My continuing Malian adventure

The last few weeks have been extremely productive in terms of getting work done and making things happen. But, this is Mali, so there are the normal, everyday obstacles to get over. In addition to the time being productive, an equally applicable word would be frustrating. We held the formation for cereal bank management over the course of three days and conveyed a lot of important information and work. The biggest obstacle in running the formation has been to get over the education barrier. The committee running the cereal bank consists of 7 village men. Three of them are literate and semi-educated, but even that can be a stretch. I have had my first lesson in non formal adult education. In the States, we tend to take lower education for granted and see it as a give in. But here, it is not always possible for kids to go to school and learn the basics of alphabetization and mathematics. The main problem lies in the fact that there is just too much work to be done when you’re stuck in a cycle of subsistence living. If the boys go to school, then there is no one to go out and herd the animals to ensure they are fed properly, watered and don't stray. There will not be enough hands in the fields, either. As for the girls, they gather fire wood, take care of the babies, prepare food and help with general upkeep of the family compound. Schooling is put on the back burner; the kids grow up without knowledge of the outside world and without a formal education. The cycle of subsistence living continues. In my village there are very few children who attend school regularly. As for the few kids that do go to school, it is not their primary concern. The children that are able to attend school are from the bigger families that have enough younger kids to work the fields, herd the animals and take care of the homes. But, if some of these younger children are sick and can’t take care of their responsibilities, the students must stay home from school and take over the work.

Amadou as the teacher

The formation was held to teach the basics and the importance of record keeping. We scheduled the formation for 2 consecutive nights and hoped they would run smoothly. We planned to start at 9pm. By this time, everyone has completed the fifth prayer moment of the day, taken their nightly bath, and eaten dinner (In’sh’Allah). That’s what I thought, at least. I show up at 8:30pm. Everyone else shows up by 10:30pm. There are the usual excuses of forgetfulness, the completion of tea making, run away animals, etc. Eventually we get going and all is well. Amadou taught the lessons in Najamba, the local dialect, and would then go over the important details in Fulfulde to allow my input. My role in the lessons has been to provide examples, make sure people understand the work and to give specialized math tutoring on the side. This has proved difficult, but it’s going. I gave the guys one problem and split them into two groups. I said, a man shows up to the cereal bank and wants to buy six 100kg sacks of millet. The cost per sack is 12,500 CFA. How much is the total? After nearly an hour of deliberation, the two groups had somehow meshed into one and had come up with a grand total of 10,750 CFA. How they got that total cost, which is less than the cost of one sack, I am still not sure. I do have my work cut out for me.

The cereal bank assosiation learning at night

Doing the math

As per usual, this week has been filled with mishaps, hilarious misunderstandings and the usual debauchery that plays into the life of a Peace Corps volunteer. On Saturday, Terriya (the old woman that cooks the food for the family I eat with), said she was going to market the following morning. Taking advantage of this situation and seeing an opportunity to increase the quality of the meals we would eat, I gave Terriya some money and told her to buy rice, beans, oil, vegetables, spices, etc… whatever she wanted, just get it. Sunday night, she comes back and cooks dinner. It’s the usual millet-based toh, so I am disappointed and wonder where the money went to. I decide to wait it out. Maybe she just didn’t get back early enough to incorporate the new ingredients into the meal. The next morning, I show up at the house and sit down on the mats with Adura, Unissa, Abadou, and Ousman for breakfast. Terriya brings the bowl over, places it n the middle of our circle and walks off. My hopes are high, but I don’t want to be set up for disappointment. After all, breakfast is usually re-heated toh from the previous night. Ousman says “Allah bisimillah” with his usual guttural flourish and lifts the straw lid off the bowl to reveal not toh, but a big bowl of beans. Yea, I was definitely excited. As Ousman is the oldest member of the family present, we wait until he takes his first handful of food and then dig in. I’m in heaven. These are beans with spices and oil. Handful after handful is stuffed down my throat and I can’t be happier. I’m dancing in my head, singing praise to the sheer awesomeness of beans and proclaiming their superiority over toh. Then, as with everything in Mali, it was ruined. This little kid waddles over with tears streaming down her face and squats down next to me. Within seconds, it is apparent that she means business. She lets out a huge groan and the poop shoots out her backside with the force of the Harmattan winds. The proximity of the child to me is mere inches. What do you do in this situation? You can’t just ignore the poop and continue eating. The excitement of beans is forever gone and my breakfast was ruined.

Much of my time in village is spent attempting to dispel myths black and white people. For instance, the villagers are convinced that white people are inherently smarter and have far more God given intelligence than black people. They tell me that black people don’t know what computers are, that they can’t build airplanes, that they don’t know how to make money. This is all white people work, and it is the job of the white person to pass these works onto the black person. They proclaim that the evidence is all around them. The white NGO workers come to Mali in big fancy cars, throw money at the villages, build schools and wells, increase the rain “footprint” through cloud seeding, etc. The villagers see themselves as the child recipients of this giving and have resigned themselves to second rate due to their physical characteristics. According to Amadou, the most educated man in village, the physical characteristics of a person are the best way to measure intelligence. And what are these physical characteristics? Pale skin (but not albinos… they are a “mistake from Allah”), straight hair and, the biggest teller of them all, fat on your forehead. He tells me that this is why Malians attempt to bleach their skin and straighten their hair. If not to make them smarter, than at least to make them appear smarter. As for the fat on the forehead, that one is beyond me. Eat more, I guess. I ask where this information about pale skin, straight hair, and fat foreheads come from. Amadou assures me that it is fact, straight from the Koran, the Bible and from legitimate media sources. I tell him that is bogus, makes no sense, and give examples of ridiculously stupid things white people do and the major achievements of blacks throughout history. He tosses my notions aside as flukes and tells me there is nothing I can say that will change his mind. Going along with his reasoning, I tell him we will just have to disagree and he will never change my mind. End of story. Hopefully I can convince him that we, as people, all have an equal intelligence capacity. Until that day, he will be stuck in his mode of thinking and be convincing the other villagers of his correctness. If you have a fat forehead, pale skin and straight hair, you can rest assured that you will be considered a natural genius in Dimbatoro.

Here are some unrelated pics just for fun.... Like, a kid playing with a tire in downtown Mougui...

I got hold of a ram at one point.

This is my road to site. I took this picture after about a month of rains; you can see the millet starting to come up and the grass taking over the cement-pack dirt.

This is another view of the road to my site. Three kids are walking back with firewood on their heads.

Millet

Abadou and Mira

I've been spending my days out in the fields harvesting the millet with my homologue, Ousman, and his family. We cut the millet one by one with a knife tied to the wrist. Some people put leather or cloth over their hands to protect against cuts and blisters. I opted for a bandana this day. Your hand gets cut up quickly because you use the knife and your thumb in a scissor motion. Once the millet panicle is cut, you place it in your leather cut satchel over your shoulder and cut the next one. The work is tough, but it is nice to have something to do all day.

Ousman preparing his donkey for a day of field work. He was unhappy that I took a pic of him working, but I said it was better this way.

Abadou holding a sorghum stock. These are filled with a sweet, sugar like center. You chew it and spit it out like sugar cane.

Back to work in Mali

I've been back in Mali for a while now since my trip to Europe/Morocco. Life is definitely status quo here and I am waiting (nearly patiently) for cold season to begin in a few months... late November or early December. Rainy season is coming to a close, but I was told this year has been a season "especial" because there have been more consistent rains than in recent memory. The millet is green, tall and healthy... Allah is smiling down up on the people of Mali.

Getting back to my village at the beginning of Ramadan was a bit of a trip. For the most part the villagers thought I had disappeared and wasn't coming back. Sometimes I am surprised that I came back, but I actually do enjoy what I am doing here and my friends from village and Peace Corps are awesome. It is strange to think how a year from now I will be leaving and will, most likely, never see any of these people again. Not seeing my Malian friends is pretty much a given, but it will also be difficult to keep up with PCV friends as we'll probably spread out around the world when we're done here. But that's not a subject to dwell on at this moment.

Work related, projects are going at the typical Malian snail pace. Regardless of the speed, I am really just happy that the projects are actually running as planned. As anticipated, the cereal bank project is definitely turning out to be long term. The building is nearly complete. We had to halt work in order to make way for the rainy season. You can't very well build a mud and stone house when it is raining and storming on a sort of regular basis. The roof has gaping holes that we will plug with dung, mud and sticks and we must now clear the mud from the floor and lay the cement down. Once this is completed, we'll build the pallets and buy the grains after the harvest season (late November). What's exciting is that we have chosen the members of the association that will be charged with running the cereal bank. Now that Ramadan is over and the harvest season has yet to begin, my tutor and I will begin the education phase on proper cereal bank management over the next couple weeks. It will take no more than a few days, but we need to finish up the prep work, ensure that everyone can attend, purchase educational materials and make sure that the association "gets it." It'll be a challenge to teach in Fulfulde, but I am ready for it and am excited to have something big to do.

As for the drought resistant millet project, it has pretty much tanked. The seeds came late, we did not nearly receive as much as we needed and we ended up planting late due to odd rains early in the season. The millet is growing, but there does not seem to be much of a difference between the Niger millet varieties and the local varieties. The local variety is actually better. What is neat is that the villagers are pumping themselves up with the pride of their own millet actually growing better. So, you can see that from this little experiment, the result has not been more, better millet, but local empowerment. A curveball, but a good one at that.

My rabbits haven't had any litters yet, but I am waiting. I really just want to eat them, but I have put in this much effort already. I will continue to play this one out. They aren't a cost burden, it has just added extra work for my homologue with no results after 5 months. We'll give it a few more.

Next on the project agenda is gardening. I bought about $30 worth of seeds (carrot, lettuce, onions and peppers) today and will work with a few guys in village to plant early. We want to get the gardening going early this year in order to beat the market glut that inevitably occurs during the cold season. Hopefully we can produce some veggies a few weeks early and capitalize on the market demand.

Unrelated to work issues, I turned 24 this past Saturday and it was a blast. I shared my birthday with another volunteer from Mopti region and everyone got together to show us a good time. We all met up in Bandiagarra for a big 'ole fiesta. In the picture below you can see Kate and I with our personalized birthday cakes.

This is my cake... I am truely integrated into Malian culture. "Happy birthday Amadou!" I don't know how or where they got these cakes, but they tasted so good. Seriously good. Thanks guys!

This picture is a must because the birthday boy has always got to be the ladies' man. Aren't I the lucky one?