The practices and contexts you’re talking about are all so different that it does come across as a bit weird that you thought “Africa” was a meaningful way to link these topics together.
Similarly, if somebody started a thread complaining simultaneously about French veal, Scandinavian gravlax and Lithuanian sausage, under the title “I find parts of Europe culinary practices distasteful”, it wouldn’t really convey any meaningful connection other than that the OP (a) doesn’t know much about Europe and/or (b) has a bit of a problem with Europeans.
[QUOTE=grude]
It wasn’t “hurr all of Africa is teh stupid” it was 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, kinda frustrating.
[/QUOTE]
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.
This is not ignorance, it is stupidity. If this was merely ignorance - if these people had somehow gone their entire lives without once realising that illness is something that can have causes and does not just strike at random - it would be trivially easy for education to cure that ignorance. Ignorance does not make people dig their heels in against learning things like “This sick person has stuff in them that made them sick, and if you get it on you it will make you sick too”, and lash out with murderous violence.
I am truly baffled. “Mutendo wegudo (dry soil where a baboon has urinated) is a traditional Zimbabwean recipe.” And they stick this up their vaginas and think this makes sex better? Anyone who has had sex on a beach knows that sand and sex don’t mix. Let alone adding baboon urine to the mix. “Baboon Urine”??? Yummm.
I’ve been told that ER people are used to women sticking all kinds of things up their snatch. Happily for the OP, in this case the annoyance seems to be self-correcting.
Please don’t call someone an asshole outside the Pit.
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You may need to read this again. He says grude is making a hypothetical reader into the “politically correct asshole.” Not that it matters since no warning was issued, but there is no way to read this sentence as “grude = asshole.”
In areas that have big funeral cultures, I’m afraid it’s just going to take a while to move past that. In these areas, funerals are pretty much like weddings are here- they are THE right of passage. People dream of them and save for them and plan for decades. It’s a major community event, and one of the major outlets for socializing (it’s pretty normal to meet a spouse at a funeral.) It’s a big deal.
Imagine if a government you didn’t particularly trust (let’s say the government of Mexico) started telling Americans not to have weddings. And all the Chinese scientists were backing this up. Do you think we would stop? I think a lot of people would say “Screw that, I’ve been dreaming of this since I was a little girl and I’ve already put a deposit down, the wedding is happening.” I think a lot of other people would try to have secret weddings. It would take a quite a while to get people to give that up.
Bribery and corruption are structural, not personal. It exists where there is a structure for it to exist. In weak governments, it serves the purpose of providing income for civil servants (who may not be paid officially for months at a time) and gaining support from groups that may otherwise not support your government. It’s not a cultural practice, it’s just a thing that happens with weak governments. If we had the secret to building stronger governments, everyone would be doing it.
Saying “don’t eat bush meat” is like saying “let them eat cake.” It’s not like people can just run to the supermarket and get some USDA prime. Bush meat is how you get meat when you live in the bush (which sucks for raising cattle.) There are programs to try to get people to raise giant rats (really) or fish instead, but it’s kind of hard to compete with “free dinner.”
You are omitting an extremely important point here. What is happening is not equivalent to Mexico or China just deciding one day out of the blue to tell people not to have weddings, because there is an actual reason why their funerals are bad. We are not being evasive or relying on any kind of obscure reasoning. Our message is very simple: “The thing that killed your relative will kill you too if you touch it. Do not touch it.” Unless they haven’t even graduated to a bronze age understanding of disease, there’s no excuse for them being this stupid about the thing that’s killing their family members.
“hurr all of Africa is teh stupid” well yes. That’s exactly what this thread evolves into (if it has not done already) without sticking closely to facts, shunning racialized generalizations, comprehending social factors, and/or placing issues within wider contexts.
You ask “why won’t Africans give up cultural practices that cause disease to spread” well it helps to be willing to comprehend why that’s true.
[QUOTE=orcenio]
Of course you wouldn’t have a problem breaking foreign cultural norms in times of crisis. But everyone always thinks that their case is special. Chances are that the families have spent their time caring for the deceased throughout their illness and thus, like the proverbial frog in the boiling pot, deluded oneself into thinking that “they can handle this” and/or when facing the desecration of a their child/father/sister/brother/etc would take steps to cling to spiritually reassuring burial norms. You can afford to be detached. It’s not your culture/religion/family member.
[/QUOTE]
Isn’t this answer more satisfying then the frustration plaguing you in your OP? Now, I myself am quite clueless about facts around any issues of Africa (who here is an expert of anything African?!?), but I came up with that response by merely asking why would anyone (maybe myself/mother/etc) act in such a way.
I don’t think that this line of thought is too burdensome if your goal is to intelligently talk about harmful cultural practices, however, if your goal is to vent you should’ve stuck this in the pit, no?
According to your own cite people are not eating raw meat, sometimes (some poorer) Africans will only have access to open fire cooking which increases the chance of eating meat not fully safe.
That’s a really interesting question. However I think your method of reasoning is preventing you from achieving a satisfying answer.
Their life is not our responsibility. It’s fine to tell them something we have discovered that they do can be dangerous. After that if they carry on presumable they have decided it’s worth the risk.
‘Wider Contexts’, for a $1000, Alex.
The answer is, “Baboon Urine and dirt”
What do some women in Africa shove up their whohas to make their men feel manly?
When Wesley said we had to look at the wider context. I assumed he meant that if we knew that we would then have a reasonable explanation for using baboon urine and dirt as a sexual aid. Your link doesn’t provide that reasonable explanation, btw.
A little confusion here: my post not Wesley’s, and placing things into wider contexts helps us talk intelligently; reasonableness is subjective (but my option is that folk reason is bullshit).
I don’t think that’s necessarily true, or not always. In some countries bush meat is more expensive than chicken, goat, fish, etc., and is something of a delicacy (I’m sure there are other countries where it’s cheaper). And bush meat isn’t exactly ‘free’ if you live in a country where most people don’t have guns.
That said, of course increasing people’s access to livestock, getting people to raise fish, chickens, cane rats, or whatever else would certainly help with the problem, since anything that makes meat cheaper is going to lower the pressure on hunted animals.
The biggest problem with stupid cultural practices that cause death is they rarely cause death fast enough for the stupid cultural practice to die out. It would be useful if the first person to think up a stupid cultural practice was uniformly and instantly killed upon initial attempt so others could conclude “Hmm, I don’t think I’ll do that.”