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!