouldn’t be taken aback to see such behavior in poor and ill-informed third world people too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-find-parts-of-africa-cultural-practices-annoying/701397.md?page=5)