Ramadan ends at The Starlight by risa
by Michael in Mali.
Life is all about contrasts. You need to take it all in. I truly believe that.
Last Wednesday was the end of Ramadan. After a busy day visiting people all over the city, and an evening sharing a few drinks with some friends, I headed home. Before getting too far though, I got a call from a Malian buddy of mine. He was at The Starlight (which I just happened to be passing by). He and some Malian friends had bought a bottle of liquor and there was room for one more. I should definitely meet them as I would not need to pay the cover charge.
The scene in that night club was unlike anything I have ever experienced. The place was absolutely packed. I had been to The Starlight before, but that night there were twice the number of people that one would normally find. In addition, usually there are several Lebanese and Tooboboos (white people), but that night I seemed to be alone in a sea of Africans. It was epic. Every single person was dolled up in their best African dress. Every man in his brilliantly shiny and flamboyant Booboo. Every woman in her hand-tailored, perfectly fitted African dress, made entirely out of Basin with vibrant African colours.
The men had cigars in their hands, and bottles of scotch or vodka on their tables (yes I’m talking about celebrating the end of Ramadan – Mali is a Muslim country, but it is in no way a DRY Muslim country. Malians drink, they just do it in the dark). The women were sipping on their pineapple juice, unless they were too busy shaking it on the dance floor.
West African Club music pounding away, with its repetitive drums forcing your body to vibrate. All of a sudden Snoop-Dog gets mixed in and the crowd of dancers do not miss a single step. More Ivoirian and Senegalese dance music and then the euro-summer hit Looba-Looba-Ley chimes in. 50-cent. James Brown. A little techno for good measure. It all gets mixed into a juxtapositioned world dance scene and the crowd keeps on moving, all the while sporting their unique African threads.
Africans can dance. Let me tell you. I have spoken of this already, but let me reiterate. There are street parties next to my house where you see 12 year old boys dancing better than any North American Hip-Hop artist, little 4 year olds – I am not exaggerating – shaking their asses to the beat, beautiful 10 year old girls dancing more seductively than Jennifer Lopez or Britney Spears. They learn young, and they only get better. You can imagine the scene in that club.
These people were having the time of their lives. Some clearly with lots of money, others hanging off of their sugar daddies. For a few, this would be their one big night of the year. For many others clubbing is a relatively regular affair. Many young girls in West Africa live off of finances from well-to-do men. The more fun you are, the better looking you are, and the better you dance, the better chance you have of living a slightly higher lifestyle. Call it prostitution, call it inequality, call it survival, that is the sad reality (Mali ranks as the 4th worst country in the world on the UNDP’s gender-related development index – probably due in large part to the 98% of girls in this country that still undergo female circumcision).
Regardless, that night everyone was in their element, and clearly having an amazing time. They weren’t thinking of poverty. They weren’t thinking about colonialism. They weren’t thinking about development. They weren’t thinking about HIV. They weren’t thinking of the near hopelessness of much of this continent’s current situation. They were thinking: Dammit, I’m going to live. I’m going to have a good time. Just watch me.
I left the club at 4am with my ears ringing, my head spinning, and my thoughts whirling. A child put out an emptied and cleaned out tomato can in front of me with a couple of 25 franc coins in it, and mechanically said: donne moi 100 franc. An artisan tried to sell me a letter opener, a prostitute sent me kisses from across the street. A late night tea session was interrupted as I walked by so that brief, yet mandatory, salutations could be shared. I passed the Grand Mosque in my neighborhood and was convinced I heard dance music coming out of the Islamic speakers, from which I am so accustomed to hearing prayer calls. I smiled to myself when I realized the music was coming from a late night party and was merely bouncing off the walls of this large religious structure.
I went up to my roof, got under my mosquito netting and into my Mountain Equipment Co-op sleeping bag. The crescent moon shinning in the sky, illuminating this diverse city.
It’s all about contrasts.
Live and love life,
Michael
November 10th, 2005 at 12:30 pm
I am very happy to hear about this years festivities in France, especially considering the present situation. I have always remembered France as a place where Africans felt as though they belonged, due to the languge commonality. I guess I was seeing through naive eyes. When i was studying there, most of my friends were fellow immigrants, and the common language was huge bonus for franco-africans. I am very dissapointed to hear about all the unrest amongst the Muslim/Arab youth, (hope this is politically correct), and am sadened by the racial profiling that will ensue, as racial profiling does in a post-traumatic event scapegoat hunt.
I can envision the glorious scene of the festivities, but wonder what the demographic of the party was. Were they religeous Malians celebrating the end of Ramadan, or just partiers taking advantage of an excuse to party? Isn’t it forbidden to drink alcohol in the Islam faith? I can’t say I have ever heard of Hindus partying with a skewer of cow to celebrate anything. Or for that matter a Jewish party chowing down on some pig following a holiday.
I am confused at the cultural statement made here? How are we supposed to view this?
November 10th, 2005 at 3:28 pm
sorry- but it sounds like there has been a bit of a misunderstanding here, because the author of the above post is in Mali, not France. it’s my fault, actually, because i put up Michael’s piece without putting his name..i did link to his other pieces about Mail though. anyway, i’ve fixed that now…
it’s extra confusing because we recently published a piece by another author (who is in Toronto) about what has been going on in France. It’s called On Paris Burning.
November 11th, 2005 at 9:06 am
Also, in response to your sense that Africans would feel at home in France-
“With Bouna and Ziad’s deaths the violent tensions seething in the depths of French society spilled over across its loathsome racial barriers beyond its poor immigrant estates into the spotlight. I remember once asking a group of young men of Arab descent, whose families have been living in France for decades, whether they felt French.
All answered in the negative. “I do not belong here” one of them said. “There is nothing for me. There are jobs. But if your name is Muhammad, Ali, or Rashid, don’t even bother to apply. The most I can hope for is a job at the local McDonald’s.” Another added bitterly: “I was born here, and so was my father. How many generations would it take for me to be considered French?”
Sons of immigrants
The rioters setting nursery schools ad shops ablaze are French by birth, language, education and culture. Yet France still refuses to acknowledge them as its own, still refers to them as immigrants and sons of immigrants.
The majority are incarcerated in poor housing estates, where unemployment figures are three times the national average. Those who defy the odds and succeed in gaining a university qualification are five times more likely to end up in unemployment than their white counterparts (26.5% compared with 5%).
Most are trapped in a hopeless downward spiral of joblessness, racial discrimination, and clashes with the police. What the inner cities are to the United States, the banlieus (suburbs) are to France.
France’s “beurs”, the sons and grandsons of its former colonials have no sense of belonging to the French nation, not because they are intrinsically unpatriotic, or naturally hostile to France, but because this land where they, their fathers, sometimes even grandfathers, were born and brought up continues to deny them a dignified existence, or a sense of respect and recognition.
No one makes more noise about integration than France does. But the gap between France’s rhetoric of equality, and abstract citizenship and its policies of systematic discrimination and hostility to its ethnic minorities could not be greater. ”
Even though French is only a shared language because of an incredibly violent history of colonization, the kids of immigrants would be ready and excited to really grow up in France, if they actually could get a shot at it. The governance system of nations like France (and Canada) need to make continuous adjustments in order to keep coming closer to the ideals they flaunt with their rhetorics. In this way, not only will their societies continuously benefit from the sense of good-faith in the intentions of their gov’t, but this feeling that trust might be warranted will spill over into the kinds of contributions those newly included Others feel brave enough to make. Because I’ll guarantee those kids who were electrocuted, and the other ones who have been starting fires, have so much more inside them, more that a better world would have inspired and enabled them to contribute to society, then their deaths or imprisonment.
November 11th, 2005 at 10:54 am
Well, i guess what i was tryign to say was taken out of context a little. I mean, in France, there are many cities. Paris happens to be the largest one and naturaly would have the hardest time assimilating immigrats, when you concede that the French ideal was never that far from the German. However. In many other parts of France, (Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse), the level of tolerance may be low, but their communities are still given certain freedoms. There are no mosque defacings, or random arab beatings. The Algerian population and the combination of African immigrant groups still have it much better of in France than in, say, Spain, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark , or dare I say Germany. (any other EU county will do here).
Now dont get me wrong. Im not advocating for Frances history of tolerance, nor their present levels, however the beauty and joi-de-vivre in practice, in this country props it up above the rest of the EU.
And even further more, when disecting the facts of the Paris situation, one must compare it to other parts of the globe. These are not mass murderings or attacks on the government, they are social outcries. A frustrated lash at the society and the idea of intolerance period.
When it comes to generelizations, none are appropriate, but they do stem from something. Such as Germans are robotic about their lives, Italians are sweet but rash, Greeks are fun, Swiss are cold……… The thing is that a general consensus is just that. A general consensus. Even though I am the last to judge someone on their personal beleifs or lifestyles(lord knows we all have our vices), This is a critique on the societies. And in order to do this one must have general working and practical knowledge of the society. One must live there and interact with different groups. Immigrant and local.
The only point of view worth taking a look at is a humane one. And anyone who judges or jumps to conclusions from what they see on tv(no matter what network or channel) is not seeing the real thing. How can you know a man unless you’ve been to his home?
November 12th, 2005 at 2:09 pm
i agree with you here, but i think i disagree with what you seemed to be saying over on that mini post about the salon, matt.
i disagree that the salons were only sites for the same old exclusivity. because the other thing they were was a space for some people who were clearly marginalized from the act of governance and the creation of the law – i mean women- to have an impact. in the salons of their friends houses, women could engage in conversations like this one about the important stuff that’s going on in the world with people who were able to have a material impact on those events (mostly men). aside from being a meeting place for the already-wealthy, the salons were also a small step toward a truer democracy. i think you’re right that we need to be critically aware of the potential for exclusiveness and bias in places like the salon that get tend to get romanticized, but we also need to try and see what these spaces contributed (in terms of depth and perspective) to public discourse and public knowledge at a time of little media.
i like to think about how some men must have carried their memories of how smart and strong the women of the salon had been in the safety and style of their own homes with them into their manly daily lives. i like to imagine the sweet men who quietly, and then with increasing volume, longed to have their partners be seen as equals; to have women with them out there in the world. inside salons and other places like it men and women began to know each other in new ways, and the expansion of the potential in that new knowing is still going on because there are still so many people to include.