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.
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