Yel Kaye – Travel Blog, Writing and Photography

My second last day in Ouagadougou in 2008, I learn from a neighbor that a good Burkinabe friend of mine has been sustaining a big lie for the past two years.

In 2006, he was the best bud to me and the two other Canadians in my project team. On our first night in the village of Sapone, he took us out for a beer. We asked him about himself, and he said he was unmarried and didn’t have any children. Over the course of the summer, we had frequent conversations about gender relations in Burkina Faso, and he impressed us with his desire for equal rights for men and women. He told us that he didn’t want to have a polygamous family, because he wants to love just one wife. (None of us found this guy attractive, but we liked to hang out with him and hear his views.)

Fast forward two years. I’ve kept in touch with the friend since my first summer in Burkina Faso, and we’ve been hanging out again in Ouagadougou. Only this time – without my two friends around – suddenly the guy makes me a bit uncomfortable. My gut tells me something is off, and I suddenly I can’t stand to hang around him. But I figure I owe some sort of loyalty, so I don’t cut off his friendship entirely.

Until I’m talking to my neighbor in Ouagadougou, and she mentions my friend’s wife and children. I figure I must have misheard, so I ask another neighbor and she confirms. Turns out that this dude has been lying to my friends and I about being single for the last two years (with the failed intention, I figure, of getting a little hot nasara action.)

I send him a message telling him I knew about his lie and I’d rather not see him during my last two days in Burkina. (Text messaging is, it seems, the only regular mode of communication in Burkina Faso.) I now had a reason to listen to my unease around him. Case closed.

Except, a few hours later, the dude storms into my little house (in a family courtyard) and starts to yell. Something along the lines of “how dare you call me a liar.” I ask him if he does have a wife and children, which he always said he didn’t. He responds with “Yes I do, but in our culture lying about that kind of thing is not considered wrong. You are being insensitive to my culture.”

(As a side note, another thing he says is “she is not a real wife that I chose – she is just a wife that my father bought for me.”)

Anyways, anyone who knows me knows that the topic of cultural relativism is something that fascinates me, partially because I am so often torn over the subject. After my friend finally leaves in a huff, I start to worry. I hate the idea that I am rejecting my friend due to differences in culture. Am I really being insensitive?

Later that evening, I’m out with a good Burkinabe friend who lives next door. A young woman about my age, this friend has always been there to help me out since I moved into the neighborhood. I decide to seek her advice and tell her about the whole argument.

She listens quietly until I mention the part about lying and culture. She suddenly looks angry. “That isn’t true,” she says. “Lying is not a part of my culture and it is offensive for him to say that. I would never lie to you, just as I would expect you never to lie to me.” I realize that what my friend did was, in fact, creepy and wrong. I should not only trust my gut feelings, but hold him to the same standards that I would any friend. Despite the supposed political incorrectness of using any sorts of universal norms, I stand by this decision. It seems much more wrong and patronizing to use culture to excuse absolutely everything.

(This image is unrelated… except it’s from last summer in Burkina.)