Palaver

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Palaver

« Your fertilizers, they are no good, they make the tomatoes sweet and they rot immediately and nobody wants to buy them!”

said the farmer, aggressively to my boss.

It was a Farmers Field Day, we were two agronomists and twenty farmers. I was a young agronomist, very young, I was expecting my boss to explain to the farmer why he, the farmer was wrong and give him all the reasons for using fertilizers on vegetables.

And then came that sentence which was going to change my life:

<< you are right >>.

And, so as not to offend the farmer, my boss continued:

<< you are right, when the tomatoes receive fertilizers they are softer in taste and as they are richer, they are more difficult to keep. As you said (he had not said anything like this) some people like their tomatoes to be strong in taste, others prefer them to be sweet. But I suppose that you have the same experience and that when you eat your chorba you do not want the same taste as when you eat fried tomatoes?>>

Having been given the authority to speak, the farmer expressed his views about what kind of tomato should be used with the chorba soup, pointing out that it was regretful that chorbas soup could only be cooked by his mother who would use only special vegetables she selected from friends at the market.

Having started this subject we could rest for at least half an hour, the subject of which village, which region and which mother did the best couscous and the best chorba was a very hot topic.

The normal conclusion of these kinds of discussions would be that each of the farmers would invite us and the other farmers to come and taste the couscous and chorba as made by his mother or by his wife.

And if you believe that the stuff you eat in restaurants that they call couscous has any similarity with the couscous and chorba and tajine cooked by the farmer's family, then it just mean that you have never tasted these dishes.

Sorry, I got mislead and misdirected by this subject of couscous and chorba.

The point my boss was making to us was that if you want to convince the farmers, if you want to convince the client, then you must never disagree with him. If you contradict the farmer, you will make him loose face in from of the community and you will have an enemy for life.

I can see that you wish to point out that this is unfair, this is a way to be untruthful and devious with the customers? Is that not your feeling? Indeed, this is what we said to our boss.

And we discussed.

Little by little we started to understand that the point was not whether we were right, or they were right, the point we had to respect was that we had to try and understand the reasons for the clients views, try to really understand the reasons why he would not accept our fertilizers and seeds and ultimately evaluate whether we had to review our message.

In American serial E.R. (Urgencies), the surgeon head is exceptionally gifted, malicious and egocentric. His power is enormous and it can make and demolish careers according to his whims. And he often wants it.

An accident arrives and its left arm is seriously damaged. Thanks to the surgery of his colleagues, one manages to repair his left arm. He passes in rehabilitation, then as you can guess it, the accidents arrive and its left arm start rotting.

For his/her collaborators the choice is simple, either it they cut down its left arm, or his life is lost. For the Chief Surgeon the choice is different, if he amputate his left arm, he is no more surgeon head, he loses his exosquelette, all his power, and the power was what made him live.

Then also the loss of the power means the revenge on those he which humiliated. For his/her colleague's surgeon the situation is difficult, who will be sacrificed to announce to the emperor that he is going to loose his power?

In fact you knew all that from your College, you remember the old Professor who does not know that he has become old and inefficient. How to render comprehensible to him that it must yield the place?

In Africa Bantu, it is the same thing but with a different solution. When civilization arrived at the end of the rifle to Black Africa, the colonizers were faced by a problem that they had not envisaged.

When one asks a tribe if it agrees to the building of a school, the European colonizers expect an positive and grateful answer and do not understand that the tribe seems to be able to give a fast answer.

The concept of palaver is completely unknown to colonizers. The colonizers come from a civilization where each one defends his opinion with the point of the sword or the pen. In this civilization one expects that each man has an opinion and that he be ready to defend it on the field of honor.

They arrive in a country where the first priority is peace in the community. This implies that the decisions are made in a collegial way. The corollary is that nobody must lose the face. In front of a decision to be taken, the group meets and it palaver starts. The women are equal in the group. What is remarkable with the palaver is that the one speaking, does not speak to express his opinion but to underline a consequence which would rise from the choice that will be taken.

The goal of the palaver is to clarify all the aspects of the question; at the end of the palaver there will be no vote because this would be completely contrary with the tradition of the group which does not conceive that a majority can impose its will on a minority. The decision will be that of the group.

A palaver can last one hour as well as a week. It is strange to see how much this resembles a study of Talmud where the goal is not to arrive at a single position but to clarify the consequences and the choices.

When the colonizer returns, they are often very astonished not to obtain the grateful and positive answer they expected. The group studied all the consequences of the decision, especially those of which the colonizer did not think of. Very often a long wisdom leads them to hesitate in front of what is called progress.

When we arrive with our bags of manure and of seeds and we ask whether a farmer would be willing to test them on his field, in East Africa that was accepted without problem, in West Africa the decision was much more complicated.

The group wanted initially to make a palaver. If a farmer accepts manures and seeds, what will be his position within the group?

If his output is 10 times higher than that of its neighbors, who will be entitled to this food?

In the English speaking countries, by principle, the production belonged to the Chief, who redistributed it, therefore it had little importance if it was this farmer or that farmer who obtained the additional maize, in any event it would redistributed by the Chief.

It should be understood, that cohesion, internal peace, was much more significant for the group, than wealth.

They had seen too often the devastations caused by the civil wars.

It is curious to note how much our civilizations are opposed. To have is what we, the rich ones want, to live is what the poor want.

In Indonesia the situation was even more complex since the first of the priorities is not to lose face in front of the visitor. So, only very poorly educated people, for example Europeans, would ask a direct question.

One should not, in Indonesia, look at somebody directly, this is an insult, a provocation. When one wants to put a question, it should be formulated in such manner that it does not impose a yes or no answer, moreover the question must preferably be addressed to a phantom floating somewhere above the participants.

The problem is not simplified by the fact that asking a direct question is very bad manners. That the visitor is so stupid and has so little culture that he asks questions indicates that it is wiser to guide this foreigner to a place where he will not be able to make more harmful and dangerous errors.

Here another history told by Dr. Michel Cavey

I attended a palaver, some years ago. I was on a market of craftsmen in Gambia, in the surroundings of Serrekunda. They were about thirty of them, assembled in a group.

The object of the debate was to decide if they were going to continue to sub-contract their lunch to a cook. I understood that the prices were a little high for their taste. The alternative was to decide to make the meal themselves.

Initially I had the conviction that the cause was heard even before the palaver started.

Then I witnessed a strange ceremony: I do not know what was said, as I do not understand woolof. But this is what I saw: each one spoke in turn, each participant said the same thing in turn, nothing did occur, nothing did advance. That lasted a little more than two hours... And at the end of two hours, the meeting was raised: everyone agreed to lay off the cook. How the decision was made, I do not have any idea; nobody seemed to have changed opinion, and the opinions had been very clear from the beginning. However the palaver had started on a conflict and was closed on an agreement.

I understood a little better when listening to a traditional orchestra. The monotonous chant was beautiful, but it did not do anything other but to turn round on itself, reproducing unceasingly, immutably identical. And yet, at the end of the piece the music which was played did not have likeness to the tune at the beginning. By nuance to nuance, undoubtedly, the transmutation had been completed.

The subtlety of the decision-making process in these civilizations, the way in which one evolves/moves until the agreement is reached, is a mechanism which we do not understand

Only perhaps Socrates approaches some by stating that truth is what we can agree on after having put it in words.

I also remember the stick used in Asia by assemblies to measure the speaking time.

It is a bamboo filled with rice grains. When it is reversed the rice grains run out, rebounding against the nodes of the bamboo; this makes a noise, and when the noise ceases the speaking time is exhausted.

Naturally the speaking time depends in fact only on the way in which the president holds the bamboo, which enables him to favor one and to handicap the other. But the problem is that everyone sees it making. Thus balance is obtained by giving to the one members of the community the right to cheat, provided that it is publicly: the system can function only in the mutual respect. From this I have wondered whether democracy would not be the system which allows people who do not respect one another to continue to cohabit without making the effort go one towards one another other.