"'Hello, uncle,'" I said. It is customary to call an older man uncle, as a term of familiarity and respect. If the man is older than one's father, he is called father." (page 58.)
There is a lot about Achak's life story so far that is very different from ours. He describes what it was like to grow up in a rural, though large, village in Sudan and live in a culture that is foreign to ours. We see many aspects of this upbringing clash with the life that Achak is experiencing in America. For example, Achak does not expect the woman and the man in chapter one to have malevolent intentions and rob him. He describes his confusion when it comes to how to use the refrigerator and which foods to put where, and his early fascination with television. His customs clash with American ones too, not only his lifestyle. The quote above addresses Sudanese greetings, a topic that stuck out to me. As I read this passage I thought, "What are some other Sudanese cultural behaviors?" So I did some research to find out.
According to sudan.usembassy.gov, the Sudanese have a specific way of greeting people that they expect to be reciprocated. They inquire after the well being of a relative of the person before entering into the conversation. A greeting between men includes a handshake and a shoulder tap simultaneously, and a greeting between women includes a hug and a rubbing of cheeks. Sudan is a male oriented society, so many social behaviors that are the equivalent of western etiquette are relative to the differentiation and treatment of the separate genders. For example, at dinner the women sit on the opposite side of the table as the men, and if a couple is invited to a friend's house to dine the husband must ask if his wife is invited.
Hello Erin, (and all you onlookers). I enjoyed your descriptions of Sudanese greetings and I am impressed that you able to describe a rather masculine culture without verbally attacking it. I was frustrated with the blatant dominance of Sudanese males in the book but still tried to respect their culture It is intriguing how there seems to be so little focus on the female sufferers of the civil war, and how they are not included in campaigns because their incorporation "would greatly impede headway on many matters". pg 180. I was thinking about the Lost Girls that are mentioned in several conferences with the people from Sudan, and thought it would be interesting to see what became of them.
ReplyDeleteAccording to The Boston Globe, it was not culturally acceptable for Sudanese girls to live communally with other girls or boys. Most of the Lost Girls of Sudan were put with foster families. If these girls had reached puberty, it was not uncommon for them to be sold as brides to older Sudanese men. These Sudanese girls also tended to stay at home and work, so they were less oriented with the Lost Boy's program which helped the boys with schooling. There has also been suspicious activity regarding the U.S. resettlement lists, in which case the names of females were removed without them ever finding sanctuary through a program. The fact that there were very few Sudanese girls that made it to the U.S. also had a great impact on their misrepresentation. All in all, I coincide with the opinion of The Boston Globe; the Lost Girls of Sudan seem to have become The Forgotten Girls of Sudan.
I really liked how you differentiated between customs and lifestyle. There is a fine line between the two and you distinguished each one very well.
ReplyDeleteI knew that Sudan and the countries surrounding it had a generally male-oriented culture, which was one of the reasons there are fewer lost girls. In society, the women are told they have a very specific place and not to stray from it. Where men are governed by a set of general laws, each women seems to have very specific, harsh laws relating to her exact position. For instance, if her husband dies, a woman must either remarry immediately or follow rigid laws pertaining to widows only. Laws forbid women from doing almost everything, where men are free to do what they like. It is made worse, too, when women are told that their discrimination is the will of God.
Also, women are generally much less privileged. As Geena mentioned, women mysteriously disappeared from the relocation list. They were told, for no reason, that they had to remain in refugee camps. And the camps are not an escape from the horrors women face In underprivileged places like this. Women in refugee camps are still raped, still injured, and still treated as inferior to men in almost every way.