Old habits die hard

Coming to Mali from America requires a number of cultural adjustments. Who would have guessed, however, that coming to Mali from Mauritania would require some significant adjustments as well? Some examples:

I was called out by a man in my village for only extending my hand to women when I greet people. In Mauritania, it was highly inappropriate for a women to try to shake a man’s hand (and vice versa), and I could probably produce a complete list of the men who shook my hand during the year I spent there. As a result, and without even realizing it, I never try to shake men’s hands. Here, though, all men will shake my hand. So I am trying to change my behavior, although I am still a little nervous every time I shake a man’s hand that he will just look at me in disgust.

Reflecting the desert culture, Mauritanians (and Moors in particular) don’t bathe all too often. I bathed about every four days there, just because it was appropriate and there wasn’t very much water. In Mali, people expect me to bathe every day, and will remind me if I “forget.” The most common conversation that I have with my host-mother here goes like this:
“Have you bathed this evening?”
“What? Oh yeah, I’m going to.”
“Now?”
“Yes…”
“Good, good, good.”

In Mauritania, the ungodly heat causes people to take cover for most of the afternoon. Walking the streets at 3 pm, you would have thought that you had entered a ghost town. I realized after a few weeks here that the four hour nap is no longer appropriate, and that work can indeed be done between noon and 5 pm.