Il faut. Pretty simple phrase/command, but it has such a story behind it. For those of you who don’t know any French, it basically means “do it,” but is followed by a verb in the infinitive like, il faut aller (which means, “Go!”) or il faut manger (“Eat!”). It’s not the most pleasant way to talk to someone and you should never il faut an elder. Making the command form is easy if you conjugate the verb. For example, allez (“Go!) and mangez (“Eat!”). Well, in Mali all of that changes. Il faut is as everyday as bonjour or any other greeting. Bizarre, right? A culture where you’re supposed to be respectful of each other, but we il faut at every chance we get. Whenever there are French NGO workers/tourists around and we’re talking, I try my best not to il faut them, but it happens. I’m Malian, not French – of course I il faut. But the look upon a Frenchmen’s face when you il faut them is priceless. It’s kind of like, “Excuse me? Did you really just ask me to stop smoking.”
So why is it so bad and where did it come from? Answer is pretty simple and straightforward, but pretty disgusting, in my opinion. During colonization Mali was a French colony. In the government, the civil service, schools, the bank, the market – pretty much anywhere - Frenchmen would constantly order Malian’s around using the rudest form of a command – il faut! As the French were here “doing good” and teaching them, they left il faut as obvious a colonial memory as the French language itself.
Talking to some of my fellow American volunteers or other expats and even Malians, some claim we il faut because we’re too lazy to conjugate said verb into the command form. It seems to me that there are far more syllables in “Il faut aller” as opposed to “Allez!” Just a thought, but I think that’s a silly excuse. I think that Malians il faut because that’s what has been passed down throughout time. It’s the same way that any habit is picked up and passed on. Malians are used to commanding things because historically they were commanded to do things.
I’m not going to lie, I’m an il faut-er at heart and I like it. It’s not that I’m too lazy to conjugate, but normally if I il faut its because I really want the person to do it. And in this society where so few things take precedence and are actually important, il fauting might be the only way to get things done. Now, we might have a problem when I move back to America and I stop saying “Please” and “Thank You” and continue to demand things of people. But, I don’t forsee the reintegration being that difficult.
Il faut stay tuned to my next posting from Mali.
