Sanakuya means "cousinage," "joking relationship," and it refers to a social norm present especially among the Mandingo ethnicity. Those in a sanakuya relationship may treat one another as if close family members with whom familiar jokes or humorous insults and intermarriages are exchanged. For example, the Kromahs and Kamaras exchange cousinage. The model of humor integrating the tragedy of past warfare for reconciliation always attracts me. Therefore, in this essay, I intentionally violated a folkway, an informal social norm that is mildly punished when violated, on the Kamara family because I was very interested in the Kamaras' reactions to experiencing behaviors they were not used to.
The situation I chose to enact my intended violation of breaking a folkway happened at the Kamaras' baby naming ceremony on Friday, July 17, 2015, in the presence of many other families, strangers, and neighbors from different cultures. This ceremony usually involves a huge celebration, including slaughtering of a sheep for the baby being named after a very important person in their family on the seventh day of her birth. Subsequently, when the time for the occasion was getting closer, I asked my uncle I would be accompanying him, and he agreed. For the purpose of my experiment, I bought a huge pig, masqueraded it in a big bag, and put it in the trunk of my car unnoticeably. Upon arrival, I immediately noticed that they had a standing sheep at the back of the house awaiting slaughtering as a sacrifice for the newly born baby. The people at the ceremony were mostly homemakers, religious leaders, elders, and traditional-oriented singers among others. There were around ninety people in the hall, all engaged in various activities. Conducting my experiment unnoticed, I went in the back of the house exchanging their sheep with the huge pig I bought and went amidst the people as if I did nothing.
While observing the atmosphere as it was time to slaughter the sheep, I heard the mother of the baby crying and saw the Kamaras running around looking for the sheep for fear of embarrassment and criticism because pig is not the customary animal for such an occasion.
