Question

Dancing Skeletons:

What does the following Malian proverb mean? “Just when it’s time to go to bed isn’t the time to say you’re hungry”. Why wouldn’t this work well as a proverb in the U.S.?

Answer 1

This is a context which desrcribes the malnutrition of countires like Mali where eatables are not readily available and it's difficult to arange or cook food quickly based on the hungry levels. In the article Dancing skeletons author has mentioned about food like Pizza, macroni, peanut butter masala which has scarcity in poor countries and they have to cool rice kind of items to manage their hungry and cannot just ask for food just before sleep as it will take time to cook. But in countires like US this proverb is not applicable as they have such food items readily available and can meet the demand.