When One God Won't Cut It

If you go to the CIA factbook website and look up Mali, you will see that under the religious statistics, Mali has a roughly 90% Muslim population, 1% Christian, and 9% "indigenous beliefs." In my experience, if you ask the typical Malian about their religion, their answers tend to back up that statistic. However, if you ask questions that go into more depth, like which practices they observe or how much they really know about their religion, you'll wonder exactly how those numbers were arrived at. Much like in America, the number of people who strictly observe a religion is much smaller than the number of people who call themselves followers. However, unlike Americans, who as a trend move away from traditional religions and down new paths, Mali tends to have a mix of this, and also movement towards traditionalism at the same time. Peoples' religious observances mix both Islam, and the older, native Animist practices that predated the infiltration of Islam.
To be fair, I should say that I haven't really done any formal research on the issue, and what I am writing here is based on my own observations, mostly taking place in my village, which even by Malian standards is not a heavily Islamic area. During Ramadan, it seemed like the majority of people did not do any fasting, and on Tabaski, it seemed like only a third of the village showed up for the big morning prayer that "everyone" traditionally attends. If I were to count the number of religious, superstitious, or customary practices that I've witnessed, I would easily say that the majority of them were Animist, or if not specifically animist, they bore no resemblence to anything in Islam that I am aware of.
Imagine if most Americans were terrified at the sight of black cats crossing their paths, took detours to avoid walking under ladders, or fretted every time they stepped on a crack for fear of having broken their mother's back, and then thanking G-d with all their heart to learn that she has remained unscathed. This is how Malians tend to react to most of their superstitions and supernatural beliefs. In previous articles, I have mentioned the incontinence-inducing fear of frogs, the "no singing in the rain" rules, and the blame of many misfortunes on, not bad luck or irresponsibility, but evil spirits or malicious sorcerers.
One night, a few months back, I visited my friend's village down the road and when I arrived, I was greeted by my friend who looked at me with consternation in his face and asked me if I arrived OK. I told him I was fine, and he asked if I was sure that I hadn't seen any demons or witches on the road. I told him I was pretty sure I hadn't noticed anything unusual and he breathed a visible sigh of relief and thanked Allah. He informed me that there had been a lot of that kind of activity in the area lately. The previous night, a man riding on his motorcycle had been scared into a crash when he saw a ten foot tall, white "djini" – the Bambarification of the French word for "spirit" – and that a village-wide advisory had been announced to be careful during night travel for a little while. My friend also told me that there was witch activity going on in town and that I should not greet any old people unless I knew them. Later at night, when he asked me to guard his bike while he went on a quick errand, he reminded me to abolutely not tell anyone my name. When I asked him why, he replied nervously, "Just...don't." Another time, when he pulled into my property on his motorcycle that is less than a year old but looks well over five, I asked him why he and his brother do such a crummy job taking care of such a nice expensive bike, noting the broken lights, dials, exhaust pipe, the dents, and the engine which made more noise than a whole Harely Davidson Biker Rally. He insisted that it wasn't his fault, it was his brother who takes the bike on long trips into the bush and leaves them in dangerous places where djini activity is common, so the evil spirits come and mess with the bike out of simple maliciousness.
As superstitious as this kid is, he is also a devout Muslim who prays five times a day, refrains from alcohol, and does all the other things commanded by the Qur'an. He is a fairly typical example of various Animist/Islamic crossovers that occur in Malian culture. Many of the beliefs and practices I've witnessed, while clearly Animist in origin, are ascribed to Islamic ones. There is a leather sort of bracelet traditionally worn in Mali that often contains blessings or holy inscriptions from Animist priests, but often people go to the local Imam to have passages from the Qur'an written inside them. In other instances, people use traditional Animist statues to serve as intermediaries between themselves and Allah, essentially turning Islam into a idol-worshipping religion.
It is no surprise that Isam and Animism have become as intertwined as they are here. In the words of a villager friend of mine, "Malians do not ask questions, they only hear the answers and accept them." Having anything that resembles a religious conversation with many locals becomes an incredibly frustrating experience since rather than exchanging ideas, they simply mourn the fact that I am wrong, that I am simply too blind to accept the things they have been taught from birth, in spite of my Western Logic and rational reasoning. I remarked about this to an English teacher, Maiga who works in my village, but comes from a larger city in Mali and who tends to be one of the most educated, open minded people I've met here. I was telling him how peculiar Mali's particular brand of religious and superstitious acceptence was. Compared to Christianity and traditional Islam, which, while faith-based, have a heavy reliance on canons and records, and Judaism which has always impressed me with its philosophy of challenging its practicers to expand their knowledge and find flaws, all of which presumably can be accounted for, the Malian theological tradition is to simply do what your father tells you, since he is older and thereby wiser. I told Maiga how peculiar I thought it was that so much of the population believes in these magic traditions, powerful amulets, and incantations, and he replied, "Well, it is not that they believe these things, it is that they are true." I was shocked. And he went on to tell me about an elderly man in another village who has a ring of invisiblity, and a leather bracelet that some wear that literally turn bullets fired at you into harmless drops of water.
"Has anyone ever tested these magic powers?" I asked. "Have you ever seen it happen?" He had not in person, but the invisibility ring has quite a number of reliable witnesses, and powers like the bullets-into-water trick only works under certain (and rather infrequent) conditions, like an all-out war between two neighboring villages. I was stumped. I was not sure quite how to take this bit of lore from Maiga, the guy I could count on to be the most reasonable – at least to my standards – and sympathetic ear in town to exhasperated grumblings about what even other Malians will deride as "redneck country," the less-refined country folk of Mali's Wild West. He continued to tell me about Animist superstitions and secrets that some old people know that they might tell you if you kiss up to them and catch them off guard, but I was thinking to myself, This must be exactly how it happens. Here is Maiga, one of the smartest folks here, and I would believe anything that came out of his mouth. So if that's the case, why should I listen to him with regards to everything EXCEPT this? Logically, and reasonably speaking, he must be right!
And that's how it happens here. What need have they for scientists and professors and schools when the most trusted people they can think of live right there in the community. Sure, some of the people who are either old enough to be wiser or young enough to be more progressive will believe what they hear on the news and from whatever other information outlets they get a hold of, but most people don't have all that much access. The information, the politics and science and history that they hear is all so fragmented, that as far in the bush as I live, which isn't even all that far, even the best informed people are only so by a margin compared to their American or European equivalent.
Now the last thing I would want to do is imply that traditional religious practices are a sign of being uninformed or sheltered, and it is certainly not a bad thing to be . If anything, keeping the old rituals should be encouraged, so long as they don't hinder the progress and development of a nation that needs change for the bet. . . oops, now I'm breaking a cardinal rule of Peace Corps: making cultural judgement calls. What I am tempted to say is to keep around the music, the masks, the holidays where only devoted Animist practicers are allowed to even leave the house during the ceremonial parade so they don't witness the "heathenism." What such judgement calls inevitably lead to is the question of what to do with such equally valid customs and traditions as women being second-class citizens, legally subservient to men, or the Bomu people who live in the deepest parts of the Malian bush and still commit human sacrifices and cannibalism, at least according to many many very convincing rumours I've heard from PCVs and Malians alike. I think, as I write this, that I am quickly getting stuck in one of the oldest and most hopeless arguments in the history of my line of work: where do you draw the line between tradition and revision. And of course, I'm not even going to try to answer that now. I'll let you think about it and tell me how you feel.

Trust Me, They Aren't All Terrorists!

"Ablaye, what time is it?" Mamadou asks me.
"It's quarter past four," I reply.
"Uh huh? Well, Ablaye, it’s been a good chat, and now I have to get off to afternoon prayers. You coming?"
"What? To pray?” I ask, with the half-feigned curiosity that is part of the pattern of any Malian conversation, speaking simply because keeping the conversation going is a good thing to do.
"Yes, to the Mosque! How come you never come to pray at the Mosque like a good Malian?"
I cycle through the half-dozen or so answers that I’ve stored in my head for use when I will inevitably need them, as this exact conversation is common currency for me. For convenience's sake, though I know full way it will not suffice, I settle on the simplest: "'Cause I'm not a Muslim."
"Yes, but now that you are here in Mali, in our village, you can become more like us and go to our prayers."
"Right, but I've told you before, I'm Jewish. Our prayers are not the same and I'm not even allowed to pray in your Mosque, even if I wanted to. Allah says so."
"I understand, but being a Jew is bad. Now you are in a Muslim village, you should become a Muslim like the rest of us. When you go home to France or Germany or wherever you live, you can be a Jew again."

I started having conversations that went more or less exactly like this about a year ago, when people noticed I went to the Tabaski service and was standing off to the side with the children, rather than praying with the two-hundred-odd adults. That was when my neighbors in Niantanso realized that not only wasn't I praying with them, but I was really not praying with them. I don't thing anybody took it as a genuine offense, but rather as yet another thing the dumb rookie white kid was screwing up. But as time went on, and word got around that the white kid was getting a tan – speaking Malinke, eating rice and sauce with my hands, working in the fields and adamantly refusing to be the only one to be resting at any given time – people began to wonder why I was doing everything else right, except being a Muslim.

Now here in the Peace Corps, we put a heavy emphasis on integration and cross-cultural understanding. This is not to say that we are expected to make ourselves indistinguishable from our Host Country Nationals (HCNs). It merely means that we strive to remember that those denizens of the Underdeveloped World (there's some good PC vocab for ya) aren't backwards, they are just unworldly. They have not been raised, as we in the West were, with Political Correctness and Universal Tolerance drilled into the deepest core of our noggins.

Therefore, to be told be my neighbours, or strangers I meet in busses and at egg-sandwich stands, that being a Jew is bad and being a Muslim is good is not really an offensive statement at all. If anything, it is a statement of fact. Talking to a good friend of mine recently, I was told that contrary to the popular global belief, true Islam is a kind, tolerant religion that does not wish harm on any person. This, by extension, implies that since one is supernally harming oneself by not being a Muslim, it is the Muslim's duty to do what they can to help others rectify their misguided ways and avoid an eternity in the place where "even the peanut and okra sauce is made of fire!" I've been given more or less this same line of logic before from Hell-threatening Christians or stalwartly scientific Atheists, and it is almost always delivered to me in a hostile change-or-die diatribe. Here, the approach is more along the lines of "It would be nice if you were a Muslim, and we really don't want you to burn in Hell, but heck, we don't listen to you about not drinking river water, so we don't expect you to heed our 'Muhammad-isms.'"

The only time I really hear any sort of aggressive conversion-based talk is when it involves a culture-based activity, like the aforementioned Mosque exchange, or when it involves financial importunities. Regarding the former, these conversations don't really bother me since they usually just lead to interesting theological conversations comparing Judaism and Islam. The latter is what most often irritates me: "You should give me your camera. You can always buy another one, but I'm poor."
"You want me to just give you the camera for free? You don't do anything in return??"
"I can give you blessings. . . Allah will reward you greatly in the afterlife! See, blessings have Allah attached to them, so they are much more potent than money."
"Oh, well in that case, if Allah can give me such a great reward, may Allah also provide you with a camera."

Back in May, when I took a brief trip back to the states for my sister's wedding, one of the most often asked questions was "What is it like living in a Muslim country, especially you being a Jew?" More often than not, people were surprised by my answer: it's totally cool. Islam has gotten an international reputation that it does not deserve. I believe that there are still a large number of people who are aware that true Quranic Islam does not support the Extremist tactics that so often make the news, but in Mali, all the Islamic stereotypes do not just prove to be bent or unfaithful, they fall as flat as can be imagined. Some people think there is a general dislike among Muslims towards Jews for whatever political and religious differences there are. Malian villagers generally know practically nothing about Judaism, and have no basis to form any opinions. In fact, the only people they tend to take up a major conflict with are Extremist Muslims. Any Malian Muslim will resolutely insist that nowhere in the Quran is permission ever given to kill. Those who do murder in the name of Allah or anything else are flat-out not Muslims. I have also heard such declarations made about those who do not pray five times a day and those who drink alcohol, be it the fermented palm wine or the watered-down rubbing alcohol which is the alcoholics' beverage of choice out where I am. If you are Muslim or not, that is your own business, but if you are going to be a Muslim, either get on your knees or get off the prayer mat. (I have often thought, half-jokingly, that Mali would be fantastic as a fascist nation. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, you are either doing things according to the status quo, or you are doing it wrong. This follows with religious observance, wood-chopping or garden-weeding techniques, and even day-to-day behavior. A friend of mine once observed that our Regional Peace Corps shuttle driver was too hostile and uncourteous when he came through the village. I told him that the driver was a bit of a tough guy and was sometimes unfriendly, even by American standards, until you get to know him. My friend was indignant: "He should not even be allowed in this country if he is not going to greet people and bring them gifts from the city! If you cannot be friendly, you do not deserve to be in Mali!").

The only time I have ever heard Allah’s name invoked in a hostile way was the other day when I was walking through the bus station in Bamako trying to find a good bus ticket. My party and I were followed for 20 minutes by a man who kept insisting that we give up our search for a nice, reputable bus and take his smoking Jalopy on the seven hour ride to Sikasso instead. We kept refusing, and finally got good tickets on a good bus, and as we left the vulture in our dust, he hollered after us “May Allah kill you allll!!!”

As to specifically Jew-Muslim issues, they are virtually nonexistent. Most people just don't know enough about Jews for any issues to exist. I have many times had to explain the pro-Israel side of the Mid-East conflict, which some people know about from listening to Radio France International, and for those of you who keep up with such foreign affairs, I'm sure you don't need to be told whose version of the conflict is being aired over French frequencies. Even in this case though, there is generally no association made between Israelis and Jews. I was once having a conversation with an Imam who, after listening to me tell him all about Judaism, of which he knew almost nothing, told me he knew of an ethnic group in Israel, naming the French word for "Jew." When I told him that they were the same people as the Bamabara word I had been using, he got very excited. "You're one of those people?? Wow, your people are the greatest! You are so smart, and you have such powerful positions in the world, and I hear you invented the cell phone..." and proceeded to tell me and everyone around why Jews are some of the most estimable people in world history.

Having described my general impressions of Islam in Mali, I should also go on to disclaim myself by saying that most of this is based on my observations of my village, which may not be the best litmus test to make general statements with. According to the census, Mali is about 90% Muslim, but a large number of these Muslims are mainly so on paper, observing very few Muslim laws, and still following a lot of the old Animist rituals. They will also say they are Muslim because Atheism is not considered a legitimate answer and Animism is not considered a religion but merely a collection of rituals and customs. This pattern holds especially true in my village more than many. The devout and observant Muslims lament the lack of fellow devotees, the miniscule turnouts at the Mosque, the drinking of the isopropanol/water cocktail. This seems to be the result of an paradoxical combination of steadfast conservatism and adherence to the traditional African beliefs, and (so-called) enlightened secularism, where, as in much of the rest of the world, people are praying before the Neon Gods and leaving behind Allah, who is just not as much fun as sex and beer. This is another one of the excuses I utilize to get out of my "Muslim obligations" ("My own host family doesn't fast for Ramadan, why would I?") but I do feel bad for using it, for reminding those who truly do care of the increasing nails in the coffin of their traditions. Secularization and general abandonment of faith: now there's something a Malian Muslim and an American Jew have in common.

And since the timing is right, happy Thanksgiving and Tabaski to you all!

Quick update, for those who can't get enough of me

I came to Kita, a small city east of my village, with grand plans of spending lots of time in the internet cafe, uploading photos, updating my blog, and sending messages out to all my friends. Instead, I spent the last weekend enjoying a big Halloween party, enjoying my time with Americans, and waiting out a citywide blackout that cut off internet for a day. Oops. That just means that instead of my normal witty insight and informative social observation which I know you all relish and enjoy, you're instead just stuck with a short and hasty "I'm still alive" letter to tide you over until my next trip out of town for Thanksgiving, which will happen a week early here so that w can have time to also celebrate Tabaski, the Muslim "Thanksgiving/Yom Kippur" holiday, with our host families in our villages.

In the meantime, as just a brief update before my bus leaves, the last few weeks have seen the end of the rainy season, and the start of harvesting. People spend the days gathering all their friends together to break off the corn, dig up the peanuts, and cut the rice and millet for harvest. This is another example of how Malians turn hard labor into a fun day in the field by making it a social event, egging each other to work harder and race each other, joking and jeering all the while. I myself hosted one such event, though rather than getting 30 men to come in and harvest two or three hectares of corn, I gave a bunch of little kids candy to come and work my quarter-hectare crop and husk all the corn. After leaving it on top of my porch roof to dry, and then putting all the cobs in a sck and beating them with a heavy log to break off the kernals, I ended up with about 100 kgs of corn, plenty to feed myself and my pet monkey for a good long time.
In the midst of all this activity, the funding came through for my first big funded project, a major step up from the smaller-scale, though equally important work I've been doing so far like teaching people how to chemically treat their wells to clean the drinking water or engaging in endless futile conversations about the importance of washing hands with soap before eating and after using their bare hands to wipe themselves on the toilet. This project involves hooking up a battery to the electric millet-pounding machine so that electricity can be efficiently stored and bought by people in the town, serving as an income-generator for the credit and loan association in the town which owns the machine, as well as a way for locals to do everything from welding broken farming equipment to storing food in refridgerators to watching the latest Jay-Z videos on their DVD players. I figure that the fact that I am not doing a strictly water/sanitation project as my work focus normally is, is made up for by the fact that I will get oodles of good street cred from the locals, who to this day often still see me as a fun little white boy to point at.

As of now, I am hanging out in Kita, waiting to get a bus home, following the wild and raucus Peace Corps Halloween party held here. In case you're wondering, I cut out cardboard boxes and dressed up as The Whereabox, the figurative message box PCVs send SMS or emails to when they travel alerting staff as to their whereabouts. In other words, you have to be a PCV to get the joke. Photos will come later.

Meanwhile, it's time I headed out, so until Thanksgiving, Peace!

Even more new pictures!

The other advantage of rainy season that I negelcted to mention in my last blog is that once your field is sufficiently weeded and planted, there's not much else to do with everyone else out in the field, so you can take off with some fellow PCVs and ship out to Dogon Country. See the unique, goofy-looking houses! The villages carved out of the side of the cliffs! Walk the grueling hikes up and down mountains, through sorghum fields, and in and out of towns where even your obscure Malian language or basic French skills will get you next to nowhere! Sleep on top of mud houses under the stars, until the stars become obscured by clouds and the rain pelts you from every possible angle! Travel two hours through the midday heat only to find that the water pump at the end of the road is broken! Enjoy hiking rocky terrain and jagged cliff edges that would never be legal in the US without a telephone book-sized liability form!

Or just check out the pictures of me doing it...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29040473@N02/

The Rainy Season Rundown, a.k.a., Samaya Sera Sa!

One of the most popular games to Malians and Americans love to play together is what I call The "What Do We Have That You Don't?" Game (catchier name pending). It is played by a "Toubab" sitting boredly and awkwardly with a bunch of Malians who want to entertain each other, despite having far-too-limited language skills to say anything of interest. The conversation eventually turns into a series of exchanges that are essentially along the lines of "Do you have XYZ in America?" "Why yes, but ours are better and built with machines. Do you have ABC here?" "No, we are poor." Lately, with the start of the Rainy Season, or Samaya Waati for those of you who want to impress coworkers with your Bamabara vocabulary, the conversations have taken on a more percipitous quality (pun sooo intended). Through endless conversations, killing afternoons and nights over Malian tea, I am now confident that within months, the denizens of Niantanso will be more knowledgable of American weather patterns than they ever wanted to be. And now, so will you be, faithful readers, as I give you a Rainy Season Rundown.


The most basic thing to know about Samaya Waati in Mali is that it is one of the two or three seasons, depending if you distinguish the Cold Season from the Hot or not. The Mango Rains begin around late March, if they come at all, and are good indicators for whether we will have tons and tons of the best mangos in the world, or simply just a helluva lot. Then, there is a hiatus in which time people figure out whether they need to repair their grass roofs at the last minute or not, before the rains come in earnest, starting in June and petering out in October. Some of the rain is your standard issue drizzle-to-pouring fare, giving your crops a good moistening, lasting a half an hour, and leaving as quickly as it came. Of course, that kind is boring compared to much more dramatic, awe-inspiring, apocalyptic monsoons that come every so often. These begin with a deep heavy gray filling the horizon in the distance, much like the scene at the top of this very page (if you are reading this post on the original blog site jakeinmali.blogspot.com), picking up to gale-force winds that feel and sound as if they will rip the bamboo and grass right off the roof of your house, which would be very unfortunate if your roof, like mine, is made only out of bamboo and grass. Then the rain starts, inundates everything in site for an hour or so, destroys mud-made latrines, scares animals, ruins farmwork, and then bashfully slinks off, leaving the sun shining in its wake, like an awkward child who accidentally destroys his mother's china collection, and quietly exists the scene hoping nobody will notice.

Left in the wake of the rain are puddles, and from puddles come some of the most fearsome, malicious blights the average African will ever encounter. The days are swarmed with flies, the nights invaded by mosquitoes; the former landing on all manner of fecal matter and organic waste before alighting on a victim's food or open wounds, spreading disease and infection; the latter, the vicious harbinger on of the world's most merciless killers - Malaria. While I have been managing to keep myself fairly healthy (thank you, Joe Taxpayer and the inventors of Mephloquine), I have been victimized in my own way be the illness brought on by the rain. The only thing more painful than seeing neighbors and friends afflicted by the disease of the day is having them come up to you asking for help. Of course, I am all too happy to dispense my knowledge of cheap, all-natural home remedies made from various friuts, leaves, and other ingredients which can be bought, if not in the local market, then in the Manantali market, where they would be going to buy medicine anyway if the local pharmacist (and by default, doctor) is dry.
"But why can't you just give us your medicine? We have no money!" they explain.
"Because I'm not a doctor," I reply, with a fully-aware sense of futility.
"But you have medicine. You get sick and you treat yourself with pills here! Why can't you give us those?"
"Because the medicine you want to use to treat what you might have, not even I am allowed to take until I send a vial of my own preserved feces to a medical lab in Bamako for testing, so there is no monkey-frumping way I'm giving it to you to give to your 4-year-old!"


The kinds of illnesses they think they have and the medicines they want are generally not necessarily coupled together. For example, "Sumaya" literally means Malaria, but practially, it means anything with all or some of the same symptoms. This means that a Malaria treatment, which is quinine-based, will be used to treat anything from the flu to dysentary to an assortment of possible parasites, which are not killed by quinine. Similarly, some illnesses defy definition, and are just characterized by the location of discomfort, like "furudimi," which is a pain in the "furu," wherever that may be. (Although one Fulani shepheard with a surprising array of English phrases under his turban once translated it as "Pancreatic Cancer." He did not, however, know what Cancer was.)


One of the most unusual afflictions I've seen happened to a good friend of mine, and was honestly one of the most unsettling things I've ever witnessed, so of course it deserves its own paragraph. I arrived home one day only to discover that "a certain somebody's" adorable, friendly, pet Patas monkey, Perry Dansira, was looking rather melancholy and listless. On close inspection, she was covered in cuts and welts, and I assumed she'd had a run in with a dog. On much closer inspection, the kind of closeness only brought on by my own creepy sense of curiosity, I realized that these wounds were still wide open, and some tissue was protruding slightly, only to retract when touched by the twig I prodded it with. Following the hunch brought on by the most morbid parts of my imagination, I prodded the tissue with tweezers, squeezed the swollen area, and with Perry in full, clearly understanding cooperation, I removed a small, fat, white grub. In all honesty, I might have shrieked like a girl, and I might have thrown the worm and the tweezers far into the yard, panic-stricken after having an instant flashback to a traumatic leech attack I suffered ten years ago. When my hand stopped shaking and my heart stopped racing, I retrieved the tweezers, placed the specimen in a plastic bag and went off to my host-family for assistance. They, of course, laughed at my consternation and still shaking fingers and told me I had nothing to worry about. This was a "Tumbo," a fly larva burrowed into the flesh of all animals, and occasionally people, during the rainy season. They told me I could leave them be, and the monkey would most likely die, which was fine since she was too small to eat anyway, or I could search her whole body and pluck them out one by one. Grudgingly, I followed my ASPCA-inspired sensibilities and began "a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area" (with respect to The Fugitive) to find these worms, much like my obsessive hunts for wood-mites in my house a few weeks earlier when I realized what the munching sounds coming from my roof after every rain were. (Un)luckily, Perry decided to aid in the exraction of the worms, and in one of the most physically and emotionally nauseating scenes I've ever witnessed, she would pull away the limb that I had partly uprooted a worm from, and attack with her mouth, pulling it out the rest of the way, taking a few good chews, and gulping down the little monster which had just been doing the same to her own subdermal layers.

No description of Samaya Waati would be complete without mentioning the most important aspect of the season - farming. In the interest of cross-cultural integration, I decided to become a corn farmer. Limiting myself to just the area in my concession, which is about a quarter of a hectare (half the size of a real farmer's smallest field), I got my hands on some seeds, bought the proper equipment, a large hand-hough and a smaller one used as a trowel, gathered some of my friends to show me how it's done, and went to work. In a departure from the norm, rather than telling me to take a break and go slowly since I'm just a lowly American, not a real tough Malian farmer, everyone stared in amazement as they realized I do in fact know how to farm, and then insisted that my "field" was too small and I should at least quadruple it, and then pay others to farm it. Incidentally, working my own field has given me incrediple appreciation and sympathy to those who have to do much more work than I do to live. It's been hard enough doing my own micro-field as a hobby, and doing enormously more work every just so I can have enough to feed my family sounds like torture. My fellow volunteers and I are often talking about the absurdity of the Malian work ethic, or lack thereof, which causes so much stagnation in the development of this country. Even in village, much of the dry season is spent simply lounging around and drinking tea, but when the rain hits and there is farming to be done, almost every one of my neighbors, from the young children sent to the fields to boil tea for the workers, to the elderly women whose family have all left town and work their fields alone mobilize and turn into labor machines. It's partly out of necessity, and partly out of enjoyment of the work itself. It is what makes the Malians proud, defining their identity of people who may have very little, but work for every ounce of it.

Yachts and Pirogues: The Paradox of Development in Urban Africa

It had been a long day of strolling around almost every walkable corner of Western Dakar, Senegal, with my friend Shelby, and all I really wanted to do was sit on a bench in a nice, grassy Rittenhouse Park-esque part of the city and smoke the Cuban cigar I had bought earlier that day. A comfy bench, good company, an expensive yet deliciously unpatriotic vice, and a pleasant view of what could easily have stood in for any Western vacation city were all I was in the mood for. Shelby and I found our park, we found our bench, I dug out my Cuban, and we sat. And no sooner did we sit, than we were descended upon, like the hapless heroes of the Hitchcock classic The Birds, not by pecking pigeons and psychotic sparrows, but by greedy Gerebous and belligerent belt-salesmen.

In all fairness, we should have seen this coming. This was my fourth day in Dakar (my extended pit-stop on the way back to the USA for my older sister’s wedding) and so far, one of the most notable differences I had observed between here and my more familiar capital city of Bamako, Mali, was the heightened number of strangers trying to get their hands on my money, and the aggressiveness with which they tried. In Bamako, I try as hard as I can to avoid places like the Artisan Market, where salesmen will call you out, occasionally using physical force, to get you into their shop, and then try to make you feel guilty for not wanting to buy anything. It’s the sort of experience that can be easily ignored with a good sense of humor for a short time, but the more the salesmen harangue you, imploring you to buy their goods if you so much as look in their direction, the more you become completely turned off from even trying to buy anything from them. And as if the shopkeepers were not enough, you have the Gerebous, youngsters studying Islam under an Iman who sends them into town to sing prayers to passersby and beg for money, and who are drawn to white people like mosquitoes to a bug-zapper.

All these things, you will find just about every day in Bamako, and their prevalence is magnified to absurd proportions in Dakar. Shopkeepers were even more aggressive and even offensive (though I’m sure “Young boy, buy my things now!” was merely ignorant word choice). The streets outside the shopping areas were no safer as random folks on the street peddling dolls, snacks, or “real” Gucci shirts would follow us for blocks, lowering their prices every time we told them that we were not interested rather than leaving.

So by the time my much-needed break in the heart of the prettiest part of downtown came, the last thing I wanted was to be interrupted by anyone whose only English consisted of “Five dollars! Very nice! Me, I love America.” And yet, sure enough, no sooner did I sit down and light up my Romeo Y Julieta than a belt salesman, about 17 years of age, sat down next to me and offered me what he assured me was a great price for a real Versace belt. I politely turned him down in the most articulate and clear French I could muster: "Non, monsieur." He continued to offer me the belt, and I continued to respond, but he was grating on my nerves and I was running out of French vocabulary. I asked him if he spoke English and he gave an awkward, unconfident nod to the affirmative. So I asked him if he thought I was an idiot, since I had told him repeatedly to leave me alone and still he pestered me. Misjudging my sardonically calm tone for positivity, he gave another, more confident nod "yes." "Really? You know English? And you say I'm stupid? And you still try to sell me a belt?" A thoughtful pause. "Very nice belt. Dix-mil francs. No expensive!"

Seeing that further conversation would be no less futile, I turned to Shelby and asked what she thought. What is it that makes Dakar and Bamako so different? Dakar is clearly a nicer city, a wealthier city, and I had been spending the last few days taking in what could easily be Bamako's Extreme Makeover, Western-Globalization Edition. Numerous tourist attractions, nightlife venues and beaches make the city beautiful and fun for locals and out-of-towners alike, especially those who want an "Africa-Lite" sort of vacation (not everyone has the adventurous constitution of a Peace Corps Volunteer). Gorgeous beaches and luxury hotels are easy to come by, and there is a plethora of restaurants and shopping venues for anyone with some money to spend. In fact, there is very little that you can't find in any Western vacation city - Bamako it ain't. The longer I stayed in Dakar, the more I wished my country of service was more like it.

As my friend the belt-seller continued to try to make his sale, lowering his price to 20% of the original, it began to occur to me that for someone to be this desperate to sell a belt to some tourists, one would have to be in pretty dire straits. He had been sitting with me for over ten minutes by now and showed no sign of letting up anytime soon. He's just trying to make some money for himself, I reasoned. In a city this expensive, it must be a lot tougher being poor than in a city like Bamako. In Bamako, poverty is rampant, suburbs look like slums, and the nice parts of town are few and far between. There's a lot less money there, but it's also a lot easier to live in poverty. If an urban Malian is short on cash, they can hit up a lady on the street who will be selling a filling plate of rice and sauce for about 50 cents, and these kinds of eateries are ubiquitous. In Dakar, I did not find a single meal to eat less than three times that amount, not even so much as a child selling froufrou, little fried-millet-powder "donut holes." Going by my theory that food is one of the most accurate barometers of the socio-economic climate of a culture, we can surmise that in Mali, plentiful cheap food reflects the abundance of urban poor who will settle for cheap rice and sauce dishes, and those unsatisfied by tradtional fare can hit up the Broadway Cafe for club sandwiches and milkshakes. Contrarily, cheap and easy food is less of an option in Dakar, reflecting the wealth and comfort of the city's inhabitants.

Does this mean that everyone in Dakar is rich? Far from it. What it means is that the economic gap between the rich and poor of the city is wide to Grand-Canyon proportions. The wealthy make out perfectly well, and the poor are almost too poor to exist. Which is why they stoop to such low levels of shameless begging to try to sell their goods. In Mali, a single sale makes little difference in the long run, since a tiny amount of money can go a long way, and the strong Malian sense of family and community means that each individual has a strong support structure to lean on. In Dakar, a merchant must sell or starve, and the city overall has less of the community feel of Mali, appearing, at least superficially, to be more of a Western-style, individualistic place.

There is an expression used in Mali that roughly means "We are all in the same boat." People share, not only their problems, but their solutions as well, with the whole community. In Dakar, it seems that there are two boats: the pirogue and the yacht. The wealthy of the city live in the yacht, the lap of luxury, while the poor are in a smaller, less stable boat. They have no connection to the rich other than that they depend on them for their own income.

When all this occurred to me, I felt much more sympathy for the poor belt-seller with me. He was stuck on his figurative small pirogue, navigating waters made for much larger ships. In Mali, he would have been doing just fine, and so would I. If I bought or declined a belt from a street merchant, life would go on as before and nobody would notice. It would be the difference of the merchant having meat with his dinner that night. In the comparative paradise of Dakar, among the Barbie mansions and muscle beaches, I realized that as much fun as I was having, I really did miss the onion sauce, joking cousins, and ever-present friendliness that gives Bamako the charm that only the truly impovershed can afford.

Another photo update!: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29040473@N02/sets/

Now that I'm in America for a bit, I have some time to spare on the internet.  I was deciding whether to update my photo album or my blog first, but since pictures are worth a thousand words each and my last blog post was only 2129 words, I figured the more efficient way to tell everyone about myself would be updating flickr, so go here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/29040473@N02/sets/

New Photos Up!

...Including some from the latest vacation you just read about. Check them out at http://www.flickr.com/photos/29040473@N02/

“We were somewhere around [Ouagadougou], on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.”

Luckily, unlike the first person to use that line to open a literary manuscript, the only drug I was on was Imodium. When you’re on a 39-hour bus ride crossing over two international borders in the not-quite-as-developed part of the world, consistency and predictability are very good things to strive for. Of course, unpredictability will follow you everywhere in my part of the world, so when my companions and I realized that keeping to our original plan of going to Benin for a week before skipping back west to Togo would mean another six hours on a stiflingly hot (no A/C in an African Hot Season aperitif served flambé-style) and physically painful bus marathon, not to mention arriving in the most sinister hours of the morning, we stopped in Lovely Lomé. We dragged ourselves into the closest and cheapest hotel, thickly covered in sweat and grime, ankles and feet creepily swollen from sitting, sleep-deprived, and craving Fan Ice, the greatest combination of marketing and ice cream since Dippin’ Dots, and after eating and bathing, passed out.

But all that aside, I was in a good mood. I was on my first tour of the greater West Africa area with two other volunteers, Brooke and Dave, who live nearby Niantanso, and before the bus ride got to the point of excruciating, it was rather interesting. I met a few Israeli girls on the bus who, despite having just completed their requisite military service in combat-zones, still thought I was insane when I described my life in the Peace Corps (“You chose to live in a place like that??”) I also noticed a sharp contrast in scenery between the comparative starkness of the Mali/Burkina Faso landscape and the much more lush and dramatic views entering Togo. I’ve had enough training in PC etiquette that I feel comfortable saying Togo looks a lot more like “Africa” than anywhere I’ve seen before. Palm trees and thick green forests are everywhere, and the villages look much more like those seen in Africa movies from which I’m probably drawing my frames of reference, small huts sticking right out of the bush, rather than surrounded by burnt-out farmlands that I’m used to.

The first few days were spent in pure vacation mode, which mostly involved doing as little of anything as possible, save trying out some of the local dishes (Mali could learn a thing or two about how to make good toh, the staple grain-paste dish) and reveling in the variety of beer that a German-colonized country serves, as compared to the French and predominantly Muslim Mali. The trip only got better as we got lazier making our way to the lovely beach town of Aneho where we stayed at a tropical-themed but not-too-kitschy hotel right on the beach. That leg of the trip was amazing for three main reasons; We met an American couple who are in the Foreign Service and not only were staying at our hotel, not only knew that there were PCVs in the area to look out for, but actually came up to Brooke and I asking if we were the PCVs they had heard about who were on their way to Benin and where our third fellow was. I never did get a straight answer as to where their intel came from, and even as I write this, I worry that a little red laser sight is being trained at the back of my neck. The second reason for said amazingness of Aneho was that we could walk about 23 seconds outside our hotel room and be on the beach in the absolute warmest ocean water I’ve ever felt, and not a single annoying tourist in sight (other than us three). Thirdly, the hotel had a small zoo that included caged alligators, guinea pigs, and a chained monkey, who of course I felt an immediate affinity towards. The monkey clearly felt the same about me: as soon as I approached him coming off the beach, he started examining my toes; as I came closer, it climbed up my bathing suit, perched itself on my arm and started methodically and almost obsessively picking through my chest hairs looking for fleas, occasionally plucking a hair right out and chomping it down. When he climbed up to my shoulder to start giving my head a far-too-excited lice check, I decided that my new friend was getting a bit too close too quickly and I gently let him down to resume screeching at the hotel’s pet dog, while I took the longest shower of my life.

After a few days, we went to the Benin border, only to be told we had to return to the capital of Togo to get our visas at the Beninese Consulate, the location or existence of which was a mystery to literally every person we asked, including the passport and visa center. Finally, we made our way to the American Embassy with minimal assistance from a cabbie who had repeatedly insisted he knew where he was going and repeatedly failed to get anywhere until we gave up on him after an hour. Within 15 minutes on “American soil,” we had an Embassy car and security escort taking us exactly where we needed to go, renewing my faith in the US Government to get done what needs getting done, when major crises like ours emerge.

Finally in Benin, we first went to Cotonou, a generally uninteresting major African city, which is right near Ganvié, an incredibly interesting major African village, built literally over a lake. Ganvié could be considered the Venice of West Africa – it was originally settled and built about five hundred years ago by the Tofinu people who, to protect themselves from their enemies who were not allowed in the water for superstitious reasons, built the village on the water. In my head, I imagine Ganviens standing in the front doors of their houses, built upon stilts rising to a meter above the water level, and wagging their tongues at their hydrophobic adversaries. Going to the village required hiring a pirogue and tour guide, who took us around to see the houses, all of which are on stilts except for the areas with artificially filled-in land, and get a glimpse of how the people live. Their main income is from fishing, and even the town market was just an open area of water where venders paddled in circles with their goods. The only frustration of the trip was the general inhospitality of the locals, who are probably sick and tired of tourists and almost always refuse to allow their pictures to be taken, making it difficult to get good shots of the area.

And what trip to Benin would be complete without participating in two of the country’s most profound legacies, both in Ouidah: the Slave Trade and Vodun. The Africans that were sent to west to become slaves often were brought to the Beninese coast where a slave castle exists today as a museum, memorializing where countless Africans were kept waiting to be shipped off. From the castle, we took the same walk the slaves took down to the beach where the ships would be waiting, and where we saw the Point of No Return Memorial, one of Africa’s universal memorials to a terrible time in its history.

But vacation is no time for too much somberness, and since Ouidah is also a historical and still-surviving hubbub of the Vodun religion, the traditional form of what we know of as Voodoo, we decided to search out the real deal. After a surprisingly easy investigation, we found an old man to lead us across town to the house of a Vodun priest. We went into his shrine alone, which was a small dark room packed full of idols, animal (I hope) bones, paintings and eerie splatters on the wall, and dozens of assorted bizarre artifacts. Inspired by the Lonely Planet guidebook’s insistence that lizard heads and monkey testicles were aplenty, I was hoping to acquire an interesting assortment for myself more as an oddity than anything. But when the priest came into the room looking just like an black Hunter S. Thompson and wearing what may or may not be traditional Vodun garb of cargo shorts and a cell phone company’s polo shirt, and holding about half a dozen idols in his hand, I knew what I wanted to walk away with. When he asked what we were looking to accomplish, Dave said he wanted love and I, protection from harm. The idols Dave would need were two small white male and female figures who would be pegged and tied together to symbolize two people being joined. My idol was, for lack of a better word, a total badass: Ogu Aqboulekhan is the God of Iron and can be willed to protect travel or prevent that which the worshipper wishes to prevent. He is covered in locks, chains, horns, bones, and all the other things that make a real live Vodun idol really really cool. After paying to purchase the idols, the priest offered to demonstrate the ceremony needed to pass ownership and power of the idols to us. Not knowing when we would get to see anything like this ever again, we agreed. For the next two hours, the priest and we drank homemade spirits, tossed shells, poured baby powder and spat soda or gin on the idols and everywhere else (except for Ogu, who was spared the gin because neither the user nor idol is allowed to touch liquor), and recited unpronounceable incantations. But lest we would have gotten bored, at the end of the ceremony, the priest brings in a chicken and with little warning, he twists the chickens head around with a crunch (a “sickening crunch” is a fairly accurate way of putting it, evidenced by the involuntary sympathetic whimper I think I remember making), cuts it’s mouth all the way open and starts sprinkling blood and dropping plucked chicken feathers all over the shrine, the various fetishes, and our brand new soda-covered idols. Luckily for us, this was the grand finale of the ceremony, and before the priest had finished offering to let us remove our shirts to pray at his shrine, we politely declined and left as quickly as possible, Dave and I with our bloody, powdery, feathery and soda-y idols, and Brooke with what is apparently a very powerful marble-sized ball of string (local people have actually shrunk back from fear upon seeing it; I didn’t bother showing them my decidedly creepier and more powerful chain-man).

The trip came to a close and we embarked on what would be a 51-hour trip home, made longer by our bus arriving at all the borders after they had closed for the night and by getting stopped at every checkpoint to bribe the guards not to confiscate the undeclared goods being smuggled in by the merchants on board (don’t even get me started on the time and expense we would have saved by doing things the legal way rather than haggling over the bribe with every gendarmerie we passed). During the long journey (made actually easier by the bus having A/C and a DVD of the best of Jean-Claude Van Damm and Dolph Lundgren films), I had plenty of time to reflect on the differences between Benin, Togo and Mali. The major difference seems to be that the other two countries are, in many ways, nicer. There is clearly more money there, the reasons and results of that are far to lengthy to go into. But what I also noticed is the amazing amount of progress and variety in these countries as compared to Mali, which is very traditional in every sense of the word. Variety was everywhere in Benin and Togo, from the street food to the music. Malian street vendors all tend to sell the same foods and goods, people listen to the same (I think awful) Griot music that has existed forever (even the pop music sounds like Griot with a modern twist). Malians are, in my experience, generally adverse to take risks or trying new things, which are the two things most important to progress. Of course the issues at play are wide-ranging and complex, but it is beginning to occur to me that as much as people hate being one of the poorest countries in the world, the general societal mindset might be the major contributing factor to this stagnation. As far as my service here goes, I worry that I can educate my village all I want, but the actual change that occurs is entirely up to them, and the prospects are looking grim.

The Do'oni, Do'oni Approach

In general, the Malinke people do not outwardly embrace their traditional culture on a daily basis. Occasionally, you will find a donzo, a member of the hunter class, carrying his antique shotgun and wearing the traditional leather-and-seashell jester cap and talisman-adorned garb that have been worn for ages by their class. And of course, you will see the same food and superstitious customs that have been the standard for numberless generations. But for the most part, day-to-day, the Malinke, like any other developing culture, embrace the future heralded by motorcycles, cell phones, and Jay-Z.
So for me, and often for the villagers too, the most exciting events and ceremonies are celebrated by a return to the traditions of the past, the things that make Malinke as cool as they sometimes are.
Take dancing for example. On holidays or big events, the official villagers drummers go around town after dinner, banging their drums to announce to everyone in earshot “It’s party time, baby!” Once everyone has arrived at the donke-yoro, or “dancing place,” the crowd makes a giant circle, with usually half a dozen drummers along the outer edge. One by one, they start up their beat, with a boom-bum-biddy-biddy-bum, or perhaps a bum-diddly-bum-diddly-bum-diddy-boom, until it becomes a full-on symphony of rhythmic percussion from the djembes, tom-toms, and more cowbell than even Bruce Dickenson can handle. Inside the circle itself, random girls will shuffle awkwardly to the area in front of the drummers, only a few at one time, and stand around, swaying back and forth like the shy guest of honor who doesn’t want to dance at her party while everyone is watching. Then suddenly, like a fish snagged in a line, they catch the rhythm and jerk into motion, skipping in place on their toes, with their arms pinwheeling in the air. It looks at once spastic, but very deliberate, and it is nothing less than a trip to watch. Adding to the ethereal mood is the thick clouds of dust kicked up that glow in the fluorescent lights that look like spirits floating and dancing along (that would be the Tyndall Effect, thank you very much 8th grade physics). Over the night, the girls switch off, never more than a few at a time, with all sorts of exciting variations on the dance, some jumping into the air, some gyrating on the ground. By the end, even the onlookers are exhausted from watching.
The reason for this dance was to celebrate the next day’s arrival to the village of the governor of the entire Kayes region. (Mali is made up of seven regions. According to the villagers I’ve talked to, they are all under the same laws but unofficially make up their own rules, like the way the US would be if the world was just a little less organized but had a little more national-gumption.) In an unprecedented move, the governor was making a tour of some of the major villages and communes across the region to see the living conditions and hear the voices of his loyal subjects. Okay, maybe “loyal subjects” is not quite the expression to use; not one person I asked knew the name of the governor, nor quite how long he’d been in office. Since the position is governmentally appointed and only given to highly accomplished generals, and as I said, travel to the interior of the region is pretty rare, the excitement for his arrival, while high, was somewhat vague. All that was known for certain was that the mayor of Niantanso - my host-father - and the governor would both be speaking, and that the event would be heralded by music, dancing, and loads of food to feed everyone who would be coming in from all the other five villages in the commune.
The festivities started that night and went on until morning, then resumed again as the people waited for the governor to arrive around 10:00 am. By nine, the dancing, drumming and waiting began, and continued with shrinking energy and enthusiasm until nearly one when almost everyone had gotten sick of the sun and gone off to lunch. No sooner had we left than we were called back because “He’s really coming this time!” An hour later, he came. I was ushered to the front of the line of the greeting procession, alongside the mayor’s cabinet and other VIPs so they could show off the local American Whitey. So yes, now you can brag to all your friends that you know someone who shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with the governor of the Kayes region of Mali.
For as long and arduous as the wait was, the event was rather uneventful. The mayor spoke, addressing issues such as citizens refusing to pay taxes because they don’t trust him to not steal the money (but he didn’t want to have them arrested because in Malian villages, “we are all brothers,” especially during election years like this one), the CSCOM (public health center) that was built but never stocked or furnished making it now a glorified solar-powered cell-phone charger, and other local concerns. The governor then spoke very, shall I say, politically, promising to try his hardest to address these issues and raising a few of his own (“The Census takers are coming. Please cooperate with them; do not hide in the woods this time.”). I was unable to understand two thirds of what was said, but I had the local English speakers translate the rest so that I could be certain that I really did not miss anything important. From my own perspective, and in the opinion of most of the people I spoke to, this was a day made special by an in-person sighting of the governor, delicious food, dancing and a mercifully short hour of anticlimactic speeches.

There is a Malian phrase, “Do’oni, do’oni,” meaning “Little by little.” It is the most frustrating phrase I have ever heard in my life. It is laughingly employed when I am struggling through the language, having a hard time carrying the mud to build a house, and it basically means that (in what I see as the root of many of Mali’s various types of problems) everything will happen much more slowly than it should. It is the reason the governor took three extra hours to get to our village, and it is the reason it took three weeks to decide what to do with my Peace Corps service. I left the PC training camp at the end of January with a plan to immediately start having regular meetings of a new “Water/Sanitation Committee.” Our first objective would be to have a few organized meetings according to the PC guides on how to hold organized meetings to come to a good consensus on what would be the first major project I would help the village with. I had an idea that I wanted to fix a water pump that happens to be in my front yard and that had broken years ago. The pump head had been removed but the money was never raised to fix it, and in the meantime, some troublesome little children had taken to dropping rocks into the pump’s narrow well, making repair a lot harder and pricier.
It’s a long story about why the meeting took three weeks to organize, but it generally involved people going out of town later and for longer than they said they were, and other people doing absolutely nothing until I actually made sure I was with them to watch them do it. In the end, we had, not an organized first meeting, but a group of enthusiastic people who had been randomly gathered from around the town because they were bored and who agreed that every single one of my project suggestions was great and should be mounted immediately. After further explanation, they finally got the point and agreed that, much to the chagrin of myself and my need for personal privacy, the pump in my front yard must be made to work once more.
So after lots of do’oni do’oni, here I am now in Bamako, beginning to write a proposal for a grant to initiate the project and updating my blog. The “hot season” is kicking into gear, following a disappointingly un- “cold season” just in time for myself and two PC friends to embark on an exciting vacation to Benin, Togo and Bukina Faso, three countries that, like Mali, I have been dying to visit since I was barely old enough to pronounce “Burkina Faso.” A special update on that trip will come when I come back.
The only other major newsworthy news worth taking up your valuable time with right now is that I am expecting another vacation in a few months, this time to the USA! One of my three favorite sisters is getting married and I am coming home to celebrate. If you want to hang out with me when I’m there, I arrive in Philly on May 17 and depart May 27. Keep in mind that time for hanging out with me will be somewhat cramped as I have to do a lot of important things while I’m home like upload photos online and pick out new wedding shoes, but save the date and give me a ring!
That’s all for now, and please keep in touch. According to Google Analytics, this blog has been visited by people in nine countries, so I’m really curious to know who my Swiss compadres are =P

A Miniscule Morsel of Mali

*Late addition edition:  I forgot to mention in this entry as I was talking about fart jokes that this is in fact the origin of the title of my blog: "Dembele be sho dun," the literal translation of which is "Dembele [my Malian last name] eats beans."  Everyone likes a little self-deprecating humor.*

For those of you who have been as loyal as I hope you have been in reading what is written on this website, you probably know a good deal about my life here in Niantanso, Mali.  But what you probably know a good deal less about is the life of the average Malian.  Granted, that may have a lot to do with my own lack of knowledge on the subject, or perhaps simple narcissism on my part (‘cause I’m just so gosh-darn interesting!).  That said, I think the time is overdue to sit down, get myself into a good mood by listening to all seven versions of “St. James Infirmiry” I have on my computer, and give you. . . A Miniscule Morsel of Mali.

First off, is the redefinition of most things which we Americans take for granted as the universal standard, but which simply don’t apply in quite the same way over here.  You remember those Australian Foster’s Beer ads a few years back: “Guppie, Australian for Shark” or something along those lines.  Well, as I mentioned in the last article, we have all sorts of our own fun examples.  The Malian Trashcan is simply the ground in front of you, behind you, or anywhere else that is not in your hand.  West African International Time, or W.A.I.T., works on the same principle as what those of us “in the know” call Jewish Time, only even more delayed.  And Malian Feedback usually involves a wide-angled, open-palm smack upside the head of the recipient (PCVs get very excited when the administrators ask if we have any “feedback” as to how things are going during training).

Even such simple activities like making tea take on a drastically new meaning over here.  The Malian style of boiling tea, supposedly adapted from the Mauritanian style, involves taking a 25 gram sachet of “The Vert de Chine” and putting it in a small teapot with about three or four shot glasses of water.  The tea is boiled on a small charcoal stove, which is always available since there is always going to be someone with a fire going from which to get charcoal.  (Interesting gender-role revelation: when I asked a woman where charcoal comes from, she explained exactly how to make it from firewood.  When I asked a man, he told me it comes from whichever child you send to gather it.)  The water is then boiled and poured from pot to glass and back again several times to cool the water so you can boil it again and make it even stronger.  After one or two repititions, a shot glass of sugar is added and boiled again.  When the tea is ready, it is served one or two half-shots at a time, starting with the oldest or most respected person around.  Getting the first glass is quite an honor.  While it seems silly that people usually end up waiting up to a half hour for a shot of tea, this ritual is enjoyed at any and all hours of the day, whether lazing around in front of the corner store or in the middle of work in the field.  At first, I thought the whole idea was silly, in how much time it takes, how little tea it yields compared to how much it costs, and how sickeningly strong the tea really is.  Now, I have grown as attached to tea as any average Malian; that second round is worth waiting all day for!

Another, even more significant part of Mali’s culture is the “Joking Cousin.”  Throughout history, in almost any culture, there has been strife, anger and war directed at those who are different in any way at all.  Some of the worst conflicts ever have been the result of one group believing so strongly that another group from another region, religion or race is wrong, that they deserve to die for their difference.  Malians have for the most part evaded this pattern with through Joking Cousins.  Lets say my last name is Dembele and your last name is Djarra.  Well, hundreds of years ago, our families had a fight and hated each other for some reason.  So did we go to war and kill each other?  Nope.  Instead, we said something along the lines of “You’re a Djarra?  Hahaha, you eat beans and fart up a storm!”  And Djarra responded “Hell no!  You’re a Dembele, and Dembeles are no good.  I greeted your brother this morning and he responded ‘mooooo!’ because he’s a skinny, ugly cow!  Hahahaha!”  Yes, Malians have successfully replaced racism, classism, or any other possible reason for conflict with toilet humor.  If a Coulibaly tries to rip you off for the price of a shirt in the market, laugh at him about how he’s your slave and he should be giving you the shirt for free, so paying him for it is an act of generosity.  Or if a Keita is being too slow in the field, tell him “Of course you’re lazy, you good-for-nothing urine-drinker!”  I have had conversations with one my family’s joking cousins, a 45-year-old Djarra man, over which of us had more penises (eventually settling on the fact that as a rich American, I had four, while he only had three).  There is no limit to the immaturity of joking, and I’m sure nowhere else in the world you can make fun of a respected village elder for farting too much.

Some other fun snippets of Malian culture:  

– Malians in village have very little money, but they also love music so they play it constantly by any means neccessary.  My favorite ways of enjoying pop music include people who walk around like something from the 1980s rap scene with radios around their necks, people who use their cell phone speakers as boom boxes, since there is no cell reception most of the time and they have nothing else to do with their phones, and of course the tape players powered off car batteries which are stuck in a sped-up playback so everything sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks.

– Some of the biggest Western pop culture icons in Mali include Tupac, Nelly, Bob Marley, The Michelin Man, Cyndi Lauper, Kris Kross, Mike Tyson and most recently, Brako Bama, the first Black US president since JFK.

– Malians, and West Africans in general, love action movies.  Let me rephrase that; they love action scenes.  It doesn’t matter what the movie is, as long as they get a good shootout or karate scene out of it.  Some movies are good for this, like “Once Upon a Time in China II” which are non-stop action and excitement with minimal emphasis on story or characters.  Some movies are less good for this like Steven Segal’s new film “Pistol Whipped” which was so painfully laden with plot, half the movie had to be fast-forwarded to skip to the next action scene.  In response to this is one of the gretest ever innovations in film marketing: movies that actually have all the story scenes edited out so it incoherently moves the film from one action scene to the next.  And considering how pathetic Steven Segal is looking these days, I think the African audiences might be onto something here.

– Smiling in pictures is considered dirty.  Frogs are very dirty and dangerous.  Singing in the rain will get you struck by lightning, and singing when it isn’t raining will bring rain, and then get you struck by lightning.  The good news is that babies peeing on you is good luck, extra salt on food is a powerful aphrodesiac, and leaving a bottle of honey next to the bed will aid in fertilization, but a banana wrapped in a condom on the night table is a contraceptive.  Mangoes give you malaria, but tea, cigarettes and anything else without a clear benefit will generally give you a good head and a strong body.  Also, there are a whole variety of talismans and medicines, coming from traditional Animist religious culture, that do everything from cure diseases, curse your enemies, protect you from harm or turn you invisible.  Usually these talismans are rings, amulets, or small rods made of leather, wood, plants, or metal, though it has been reported that white-people hair is also quite powerful in this regard.  You may be asking why a predominantly Muslim country has so many Animist customs.  The truth is, to an extent in Mali as a whole and especially in villages like mine, that if you ask someone their religion, they will tell you they are Muslim.  Depending on the area, between 20%-80% of the time, they will really just be saying it to be cool, generally preferring their Animist heritiage.

– The experts on rituals from both cultures seem to be the Griots, or Jelis as they are called here.  They have a few jobs: they sing songs of praise about you or your family, they officiate religious ceremonies, they greet anybody who comes from outside the village to visit or move in, and most conspicuously, they collect a special tax just for them in the form of money, food, tea, or anything else you want to give them.  Of course, it’s not clear what they actually do to deserve these taxes, and I was warned by villagers, only half-jokingly, that griots have “bad heads” and that there was no need to ever pay them, excpet perhaps on the major holidays.  The Jelis were not pleased with this advice, needless to say.

– In America, if you are walking down the street in a black neighborhood and someone shouts out to you “Hey, whitey!” there is a good chance you’re going to put your guard up.  Really, there is no time when calling someone out by their race or ethnic group is a polite or safe idea unless the instigator is looking for a fight.  Here, white people getting called “White Person!” is not just regular, but almost endearing.  “Toubabu” literally means “Frenchperson” but since it’s never really clear or important where the white person comes from, Toubabu really means “White Foreigner,” sometimes even if the subject is still African.  So, walking down the street, be it a small village or a regional capital city, children and even the occasional adult will chant “Toubabu!  Toubabu!”  In Niantanso, I am regularly called by everyone “Toubabuke,” or “The White Man.”  This takes some getting used to by most Americans accustomed to such nicknames being vulgar or offensive, and it irked me a bit until I realized that in addition to myself, old people are called “The Old Man/Woman,” tall people are referred to as “The Tall M/W,” mentally ill or impared are “Crazy M/W,” and so on for just about any distinguishing characteristics of any given person.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this all-too-brief glimpse into some of the most fascinating or at least entertaining elements of Malian life and culture.  Of course, this is an old country with a rich and diverse heritage and volumes could be written about all the things that I would love to tell you about.  Sadly, I don’t have nearly enough interest in writing these volumes yet, so you’ll have to settle for what I’m giving you here.  If you have any questions about anything out here that you want me to answer in future updates, post a question or comment and I’ll do what I can to find or make up a good answer.

I know it's a bit late, but...

‘Twas the month of December and all through the nation,

No holiday songs were heard on the radio station.

No mention of Rudolph nor pictures of Santa

Adorned “holiday” bottles of Coca Cola or Fanta.

No Endless hordes scrambling for late gifts to give spouses;

No red and green lights glare from the trees or the houses.

Yes, it’s that time of year but there’s no trace of snow,

Nor anything "festive" anywhere I go.

Now to Americans, I may be committing high treason

By saying I won’t miss this holiday season,

But I’m sick of our culture, so fiscally frivolous,

Spending all our spare cash on an Elmo that’s ticklish.

Each yard decoration tries to outdo its neighbors.

(Click here for a “Star Wars” Nativity Scene with lightsabers!)

There’s no Sandler’s “Hannukah Song” nor sleigh bells to ring-a-ling,

But in this third world country, I don’t miss a thing.

Perhaps the reason is that in a small Malian village,

with no strip malls or Wal*Marts for the locals to pillage,

I’ve recently gained a new sense of perspective:

Even those who have nothing, if they want, can feel festive.

A merry time was had with friends from Corps de la Paix,

Though I got sick of hearing Christmas music all day.

We had pumpkins and latkahs, menorahs and stockings,

But I had more fun hiking and sitting ‘round talking.

Now, when Malians celebrate they buy a cow and kill it,

And splurge on rice instead of plain old cheap millet.

So when you think you’re the only kid in town without a Christmas tree,

Remember your African friends who live at least as “modestly.”

I hope these rhymes weren’t too bitter or dour;

I wouldn’t want your sweet holiday season to sour.

Just remember for true happiness, one need not a dime pay,

So Happy Holidays to all, and to all: Basi te!

Life in Malian Time

When you spend days at a time having only 2nd-grade-level conversations with people, if you manage to have any conversations at all, and when you still have no idea how to occupy your day, with the expectation that the next day won’t be much more exciting, you start to get really, really bored.  I have termed this class of boredom “Malian Boredom,” similar to the “Malian Trashcan,” which is the ground around you, no matter where you are,  “Malian Feedback,” which is a hard openhanded smack upside the head, or “Malian Time,” which is the same as “West-African International Time” (W.A.I.T.).  Malian Boredom is not like American boredom, where there is nothing to do, because there is plenty to do, but nothing for you to do.  There are people to talk to, but no way to talk to them.  There is work to be done, but either you don’t know where it’s being done or you don’t know how to do it.  So while everyone else is moving all over, left and right, busy as bees, you are conspicuously doing nothing, and are thus not just bored, but guiltily bored.

It was after about a month of such boredom that I decided to start working.  Though the first few months at site are intended for integration, and starting real PC projects isn’t expected, little things like surveys or needs assessment work is perfectly fine.  But after a while, trying to survey all the families in town got too difficult when none of the interviewees could understand a word of what I said, or else I couldn’t understand their responses.  But one thing I did get out of these sessions was a general understanding of the kinds of work that people want me to do.  With this knowledge, I now had a new way to combat Malian Boredom: build a soak pit.

For those of you who have never had Peace Corps Water/San training, and aren’t otherwise familiar with village-work-level sanitation techniques in developing countries (that many of you?), a soak pit is a hole in the ground filled with rocks.  Into that hole, flows water, which can come from a bathing area, washing station, latrine, or anything else that would otherwise leave stagnant water lying on the ground to attract mud, microbes, and mosquitos.  In this case, it was a deep-water pump, in the center of town, right next to the market.  It was visible, public, and disgusting.  I convinced the mayor that if we build a soak pit here on the village’s dime, it would make it easier to attract interest in building more in peoples’ own homes and other areas around town which could be turned into a large, funded project.  He agreed, helped organize workers, promised we would gather the materials, and said the work would begin any day now.

After two months I got a bit tired of waiting.  The various people who were asked to get some materials kept forgetting, though I’m skeptical that some of them were even told at all.  And as the project failed to progress, people lost interest and a simple two-day project just didn’t happen.  Now, if nothing else, the two months were a great learning experience.  I did see how projects are organized, and the pitfalls of my own mistakes like expecting Malians to work the way Americans do.  From what I’ve seen, and what I’ve been told by others, it seems that Malians are happy to work on a good project, but they’re going to expect all the planning, supplies-gathering outside the village, and other preliminary work, not to mention the money, to come from the project leader, in this case me.  Like, no matter how many times they told me that a 6 meter pipe would be coming in next week, it was not going to arrive unless I brought it myself.

So I did.  And of course as soon as I did, work began.  People saw me walking through town with a giant pipe and the very next day, they were already organizing laborers to get started digging the hole, gathering rocks to fill it, and mixing cement mortar.  The day after, we started working, and it was fantastic.  The work went just the way I had hoped it would go, that is, while I was the guy who told them basically what to do, they took it into their own hands to think of the best ways to do it themselves, changing my blueprints to what they thought and I agreed worked better, or thinking of things I hadn’t even thought of.  In short, they made the project their own, without fighting with me for power, or depending on me for total guidance.  The only major hitch was when nobody showed up for the second day of work because the hole had been too short and too wet after the first day of work, so when I was asked if “A ma ja folo?” meaning “Isn’t it dried yet?” I answered “No, it’s not,” which put off being able to keep working because I had heard “A man jan folo?” meaning “Isn’t it tall enough yet?” (to which a “no” would have just meant that we could keep digging, and then keep working).

Though the work was a bit trying, and the whole process of getting the project off the ground was downright exasperating, I’m glad that I got my introduction to the Malian work ethic on a tiny, independent project like this soak pit, rather than a larger funded one where there would be a lot more at stake.  Now I have an idea of what problems I am likely to run into later, as well as what positive surprises I can expect.  I take comfort in my old philosophy that there are no mistakes in life, just discoveries of new ways to screw up.

Other than that one adventure, life at site is more or less the same as it’s been.  Sometimes bored, sometimes not.  Sometimes work, sometimes idleness.  I spent Christmas/Hannukah in Manantali with 10 other volunteers and one visitor from the states who brought all the delicious and festive holiday foods like marshmallows and canned pumpkins.  We ate like kings and drank like Malians by indulging in “sebeji,” the fermented palm wine drank by even the strictest of Malian Muslims because “It’s naturally alcoholic, which doesn’t count.” Of course, I represented Jewish contingent (being myself only) by lighting the menorah every night and making latkahs for lunch.  I also represented the Philadelphia contingent with a proud Phillies World Series Champions banner sent by Mom and Dad.  This banner would later make its appearance in my village as perhaps the only time ever that a baseball banner was captured in the same photo as a mud-brick-thatched-roof hut and a couple dozen Malian children (pictures to be uploaded soon).

New Years festivities were some of the best in memory as the weekly dance hall in Niantanso opened up for the whole town and we danced the night away, eating and drinking courtesy of the local restaurant.  I had a great time and learned a valuable lesson: paying a lot for real liquor is better than paying less for the watered down rubbing alcohol that the locals are drinking.  (Don’t worry family: Malians are not drinkers.  If I drank here a quarter of what I drank at a low-keyed party back in college, I’d be thought an alcoholic by everyone in town.)

These days, I’m back in the mythical land of Tubani So for more intensive technical training, like how to actually build a well and create project proposals.  In other words, we’re learning how to be more useful than ever!  It’s also a nice reunion with all our PC friends and a chance to compare stories and survival strategies from the edge and show off our newest Malian threads.  We’re hear until the end of the month, when I go back to village for a month before a trip with two other volunteers to visit Benin, Togo and Ghana in a 2-3 week excursion.  After that, back to village again until (yes, the rumors are true) I come home for my sister’s wedding at the end of May.  That’s right, if you thought you couldn’t go another five months without seeing me, you’re in luck because you won’t have to!

Also at Tubani So, we are learning how to get funding for our various projects, and this is where I put out an appeal to YOU, THE READER!  There are a number of agencies that give grants or collect donations to help us make our project proposals reality.  However, by far the easiest way to get money is to have a doner already set up who will fund the entirety of the project.  Now I know with the economy as it is, times are tough, and charitable donations are the last things on your mind, but if you or anyone you know wants to help me out, consider this: many projects only cost a few hundred dollars, some larger ones only a couple thousand.  Among many possible projects I am hoping to carry out in the next two years include repairing water pumps, improving dirty and eroding mud-brick wells, building irrigation systems to improve the gardens so the village can generate its own income, and expanding the village radio station so that programs on sanitation and hygiene can be heard in all the surrounding villages as well.  Unlike other charities or non-profits, donating to my projects means you know exactly what the money is going to and you know who is overseeing its proper usage.  If you are interesting in sponsoring a project sometime in the future, send me an email or if you don't have my email address, put up a message here and I will send you my address (so I don't have to post it here for the world to spam me).  Think of it as a thank you for all my awesome blogging.

In the meantime, I'm sure I'll try to blog again while I'm in Bamako, and certainly get some more pictures uploaded.  In the meantime, stay the same cool and loyal readers that you are and I'll see you next time!