Even though my project is subtitled "Confronting civil unrest through music and comedy in Ivory Coast", today civil unrest is far less relevant in Ivory Coast (and possibly in the West African sub-region) than the Ebola virus. Unless you've been cut from all civilization for the past few months, you are probably aware of the highly infectious (not highly contagious) disease. Mortality rates are extremely high, and the symptoms are not very pleasant either. As with most issues, the media has done its part to escalate the matter sufficiently to make everyone paranoid. Since the end of July, all the comments I've received from people I told about my project were "Isn't that where Ebola is?", "I don't think you should risk it - your life is too precious", "Not worth it man". Well just so you know, there are currently no documented cases of Ebola in Ivory Coast (knock on wood). Then again, Ivory Coast's proximity to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone makes you wonder how long the country will be able to preserve its immune status. My hope is that by the time I am ready to actually start fieldwork in Ivory Coast (mid March), the outbreak would have been better controlled. However, I'm getting sidetracked because this is not what this post is about.
In a previous post, I predicted that it wouldn't be long before Ivory Coast musicians came up with an Ebola dance. It looks like I was correct (thanks DJ Lewis)! Scanning through my facebook newsfeed today, I came across the following video.
DJ Lewis - Ebola
From a very basic analysis, I sense that the purpose of this video is twofold. First and foremost it serves as Public Service Announcement to warn people of the dangers of the disease and what preventative measures they could take. In a very synthesized voice you hear DJ Lewis yell "Aucun vaccin n'est disponible - Attention - 90% des malades meurent - Attention" (translated: No vaccine is available - Warning - 90% of affected people die - Warning). If this doesn't qualify as awareness raising, then I don't know what does. But we should note that this is also a party song. It is performed in the "Coupe Decale" style, a type of Ivorian music that advocates excess, luxury and an overall festive lifestyle. Even though a terrible thing such as Ebola is not necessarily compatible with partying, something in Ivorian culture (perhaps in human nature) allow the two to mingle so as to produce refreshing music. It is not that Ebola cannot or should not be sung, however to most people the expectation would be something similar to this:
Here, Ismael Yoroba gives us a mellow performance that outlines the risk factors, and presents a couple of pointers on how not catch Ebola (#boring? #effective?).
Ebola is terrible and is currently wreaking havoc in West Africa. However, if dancing and singing engages folks in ways that can uplift their spirits while also providing education, then these populations are certainly getting closer to recovery. As we wait for the powerful figures of the world (Obama, Bill Gates etc.) to assist us, Africa let's dance our sickness away like Mamadee here!
Today was my second class in Ethnography Theory and Research Methods. Coming from an undergraduate engineering background, I have certainly struggled with the concepts presented to me over the past few weeks. While an obvious divergence already exists between this social science and the natural sciences, this dissimilarity is further intensified when contextually observed from my particular standpoint – that is: an undergraduate student thrown into a graduate level course. I suddenly found myself in virgin uncharted territory, and the feeling is actually somewhat refreshing.
For as long as I can remember, I have only ever been presented with a single pedagogical model. In this model, the instructor serves as the keeper of knowledge and his job has always been to pass this knowledge to students in the form of a lecture or tutorial. As I matured as a learner, I found that expectations increased in terms of the amount of preparatory work, self-study and other “practice” activities necessary in order to fully grasp the concepts communicated. At McMaster, Professors often stress that 3 hours of self-study is required for every hour spent in class. Even if this held true for some of my classes (many core engineering courses), I was often able to get good grades by spending only a modest amount of time doing homework. However, one thing remained undeniably true, new concepts were almost always first introduced by the professor and students were then asked to reflect upon them. Thus, this approach has always afforded me an advantage because the lectures provided a good basis for starting my exploration of a particular topic. Nevertheless, this ethnography course has shown me that this model doesn’t necessarily hold true for graduate classes (or possibly just graduate classes in ethnography?). Instead of being keepers of knowledge as previously described, Professors in this model serve as moderators and guide students (who are required to do ridiculous amounts of self-preparation) in their understanding of the concepts being presented.
The structure of this course is therefore radically different from any post-secondary experience I have been faced with thus far. First, there is the issue of the size of the class and its gender distribution. In total there are 10 students (myself included), and of those 7 are female and (only) 3 are male. This kind of pattern strongly contrasts the demographics that I’m used to in the engineering faculty. An observation that I immediately shared with the rest of the world as I stepped into my first calculus class.
Moreover, my uneasiness is further compounded by the humbling fact that I am the only “undergraduate” and “foreign” student in the room. The argument about being an undergraduate is in reality simply a technicality (I have completed all the requirements of my undergraduate degree, but convocation is not until November). However, my foreignness to the field of anthropology – and more generally to the social sciences – does put me at a palpable disadvantage relative to the rest of my peers. Even though their backgrounds span a great breadth of disciplines ranging from religious studies to sociology, they remain unified by the common theme of having a certain rooting in the arts and humanities. As such they carry an intellectual baggage that I can only dream of possessing, which also gives them a clear edge in terms of thinking methods and approaches to problem-solving.
Being a product of engineering school, I am obsessed with a desire to categorize, quantify and objectivize data. As much as possible, engineers (as most scientists) attempt to distance themselves from the topics they study in order to generate abstractions and solve problems. As long as human bias is minimized, experiments become replicable and norms, theories and other laws can be deduced – this is what I understand to be positivism. However, this worldview was immediately challenged as I began learning about anthropology, ethnography and the different schools of thought that exist within these disciplines. I have come to learn that the study of people and their cultures does not lend itself very well to such a rigid method. Instead, complexities and nuances that exist within various societies must be accounted for and presented to the reader through the lens of the researcher – that is my understanding of interpretivism. Hence, bias becomes inevitable and at times even desirable. If such a statement unsettles many self-respecting engineers at first, it is important to also remember the limitations of our own science. Indeed, many disciplines of engineering make reference to terms like “assumptions”, “judgment” and “risk” to illustrate the importance of human input in the design process. However, where engineering attempts to minimize such human factors (or to effectively quantify them), ethnography encourages one to embrace them so far as their existence is acknowledged in the work.
I am not sure if will ever fully embrace this new way of thinking, but it has definitely opened my eyes. I am currently torn between two places and across two disciplines. While my foundation remains strongly rooted in engineering and technology, ethnography appears to have promising tools that will help me shape a new way of looking at the world. Oh and happy birthday to me!
This post’s title is quoted verbatim from an interaction with a coworker earlier this week. If you do not get the absurdity of this statement, great! You are part of the demographic that I am targeting. I use the word “target” cautiously because I do not aim to reprimand, ridicule or guilt anyone for their lack of knowledge of African geography, history or politics. It is, after all, human nature to be more interested in matters which are directly related or applicable to us. Hence, if you asked me to identify The Philippines on a world map, my answer would probably amuse or offend most people who are from that region. Human or physical geography were never my strong suit. Therefore I state it again, I am not trying to embarrass anyone here; I’m just trying to educate. Please read on.
Now, let’s ask: What exactly is funny (or offensive to some) in the above statement? Is it the fact that my coworker assumed that West Africa was a country in its own right? Did she think that Ghana was not a part of Africa? Did she perhaps presume that Africa was a big federal republic of which Ghana and West Africa were member states? It actually seems quite logical that West Africa would be a country if there is already one called South Africa – Right? Maybe she simply confused Ghana and Guyana? I will never know because I never attempted to correct her, and this makes me a part of the problem. Indeed, countless African immigrants have felt indignation when “Westerners” misappropriate, confuse or otherwise insult their origins. Again, I use the word “Westerner” in a general sense to mean people living in this imaginary “Western World” and not to specifically target a particular ethnicity (i.e white people). In fact, I’ve been approached by countless Caribbean people of African descent who were, despite their enthusiasm in hearing that I was from the “Motherland”, clueless about African geography, history and/or politics. Hence, if we as Africans make no attempt to educate the people we interact with, we cannot possibly expect to better the situation. This is what this post – and to a larger extent this project – is all about.
What/Where is Africa? What/Where is Ivory Coast?
Most people I have encountered remember their Grade 5 geography and can easily point the African continent on a map (if you can't, it’s the one that looks like it used to fit into South America before God decided to shuffle the puzzle pieces.). Note the use of the word “continent”, because believe it or not African is huge and covers an area of approximately 30.2 million km2 (11.6 million square miles). Here is a picture that helps put things into perspective: http://flowingdata.com/2010/10/18/true-size-of-africa/. You could fit the USA, Europe, India, Japan and China in that area, making Africa the second largest continent in the world after Asia. Africa is big – in fact, Africa is huge – but Africa is not a country. It is a continent that currently hosts about 54 sovereign countries and is home to about 1.1 billion people (all facts taken from Wikipedia.)
If you were involved in any form of World Cup activity this summer, you probably remember some African teams doing some pretty memorable things on the field. The player who elbowed another player as his team was losing was from Cameroon. Ghana was the team that gave Germany some of its fiercest opposition during the tournament (Germany vs .Ghana: 2 – 2; Germany vs. Brazil: 7 – 1. Just sayin’). Ivory Coast is that team whose flag is extremely similar to Ireland’s (they also had a disappointing loss against Greece, but thinking about that just gets me upset). Algeria and Nigeria are the two teams that made it out of the group stages. So far we’ve covered 4 countries, we have about 50 more to go. Ok, you get the gist.
Ivory Coast is a country on the West Coast of Africa (no, West Africa is not a country). It is bordered on the South by the Atlantic Ocean; on the North by Burkina Faso and Mali; on the West by Liberia and Guinea (where the current Ebola epidemic is believed to emanated from – more on that later); and on the East by Ghana. Ivory Coast used to be a French colony from 1893 until it got its independence in 1960. Prior to this, several Kingdoms (Baoule, Senouffo, Kong etc.) prospered in this area (Sources: Grade 6 History classes and Wikipedia…mostly Wikipedia). After 1960, Ivory Coast had a single leader, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who ruled the country until his death in 1993. Despite being a dictator by most standards, he was (and continues to be) highly respected in Ivory Coast due to Ivory Coast’s economic prosperity during his reign. In those days, Ivory Coast rose to be the world’s top exporter of cocoa and one of the top exporters of coffee. The strong Ivorian economy was reflected in the country’s grandiose infrastructure projects and overall development status, far ahead of most of its French speaking West African counterparts. As a young boy, my friends and I would often refer to Abidjan (the capital of Ivory Coast) as “Petit Paris” (Little Paris). The picture below can hopefully explain why.
Compare Adidjan, Ivory Coast (Above) to Cotonou, Benin where I'm from (below)
Unfortunately after Félix Houphouët-Boigny’s death, scrambles over his succession quickly arose. Political alliances and rivalries quickly formed and tensions grew. These tensions culminated in a Coup D’etat on Christmas Eve of 1999 when a group of disgruntled army members took over the state and established General Robert Guei (a retired officer) as their military leader.
My family and I were living in Ivory Coast when this happened (1999- 2000) and an air of political instability lingered over the course of that year. I still have vivid memories of deserted streets, gunshots and my mom yelling at me for standing too close to the windows. Yet, I remember my year in Abidjan as one of the best in my life. We lived in a beautiful apartment in the Abidjan’s Plateau (downtown) district. Everything was so close that we barely needed a car (somewhat unthinkable in an African capital). I would walk about 10 minutes to school and was able to come back and have lunch with the family. There were often long dinner lectures where my dad would teach us a thing or two about his experience in the West, and why the English were so much better than the French. Weekends were mostly spent cruising the Ivorian countryside in my dad’s tiny Renault Clio; Grand Bassam was one of my favorite destinations. It was one of the last (few) years that my family truly spent together (i.e. all of us in one place at all times). It was also the year when I was due to write my CEPE (secondary school entrance examination – yes, the whole country took a standardized test at the end of elementary school). How could a country that had seemed so stable and perfect a few months earlier descend into such chaos? Perhaps I was unable to perceive the political tensions that were present at the time due to my young age?
On est où là? (Where are we now?)
Irrespective of all the instability, I was also indelibly marked by the striking humor Ivoirians managed to find in every situation. It is not to say that everything was a joke to them, but there was definitely a funnier side to every situation. This attitude is partially reflected in the music that emerged from Ivory Coast in the early 2000s. Zouglou lyrics made fun of serious social and political issues, while Coupe Decale produced a movement that seemed to approach the conflict with a certain lightheartedness (these two musical styles will be further discussed in a later post).
Today, I can see the same attitude depicted in some of the cartoons coming from Cote D’Ivoire regarding the Ebola hemorrhagic fever. While there are currently no cases of Ebola in Ivory Coast, its proximity to Guinea and Liberia has fuelled some paranoia amongst government officials and populations alike. Recent disagreements between the Ivoirian government and the Confederation of African Football over an African Cup qualification match between Cote D’Ivoire and Sierra Leone (also heavily affected by the epidemic) taking place in Abidjan resulted in the hilarious image below.
The caption reads: “Cote D’Ivoire vs Sierra Leone – Anti-Ebola Soccer Kit”. I predict that the “Ebola” dance will be the next big thing coming out of the minds of Ivorian DJs and artists. Believe it or not, there already exists a “Bird Flu” dance…
