I will beat you-o

Before coming here I primed myself to be open-minded about the inevitable cultural differences. For instance, I knew from prior travel that in a lot places in the world considered knees to be scandalously sexy; but breasts were simply functional protrusions devoid of ability to arouse the interest in the baser sex. Like a good anthropology student, I was ready to keep my judgments at bay and see the beauty in our differences, knowing that our way of mentally and socially organizing the world is not the only or best way of doing so. All this multiculturalism is fine in theory, but in practice it is another thing.

The hardest thing I’ve had to come to terms with is the level of what in the Western world would call “domestic abuse”. The other night I came back to my house to hear my little 6 year old neighbor, Bakayoko (the tree climber from previous posts) wailing in a kind of agony that I’ve never heard before from such a little person. He was literally writhing on the ground pounding his tiny fists on the dirt outside his house, screaming and shaking, and no one was coming to his aid. When we approached him we saw that he could not open his eyes. Everytime he tried to, he would start convulsing in pain. As we attempted to rinse his eyes out in the dark with a bag of water and flashlight, we’d ask him to hold still; but each time he’d attempt to open his eyes the pain was so much that he would twist his little body uncontrollably and start to wail again. It took some time, but we flushed out the irritant and he just sat there on our stoop hunched over and exhausted from the pain. I asked his brother what had happened, and he told us that their mother had put hot pepper in his eyes. She did this because Bakayoko, in a defiant 6 year old tantrum, had thrown some dirt in the dinner his mother was cooking. Some of the kids were sympathetic telling him that they were sorry and other kids just laughed.

We were outraged, confused and at a loss as to what to do. I asked the other neighborhood kids if this was common, and they each told me story of a time it happened to them. Sandra told me that she stayed out too late once and her step mother waited until she was asleep and then rubbed pepper in her eyes in the middle of the night forcing Sandra to go screaming out into the night alone in search of water. I asked some of the adults if this was considered acceptable, and perhaps they were embarrassed because they said it was wrong and was not what educated or modern Africans do. But almost every child I asked said it happened to them.

But what’s the point? If it’s culturally acceptable does that mean it is beyond criticism? When do we stop caring about cultural sensitivity and start caring about individual lives and human rights?

But who are we to tell someone else how to raise their kids or initiate their youth into their society? Isn’t that just cultural imperialism?

But maybe all of that is bullshit. When someone is writhing in agony or being regularly beaten for minor infractions, maybe there’s no cultural dictate strong enough to morally excuse it. I also know that not everyone beats their kids as severely, and I’m sure there is a point at which even a culture that sanctions regularly hitting children draws a line.

Our school is the only school on camp to officially prohibit corporal punishment. And that is only because the international volunteers would not work beside teachers who cane their students. But this is policy that was imposed from the outside and the local teachers are not really behind it. They still beat the kids, just often not within our sight. When we try and talk to the teachers about alternative strategies like positive reinforcement and taking away privileges, they just smirk and remind us that these are “African children” we are dealing with. One of the volunteers from Denmark, where even spanking your own child is legally prohibited, had reached her wits end working alongside a teacher who had on several occasions taken the child out to beat them. She was torn between being a respectful guest in another culture and coming to a screaming child’s aid. Intervening did not seem appropriate, but neither did doing nothing. She was paralyzed to inaction, but left feeling like she had let the children down. Most of us have the same struggle. I was spanked as a child and I don’t know that I won’t do the same to my own children, judiciously. But for those volunteers who vow never to spank their own children, this kind of punishments is bordering on outrageous. Each person responds to it differently, and no one feels entirely like they’ve done the right thing in the end.

But the tides may be turning. The other day I saw a very small girl being chased by her mother with a switch. The little girl ran behind her neighbor, who yelled to the switch-wielder that he would call the “domestic abuse authorities” if she kept beating her daughter so severely. Another time we had to bail one of the local volunteers out of a Ghanaian-run jail on camp for allegedly beating his wife. This may not seem like an example of something positive, but for years, beating ones wife was a right or even duty, not a jailable offence. It’s still legal in Liberia. We see signs around camp about domestic abuse awareness, and peace and reconciliation groups are teaching ways to non-violently solve problems. But I guess the key is that change has to come from within to be sustainable. An outsider can’t carry the message with the same kind of impact. Being an outsider I guess that lets me off the hook, but just like my decisions on to whom and how much and in what way I should give people help here I still never fully feel like I’m doing the right thing.