During the festival of Eid al-Hada, a ram must be sacrificed because blah blah who cares. After killing and stringing the ram up into a tree for butchering, a gaggle of boys (they are always around in groups of 10-50, usually begging for presents and money because idiot white people always give it to them) rushed to the dying animal with a pair of scissors, snipped off its balls, and ran away with their prize. I asked the closest mother why, she said they’re going to grill it–the balls are a prized treat for the boys. I asked, do the girls eat it too? Of course not, she said. They would get pregnant with a goat.
Africans are dumb as shit. Basically, they never grow up. You are dealing with 200 pound children. If you go into interactions with that mindset, things go all right, but if you expect anything adult from them, you’ll be disappointed and frustrated at every turn. They believe in everything you can list–ghosts, angels, demons, curses, charms, blessings, and magic. Oh, and magic. They love it. I was party to a number of village magic battles, where charms and counter-charms were buried at people’s doorsteps, protective wards were made, and potions were snuck into tea. It’s a huge deal, and everyone pays big bucks (for them) to the local shamans and witch doctors to get all these magical trinkets. Yes, even in Islamic Africa, it’s just like this. They are pagan savages first and moon-worshiping goatfuckers second. They just slap a varnish of Islam on it–“The magic charm has a Koranic verse in it!”–and go about their lives happily as before.
A volunteer once fronted enough money for the farmer he lived with to buy fertilizer. They spread it together, and the yield was recorded. In total, it was 9 fold over the year prior. Instead of taking out his share to cover the loan, said volunteer forced the farmer to buy fertilizer for the next year, and save it. The next year came and they used it again, and again the yield was 10 fold over the first non-fertilizer year. This time, though, the volunteer had left the country. The farmer didn’t buy any fertilizer, and instead blew through what he earned from his crop on frivolous crap and gifts to every extended family member who cast a shadow on his door. The next year his yields returned to the original level, and everyone went on with their lives as happy as before. The end.
This is my penultimate Africa story. There’s a bit more to it–the Peace Corps showed graphs and charts of this particular case as a successful intervention. I only found out about the little coda because I specifically asked what happened the next year; they didn’t decide to share that little fact in the larger meeting. It brings together everything–the waste, the stupidity, the lack of foresight, the inability to see cause and effect, the massive importance put on frivolous crap, and the way communities tear down their best members. Here’s the takeaway: nobody who wasn’t white on that farm saw the connection between the yields, the currency they made, and the fertilizer. Nobody stopped to think, “Hey, we should buy more of this.” That’s the insanity of Africa. 200 pound children, blowing huge stacks of cash on magic charms while they grind out a subsistence livelihood on the border of the desert.
This is already super long, and I could really go on and on about this subject. There are more stories–the myths of the African family, more stories of faux-communalism, stories about crazy African religion and politics, and so on. The long and short of it, though, is this: They’re not terrible people, they just shouldn’t be anywhere near us. Africa is, no shit, the Garden of Eden. It’s no surprise that the people living there are giant children. Despite tons of diseases and ferocious animals, they want for nothing. Trees growing fruit are everywhere. Every weed is edible. Before the Western-induced population bomb, I’m not even sure they even required agriculture to feed themselves. If–for whatever reason–we’re going to live a world where complete ethnic cleansing and colonization is off the table, just let them have their little paradise and leave us alone. They have absolutely nothing to offer us nor anything to gain by interaction with the West. They’re a people frozen in time from tens of thousands of years ago, and I have no trouble leaving them like that.