T in Mali

On what may be my last day in Mali ever, and having just left an angelshare in Hippodrome, I find myself trying to piece together a series of thoughts and memories whose impact on me I’ve not even begun to register.

Although I came to Mali under the pretence of a professional internship which is part of a larger government employment strategy, I think a lot of what I’ve been doing is also a sort of long term and stable traveling. True, I’ve lived in the same house the whole time and I go to work at the same office every day, but I’m still discovering a new culture, learning about different ways of life and seeing unfamiliar sights, which defines travel.

Undoubtedly, this experience has helped me grow both professionally and personally and just as with my prior experiences traveling, I have seen sights and most importantly, lived moments both good and bad here in Mali that will stay with me for the rest of my days.  I believe that traveling ends up being a collection of moments that ultimately impact, change, affect, inspire and at times, devastate a person.

Sometimes during my bored moments, I’ve periodically flipped aimlessly through my collection of digital photographs but I noticed that the longer I stayed here, the further away all of those captured moments seemed to be.  I forget what it feels like to be cold, to see an overcast sky, to cook for myself, to sleep without a mosquito net and to wear closed-toe shoes. Slowly but surely over the course of my time here, “home” became a collection of moments in my seemingly distant past that were pushed aside to make room for the new ones I was to experience.

These new moments were amazing in the truest sense of the word; they left me shocked and awed and not always in a good way. Some were firsts. Some made me say WTF?! Some were “a-ha moments” where I learned a lesson.  Some moments I really could have done without. Finally, some were downright devastating, but I still consider myself fortunate and better off for having lived the lot. I will now try to do my best to describe my most memorable moments in Mali.

Firsts

This was my first time on African soil, so there were a lot of somewhat arbitrary firsts (i.e. using a trou, washing my hands with the kettle, drinking bissap juice, wearing a pagne, eating sheep liver and fish heads etc.). I decided to pare down my firsts to the ones that were most important to me.

• Celebrating Tabaski with my local colleague’s family was the first time I saw my food (a sheep) walking, prayed over, butchered and in my mouth within a matter of hours.  I appreciated the respect that my hosts paid the animal and the comfort I felt in knowing with certainty that he had just met his maker without suffering.
  

• The second time I went to my sanity-saving paradise of Siby, I rock climbed like a boss, despite being terrified for the first time in almost a decade.  This challenge was as much mental as it was physical, but it felt incredible and shortly after I saw my first composting toilet.
  
  

• My third time in Siby after having rock climbed the previous day, I biked a total of 34km in the blistering heat to a beautiful waterfall and freshwater pool and then got to cruise the last downhill 3km at an exhilarating break-neck speed (sorry Mom). I’ve never biked so long and so far and not to mention on such a hot, and I was amazed at how little I complained how I was not very sore the next day. Also on the bike ride I saw and heard my first cicadas. Cicadas are significant to me because I went through a bug phase as a kid and I remember wanting to travel to Africa to see and hear them.

WTF Moments

When divergent cultures collide, there’s bound to be some wires crossed, or things so strange and bewildering that they make you say WTF?! These moments can be endlessly frustrating, scary, confusing, but with a “meh, Africa” shoulder shrug and robust sense of humour, they can easily become hilarious stories to tell for years to come. A lot of these moments became banal to me and it was only after I mentally removed myself from the situation could I appreciate how strange they were. These are some of my most incredible WTF moments:

• The famous cursed panties hilarious misunderstanding.
  
  

• Today while leisurely eating breakfast in the court yard of a friend's NGO compound, a person (couldn't tell if it was a man or worman because all I could see was 2 eyes peering creepily from behind a slat in the fence) felt compelled to tell me that my pagne was pretty, but that it was an old one and then carry on being creepy.
  
  

• Seeing a baby pick up a kitten that had worms coming out of its fur and put it in his mouth while the adults around him laughed.
  

• Seeing 7 people cram into a baobab tree to pray while in a clearing that seemed to be at the end of the world.
  

• The giant, horned cow that wandered up down the street I worked on would sometimes just chill out on the meridian. The juxtaposition of a pastoral animal laying on the concrete partition of a busy street with cars and motos whizzing by would always make me stop and chuckle.

• Some families do their washing, cooking and evidently their butchering in the street instead of the court yard in their house. This means they dump all their waste water into the street which in turn forms trenches. One day, instead of having to step over a trench flowing with grey, soapy water, I had to dodge a river of blood on my way to work.
  
  

• 30 sheep tied to the top of a bus on the way to Soké and Kemeni that seemed oddly nonchalant about it.
  

Come on up, the weather is fine!

A-Ha!

Part of intercultural learning is well, learning.  These are a few of my moments where a light bulb went off.

• A month into my mandate, when my bosses’ car broke down on the side of the road, miles from nowhere, Solo, I learned that one should always travel with extra water, snacks and a jacket in Africa. Although I got cocky a couple months later and stayed in my friend’s village too late before jumping in a sotrama without enough water to survive a disaster and lo and behold, the thing broke down. Luckily, after an hour, and just before it got no-electricity-around-for-miles dark it got back up and running.
  
  

• Listen up locavores: it’s not always good knowing where your food comes from. I once accompanied my favourite maid to the market where I saw the meat what would become my lunch on a table completely covered in flies which all scattered in a flurry when the butcher began to hack the meat. He also chopped up an organ that I couldn’t identify but the look of which made my stomache turn. Finally, I saw where what I’m sure is the source of my perma-bloat, palm oil, comes from: giant metal barrels with a tap that I’ve only every seen to hold aircraft fuel.

• I couldn’t understand why the maids in my family and other’s wouldn’t respond to me when I greeted them, nor did I get why they would just stare at me seemingly mystified. I thought, they live in Bamako, surely they’ve seen toubabs before. After scaring the bejebus about of a young maid during her first week with my family simply by force of being pale, I learned that a lot of the hired help come from little far away villages where it’s quite possible that they have never seen a white person.  This can be cross-posted with devastating moments, because they’re usually just kids who have been sent to the big city by their parents to basically work as indentured labourers for slightly better off families.
  
  

• Finally figuring out what Papou’s hand gestures and grunts meant. He is wicked funny with a jovial spirit that kept the mood in the house perpetually light and I will miss him dearly for that.
  
  
  
  

Not so much a Time

On the whole, I've had an icredible time in the purest sense of the word, but there were a few moments I could have done without, such as:

• Multiple sessions of repeat visits to the trou.
  
  

• Soké and Kemeni pink eye/chest infection onslaught where a bus delay almost prevented my seeking treatment in Bamako.
  
  

• My wipeout on the soccor field where I ran. I tore up both my knees and hurt my wrist badly. I couldn’t get any reprieve either because finding ice in this country is a Sisyphean task.  It was finally 24 hours later that I got to ice my hand and get the swelling down.
  
  
  
• Thinking that "brousse" was "brusque" for a month and that "sotrama" was inexplicably "outre-mer" for 2 months, epic French fail.
  
  

Hidden Devastation

Mali is a desperately poor country, and that poverty is devastating, but it doesn't meann that life skips a beat here. Things still move and life carries on despite the hardships and as part of an adaptive strategy I became quickly vaccinated against the devestation I was seeing. Things devasted me, but I hid it and just kept going.

Nevertheless, certain sights and moments would break through the wall I put up to be able to carry on with my work without being perpetually an emotional wreck if I truly sat down and processed all that I was seeing. Some of those moments were too devastating for this blog which I've tried to keep light, but these are some of the moments that threw me off, but ultimately made for an amazing and eye-opening experience that steeled my resolve to be involved in this field of work.

• My host mom did a very good job of not trying to treat me like a walking dollar sign. More importantly, she treated me the same as most my other "family" members and did not hesitate to take the piss out of me. One day she asked me to call my taximan friend, and I did but warned her that he might be out of her price range for the kind of trip she was wanting to do. She asked for a ball park and when I gave it, she told me in a defeated tone "I can't afford that, I'm not like you." I knew in the back of my mind that there were vast disparities in wealth between the two of us, and that's the only time she ever called it to attention.
  
  
  

•  Between the "toubabu! donne-moi le 100 francs", finding out you overpaid for something after the fact and a few sketchy taximen, it's hard to not to be suspicious of being fleeced sometimes. After a swim one night, I hailed a taxi with my friend and explained that there would be 2 stops in Hippodrome, negotiated a price and off we went. After the first stop he told me he didn't understand that there would be 2 and that I needed to pay more. Not at all in the mood for this I argued with him and it got so intense a guard came out to see what was going on. I finally finished by insulting the guy and storming out of the car to walk home. I took two steps and realised that I had been fighting with an impoverished local over the equivalent of 50 cents and had ultimately devastated myself with my lousy behavior. To make matters worse, he insisted that I get back in and drove me as far as the main drag. While I understand that it's not good to train locals to depend on handouts from toubabs, I didn't need to get so upset, especially considering that the 50 cents he was trying to squeeze out of me wouldn't change his situation in any way, and that made me feel hopeless, thus devastated.
  

• A colleage recanted a conversation with her host family:
  Family: "How many brothers and sisters do you have?"
  Colleague: "I have one brother."
  Family: "Just one brother? What happens if one of you dies?"
  Colleague: "Well, babies don't really die in Canada."
  Family: Perplexed stare... "What do you mean babies don't die? Babies die here all the time!"
  
  
  
  
  In sum, it's been a wild ride of incredible moments that will stick with me and provide me with stories for years to come. There were hard moments, moments I could have done without and moments that brought a mist before my eye, but that just means that I got the exact experience that I signed up for.I'll miss this complicated, bewildering and at times, devastating place, but I'll be back again I'm sure...inshallah.
  
  Total Marriage Proposals: 20