Coup-ed Up: One Week After Mali's Mutiny

It depends on who you are talking to, whether it was a "mutiny" or a proper "coup d'etat."  The latter seems to have a more official ring to it, though the Dictionary on my laptop calls it "violent, and illegal," while the former is a more derogatorily used term, adopted by those who would prefer to undermine the legitimacy of the military takeover.  They both sound bad to me, but I suppose "coup d'etat" has that sophisticated Francophone authority to it, whereas "mutiny" (which by the way is also a French word in origin) brings to mind 18th century pirate novels and Humphrey Bogart being miscast as a Naval Captain in "Mutiny on the Bounty."  In Peace Corp's recent text message to all of us volunteers, we were warned to stay out of the center of Bamako because of protests "supporting mutineers."  And hours before he was deposed, Malian president Amadou Toumani Toure, ATT as he's universally known here, Tweeted that there was no "coup" going on, simply a mutiny, as if the difference between the terms was enough to quell our worries.  ATT only got off one final Tweet before he wasn't heard from again for an entire week, so it seems to me that whatever you want to call what happened, it was certainly effective in its goal – ousting the president, dissolving the constitution, and handing control of the entire country over to Captain Amadou Sanogo.

These are some of the thoughts I've been ruminating on since Thursday morning, at around 7:45 am, an hour before I usually show up at Mali Health Organizing Project for work.  It was at that time, lying in bed reading, that I got a phone call from Anna, our current and soon-to-be former Executive Director, and Kris, our currently soon-to-be Executive Director.

"Hey, Jake, have you been listening to the news?  No?  Okay, well, the military apparently took over the presidential palace and dissolved the constitution, so we're all just kind of hanging out at the office on the internet, waiting to see what happens."

"Um, okay…I guess I'll be over in a little bit…" I replied, shocked almost to silence and not having the slightest clue what to do with the information I had just gotten.  Presently enough, Peace Corps brought it all home for me with a phone call saying that we were officially on Standfast, which means that you don't leave home for any reason, unless you're like me and your office with internet is around the corner, and the neighborhood is totally quiet.  So I headed over to work, and Anna, Kris, my supervisor Devon, and I began our weekend-long vigil, confined mostly to the office, glued to our computers, and turbulently plowing through every emotion we knew of while trying to make sense of the insanity.  Anna half-joked that we have been going through the seven stages of frief, from shock and denial (not our little Mali!?) to anger (stupid Sanogo!).

After a week, things have calmed down, in a manner of speaking, but they don't make any more sense.  Even since the last time I was in Mali in 2010, Malians have not been fond of ATT, and are perfectly happy to have someone kick him out of office.  The fact that he was just over a month away from being voted out legally and democratically is not all that important to many people.  They were happy to see someone like Sanogo stand up for their opinions.  And to the disbelief of us Americans, while around 1000 people marched into Bamako to protest the unconstitutional takeover, several times that number held a rally the next day in support of Sanogo and his junta, and decrying the opinions of the rest of the world's governments who are appear universally opposed to the coup.  Mali has been disenfranchised and sanctioned by the likes of the African Union, the EU, US, and ECOWAS, who was planning to send a delegation of presidents from neighboring countries over to talk to Sanogo, but protestors crowded the runway at Bamako's airport and all the planes turned tail and flew home, and now they are planning sanctions and border closings if the junta is still in power come Monday.  The public seems to largely see this as their country's business, and has no interest in seeing anyone else get involved.  Whether they see the long-term repercussions of alienating the countries upon whose aid, Mali so heavily depends, is unclear to me, but that particular issue has not really come up.  "I want the international community to shut up. This is our revolution," were the words heard by one young protestor at the pro-junta rally on Wednesday. 

Of course, we here at MHOP have nothing good to say about the revolt.  For one thing, I've been prohibited by PC from leaving my neighborhood or going further than the distance to get food at the market down the road.  It's in the interest of safety, and I'm fortunate to be able to split my time between home and the office, and I've been making use of the time by being more glued to the Media than I have perhaps since 9/11.  On a side not, it wasn't until this week that I realized the advantages of Twitter.  I had always just ridiculed it as the latest superfluous web-based outlet for mankind's sense of narcissism, a tool for those who truly feel that each trivial thought of theirs needs to be communicated to the masses in real time.  However, I've spent most of the week with at least three web-browser windows opened at a time to various live feeds of Mali news headlines, as it was literally the fastest way to get the latest headlines, and to those of you egotists who really think that what you have to report is so important, you've just been vindicated, so well done!  Of course, half the information out there is rumor and heresay, so a lot of the "information" we've been getting has been second guessing itself and put together, it would read like the script of a bad thriller/soap-opera: The president is dead!...no wait, he's alive but in custody...no, he's still free and under guard but he's launching a counter-offensive...except he's not, and ECOWAS has closed all the banks and frozen money...but actually, they haven't!...and Mali's national television is out of military control...well, no it's not, but they're just showing videos of dancing villagers anyway...

The grimmer news is that the MHOP Board of Directors has decided that with the situation as unpredictable as it is, all American staff are ordered out of the country until things calm down, some unknowable time in the future.  Luckily for me, I ultimately answer to Peace Corps, so I can keep working as long as we haven't evacuated, but with our EDs leaving early and the office manager Devon leaving this place which has become her home, and the rest of the organization's operations continuing to run at almost regular capacity, things are going to get heated up around here.  We've spent days making arrangements for who is to take over which roles and which programs will run at what level.  We're also pulling 12-hour work days preparing for an impact evaluation study we are planning for this summer with Brown University.  

Between these last minute preparations for their departure and seeing the news of the situation evolve in ways that make it increasingly clear that an easy and speedy resolution are unlikely, not to mention being quarantined to my immediate neighborhood, things have been stressful.  Peace Corps sent a list of clever suggestions for killing time while on Standfast, which I'm sure is a much different situation for volunteers in other parts of the country where dozens of them are sequestered in their regional houses together (22 in Kita, my old region, which if I recall has maybe room to fit half that many people comfortably).  These included making Zombie movies, holding Poker tournaments, and a Nation-wide Volunteer World Map mural contest.  We've been mostly watching movies (but still no 2008 Phillies vs. Devil Rays), cooking lavish dinners, working, I made a Standfast playlist on my iTunes featuring songs about being bored, trapped, and how "Politics Are Bad" by Malian duo Amadou and Mariam.

Thankfully, things are still safe here, and in my neighborhood things have barely changed at all, except at first when gas stations closed to avoid looting and our water-delivery tanker was delayed a couple days.  Overall, looting in town has subsided, and all the soldiers who stole property from the homes of the deposed politicians were ordered to return everything.  Evacuation, as of last night, is still considered an unlikely and unnecessary scenario.  But we're still on Standfast through Monday at the earliest, and this whole situation feels like a countdown to the inevitable, as it doesn't seem likely that Sanogo will give up his power anytime soon.  For now, it's just more waiting and wondering.  

For those of you who haven't done enough reading here, I recommend this blog, this interview, which shows a side of Mali's problems I haven't even addressed here but which are no less pressing, and my new friend Twitter for a conglomeration of pretty much all Mali-news, as it comes.

The Situation in Mali

It's a similar feeling, I imagine, to what one feels when you've been diagnosed with a terrible disease.  There's a feeling of denial that makes you have to ask yourself, "How could this happen to me?  I'm healthy!"  Similarly, Mali has for a long time had a reputation of being one of the sanctuaries of peace and Democracy in West Africa, and really the continent as a whole.  They have had a strong Democratic government for years, and relative stability, one of the freest medias in Africa, and while desperately poor as a country, and certainly not without its strifes, it just feels like a safe and happy place.  So it's amazing to me that things have gotten as out of hand as they have.

If you haven't been following the situation as it's been unravelling, over the last several months, there has been a resurgence of rebel activity in the northern part of the country from militants of the nomadic Tuareg ethnic group, MNLA, who want their own independent country in the north.  This fight has been going on for decades, but has been fairly quiet and civil, up until a couple years ago, when I was in Mali the first time.  With the combination of MNLA rebels and a rapidly increasing presence of AQIM terrorists using that desert part of the country as a safe haven, stability began to decrease.  In the last several months, MNLA has become much more determined and agressive in it's demands, and has begun advancing south into more populated areas of the country, seizing towns, killing locals, and and successfully resisting Malian troops almost the entire way.  The Malian government has been sending forces up to combat, but their lack of success at stopping the MNLA advance has angered civillians all over the country.  Combined with the long-lasting drought that has been going on, there have been nearly 200,000 refugees from Mali, either to other neighboring countries or to more central parts of the country, near Bamako.  And in Bamako, there have been demonstrations, riots, and occasional violence as people are getting fed up with watching their soldiers and countrymen killed only because of what they consider to be the weak handling of the situation by President Amadou Toumani Touré, ATT, whose already weak popularity had become total disdain by many Malians.  And that was the state of things, until Wednesday.

Despite the democratic elections being held next month, the military faction, CNRDR (National Committee for the Return of Democracy and the Restoration of the State), declared a coup d'etat yesterday to oust the "incompetent and disavowed" President.  They took over the national TV station and Presidential Palace in Bamako to make this speech, and have begun arresting cabinet members.  ATT disappeared, and is reportedly hiding in a base outside the city, protected by his special guards and paratroopers.  According the Red Cross, there have been 40 injuries and one death.  A full-time nation-wide curfew has been declared, and in the meantime, NMLA has decided to take the opportunity caused by the confusion in the capital and preoccupied state of the military to "take advantage of the chaos to gain more ground" and "make new advances in their campaign to carve out a northern homeland." (http://af.reuters.com/article/maliNews/idAFL6E8EMAAJ20120322)

As for me, I've had some contact with Peace Corps officials who called me to tell me that we are on Standfast, meaning stay inside and don't try anything funny.  All day, I've been at my office, around the corner from my house, with the other 3 American staff and a couple of our Malian coworkers as well.  We've been soaking up the news, staying in contact with friends, and waiting to see what happens next.  Our plan is to head over to my house if anything heats up around here, which is not likely, but my house has lots of locking doors and is well fortified, with food and water if the worst were to happen.  We just ventured out to my house to get my external hard drive full of movies, some TV shows, and the 2008 World Series (which nobody else seems interested in watching), and some whiskey I had stowed for special occasions, such as violent military uprisings.  Nobody in the streets seem the slightest bit concerned over anything that's going on.  A truck full of armed soldiers passed by the road earlier, but it hasn't caused a bit of a stir, and people say they were probably just filling up on gas, or perhaps arresting some political figure who might live in the next town over.  We're going to start making dinner together soon, and we're keeping a good sense of humor as we wonder how this could have happened to our little Mali.  It's surreal, because by the looks of it, things seem more or less the same as they always do here in Sikoro, making the whole day seem more unbelievable.  And yet, here we are, waiting to know what the future holds.  I finally got to meet my adorable new niece over Skype, less than two weeks old, and to echo the words of her mother, my sister, I hope it will still be another year before I get to meet her in person.

Here's a nice long list of all the major Mali-related news headlines since the begining and earlier to get a better idea of what's been going on here: http://twitter.com/#!/mali

The Good, the Bad, and the Uncreative Title

There's a rustling, a shuffling, and scratching, and a squeaking, and I lift myself upright in my bed and look at the ground outside my window to find Ratt Murdoch happily feasting on my old fish bones.  Ratt Murdoch is a good neighbor, one whose company I've enjoyed through my screened bedroom window almost since the day I moved into my new apartment in Bamako.  He makes some noise, but it's enough to let me know he's there, and not too much to be a bother.  Unlike the lizards who frequent the walls outside my house, he's not as skittish and frightened off by sounds, so I can usually get a good long look at him, watching him scamper around digging for food or exploring my seven square feet of backyard, without him running away.  A few nights ago, I hosted a fish chowder dinner for some of my co-workers and there was enough leftover for me to give to one of my (Homo sapien) neighbors who often cooks for me.  Left with a pile of fish bones, I decided that those would be equally appreciated by one of my other (Rattus norvegicus) neighbors, who I named after the alter ego of the superhero Daredevil (The Man Without Fear!).  Now, some of you might know that for quite a while last year, in between coming home from the Peace Corps and going WWOOFing in Europe, I adopted a pair of rat brothers who were adorable, affectionate, intelligent, and playful little pals.  Aside from an avid propensity towards defecation wherever they chose, they were fantastic pets and proved themselves wholly unworthy of the stigma our society has so unfairly cast upon them.  So when I discovered the young little Mr. Murdoch outside my window, I developed an immediate sympathy and affection towards him, and while I have no intention of actually adopting a possibly feral rodent off the street, I have no problem encouraging him to stop by once in a while to say hi, and letting him eagerly dispose of some of my organic garbage too.  Besides, since I'm living in an urban environment this time, keeping a pet seems like more trouble than it's worth, and I already fulfilled one of my greatest life-long dreams of owning a pet monkey the last time I was in Mali living en brousse, so I'm happy to just have a frequent visitor who isn't too dependent on me this time around.

Yes, things are certainly different from the way they were the last time I was doing PC Mali.  I've moved from the country to the city; I've got utilities, regular contact other Americans/Westerners, and a 9-5, five-days-a-week job (for the first time since 2007!).  It's good, it's bad, and it's looney.  For the benefit of those of you who have not read my old PC Mali articles or just don't remember everything I've written about over the last three and a half years (I don't even remember some of my Niantanso friends' names, so don't feel too bad), here's a little point-by-point comparison of the old life to the new.

First off, the most basic differences.  In Niantanso, my 2000 resident urban farming village, three hours from the nearest large town, people didn't have any qualms about a) naked children running around all over creation with their five-year-old siblings looking after them, b) publicly picking their nose or spitting indoors, c) coming by my house at all hours of the day or night if they had any suspicion at all that I might be around and incessantly knocking and calling my name so they could say hi or just get a good White Person sighting, until I would cave in and answer, whether I was sleeping or just ignoring them and trying to get some peace and quiet, d) asking me if I brought them presents every time I come in from town or telling me (not asking me, mind you) that I should give them my money/clothes/watch/food/etc. because I'm stinkin' rich and they have no money at all.  In Sikoroni, the peri-urban neighborhood that is one of the poorest areas in Bamako, just outside one of the most cosmopolitan, a) many more, but not quite all, the children wear clothes, b) it's probably not a whole lot more sanitary here, but you don't see kids using the outer wall of my house as a urinal, c) I live in an enclosed apartment compound so people don't really come in without a reason, and kids seem to have better things to do with their time than "visit" me, and d) people seem to be more used to folks like me around here, and don't have the same expectations of me.

In Niantanso, the nearest cellular service was a 15km bike ride on a forest trail which I took once a week, and the nearest electricity and running water were 40km, which I only saw maybe five days a month on average.  In Sikoroni, there is cell service, electricity, and while I have no running water, I do have an indoor latrine and I can just get the kid who goes up and down the street all day selling water for ¢10 per 20L jug to fill me up.  In Niantanso, my house was made of mud bricks, and had a thatched grass and bamboo roof, which meant that the insect-to-human ratio in my house outnumbered me several thousand to one.  In Sikoroni, I get cement walls, tile floors, and screen windows that close properly.

So have I moved up in the world?  Well, in Niantanso, I was friendly with at least half the town, partly because I was so novel and exciting, even late into my service, and partly because everyone knew everyone anyway, so of course I was part of that.  In Sikoroni, well, it's a lot more like living your city.  In Niantanso, the village was surrounded by literally endless trails that wound through forests and fields, over and around hills and cliffs, past other villages, and one of the most relaxing things to do on a slow day was just to get lost in the woods or on a hilltop, or gather wild fruit, or go bouldering.  In Sikoroni, it's all urban, you have to be constantly watching out for passing motor scooters in the road, and while there is a hill, there's nary a decent tree on it and nothing but slums of small cement houses as far as the eye can see.  In Niantanso, my 6am wakeup every morning was the gentle and rustic cockadoodledoo of the roosters, braying of donkeys, and rhythmic thumping of women pounding millet.  In Sikoroni, it's motorcycles, trucks, the main gate to my compound swinging and crashing open and shut, all reverberated and amplified by the walls of our courtyard so it's like trying to sleep through the motor pit at the Indy 500 Speedway.  In Niantanso, I was literally unable to spend more than a third of my $280/month stipend at site every month even if I tried since there's little more than food and the occasional new t-shirt or soap bar to buy, which meant that when I went into town or took vacation time, I had more than enough cash to throw around.  In Sikoroni, being a Bamako volunteer, I make slightly more money but have a lot more places and opportunities to spend it, and people to encourage me to spend it with them, and instead of being filthy rich, I'm finding myself having to budget my expenses just to keep my bank account in check.

I could go on, but another advantage of being in the city is that I can update my blog more often and not burden you with half an hour of reading material with every posting.  As far as conclusions for this one though, I honestly haven't made up my mind yet.  Bamako is easier, the bush is simpler.  I certainly had no desire to go back to living in the village for my second time out, though.  I may miss the magic, culture, and freedom of the Wild West, but it's the same Mali.  I still get to speak Bambara, I still get my favorite local cuisine – though they make it better out in Malinke country – and I'm still getting to do some feel-good local aid work, which I'll get into next time.  For now, I hear some more rustling outside my window…it looks like Ratt Murdoch has a friend!  Well hello there, Ratisyahu, Hassidic Rodent Superstar…