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.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
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!
"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!
Monday, November 2, 2009
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!
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!
Thursday, August 13, 2009
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/
Or just check out the pictures of me doing it...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29040473@N02/
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
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.
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.
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