Political Transparency

Just a short comment on some of the sentiments referred to in the previous post:

Mali is praised for being politically stable and trustworthy - generally there isn't too much graft and corruption.

I said generally. Recently, I had a blatant reminder of just how fragile that line is - my counterpart, the director of the regional tourism office - a pretty coveted and respectable position - was removed from his position this week.

Why? He supported the opposition during the recent presidential elections. Sure, they could probably explain and give another reason but it was clearly politically motivated - because he supported the other candidate, he is thus not loyal and needs to be fired. This implies that one must support the winner for if they don't, they risk being disposed of if the other party/candidate wins. If this is how politics are run - it is inherently less free and democratic because voters might not vote how they truly feel because they don't want to lose their job/contract/etc.

My counterpart grew up in Segou - taught French at a local high school and is the "Chief de Quartier" of probably the most populous neighborhood of Segou. His heart is truly invested in the development of Segou to improve the lives of all those living there. He is intelligent, organized, motivated, honest, and just has a great understanding of how all the pieces come together. While he may not have been an expert on tourism when he got the job a few years ago, he certainly knows what is going on now... except for now he doesn't have a job anymore.

So, while Mali is generally blessed with good governance - it still has a long way to go.

Millennium Development Goals

Here is article recently published in the economist... I live just a few kilometers from one of the MDC villages and Segou has recently been choosen as an MDC city (not sure exactly what that means and what it will entail yet).

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

The eight commandments
Jul 5th 2007 | DHAKA, KOLKATA AND TIMBUKTU
From The Economist print edition


Panos












In 2000 the world set itself goals to cut poverty, disease and illiteracy. It will take more than aid to meet them

RICK JOHNSTON carries his “Arsenator” with him whenever he leaves his office at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Dhaka to check on the handpumps, standpipes and ringwells of rural Bangladesh. This device, a sort of portable chemistry set, can detect whether village groundwater is laced with dangerous concentrations of arsenic. If it finds its way into a person's organs the poison can accumulate, causing black lesions and terminal cancers.

Arsenic has contaminated over 90% of the shallow tubewells in Muradnagar, a subdistrict three hours from Dhaka. Drilling deeper is not an option: the low-lying aquifer is too salty. The households in this corner of the subdistrict rely instead on a gift from the United Nations Foundation: a $4,000-filtration plant, which can strip arsenic and iron from up to 2,000 litres of water a day. A small crowd gathers to watch Mr Johnston mix water from the plant with the chemical reagent in his kit. The Arsenator will take 20 minutes to deliver its verdict.

In 1990 more than one person in four lacked access to safe water, according to the United Nations. By 2015 that scandal will be only half as large—if the world's leaders keep the grand promises they made at the UN's New York headquarters in September 2000. The pledges, which also include halving poverty and hunger, schooling the world's children, arresting disease and rescuing mothers and their infants from untimely deaths, have been translated into eight “Millennium Development Goals” (MDGs). July 7th is officially the halfway point between setting the goals and reaching the 2015 deadline.

Sadly, the UN family is better at making goals than meeting them. In 1977 in Mar del Plata, Argentina, the world urged itself to provide safe water and sanitation for all by the end of the 1980s. In 1990 the UN renewed the call, extending the deadline to the end of the century. In 1978 in what is now Almaty, Kazakhstan, governments promised “health for all” by 2000. In 1990 in Jomtien, Thailand, they called for universal primary schooling by 2000, a goal pushed back to 2015 ten years later. Kevin Watkins, the lead author of the UN's yearly Human Development Report, worries that the pledges the UN mints so readily may become a “debased currency”. In the summer of 2005, at the height of a campaign to “make poverty history”, only 3% of Britons thought the world would meet the 2015 goal of halving poverty, defined as the proportion of people who live on less than the equivalent of a dollar a day.

Such fatalism is as unwarranted as complacency. The world is making unprecedented progress against poverty. Thanks to miraculous growth in China and India, the first MDG target should be met. Almost 32% of people in the developing world lived on less than a dollar a day in 1990. In 2004 that figure was 19.2%. It should fall below 16% by 2015 (see chart 2).

But if such progress inspires optimism, the goals themselves provoke scepticism. They are meant to convert worthy aspirations into quantifiable commitments, against which governments can be judged. But only 57 out of 163 developing countries have counted the poor more than once since 1990. Ninety-two have not counted them at all.

The world has promised to halt the spread of malaria by 2015. But the disease's death toll is unknown. To monitor its fourth and fifth goals, cutting infant and maternal mortality, the UN would like to cull data from death certificates. But many places lack hospitals, let alone hospital records. The UN relies instead on surveys, which net 5,000-30,000 people in a country once every five years or so. These ask siblings whether they have lost any sisters to childbirth. But these estimates are too vague to track trends over time or to make meaningful comparisons between countries, the UN laments.

The numerical targets are also arbitrary. They are not a global totting up of what might be doable country by country. Far from it. China, for example, had more or less halved poverty from its 1990 level by the time that goal was set in 2000. Sub-Saharan Africa, by contrast, will not meet any of the goals. They remain too distant even to serve as beacons to steer by.

Although the extreme-poverty rate in Africa has fallen from an estimated 46% in 1999 to 41% in 2004, that is still way off the 2015 target of 22%. Hunger and malnutrition still gnaw at the region: the proportion of under-fives who are underweight has declined only marginally, from 33% in 1990 to 29% in 2005. Despite dramatic gains, Africa will not meet the goal of universal primary enrolment either; the rate is up from 57% in 1999 to 70% in 2005.

Africa lags behind partly because its population is growing so rapidly. In rural areas, mothers are giving birth to at least six children on average, doubling the population every generation. As a result, Africa's top-line numbers are improving more than its ratios. Millions more African children are going to school, but the denominator is also increasing. According to the UN, in 1990 there were 237m Africans under 14; today, that figure is 348m, and by 2015 it is expected to top 400m. What price the goal of universal schooling at that pace of population growth?

Start where you're ATT

Yet it is still possible to get things done, even if not at the pace that the MDGs demand. Take Mali, for instance. This landlocked country, straddling the Sahel region and the Sahara desert, should be one of the least promising countries for development on earth. It is ranked third from bottom (in 175th place) in the UN's human-development index, just shutting out its neighbour Niger and poor Sierra Leone. Yet Western governments and aid agencies, to say nothing of Libya, the Islamic Development Bank and the Chinese, are all flocking to Mali with both great expectations and lots of money.

Why has Mali generated so much hope, whereas nearby Nigeria and Guinea, for example, provoke merely exasperation? Mali has a government, led by Amadou Toumani Touré (“ATT” to Malians) that devotes most of its limited resources to what it calls the “Struggle against Poverty” rather then squandering them on the baubles of office. Mr Touré's commitment is acknowledged by Malians, who have just re-elected him for a second term. It has also been rewarded by donors. Mali is one of only five African countries to have fully qualified for America's Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), with its stringent criteria for good governance; that alone will bring in $460m over the next five years, a huge amount in a country with a government budget of only about $1.5 billion.

How will Mr Touré spend this money? Mali's government has made agriculture and infrastructure a priority. The head of its poverty-reduction programme, Sékouba Diarra, argues that rather than depending on aid, his government wants to raise growth to lift people out of poverty. With greater mechanisation and irrigation, the country's 3.5m farmers will, he hopes, become self-supporting, growing much more than the traditional crop of cotton. Donors have been persuaded to give large sums to support this; the MCA, for example, is funding a 16,000-hectare (40,000-acre) irrigation project at Alatona, which represents almost a 20% increase in the country's drought-proof cropland.

In a desert country, irrigation is probably the most important anti-poverty tool of all, and the results can be seen in the remote villages around the desert town of Timbuktu. In recent years villagers have been shown how to build irrigation canals to capture the flood-waters of the huge Niger river, which winds its way through most of the country. This week, with the rains just about to arrive, the people of one of the villages, Adina Koira, are coming to the end of a three-month communal slog to build up their 5km of irrigation canals. On the irrigated lands they have been able to grow traditional crops such as cotton and rice, as well as new ones such as tomatoes and onions. At the moment they can buy aid-subsidised fertiliser and seeds to do this.

So successful has some of this irrigation work been that the villagers have even reversed the usual patterns of immigration. People are coming back to the villages, from the capital Bamako, or from other nearby countries such as Côte d'Ivoire and Niger, to share in the new sense of endeavour, if not actual prosperity. One man, reflecting the experience of many villagers of the Sahel, says that without the irrigation schemes “none of us would be here today.”

The hope eventually is that Mali, using the waters of the Niger, will become the bread-basket of west Africa. It would also be nice to have better access to European and American markets. But for any of that to happen, Mali needs roads and transport. The country has excellent beef, for instance. But as one UN official says, “You can't have the cattle walk 2,000km to market—they become skeletons.” During the four-month rainy season, villages just 20km or 30km apart can become cut off from trading with each other. Thus donors such as the European Union and China are building roads and the Americans are re-developing the international airport.

Donors now contribute about a fifth of the government's budget. Foreigners are happy to help out because they are confident that the funds they provide will not be misused. The institutional framework for reducing poverty seems entrenched and irreversible, whatever happens to ATT. Mr Diarra is confident that even Mali will reach the goal of halving poverty in the end. Not by 2015, but perhaps by 2025.

Goal-hanging

Such incremental progress pleases, but does not satisfy, the custodians of the MDGs, such as Jeffrey Sachs, the UN's special adviser and a tireless advocate for the goals. They are reluctant to lower their sights, arguing that the goals are akin to human rights, solemn obligations that brook no compromise. By this reckoning, the developing world's needs can be counted, the cheapest fixes can be costed, and the resulting bill can be calculated. All that remains is for the rich world to pick up the tab, so that a poor country's health and education ministries can get the job done.

This MDG-think is seductive. It is a potent mix of inspiration (saving lives and educating minds is eminently doable) and accusation (why, then, is the rich world not doing it?). But this thinking is also misleading. However laudable, the goals wrongly invite people to think of development as akin to an “engineering problem”, as Lant Pritchett, now of Harvard University, and Michael Woolcock of the World Bank have argued. The task is to pour money in one end of the MDG pipeline and then count the tubewells and school enrolments emerging from the other.

Some of the duties of government can indeed be left to the technocrats. Repealing tariffs or preserving the value of the currency are tasks best handled by “ten smart people”, the two authors point out. Mr Sachs was one such person, stopping Bolivia's hyperinflation in its tracks in 1985-86, the triumph that first made his name. In Africa, such monetary mayhem is now confined to Zimbabwe. Elsewhere, inflation has fallen from an average of 17% in 2000 to 7% last year.

Other tasks, such as laying a road or delivering a measles jab, rely on the efforts of many more people. But these legionaries need not exercise much judgment or discretion, and their output (a mile of road, a shot in the arm) can be easily counted. Thus immunisation drives and road-building campaigns lend themselves to routinised programmes that can be rolled out and “scaled up”, often with the help of foreign funds. International efforts against measles have helped cut the disease's death toll in Africa from 506,000 in 1999 to 126,000 in 2005.

Most of the MDGs, however, do not play to these strengths. If a country is to educate every child and spare its infants and mothers an early death, it must enlist the efforts of thousands of teachers, nurses and midwives, all of whom must exercise care, diligence and judgment. That conscientiousness is not easy to buy or import, except in showcase communities such as Mr Sachs's Millennium Villages, of which there are several very impressive examples in Mali. For these services, the link between spending and results is notoriously weak.

Ultimate success depends not so much on field-marshals like Mr Sachs, but on footsoldiers like Rita Dana, an auxiliary nurse and midwife in the Bardhaman district of West Bengal, who patiently examines over 60 pregnant mothers in a day. They arrive from up to 3km away, complaining of abdominal pain, vomiting or swollen feet—a possible sign of dangerously high blood pressure. Some of these workers show up even when floodwater is “up to the knee”, says Mohammed Hossain, a consultant to UNICEF. But perhaps a quarter of the centres, he adds, will not be open when they should be.

The more qualified the doctor, the more likely he is to take flight. The district hospital in Matlab, Bangladesh, boasts an operating table, lamp, oxygen cylinder and anaesthetic machine, all carrying the EU's gift tag. They gleam, partly because they are unused. Several surgeons and anaesthetists have been trained, but none so far retained. “Other than holding a gun to their head, doctors do not stay here,” comments Shams Arifeen, a researcher in the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B). Doubling their pay is not the answer, because they can earn five or ten times as much in private practice. Besides, specialists want to educate their children in Dhaka, not in Bangladesh's backwaters.

One response is to turn the doctor's arts into a routine programme. Outside a hut not far from the hospital, a young woman examines a child suffering from pneumonia and diarrhoea, with blood in his stool. Her diagnosis is guided by a flow-chart that leaves little room for discretion. She is one of about 4,500 villagers who have been given 11 days' training under a scheme called Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI). The IMCI protocols are a great leveller: Bangladeshi social workers can adhere to them as faithfully as qualified Brazilian physicians, and reach similar medical conclusions.

Doctors and paramedics pose one set of problems, patients and clients another. The IMCI workers cannot count on everybody taking the advice they offer, for example. Farida Yesmin advises a young mother, expecting her fourth child, of the need to rest and avoid lifting heavy pots of water. The mother's neighbour, sticking her nose in through the window, offers a second opinion: work never did me any harm, she insists.

The customer is not always right

Villagers think a labour of three or even four days is normal for a first-born, Ms Yesmin says; a few will also blame headaches and convulsions on evil spirits. A study published by the ICDDR,B provides an alarming catalogue of such misconceptions. Pregnant women are sometimes told to eat less than normal because an empty stomach supposedly leaves room for the baby to grow. By tradition, midwives might kick the mother's waist or break snails over her head to speed up the delivery.

Superstition is not the only source of competition. Well-stocked quacks in the private sector are adept at giving people what they want—drugs, principally—if not always what they need. One government paramedic, his desk standing in the rainwater that leaks through the roof, confesses that he sometimes prescribes vitamin pills for the sake of it, because his patients do not expect to leave his clinic empty-handed.

Efforts to tackle the plight of the poor do not always win their favour. The needy make their own judgments about outside schemes to improve their lot. In 1980, for example, the UN proclaimed that the next ten years would be the “sanitation decade”. In India the government set about improving sanitation in villages where people still defecated by rivers and under trees. The need was glaring: contaminated water was responsible for countless deaths from diarrhoea. The solution seemed obvious: a toilet with a brick cubicle, squatting slab and two pits. The government set its budget and began building.

Unfortunately, the villagers themselves had not signed up to the UN's proclamations. They preferred to defecate a prudent distance from the place where they ate and slept. Besides, a walk helped to clear the bowels. So the government's construction programme failed abjectly as a sanitation programme. As the only pukka concrete structure in many homes, the toilets were often used for storing grain, keeping hens or even displaying deities, says Chandi Dey of the Ramakrishna Mission, a charity based in Kolkata.

In the late 1980s, his mission and UNICEF realised they could not tackle the sanitation need until they first drummed up demand. Songs, slogans and slideshows spread the message. Public meetings pressed it home. Mr Dey describes how they would put a drop of faecal matter into a glass of water. When people refused to drink from it, the mission would point out that they imbibed such water every day from ponds and rivers where some people defecated, even as others bathed their bodies and rinsed their mouths.

Non-governmental organisations, accustomed to the role of good Samaritans, had to learn the art of marketing. They offered people a commission for persuading their neighbours to buy a toilet. One paid 13 visits to a potential client before closing the deal. Proceeds from the sales helped meet the running costs of “rural sanitary marts”, which employed poor people as toilet-masons making a range of affordable models (mosaic or ceramic bowls; bamboo or brick walls; single pits or twin pits). Now, says one mission-member, “It is not a programme, it is a movement.”

The government soon latched on to this campaign, adding a small subsidy in 1993-94 and a presidential prize in 2003 for villages and districts that can show they are nirmal or unsullied. In West Bengal, where it began, more than two-thirds of rural households now have access to a toilet. But some districts still lag. M.N. Roy, a top civil servant, puts this down to the “low equilibrium” of poor expectations and apathetic politicians.

Parish-pump politics

The trick is to sharpen the elbows and strengthen the hands of poor people so that they demand what they need and get what they demand. For example, a recent report on the MDGs by the World Bank's Bangladesh office lavishes praise on the efforts of Gonoshasthaya Kendra (GK), a health charity, which began life as a battlefield clinic, treating the casualties of Bangladesh's war of independence. Born in battle, the group still sees a place for “creative tension” between the poor and the people who are supposed to serve them. Whenever someone dies in a village, it holds a public post-mortem. The aim is not to blame or indict per se—bare-knuckled confrontation would alienate the government—but to remind public servants that someone is watching them, and that the negligent will be named and shamed.

Promises, promises
EPA
But is this brand of feisty local politics something donors can cultivate? Aid proposals are now replete with mentions of the word “community”. Sceptics argue that donors will conjure up “communities” to fit their projects and their timetables, even if no such organic political unit exists. They also worry that ceding control to the grassroots may simply put aid in the hands of the local mafia.

Perhaps all donors can do is pray for a more productive politics to evolve, then support it when it does. Mali, for example, has gone further than any other African country in decentralising its government. In 1991 it had 18 local communes, now it has 702. In many communes the people now actually pay local taxes and can see the tangible results of the money that they hand over in a school or a health centre. Alexander Newton, the head of USAID in Mali, which helps train the new layer of local administrators in 155 of the communes, argues that “local management of money tends to be much better.”

Likewise, in Bangladesh, households are often asked to pay something towards the filters that strip their water of arsenic. These charges are not mean-spirited. They aim instead to turn victims into proprietors. A financial contribution is proof of a household's commitment to a scheme, which helps to ensure a filter's upkeep. Halima paid 300 takas ($4.30) for her filter. Now she wouldn't part with it for 5,000.

Across the border in West Bengal, villages are going a step further. For each well or pump, they are convening a water committee. The committees collect dues to pay for regular water-quality tests by laboratories set up in the sanitary marts. Elsewhere, such committees have not always lasted; everyone would rather someone else paid to maintain their well. But without them, villages will remain forever dependent on outside professionals from the government, UNICEF and the like.

After 20 minutes, Mr Johnston's arsenic reading is ready. The test paper has turned an ominous shade of ochre, suggesting arsenic up to four times the allowable limit. He is phlegmatic. The filter's granules have probably reached the end of their natural life. Once informed, the company can fix it within days, and it takes years of exposure at these concentrations to suffer much harm. But as schoolchildren busily fill their kolshi pitchers with contaminated water, the easy promises of seven years ago feel a long way from fulfilment.

360 view from the top of my house and local rain storm

Here is a view from the roof of my house. I took this video back in November after I first moved in with the hope to put it up here. Only I didn't figure out how to upload videos until just now, so here it is.

Here is another video I recently took from the door of my house of a passing rain storm.

East through Togo and Benin before heading north for home

The Final edition on my trip south - taking me through five countries: Mali, Burkina-Faso, Ghana, Togo, and Benin.

After a leisurely start from Accra, we made our way to a bus station and were on our way east. The plan was to take the few hour trip into Togo and spend a few nights on purportedly not-so-special beaches. By the time we arrived in Lome, the capital of Togo, we decided to continue on the barely two hours across the entire country to Benin. We hadn’t heard many good things about the coast of Togo and much better about that of Benin so off we were to Grand Popo.

Considering the fact that we didn’t leave Accra, Ghana until a little after noon it is quite remarkable and telling of how small these countries are – we were in Grand Popo (just east of Benin’s eastern boarder) by 7pm. We arrived on what would be Memorial Day weekend back in the US and was brotherhood/friendship (approximate translation) weekend in Grand Popo. Perfect, we picked a festival weekend – a mixed blessing – lots of people crowding the place yes also great since there was something interesting going on. Overall a good thing. We dropped off our bags at a posh hotel (by Beninese standards) where all the rooms were full (a situation that applied to virtually all lodgings in town) – we were going to pay $5 a night for the two of us to camp on the beach.

We hitched a ride into town with another guest heading to the festival where we could hopefully satisfy our appetite… we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. We were treated to a Beninese specialty: pot. No not that kind – something that can best be described as a white, gelatinous, mound of mashed up corn grain and a unknown green sauce in which to dip it. We were hungry – it could have been tasteless giggly something or other and we would have eaten it… oh wait, is was.

Peace Corps Benin had just finished a training session in Grand Popo the day before we arrived and a few volunteers had stuck around to enjoy the festival – we had some locals to show us around. It is always interesting meeting volunteers from other countries and talking to them about the differences between where you’re serving and where they are. We were a bit tired from traveling so said farewell to our friends before walking the few kilometers back to our tent on the beach.

The next day we slept late (about 9am) and walked down to hangout on the beach. This was our first glimpse of our surroundings – there was a long gradually rising beach before dropping suddenly to some huge churning waves – not the most swimmer friendly beach. Within an hour a huge rain storm came in. Owing to our relative fascination with rainstorms (remember we don’t get them up in Mali), we decided to stay run to a hut on the beach to watch the storm.

Inside the hut was a group of Beninese taking refuge from the storm (in contrast to our intentionally going out in a ranging thunderstorm). After chatting for a few minutes, they asked if we played volleyball. If you remember (or read) how desperate we were in Ghana to play volleyball that we used a soccer ball, you’d have known our affirmative answer. They were apparently going to play just a 100m down the beach once the storm let up and invited us to play. Only later did we find out they were meeting up with about 20 other players (not including friends coming with them) who were all professional volleyball players.

The man who initially invited us to play turned out to be ranked the No. 1 player in all of Benin. I ended up playing on a team with his sister (she played for the national women’s team), her coach (i.e. the coach of the national women’s team) and the coach of the national men’s team. These people weren’t messing around… well, sort of. It ended up being an informal round robin so to speak with the teams who won most going on to play each other. You might think they would have been pretty harsh on two white Americans that just happened to be on the beach, but they weren’t. The mood was remarkably relaxed and casual – they were just out to have fun. We ended up playing volleyball with them until almost five in the afternoon.

We spent one more day in Grand Popo hanging out with our volunteer friends before heading to the former capital, Cotonou, to extend our 72 hour visas before leaving the north next day. We were a little dismayed to find out it took a full 48 hours to process a visa and, while we were waiting for the office to re-open after lunch, were scheming some way to expedite the process. Things were looking grim until, low and behold one of volleyball friends walked by. It turns out he is in charge of issuing passports (we were at the immigration office) and was going to see what he could do to pull some strings. Five hours later we walked out passports and visas in hand – success! What a small world! In a city with .75 million people, we happen to run into someone we were playing volleyball with in a tiny town two days ago.

We woke up early the next morning to a torrential rain storm – something that doesn’t lend itself to riding a moto. It stopped just in time for us to race off to the bus station and hop a ‘Comfort Line’ bus north. The bus companies are much nicer and more organized in Benin. For one thing – they leave on time!! Knowing this, we were a little concerned cutting it so close, but we made it and before we could find a seat, the bus was moving.

We got off in largish northern town called Natitingou, checked some email for a few painfully slow minutes and jumped in another mini-bus north to Tanguieta our destination for the day. We were accommodated by a hospitable volunteer based in the town who was so kind to let us stay two nights with him. The next day we went out to some waterfalls and a little exploring in the local area. To be honest, I liked northern Benin more than the coast. It probably has something to do with me being from Colorado and being predisposed to liking mountainous regions… it was really pretty and quite refreshing to be surrounded by topography – any topography at all is more than what I have in Mali –so having real-ish mountains (probably more like hills) was quite a treat. We even climbed one of them and got some spectacular views.

After our second night, it was time to get home to Mali. We went out to the main road through Tanguieta hoping to catch a ride north. Only problem was there weren’t any ‘rides’ north. We sat on the side of the road for five hours before finally giving in and catching motos the 80km north to the Benin-Burkina border.

Normally in Mali, we aren’t allowed to ride motos since they are deemed too dangerous. It is really the same situation in Benin only they often don’t have a choice. Thus, they are given helmets and told to ‘be careful’. We picked up some helmets from Cotonou and used them while getting around in the city and to get out to the waterfalls. We never expected to need them for a long distance (80 km on some not-so-fast motos is a long distance as far as I’m concerned) to get out of Benin. We went back to the volunteer’s house to pick them up and were on our way.

As we approached the border, our drivers suddenly veered off to the right onto a dirt track through the border town. As I was trying to figure out what was going on and why we were taking this detour, I realized they were taking us around the border guards on some back road. I immediately told my driver we had to go back – we needed our passports stamped! Two minutes later we popped back onto the main road only to find ourselves surround by gendarme policemen on motos yelling at us to follow them… let me just say they were about the opposite of pleased. We tried to explain we didn’t know what was going on and plead innocence and/or ignorance. Eventually we convinced them we had intended to cross the border normally but our drivers had unexpectedly taken the short-cut.

We were free to go but our drivers were ‘staying here’ – implying a long wait and a bribe to let them go. I still don’t know what ever happened to our drivers, but two hours later when we finally left the border after eating lunch, they were still there with sad expressions on their faces. Knowing they were most likely going to have to bribe their way out of it - we gave them an extra 5,000 (~$10), on top of the 10,000 we were already paying them, to help them out - $10 to us and $10 to them is a big difference. We figured that would at least cover their gas roundtrip.

We caught the last bus to Ouagadougou, spent the night in their beautiful volunteer house and were off the next morning back to Mali. We had a trip similar to our experience back in February to Kayes – i.e. sleeping in the middle of nowhere – and had to sleep at the border until it opened. I just made it to Bamako for my meeting early the next morning and finally, my long trip was over!

I apologize for the length of this post and the tardiness of getting up – hopefully you made it this far.

Till next time!

Vote for Timbuctou for one of the "New 7 Wonders of the World"

In line with my effort to promote tourism here in Mali, please go to this website (http://www.new7wonders.com/index.php) and vote for Timbuctou to be included in the new list of Seven Wonders of the World.

Thanks so much! I'll try and get that final post up about my return trip through Benin from Ghana soon...

Important article about the dire situation in Darfur

Please read this article written by a close friend of mine about the situation in Darfur, Sudan.

Summary: This post is as distilled a version of the conflict in Darfur as I can adequately produce without trimming critical detail. Genocide, despite vows of the developed world to act, continues today. Take copious notes and bare witness.

Read the full article here.

Very belated videos from Festival sur le Niger

I'm getting the hang of this [video thing]...

Here are two videos from the Festival sur le Niger last February. The first one is an assortment of clips of some local dance groups and what not (sorry for the sideways part, I couldn't figure out how to rotate it). The second is of Habib Koite singing Abana - he was my favorite performer of the festival. From what my mum tells me, he just played at Belly Up in Aspen.





So... anyone want to come out here for 2008???

Some video from Ghana

I'm trying something new with YouTube - adding videos!

I think you'll have to be signed up for YouTube and signed in on the computer you're using to be able to watch the video.

Below is a video I took at a party in Accra, Ghana. My friends were taking me around and this was one of the stops... Not the greatest video but I'm just getting used to this and will try and upload videos more often as bandwidth allows. Let me know if you encounter any issues. Enjoy!

Accra and West...

My long journey to the coast was over and before I get to the Nut Rehab Center, I must get through the story of Accra and all my experiences leading up to this interesting twist to my trip.

My first activity upon arriving in Accra was a two day intensive seminar on exporting artisan handicrafts and textiles put on by WATH (West African Trade Hub) which in turn is funded by USAID. The entire training was very professional – since there were both English and French speakers there, they had translators and earpieces for everyone – think the UN General Assembly similar to scenes from the Interpreter.

Kathy came down with her counterpart from Segou to participate in the seminar – this makes sense since she is working directly with the Malian governmental coordination of artisans for the region of Segou. Forget about figuring out what that means – simply she tries to help artisans in Segou in any way they need it and in this case on bringing their work up to exporting standards. I won’t go into too much detail, but the seminar was pretty interesting even if most Malian artisans are not quite at the exporting level. Some of the simpler more fundamental principles covered are hopefully transferable back in Mali (since we are now back - today, Kathy is giving a brief presentation on what the seminar covered here in Segou).

Like I mentioned in my previous post, Ghanaians are very easy to talk to – I met quite a few very interesting locals and had a great time going around with them. One night, a couple of us went out dancing (if I can figure out how, there should soon be a video via YouTube of some dancing from one our stops) and were shown very generous hospitality from our hosts. Since living in Mali, I hardly ever drink – rarely with other volunteers and never with Malians (they’re Muslim) – for some reason it just doesn’t agree with me. Even so, just the simple act of going out with Ghanaians was a welcome change. Sure, I am sociable with Malians but they don’t hold ‘parties’ very often – where a lot of people gather together - hang out, dance, etc. Sitting around and drinking tea is their version of regular socializing which is not as familiar to me and harder to just sit and talk when done in another language.

On the Saturday after the seminar, one of our new friends, Andrew took us in his car (yes, like I mentioned before, some of them actually own cars down there) to Bojo Beach a little west of the capital. We spent the entire afternoon relaxing. There was a volleyball net set up and since we were unable to find a proper ball, ended up using a soccer ball – something I don’t recommend; soccer balls are quite hard for volleyball. Never-the-less, it quenched our craving for sport and was a pleasant finish to the day.

Eventually, we pried ourselves out of the capital and jumped on a bus heading west. We had herd of this beautiful beach with a reputed place to stay – The Green Turtle… all we knew is it was somewhere out that direction and assumed it was near Cape Coast, the former capital during British times and the next big city west of Accra. After about 4 hours, we got off the bus at Cape Coast only to find out we were just half way to our destination. While waiting for the next bus, we experienced our very first rain storm since last October! I miss rain and for that matter, any form of precipitation – something lacking up in Mali. The hours flew by while we were entranced by the torrential storm. Eventually, a plush new state owned bus pulled up with air-conditioning and all… something under any other circumstances would have thrilled us. Only by that point we were soaking wet outside the bus (yet still relatively warm) – this quickly changed with the addition of scarcely found air-conditioning – we were instantly freezing! You have no idea how bizarre the whole situation was to us. We were conflicted with actually feeling cold to the point of blue lips and chattering teeth and the mere novelty of being cold – a sensation long since felt in Mali. It bordered on hilarious.

Finally, we arrived at the Green Turtle late that afternoon where we promptly dropped off our bags, threw on our swimsuits and were, within seconds of arriving, swimming in the ocean. We capped off the day with a nice dinner of swordfish and rice and beans before retiring thoroughly exhausted to bed.

The entire next day was spent lying in bed with a horrendous case of food poisoning. Given our limited time schedule this was quite a tragedy to waste an entire day clutching our stomachs between races to the bathroom. We made the best of it and tried to appreciate the fact that we were on the beach.

On the way back east towards Accra, we visited some old colonial forts originally built for trading and later converted during colonial times to slave prisons. We visited the Elmina and Cape Coast forts/castles taking a tour in each. It was a humbling and somber experience. For me, it was hard to see some of the places and then to hear how they were used. I can hardly imagine what it is like for the descendants of former slaves coming to see where their ancestors passed through. I would equate it to what a Jew might feel when visiting Auschwitz and all the grief and emotion that accompanies visiting sites of so much brutality and evil. It is certainly strange to be given a tour by a Ghanaian, whose ancestors were potentially abducted during the slave trade, and then to think how strange it might be for the guide to be telling this history to the visiting white western tourist… you get the idea – but in any case, a necessary visit and an understanding of a history that should never be forgotten.

Ok, so you’re probably wondering where the Nut Rehab Center comes in. I’m getting to it… While visiting Elmina, I went to their newly established tourist information center. This was particularly interesting to me since I am currently trying to start up something resembling an information center back in Segou, Mali. After talking for a while eventually befriending the gentleman staffing the office, we asked him if he knew anywhere cheap in Cape Coast that we could spend the night. He said sure, called a friend staying at the Red Cross office there and asked if there was room – apparently they also rent out rooms (like a hostel) when they’re not busy. We shared a taxi (since he lived close to the hostel) and got off at the Cape Coast Regional Headquarters of the Red Cross. Upon further scrutiny of the sign while walking in, I noticed a slightly shorter sign welcoming us to the Red Cross “Nut Rehab Center”. Hmmm… Um… Kathy? Where are we?

We were instantly suspicious but after a little inspection, it seemed harmless enough and dropped off our bags – we just agreed to make sure to lock our doors before going to bed. Hopefully we wouldn’t need earplugs to drown out any strange noises in the middle of the night. (We never did resolve the issue of why his friend was staying there… just left that one a mystery).

The night passed peacefully and we left for Accra that afternoon after visiting the Cape Coast castle. We spent the night with an old Peace Corps volunteer from Segou – she is the one who contacted Kathy about the WATH training since she used to work with artisans while living in Segou. We were up early and off on the next leg of our journey: east through Togo and Benin before turning back north to Mali. I’ll leave you there and fill you in with the rest of my trip in the next edition.

Ghana. What a difference...

The coast!! Yay! I’m finally to the coast. After three full nights and days on a bus, I finally arrived in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Even though it would still be considered poor by most of you, Ghana is worlds apart from Mali in so many ways and oh, what a relief it was to go there!

Just as a little reality check for myself, every now and then I go back and read my post about the differences between Segou, Mali and Aspen, USA. I haven’t looked at the statistics for Ghana, but within a few hours of driving down the road there, a few things jump out at you.

For one, the people seemed to be more aware of their situation in relation to poverty and development. Sure, in Mali, I can talk to Malians about development and trying to improve their lives but only a very select few and of those only to a limited extent (forgetting for a moment about the language barrier which I’ll get to later). For the most part, they are so concerned with making ends meet – the present, rather than the future, is what is most important. Talking about or planning for more than a few years down the road is almost unheard of. The discussion is usually more focused on what season it is (dry/hot season or rainy season) and what will happen between now and the next, a year or less away. This short-term vision makes development and change quite difficult.

Somehow, Ghana amid ultra high inflation, relatively similar resources, and a colonial past has been able to move forward and actually dig itself up out of extreme poverty. This is not to say they are free and clear with nothing to worry about but they are, as I said before, worlds apart from some of their neighbors with relatively similar starting points.

Some of the little, simple things tell of the large amount of progress attained in the last few decades. For instance, while driving down the road, there are the usual vendors on the side of the street trying to sell various items like nuts, fruit, tissue, water, newspapers, juices, etc. Sounds normal right? Did you notice newspapers? Does that stand out at all? It should.

If vendors are making money selling newspapers that implies the people buying them are able to read. Remember the statistic about Mali – 81% of the population is illiterate? Just the simple fact that vendors are able to make a living selling newspapers to the passing motorists tells a lot. People can read! They can conduct real businesses, access the internet, etc.

In Mali, very few people own a motorized vehicle let it be a car, truck, motorcycle, or moto – at most they might have an old beat-up bicycle (I’m referring to the total population). Of the few who do own something (which is largely limited to cities and large towns), they own a moto and rarely more than one per family. I wouldn’t say motos are cheap, but they’re a lot less expensive than a car. If a family owns a car, it is a big deal. In small villages, usually only a few families might have motos with nobody owning a car. Even in Segou, a large regional capital, it is still a pretty big status symbol to own a car.

When I arrived in Ghana, while driving around, I noticed right away that something was different. There were no motos! Pretty much to the same extent it is rare to own a motorcycle in the US; it was about the same in Ghana. People have that much more disposable income to have the ability to own and maintain cars! (I will add that the traffic was considerably worse there as a result, reminding me of Dakar, Senegal – which now that I think about it, had relatively few motos too but not nearly as few as Ghana nor was the phenomena as widespread outside of the capital).

Lastly, Ghanaians, when they want to reach you on your cell phone, call you. They don’t send you a text message or ‘beep’ you – a practice which means you call someone, let it ring once, hang up and thereby ask the other person to pay to call you back. In Ghana, people call each other! It was great, when you needed to tell somebody something, you just called them. There was no sending incomplete, complicated and coded messages but just simple straight-forward communication. You’d be surprised what a difference it makes; things become much more efficient – this all on top of being able to speak English came as quite a welcome relief.

My French has improved significantly since arriving in Mali. Everyday I conduct my life in French (aside from the time spent with other volunteers – which is probably more frequent that it should be). My proficiency isn’t to the point I would like to achieve before leaving here, but still better that when I arrived. I’m discovering I am going to need to put in a lot more effort if I am going to attain fluency. However, being able to talk to just about anyone in English was so nice you can hardly imagine – I just wanted to remind you all that life is conducted in French and that isn’t easy. I can’t just jump into any conversation on any topic. I am limited to my vocabulary which always is less than desired. Simply being able to converse with Ghanaians freely was great.

I think about all these differences and then about how different my life would be right now if I had been placed in a country like Ghana. The different relationships I would have with locals and how much further developed they might be. How my work and potential projects would have had that many less hurdles to jump over. Then again, where I am, to a degree is what I wanted. I wanted a challenging place where I could learn French. I didn’t want life to be easy, in fact if you really look at it, I wanted life to be harder than it is. I requested a small village where there would be no running water or electricity – but then in that setting, I wouldn’t be able to practice my French and would need to learn the local language.

Everything has its different trade-offs and in the end you just have to accept and make the best of your given situation. I’m doing my best to do precisely that. Only the end will tell and even then, not really. One must simply accept the fact that every Peace Corps experience is different – from continent to continent, region to region, country to country, city to village, and so on.

I don’t know exactly what I am trying to say here, other than that every experience is different, just like everyone’s lives anywhere and everywhere are different and in many ways incomparable, so is Peace Corps service. I’m going to wrap it up here and hopefully get another entry up soon to finish the details of my trip (like how I got the privilege to stay in a nut rehab center). Till then…

Bamako, Mali overland to Accra, Ghana (and what a long road it was...)

Ok, so I'm back in Bamako, Mali now about to head to Segou this afternoon but thought I would try and at least start a little updating on my trip over the past month or so.

Let's see where to start...

On Monday the 14th of May, I hopped on a bus with Kathy headed for Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina-Faso (any of you having trouble pronouncing that city? Don't worry, I didn't have a clue myself until I got there. Really, just sound it out the way it is spelled or, as most people do, shorten it to "Waga"). We left at 8am prepped for the long journey ahead: 3 days on a bus until we arrived at Accra on the southern coast of West Africa (check out the map I have on the left side-bar for a little geography lesson - it was a long trek!). Many hours later, a 5 hour stop in Bobo after just missing the connecting bus, we finally arrived in (ok, say it with me) Ouagadougou about 4am the next day. Whew! Leg #1 complete.

We had expected to get in around 10 pm and get a chance to rest in the really nice Peace Corps rest house but with only a few hours till our next bus, we tried to catch few winks at the bus station. The preferred, nice - possibly even air-conditioned, but direct to Accra has left the day before on it's once weekly route so we were forced to find a 'no-name' company (CTI, see picture) to make our way south. If you've read my "transport" post, you'll know this was a bad idea and just asking for trouble - not to mention the fact it would be a almost 24 hour journey on the nice bus.

After all my travels around West Africa and especially after this trip, I've come to appreciate the perils and sheer danger involved with traveling by road around the region. On my entire trip, I saw at least five major accidents. Two were on this bus heading south before we even reached Ghana.

We arrived what must have been 10 minutes or so (just enough time for a large crowd to gather but not long enough for anything much else to have happened) to see a huge semi flipped over. Since we must have been the first vehicle to arrive, the driver and assistant were loaded on our bus to get a ride to the next town to get medical attention. The driver had a gash on the top of his head and the assistant had his right arm twisted around with the elbow on the wrong side of his arm. It was a pretty awful sight. To get an idea of how ignorant the people here are, everyone agreed and thought it was a good idea to pour half a bottle of some lady's perfume on the drivers head - all I can imagine is they thought the alcohol in the perfume would help, but jeez it must have hurt! We didn't get too far and just as we were arriving on the outskirts of the next town, an ambulance raced up and took them away. Hopefully they were OK.

The other accident I saw on this bus was the most disturbing. Throughout all of West Africa (besides Ghana) people get around on motos (a cross between a supped up moped or dumbed down motorcycle). Few people actually own a moto, but due to how poor most people are, if they own a motorized vehicle, it is a moto and not a car. Never-the-less, they also don't wear helmets - such a small percentage it is pretty much negligible. This adheres to the short-term view most Africans hold towards the future and how ingrained 'Inch-Allah' is in the culture - meaning 'if god wills it' or 'god willing'.

The bus slowed down (and as is typical, a lot of people on the bus stood-up or leaned into the aisle to see why) and approached a crowd of people that spilled into the road. We crawled by the edge of the crowd and from our elevated vantage point, got a glimpse of the scene as we continued down the road. There was a woman lying on her side at the edge of the road with another woman sitting by her side next to a large pool of blood. I'm pretty sure that woman was dead. We had slowed down but at the speed were going, I still only got a quick glimpse and was left with that image in my mind as we continued down the road. Tragic. Sobering. Real.

To be honest, I think we saw a few more accidents on the road south, but, as bad as it sounds, they are so frequent, I can't really recall when, where, etc. I saw an accident - I see so many. It scares you riding buses around when you frequently pass not only moto and car accidents, but pass by crumpled up buses and various other modes of transport that you frequently take. Trust me, I would rather choose other options and when I can I do, but usually I don't have a choice. That is life here, and the only way to get around is on these roads. You just hope that you don't meet the same fate.

The rest of our trip went as usual, we spent a lot of time stopping at gendarme stops and police checkpoints, stopped for a few hours to change a tire, and other various delays. Eventually, we arrived around 7 or 8am in Kumasi where we caught another bus the final 4-5 hours to the capital of Accra.

I'm going to end it here since I need to go catch my bus back to Segou. I'll try and write some more in the next few days to finish this multi part update on my Burkina/Ghana/Togo/Benin trip.

Malian music Notes from the Niger

Ok, this is the last one for now. I was browsing around the Economist and found this one too...

Malian music Notes from the Niger

Aug 18th 2005 BAMAKO AND TIMBUKTU
From The Economist print edition

The quiet influence of Lobi Traoré

MOST Saturday nights, when he is in Mali, Lobi Traoré plays the Espace Academia club in the old airport district of Bamako. The club is like a Mississippi blues joint, minus the menace. It is about the size of a garage, with painted concrete walls, a couple of flickering light bulbs, a television over a rudimentary bar (playing French soap operas and old Paris-St Germain football matches), and an audience that includes Turkish road engineers smoking fake Dunhills, and a set of Malian girls swaying gently by a cramped stage.

Mr Traoré, squat and thoughtfully glum, arrives late in the evening, just as the crickets are stilling themselves on the dust outside. He sits at this correspondent's table, under a poster of an American rapper Tupac Shakur. Sipping pineapple juice, he fixes a stare. “So, what do you think of Jackson Browne? Cool?” Mr Traoré beams. “Yes, cool.” Such are Malian inductions into its music.

Some musicologists consider the steamy malarial swamps of the Niger river in west Africa to be the real home of the blues. Nowadays, with Air France jets streaming to Paris and beyond, the musical styles cut back and forth in Bamako. Not just the local Bambara and Songhai tunes, but soul, Congolese rumba, Cuban rhythms from socialist connections, rock (though mercifully not French rock) and latterly hip hop.

Mr Traoré has something of a hip hop look himself. His cap is slightly turned to the right, and his amulet necklace, traditional in much of Mali, is etched not with star systems or Koranic verse like those of the shepherd musicians at the edge of the Sahara, but with a bling silver guitar.
When Mr Traoré finally gets up on the stage, it is crowded with his group: bass player, another guitarist who doubles on the ngoni—a four-stringed lute—a rock drummer, a traditional Malian drummer and a percussionist feverishly working the calabash. Mr Traoré sings in a flat, strangely penetrating voice, somewhere between rap and blues, alternating between Malian languages. When he plays the guitar, the entire club turns to watch.

Although Mr Traoré regularly tours Europe and was recently voted “best rock artist” by Libération, a mainstream French newspaper, and even “best world artist” by Le Monde, there has been no commercial breakthrough. Instead, his work has become a valuable raw material, a kind of musical obsidian for other artists, several of whom have remixed his songs. The same is true for other Malian stars including Habib Koite, Boubacar Traoré, Amadou and Mariam, a couple who met in Bamako's school for the blind, and a Touareg group called Tinariwen. Several members of Tinariwen, whose sensibility lies somewhere between The Clash and Jimi Hendrix in the desert, were guerrilla fighters in the Touareg insurgency in northern Mali.

Legend has it they went into battle with electric guitars on their backs. Mr Traoré is less martial. Born in a village on the banks of the Niger in 1963, a little way from Ségou, he did not belong to Mali's musician caste, who sing songs at weddings about kings of Timbuktu and are themselves feted as princes. The first guitar he saw, he says, belonged to a man being cured by Mr Traoré senior, a well-known healer. Young Lobi was captivated by the instrument, and he later drifted to Bamako to explore its possibilities. His breakthrough came in 1994 with his second album, called “Bamako”, which was produced by Ali Farka Touré, one of Mali's brightest stars.

Several more albums followed. The best is, arguably, the latest, called “The Lobi Traoré Group”, which was recorded in live sessions around Mali. Mr Traoré's strength on it, as with Malian musicianship in general, lies in the effortless mix of old ballads with modern riffs. “My music resembles the blues”, he says, “but it belongs to Mali.” He is modest, but not shy. “By the will of God, I will be famous,” he says. Hopefully so.

Festival in the Desert

I just found another article in the Economist about a festival similar to the one held where I live. I am hoping to go to this next January. While the two are quite different in their locations within Mali, they are, however, quite similar with the music performed and general atmosphere. Habib Koité played at the Festival sur le Niger in Segou too and was probably my favorite performer. In any regard, here is a short article about Festival-au-Desert.

Mali Desert discs

Jan 18th 2007 TIMBUKTU
From The Economist print edition

The political roots of one of Africa's liveliest music festivals

AS A very cold wind swept across the sand dunes in the early hours, the time had come for the last concert of this year's “Festival in the Desert”. It is held annually near Essakane, an oasis some 40 miles (65km) north-west of Timbuktu, the ancient city on the Niger river. Reaching it tests endurance, with miles of impermanent sand tracks to negotiate. The reward is a three-day feast of music that has now become so popular that this year 4,000 people turned up.

It is mainly a celebration of the musical heritage of the Touareg, a fiercely independent nomadic people who live in the area. Their concerts feature electric guitars, loud singing, drumming and swirling flutes, belted out through megaphones. Against this raw, distorted background of noise the dancing is remarkably gracious.

The festival coincides with traditional Touareg celebrations but has a political side too. Since the advent of French colonial rule more than a century ago, the Touareg and their cousins in neighbouring countries have been restricted in their movement and made to feel marginal. They first rebelled against the French in 1894 but were bloodily suppressed. Mali's independence in 1960 changed little.

Another rebellion, in the 1990s, extracted partially fulfilled promises from the Malian government that the Touareg would be better represented in the government and the army. To mark this reconciliation, thousands of weapons were incinerated in Timbuktu in 1996, in a ceremony called “the Flame of Peace”; the music festival is an offshoot of it.

Its chief organiser is Habib Koité, an indefatigable singer and guitarist from western Mali. He closed this year's festival, after local heroes Tinariwen and others from around the world had paid homage to the late mayor of nearby Nyafunké, better known as bluesman Ali Farka Touré, who died last year.

It may be in the middle of the desert, but the festival has pulled in sponsors such as the French-owned mobile-phone firm Orange. Touareg traders badger everyone in sight with endless offers of camel rides, swords and jewellery: a once-a-year chance to get some cash before returning to their harsh, nomadic existence for the rest of the year.

Junior Achievement is coming to Mali

I just came to Bamako for a training on how to be a trainer of trainers for Junior Achievement. JA is a non-profit based in Colorado Springs, CO focused on teaching kids fundamental economics so they are able to fully participate in the global economy. The curricula are focused at the specific age level of the students starting in elementary school through middle and high school. JA currently has operations in over 100 countries and is just now moving to Mali. In fact, Mali will be the very first country in West Africa and the first French speaking developing country that JA will enter. They are doing a pilot program from now through September before expanding to the full program.

Anyhow, getting to where I come in – I came down to Bamako (actually west) for this training. I was supposed to come and learn how to teach other Malians how to be JA instructors. Unfortunately, the trainer was unable to make it for a number of reasons. Only myself and another volunteer, Kathy (she is in Segou with me), had ever taught JA back home in the states and were the only ones with any real experience with the program. This left us as the obvious choice to lead and give this training that I’d come down to participate in… All of this came about the day before the session was to start giving us plenty of time to prepare!

Kathy and I whipped up a quick plan of action and did the best we could with the time and materials available. It wasn’t exactly what everyone had been planning on but, none-the-less, was a successful training.

For now, we are only going to be teaching “our community” which is normally taught to 2nd graders in the US. Of course, the booklet we have is the same used in the states and not exactly applicable to the culture and environment here in Mali, West Africa. We are making some adjustments (such as re-drawing the neighborhood map to reflect the local businesses, buildings, etc.) and working on translating the lesson plans so French speaking Malians will be able to give the course.

Now, I’m back in Bamako (the JA training was down at the Peace Corps training facility of Tubaniso) getting ready for another meeting with my fellow tourism volunteers tomorrow. We are trying to create pre-packaged trainings on various subjects such as customer service for hotels/guides/restaurants, food preparation and sanitation, English teaching, accountancy, etc. The goal is to have these trainings complete to the extent that you could pick up the training packet you’re interested in giving and have everything there to give a training. I’m working on customer service for guides/hotels/restaurants, cultural sensitivity for guides/tourists, responsible philanthropy for tourists, and energy saving practices for hotels/restaurants. Needless to say, I’ve got my hands full – especially with the limited access to resources over here in Mali (limited or no internet, no library resources, and well, that’s about it).

On Monday, I’m jumping on a bus down to Accra, Ghana for a training on importing and exporting artisan goods to places like the US and Europe. Afterwards, I’ll try and meet with a few tourist businesses before taking a little vacation on the beach. The plan is to go down through Burkina to Ghana and then back up by first heading East through Togo and then North through Benin. The entire trip should take about three weeks.

I’ll try and get photos up as soon as I get back and even an update while I’m out traveling around. Till then…

Swathes of desert but oases of progress

Here is an article recently published in the Economist on Mali. We just had an election here which seems to have gone over with only limited protests in the capital. I don't have much to say now, but just thought you might all like to read the article.

Mali and Mauritania

Swathes of desert but oases of progress

May 3rd 2007 | BAMAKO AND NOUAKCHOTT
From The Economist print edition

Two dirt-poor Saharan states are doing better

WHILE its richer and grander neighbours quarrel and cheat, modest Mali looks askance at Côte d'Ivoire (struggling to reunite a divided country) and Nigeria (making a hash of democracy again), as it makes quiet progress. As a result, on April 29th its people re-elected their president, Amadou Toumani Touré, for a second five-year stint in office. Meanwhile, Mali's almost equally poor and sandy neighbour to the west, Mauritania, has had a similar success, with its first free election since independence in 1960.

Political progress apart, their economies both have a very long way to go. Ranked third from the bottom in the UN's world human-development index, Mali is a tough place to live. Infant mortality is among the world's highest, adult literacy among the lowest. Some 12m-strong, Malians on average earn less than $400 a year. Although most farm, only a quarter of the land is productive—and is being eaten away by the Sahara desert as it creeps south. To make matters worse, Mali has been hit by drought and a plague of locusts. Its cotton industry is fading. Civil strife in Côte d'Ivoire has disrupted its main outlet to the sea.

Still, other things have been improving. Mali's election was the fourth in a row after decades of dictatorship. Mr Touré, who seized power in a coup in 1991 before handing power back to civilians a year later, avoided politics for a decade before returning to power in 2002.

Since then, known simply as ATT or more grandly as “the soldier of democracy”, Mr Touré has fostered a system of government by consensus. He belongs to no party but is supported by a coalition of 44 of them. His seven challengers all have representatives in government. “We think that when all the players are brought together we can avoid useless politicking,” he declared before the election. “Western confrontational democracy would not be a good thing in our country because it risks degenerating into regionalism, factionalism and ethnicity.”

Not everyone in Mali agrees—and the notion that adversarial politics means chaos has often been cited as justification for dictators elsewhere on the continent. Mr Touré's opponents have cried foul, complaining that soldiers were told who to vote for, ballot papers were floating around before election day and voter lists were inaccurate, with many dead still on the register. But most foreign and local observers said the poll was fair enough.

With its cotton industry withering, Mali is now Africa's third-biggest producer of gold. It also hopes, in the next five years or so, to produce oil. Mr Touré, a champion of mechanisation, wants to increase Mali's output of cereals from 3m tonnes today to 10m by 2012. Donors are rewarding Mali's quiet progress with hundreds of millions of dollars of aid. In the forefront is the United States, which sees Mali as a key ally in its war on terror in the region.

Has Mauritania set a Saharan trend?

Coups d'état are frowned on these days in Africa. But the one in Mauritania seems so far to have turned out nicely, even for those who were rudest about it at the time. Nineteen months after he ousted President Maaouya Taya, who had clung on to power for over two decades, Colonel Ely Vall graciously left office a month ago.

Most of sand-blasted Mauritania's 3m inhabitants are also dirt-poor, despite their country's abundance of iron ore, fish and, more recently, oil, though their GDP per head, at $530, is higher than Mali's. They are now looking to their new ruler, Sidi Ould Sheikh Abdellahi, to improve their lot. The election he won in March was Mauritania's first free one since independence 47 years ago. Hope has risen in a Saharan country that, like Mali, straddles Arab and black Africa.

Governments in Africa, Europe and America voiced their disapproval when Colonel Vall took power in a bloodless coup in August 2005. But he kept his promise to hold an election in which no coup leader would compete. The transition has been smooth, authoritarian rule has been softened and the polls—free and fair—took place earlier than originally planned.

The United States lambasted the military takeover. But John Negroponte, its deputy secretary of state, was on hand last month to praise both the colonel and the new president, promising to renew aid and to bump up military co-operation, not least because Mauritania—like Mali—is an ally in America's war on terror in Africa.

Mauritania's new president promises to tackle poverty and injustice. Under a calm surface, social tensions are strong. Mauritania's conservative ruling class has a poor record. Vast villas behind high walls in the capital, Nouakchott, testify to the wealth of the country's Moorish elite. Bubbling frustration in the slums, particularly among black Africans, may boil over if things do not improve. Mr Abdellahi, who hails from the long-dominant white Moorish establishment, may struggle to convince people he will break with the past.

“It was good the soldiers came and went,” says Amadou, a taxi driver sipping sweet mint tea. “They say they will change things—but we will see.” Mauritania's full diplomatic relations with Israel are popular in Washington but less so back home. Clashes between African and Arab Mauritanians in 1989 and 1990 led to tens of thousands of blacks fleeing or being deported. It is unclear whether Mr Abdellahi will let them back.

His trickiest task will be to tackle slavery, which has resisted three attempts at abolition. The last law, in 1981, banned it but failed to criminalise it. However much it is denied, an ancient system of bondage, with black slaves passed on from generation to generation, still plainly exists.

Segou, Mali versus Aspen, USA

In my continuing effort to communicate my experience here in Africa, I am going to describe some of the differences between here in Segou, Mali and where I last lived in the states – Aspen, Colorado. You would be hard pressed to find two more opposite places on earth.

I am adjusting - but being that I came from such a different environment, it hasn't always been easy. Aspen and Segou are worlds away and getting from one to the other involves flying almost to the other side of the planet.

For one, Aspen has topography. There are mountains over 14,000 feet high surrounding the nearby valleys. The sun sets hours before it would have without the mountains. In fact, the only time you really get good sunsets is during the summer when the sun sets straight down the valley. Segou, on the other-hand, is completely flat with not even the slightest undulation of terrain detectable to the eye. In essence, you see as far as the curve of the earth lets you. There is the potential for a great sunset every day... well just the potential. Half of the year, the air is so dusty that almost an hour before the sun even reaches the horizon – it has already disappeared in haze. Normally, particles in the air and a clear line of sight to the horizon would make for great sunsets. Only here, the dust is so extreme, it just blocks out the sun entirely. When they happen though, they are great – as you can see from my many pictures.

For technically being in a desert environment, Aspen has a bountiful amount of fauna compared to Segou which, really is in the desert (and yet not in the desert when comparing to other places in Mali farther north). Aspen has forests with a huge range of trees covering the mountains and hillsides. During the fall, the mountains display a beautiful palate of green, yellow, and red with all the shades in-between. Mountain wildflowers cover the hillsides. Aspen also has a wide range of wildlife. There are bears, deer, rabbits, mountain goats, mountain lions, foxes, coyotes, skunks, porcupines, raccoons, all sorts of rodent type creatures and birds such as chipmunks, squirrels, eagles, hawks, ducks, penguins, polar bears, humpback whales, leprechauns, unicorns, etc. (Ok, every one but the last five). In any case, a lot. Segou on the other hand has just a handful (pun intended)... All I can think of are lizards, rats, toads, scorpions, flies, mosquitoes, spiders, ants, termites, amoebas, schisto-carrying snails, hookworm, and a large assortment of desert birds.

Both places have a 'rainy' season – Aspen technically even has a monsoon season from late June to September. In Segou, the rainy season is similar – from June to late September. The biggest difference is that when it isn't rainy season in Segou, it does not precipitate at all, not a drop of anything that would even liberally be considered falling moisture. Thus, from October until the beginning of June, Segou gradually becomes dryer and dryer and dryer until the point that you start getting full fledged 'dust' storms when the wind blows (that, yes, block out the sun and limit your sunset viewing opportunities). The wind can get especially bad at night. So bad in fact that I've woken up, after sleeping outside, with a full layer of dust covering me from head to toe. It is so thick that you would have thought my skin has turned a reddish-brown color – either that or I hadn't taken a shower in a few months and had been rolling around in the dirt street every day. You might suggest: why don't you sleep inside? Well, it is too hot! The relentless sun turns my cement brick house into an easy bake oven so I have to sleep outside.

This dry season is accompanied by a hot season from late February to June (when it is still pretty dammed hot – just now slightly less so and with rain). I've experienced temperatures I had only read about in books or seen as breaking a century old record on the weather channel for Phoenix, Arizona... no... actually, I don't think it even gets that hot there. Highs here during the hot season can reach up to about 52 degrees Celsius – that's 125.6 degrees Fahrenheit! Luckily, this year, it hasn't gone up quite that high – so far just (yes, just) 45 C or 113 F.

The heat here was the one thing that really concerned me before coming. I felt I would be able to deal with everything else but was afraid how I might react to the heat. Well, I'll have you know, it is fucking hot! I'm dealing with it while I count down the days until the rainy season – when it supposedly starts to cool down at least a little bit. During the days, I drink five to six liters of water. At night, I take a shower right before getting in bed and when I'm done, I just go straight to bed. I'm talking straight to bed – I don't even bring my towel into the bathroom anymore. In lieu of a towel, I bring a sheet into the shower to drape over myself when I do lie down. By about an hour later I'm completely dry – including the sheet – so if, or rather when, I wake up, I go take another shower repeating the whole process again. Last night for instance, I got up and took a shower three times and still had a crappy nights sleep. This all wouldn't be too bad if I could at least take a nap during the day but it is so hot that if I do doze off from exhaustion, I wake up in a pool of sweat. To compensate, I starve myself of sleep during the days, get a few nights in a row of poor sleep – thus, by every third night or so, I am so tired I actually sleep through the night with only having to get up once to take a shower.

I will say that the human body is amazing and can adjust to just about anything. Being that I came from Aspen which exists on the other extreme of the temperature scale, I'd say I'm doing pretty well. Somehow, my body has reached a compromised equilibrium and I'm getting through the hot season – I just can't wait till it's over.

As you might have gathered, Malians have never experienced snow. Sure, they might have seen it in some kung-fu movie but even then they don't really understand what it is and how it feels. Snow is so beyond anything they have ever experienced that they can hardly comprehend the qualities of snow. One might infer that it is cold from the fact that everyone they see in the movies around snow are wearing jackets. Only, Malians wear jackets when it is 70 degrees outside – still wearing wool hats when it is in the upper 80s. So cold isn't really a good way to describe “cold” to a Malian, not at least in the sense that we would be considering. The best I've been able to do is have them picture the ground covered in ice (they never even ask the question if it is slippery since they've never been around enough ice at once to realize that if you walked on it you might slip). As you might imagine, when I tell them I used to teach snowboarding they have a difficult time understanding exactly what I'm talking about. Mali is landlocked so they also don't have a concept of ocean waves let alone surfing as a comparison. They don't have skateboarding since all the roads are dirt. There are no ice rinks to talk about sliding around on. Nor, as I said before, are there any mountains – so telling them I teach people to surf down slippery ice rinks that are tilted just doesn't work. I've shown them pictures of me standing on the top of a mountain with my snowboard but then when they see another with me holding a snowball in my hand they get all confused. They're like, “What?! How are you holding that white disc? And why are you wearing those funny things on your hands?” I've had some good cultural exchanges let me tell you. Still, I don't think I've really been able to communicate fully what it is like to live in a cold environment where it snows. Just like I couldn't really grasp what it would be like living somewhere with 125 degree heat; they can't grasp living in a place where it snows and gets to be 20 degrees below zero.

What I have described so far are just natural environmental factors. I haven't even gotten into the differences regarding wealth or lack there of. Aspen is frequently rated as the most expensive place to live in the United States putting it near the top of the most expensive small community category worldwide. Last time I remember seeing the ratings was almost ten years ago when the average price of a home was 1.5 Million dollars. Since then, prices have only gone up. There are not only many millionaires with homes in Aspen, but there are a few billionaires too. Aspen has countless restaurants where dinners could easily cost over $100-200 a person and still more where you could buy a bottle of wine for over $1,500 or more. Basically there is money everywhere.

Mali's situation is more than just slightly different. Mali ranks 175th out of 177 on the United Nation's Development Index and 102nd out of 102 on the Human Poverty Index. That means Mali is the third poorest country in the world and dead last for having the worst poverty out of developing or under-developed countries. Only two away from the bottom and last. Think about that for a moment and what that means. How many other countries out there would you consider as being “poor?” Quite a few I'm sure and before I ever came here, how many of you had even heard of Mali let alone could have found it on a map? I had heard of it and would have been able to place it in West Africa, but certainty didn't know anything about it – only after I received my assignment to come here did I realize the famed city of Timbuktu was located here.

Ok, so Mali is poor. What does that mean exactly? How is it that they are rated so low on the UN's Development Index? I took a look at the numbers from the UN DI and HPI on Wikipedia as well as a few from the CIA’s Factbook.

Mali’s GDP per capita is only $998 – less that $1,000 a year. If you do the math, that comes out to $2.73 a day. Adjusted for the wealthy, 72% of Malians earn less than $1 a day.

The average life expectancy is only 48 years old. If I was an average Malian (which I couldn't possibly be just from the fact I've gone to university), I would be over half way through my life right now. Malians have a 37.3 % chance of not surviving past the age of 40.

The infant mortality rate is 11% before they’re one year old and 24% die by the age of five – one if four. To compensate for the high death rate, Malian women on average have over 7 children – that is the second highest fertility rate in the world. This creates a slew of problems I’m not going to get into.

70% of Mali's economy is based on agriculture but 65% of the land is classified as desert or semi-desert leaving only 3.76% as arable land – less than 4% can be farmed. This confines much of the economic activity to the limited area irrigated by the Niger River. For that economy, 81% are illiterate (over 15 years old and unable to read and write) leaving them economically handicapped in the society. This is not helped with Mali’s Gross Enrollment Ratio being only 35% - this means only 35% of people who should be in school are actually in school (including primary, secondary, and tertiary).

The government is so low on resources that over 78% of the national budget comes from foreign aid and grants. This has left Mali incredibly indebted to foreign governments – Mali currently spends more money on interest payments than it does on heath and education combined.

That is just a very brief synopsis of the statistics, but any way you look at it, Mali is poor and quite a world apart from Aspen. I was going to write more but I’ve got to go. Until next time! Oh, and I just added a few things to the sidebar of my webpage so check it out!