Culture and Colour

So, every culture sees colour differently ... the Fulani have few words for colour:

- red
- yellow
- blue
- brown
- black
- white
- green ... which is actually the same word for fresh "greenery" (bush, grass, tree leaves, etc...)

Though, they do have 17 variations of each of the six foremost colours - depending on the suffix of the object it is describing!  I am still trying to memorize all of these!  Blue I find particularly difficult.

But overall, few words, in comparison, to English ... in looking at my pencil crayon box, there are 60 pencil crayons.  Thus sixty different colour names.  And I know that I have the small box ... let alone the vast quantity of colour words one can find in a paint store!

The Fulani do on the other hand have a prolific combination of the colours brown, black, and white in order to distinguish the colour variations of the hide on their cows!!  Black cow with white spots.  White hide with black spots.  Small specks ... splash of spots versus solid colour ... medium spots ... large spots ... splash of brown on one leg and forehead .... you get the idea, I am sure there are at least 50+ combinations!!  I stopped keeping track or trying to memorize them.  I figure, I'm doing really good to distinguish a cow by: male, female, nursing calf, and "young female cow of the age to have a calf but has not yet birthed a calf".  (yeah - I memorized that last one just because its fun!! ... and they are always surprised I know said random word!)

I learned in my cultural anthropology course that the number of words that a culture has to distinguish variations of "one" object - the more important it is to their culture, livelihood, or way of life.  The Inuit have 50 words for "snow".  In Arabic, there are a disputed 100-1000 words for camel.  

I would hazard a guess that what I learned in my cultural anthropology course would hold true in the reverse for the opposite.  Thus, a lack of words would denote therefore the lack of importance to an object or idea.  I would deduce, then, that colour is not overly important to the Fulani ... except in matters pertaining to their animals, especially the cow - for the cow is central to the Fulani code of life!

But ... I digress.  Back to the colours!

Mats are an important part of life here.  Every hut has at least one, but usually two or three.  Some are used on top of the bed frame - these, as far as I can tell, are not brought out for visitors to sit on.  Smaller ones are used for prayer.  But mostly the mats are used to sit on.  There are a few rules - generally, men and women do not sit together on the same mat.  Children can sit wherever, but mostly I see them on the mats with the women.  And one always takes their sandals or shoes off to walk on a mat - this keeps them from getting dirty and consequently keeps your clothes from getting all sandy once you sit down!

When I do training in a village, I bring my own mats as there are not usually enough mats in the village to seat all the villagers who come ... as this is usually 80+ people!  I try to buy mats that are matching so that I can visually identify all of mine instead of trying to remember the pattern and colour.  This is always fun in the market to try and find matching mats, but the Grand Marche is my best bet.  This year, I have six mats that match - two more that are a different pattern but same colour and then I had to buy three more that match each other, but not the others.

When I buy mats for a school, I also try to buy matching mats so that the villagers can also quickly identify which ones need to go to the school hut.  For the new school that opened this year, I bought four yellow and red mats with a flower pattern ... as seen in the photo below.

Then, more children came than originally registered ... so we had to buy two more mats.  My national friend was in the truck with me when I went to the market, so he volunteered to go in and buy the mats.  He is the teacher of the school, so he has seen the mats above, but to be sure, I said to him: "buy mats that match the ones at the school - either red or yellow".

This is what he bought:

And as a teacher - he even knows the French word for these colours ... ."rose" and "violet"!!!  Yup - colour identification varies from culture to culture!  I am still trying to figure out if he thinks these are red ... or yellow!!