At home in the world

Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek, recently published 'The Post-American World.' While I have not (yet) read the book, I did read his excerpt in Newsweek titled 'The Rise of the Rest', which you can read here.

I think in the larger picture--global politics, history- the organization of the world's major players, and how those players interact, is changing.  The European Union now forms a political bloc.  China, India, and Brazil are major economic forces in the global market.  In sum, the United States as the lone superpower is ending.  We are, as Zakaria states, shifting from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism with this rise of the rest.

Which is why now, the United States, and more broadly the world, needs the Peace Corps more than ever.

The United States, as the richest and most powerful nation, has spent a long time setting global priorities and policies. And this is not difficult to see.  In Mali, I often see white people, passing in Land Rovers, stopping to hand out clothes or food supplements.

So it is especially significant when you are a 70-year-old Malian woman, and there is this new American girl that lives with you, one much like the people that pass in those Land Rovers. Except this one asks if she has bought the right soap for washing her clothes, and where to burn her garbage, and how to get to the village 1 km away.

Peace Corps is a humbling experience, to say the least--a village helps you learn a language, a culture, a way of life that is 180 degrees different from everything that you have previously known. It is only after the village has helped you that you can then help them. Unlike the bags of donated food and Land Rovers, Peace Corps isn't paternalism. Living in a village for two years, having their problems then become your problems: this is exchange; and mutual exchange and cooperation--these are the traits required if America's future is to be successful.

Peace Corps is something that shakes you to the core regarding who think you are and what you think you know. As our own Country Director commented, in Peace Corps, we have come out of Plato's allegorical cave. Now with an intimate knowledge of the previously unknown and irrelevant, it's impossible to go back to where we came from, to the former perspective of that American and First World life. Am I still an American? Yes, of course. But I cannot express the sadness I felt leaving my village--leaving people who taught me a language, how to make tea, how to properly tie a pagne. I am leaving people who want me to tell them when I have found work, when I will marry, and when I will start having kids. They want to know these things because they have now become my family and my home.

Further, I recognize that my work is not done. As I explained to my village friends why I was taking pictures of people eating and farming and their daily ho hum life that is so routine to them--there was a sudden realization of what I was doing. "Tell them" they say, "explain how it is, how it really is and how we really are. Because you have lived here with us. You understand. And you must help them understand too."

I'll post an excerpt, made in 2000 at Peace Corps 40 year anniversary, from journalist from Bill Moyer, that makes this statement beautifully:

Sometimes the soundtrack of memories deep in my mind begins to play back the Sixties, echoing the incongruities of those years. I hear the sounds of crowds cheering and cities burning; of laughing children and weeping widows; of falling barries and new beginnings...

But something survived those years, something that bullets could not stop. An idea survived, embodied in the Peace Corps.

...John Kennedy spoke to my generation about service and sharing; he called us to careers of discovery through lives open to others. There was music in this discovery. It was for us not a trumpet but a bell sounding in countless individual hearts, a clear note that said 'You matter. You signify. Make a difference.' Romantic? Perhaps. But we were not then so indifferent toward romance. We watched and cheered as each Peace Corps Volunteer waged hand-to-hand combat with cynicism, and won.

Today, 40 years later, they keep on winning.

...They come-these men and women--from a vein of American life as idealistic as the Declaration and as gritty as the Constitution. I am reminded of an interview I had with Henry Steele Commager, the renowned American Historian. Reviewing the critical chapters of our history, he said that great things were done by all the generations that preceded us. And-said Dr. Commager--there are still great things to be done...here at home and in the world.

So there are. But if from the lonely retreats of our separate values we are to create a new consensus of shared values; if we are to exorcise the lingering poison of racism, reduce the extremes of poverty and wealth, and overcome the ignorance of our world; if we are to find a sense of life's wholeness and the holiness of one another, then from this deep vein which gave rise to the Peace Corps must come our power and light.

..."The dream we must seek to realize," writes author Michael Venture, "the new human project, is not 'security,' which is impossible to achieve on planet Earth in the 21st century. It is not 'happiness,' by which we generally mean nothing but a giddy forgetfulness. It is not 'self-realization,' by which people usually mean a separate peace. There is no separate peace. Technology has married us all to each other, has made us one people on one planet. There is no such thing as going alone. Not anymore. Our project, the new human task, is to learn how to sustain, and how to enjoy this most human marriage."

America has a rendez-vous with what my late friend Joseph Campbell called 'a mighty multi-cultural future.' But we are not alone. We have guides--160, 000 Peace Corps Volunteers who have advanced the trip. They have been going where our contry is going. Out there in the world, as John F. Kennedy might say, is truly a new frontier.

***

Peace Corps has never been more relevant. The world needs Peace Corps not because developing nations need assistance in building schools, weighing babies, and teaching English classes. We need Peace Corps because we need to learn to be at home in the world.

"We who live in, and lead, the world’s poorest nations are convinced that...the rich world and multilateral institutions have a heart for the poor...

"... But they also need to have a mind for the poor."

I encourage you to read the President of Rawanda Paul Kagame's entire speech on Aid and development:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0d1218c8-3b35-11de-ba91-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Also of interest, Kagame made a public address regarding Rawanda being reopened to the Peace Corps:

http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.media.press.view&news_id=1462

and finally, an article about a year ago critisizing Peace Corps:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/opinion/09strauss.html

As I'm nearing the end of my service-- completing final reports, re-drafting my resumes, performing all of the formalities that the first world demands.  In doing this, my fellow Peace Corps volunteers and I are forced to answer the bottom line: to put it bluntly (as Americans are prone to do), what exactly did you do over there? Is Peace Corps doing any good?

I understand the question.  But it is still upsetting to hear it--it takes a moment, 3 or 4 seconds, for one to take a deep breath, to remember what I, too, was like in a culture which operates according to a very different conception of priorities.

To answer the above two questions, we as Peace Corps volunteers are forced to confront the development component of our job, that first goal which says we are here to help our Host-Country meet developmental goals.

As a health vounteer, my work revolves around health development: malaria prevention, sanitation education, reproductive education, etc. And I bump up against other developmental organizations fairly regularly: our health center distributes mosquito nets that are donated by aid, a German NGO comes through for one weekend and distributes medicine, USAID gives food supplements to malnourished children. This is, according to my sources and my own experience, the most common form of aid.

But what I do, what my work is--how can I even begin to explain? How do I answer? Let me provide you with an example of a 'typical' day in my village: yesterday I helped my friend sell rice and sauce at my village's Tuesday market.

I told my friend one day, exasperated, "Whenever I cook rice and peanut sauce, the sauce just isn't good like when a Malian woman cooks it!" She laughed, and responded, "market day, I will teach you again, and then you will know exactly how to cook sauce like a Malian woman." So I start my day by helping my friend sweep clean the hut she sells rice from, and then begin chopping onions with her eleven-year-old daughter. While cutting, we chat all the while about last night's rainstorm and the intricacies of peanut sauce (I add tomato paste to mine, is that okay? What if I can't find Okra powder?).

While the sauce is cooking, some more friends stop by: "Fatim! Why are you not at the health center? Are there vaccinations today?" I tell her no, there aren't vaccinations today, but I thought I remember her being told to come to the health center next market day. She repeats what the doctor said, and I tell her, "yes, yes, that's next market day!" I continue, "...and the other woman in your house? Her baby is 2 months old now, her child needs to start vaccinations too." Ah, yes, she has forgotten that he is already 2 months old. She leaves, wishing me a peaceful day, and also promising me that she will be at the health center the next market day.

After the sauce is cooked, I meet another friend of mine to ask if her savings group is meeting this week: last week, we treated five woman's mosquito nets together, and now the other five women want to treat their nets too.

Finally, afternoon has arrived.  I join another set of friends--four boys between the ages of 15-17- to make tea until dusk. "Man, I'm tired" I tell them, and they laugh as I tell them that my morning of making rice and sauce is what has exhausted me. Two of them will be in highschool in Bamako come October, and I tell them, half-joking but half-serious, "how will you focus on school in the city! There are so many beautiful and smart Malian women, you do know where to buy comdoms in Bamako, yes?" And they laugh, although it is nervous laughter--I know one has a 'girlfriend' in our village, something that Malian parents, who select their child's future wife, tend to frown upon.

I then come into Bamako to stare at an evaluation report--number of children completing full vaccination series, number of people employing preventative health measures. I understand the rationale, the need to measure and evaluate what is working and what isn't.

But to us? As vounteers? We laugh a little bit as we fill out our reports; it's not what you get done, but the way it gets done. Peace Corps' first goal is tough to seperate from her second and third goals--mutual cultural exchange between your Host-culture and American culture-because exchange is the way good development happens. To us, it is refreshing to hear Kagame, to anxiously watch Rawanda, mostly because we feel like he gets it--he is a leader that is not merely looking for a handout that a Western Nation, eager to prove it's 'generosity', is only too willing to give.

I would argue that aid can be done properly. For example, Doctor's Without Borders builds and renovates health centers, including the very one with which I help. But without properly trained staff, a nice and clean facility is useless. It was only after my village kicked out incompetant staff and asked me to help work with new personnel, to develop a patient file system and consultation hours, that my village has begun to make good use of the facility. Similarly, the doctor in the village 50 km north of mine was hoarding food aid destined for malnourished children. With a new doctor, and a Peace Corps volunteer, the health center has begun to distribute food to those children who are malnourished, as identified through regular weighings.

But what about those white people who drive up in Land Rovers, hand out medicine, and then leave?  And the donated mosquito nets, handouts that sabotage the motivation of someone every buying a net on their own initiative? And the training sessions well attended by Malians for nothing other than the free lunch and drink?  It is all so some bureaucrat can check off a box, number of nets distributed, number of villagers trained.

The current state of aid has been called neocolonial, paternalistic, and classist. I think, quite simply, most aid is disrespectful--it treats people as data points, or these noble poor which need taking care of, and which the rich world will continue to take care of. The First World has yet to treat the Third World as equals confronting a set of borderless problems--HIV/AIDS, global warming, the energy crisis. I would argue with respect to consumption patterns, waste-reduction, and self-sufficiency, it is the First World that needs helping from the Third.

Aid needs to have a mind, not a heart; and that only happens when we give another culture or country the dignity and respect one would one's own culture. Treat people as an end in themselves, do things the right way- that is genuine development.

Some suggested titles that are critical of aid:

Dead Aid, by Dambisa Moyo

The Road to Hell, by Michael Moren (RPCV Kenya)

And finally, aid done right:

Small is Beautiful, by E.F. Schumacher Two Ears of Corn, by Roland Bunch Helping Health Workers Learn, by David Werner Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire

What do you do? Why do you do it? Yet another aspect of culture and change

I have avoided up to this point speaking about some of the more troubling aspects of my time here. But because I have been asked by a number of people, I will speak on yet another cultural subject to the best of my ability.

In response to several inquiries, yes, my village performs female circumcision. When my language improved, about 8 or 9 months into my service, I began to ask: "I've seen the ceremonies for male circumcision--what about the ceremonies for female circumcision?" And they responded honestly, "Ah, yes! We do that too! Boys around age 9 or 10, so they will become big and strong, and girls around age 4 or 5, so that they won't 'wander' from man to man." Several times after this exchange, a Malian will often ask me the same thing: "Are boys and girls circumsized in America?" I tell them that many boys are, but not all boys. And that no, women are not circumsized.

Practiced in nearly all of sub-Saharan Africa (the very south and south-west countries are excluded), female circumcision has recently gained widespread press coverage by health organizations, feminist organizations, and human rights groups. In Mali, some 90% of women are circumcised. Techniques vary from scratching the clitoris with a razor blade or blade of glass, removal of the clitoris and labia minora, to a full removal female external genitalia, including the labia majora. The least intrusive form, scarring or removing the clitoris, is the type practiced in my village and also the most common form of excision. Elderly women who are from the blacksmith caste perform the ritual.

Most villagers see nothing wrong with the ritual--after all, males are circumsized, why shouldn't females be circumsized? My villagers tell me it gives strength to men, chastity to women. I've read more technically advanced anthropological reports that claim circumcision as gender differentiation; to the Bambara ethnic group, all people are born hermaphrodites. So male circumcision is the removal of the 'female' genitalia, while female circumcision is the removal of the 'male' genitalia.

After all, Americans have their own ways of gender differentiation--women typically have long hair, men short hair. Women wear skirts and dresses, and tend to pierce their ears.  Men wear tuxedos and suits, and generally do not pierce their ears. This is what we do, these are the reasons we do it, so why is there a problem with some minor African rite of passage?

Human rights groups often cite the brutality of the practice--several women will usually hold the girl down while a third performs the ritual with an unsterilized razor blade. Sure, it is brutal, but male circucision ain't much better--a male blacksmith using a sharp edged rock while two other men hold his legs down. There are other such 'brutalities' here too--giving birth without anaesthesia, the pulling of an infected tooth, burns that women often suffer from cooking every day over a fire. These 'brutalities' are simply realities in a place where technology is far away. Is female circumcision brutal? Yes, in your eyes and mine, but it's just 'one more thing you do' here.

Several months ago, I opened up the topic to a friend of mine, whom I sit and chat with every night. I talk to him about his daughters, how I think he should try to keep all of his kids in school, not just his sons. Uneducated himself, he immediately agrees, responding, "all my kids will go to school. They will read! They will write!" His second wife recently gave birth to a daughter, and I asked him, gently, "will you circumsize her? Many people in Bamako are chosing not to circumsize their daughters." I felt I was in safe waters, but he then became baffled and defensive: "Of course I will circumsize her! What kind of father do you think I am? One that will all my daughter to become some prostitute?" I let the matter drop.

Typically, even when a Malian is in agreement, having the practice talked about by white people smacks of cultural supremacy--this is our culture, who are you to tell us how to live? The reaction would be similar, if not identical, to having an African or European ask an American to just stop driving cars everywhere and take public transit or walk--after all, what with global warming (which I do think is real) and dwindling oil supplies, why haven't we stopped driving our cars? Besides convenience, I think the automobile, the American method of personally getting yourself from point A to B, is something deeply embedded in our own culture.  In this case, we, too, get pretty defensive about our vices.

I have discussed circumcision with the doctor and vaccinator of my health center, and the director of our school, and they all will privately admit to the problems of female circumcision and the need for it to stop. As volunteers, we have also met with Malian health professionals in Bamako who think the practice is barbaric and should be stopped. Yet it was recommended that we not talk about female circumcision, of putting a white face on a cause that should be strictly African. While I have said little about the issue in my own village, other than discovering the practice, many African-American health volunteers, in their unique position, have started a dialogue with villagers about why they perform the ritual, while in contrast, African-Americans (and even some African countries!) do not.

Like development, genuine change must come from the people themselves. Case in point: Burkina Faso passed a law in 1996 outlawing female circumcision, driving the practice underground rather than ending it. While the current situation is frustrating, the number of young Malian professionals I see opposed to the practice makes me hopeful that there can, and will, be a change in the culture.

What do you do? Why do you do it?

Sorry folks, sorry for the break in posting! It has not been for a lack of things to say, but merely a lack of a computer as a means to say things. I offer the photo, left, from the Fouta region of Guinea, as proof of my absence

When compared to the developed world, I have rather large communication gaps--no internet, phone, or print material until the next major city. Sure, this is an occasional nuisance, but my living situation does have one up side: I was granted a village...on the paved-road(!).

Yes, in my situation, you take what you can get.

But take a 10 minute walk on the 5 foot wide dirt path to my other village. While not far in proximity, there is something distant about the village as a whole: there are no stores, no school, no mosque, no televisions, and perhaps 2 or 3 mopeds in the 300 person village. The most elderly woman in this village, never venturing to the paved road, speaks a slightly different kind of Bambara than my own neighbors.  And the village doesn't even recognize French when they hear it.

Several months into my service, my friends from this village invited me to the Animist celebration just before rainy season. I was having a pretty good time, watching one of my friends paint with mud onto white cloth for the upcoming celebration. That is until her kid presented a recently cut and bloodied toe. "Give that to me!" the child's mother shouted at no one in particular. She yanked the child's foot towards her, and rubbed some mud into his wound, then told him to go off and play.  She sat there, clearly contented, while I was not surprisingly stunned and shocked. I asked around to find out if this was normal--"well, sure, you need to stop the blood, and dirt does exactly that. After all, we are black, you are white, you use soap, and we use dirt."

Since that first encounter, I've discovered that it is not unheard of for an Animist to rub mud in an open wound, use chanting to excise a "bad spirit," perform a sacrifice for revenge, or to push upward on the roof of a child's mouth when she is very dehydrated. My Animist village also doesn't treat their water or sweep their living areas regularly. In fact, my own village reels at their poor habits:"They drink to excess, they eat dog meat. They are Bambara and therefore dirty!" This is what my predominantly Muslim and Christian village says when I asked why they did not rub dirt into open wounds.

So what is it that makes my two villages so different?



Quite simply, my village is on a major road. There are always truck drivers who stop in my village for gas or for the call to prayer, city-dwellers who come from for market, and NGO workers or tourists driving to Kayes and Dakar.  Their Land Rovers are always fogged from the air-conditioned interior. Village-locked residents chat with truck drivers, see and buy goods from outside vendors, and gawk at the white NGO workers. Twenty years ago, Protestant missionaries stopped along every village on the main road. Fifty years ago, Catholic missionaries stopped in every village on the main road. Many many years ago, Muslims came south from the Middle-East to spread Islam...again on most of the main travel routes through Mali. While most of my village is too poor to go anywhere, the paved road alone has Westernized certain tastes, attitudes, and beliefs in my village. Likewise, most messages about health and hygiene have resulted from a Coca-Cola ad or a religious missionary, not from a doctor or a vaccinator-- everything is a result of imitation (proper behaviour) and not information (proper knowledge).

The post-modernist in me hears Edward Said groaning at every action which has been broken into racially coded oppositions: black verses white, rich verses poor, science verses spirituality, clean verses dirty, good verses heathenistic.

And of course me and my thoughts are part of this Western-construction too. I have been raised since infancy to value rationality over religion, to judge the clean and well groomed as morally better than the dirty and unkept. Think of your own childhood and how you were trained to wash your hands--it was not until much much later when you learned the reasons for your behaviour.


I've had to remind myself that there's nothing inherently clean about religion, or dirty about a lack thereof. My Animist friends have constructed themselves in opposition to white people and Theists, and all those behaviours and attitudes that I also endorse. But how to explain handwashing and sanitation in terms that are not from a rich,white, Western paradigm, but rather, from terms that can be considered universal?

"Children shouldn't die," I tell them. "And in general, people shouldn't needlessly suffer. I don't care what you are or how you are living. You can roast kittens on spits and believe in any number of benevolent spirits, or even no sort of spirit if that makes sense to you. But I know that children should not die. I know that dirty water and dirty hands make my stomach hurt, that uncleansed wounds often don't heal properly. And no belief or disbelief in a God or Gods will change our own shared observations and experience."

My adult-women friends are still skeptical of soap and sanitation. True, I myself coming from a position of faith in observation and experience, another sort of religion to which they are only just beginning to understand. But the kids are unbiased, open to the strange habits of what seems impossible--me, a poor white person who eats African food, wears African clothes, and lives in an African house!
"Fatim washes her hands with soap," they shout, splashing the soapy water before eating. "She says it kills the bad spirits!"

I laugh to myself. I think that actually, their explanation isn't so far off the mark after all.

"Come back in three markets time."

I often spend a few minutes before I go to bed every night chatting to the old woman with whom I share a compound. Last night we were interrupted by the town crier--paid 500 CFA for every message he shouts, he came to the second of the four shouting areas, pounded his drum three times, and then shouted his message:

Villagers! Listen up! Last night, someone lost a cellphone at the dance party! If found please return to the chief of the village, no questions asked!

He then repeated his message the customary two times, and then shuffled off to the third of fourth shouting points while my neighbor and I resumed out conversation.

Such is how information is relayed in Mali. In my village, there are four or five televisions (hooked up to car batteries) and nearly every family has a radio. There is no cell phone reception. I can rattle off the names of all the men and women who are literate. So the best means of sending information? After radio...well, paying the town crier to deliver your desired message. Or simply word of mouth, referred to as the 'bush telegraph.' After all, there's really nothing better to do.

But what's odd is the juxtaposition between technology and poverty--the irony that a town crier must spread the message of a missing mobile phone. At night, when there is no moon, everyone walks around with flashlights and the two store-owners hook up flourescent lights to a car battery. Or for example, I'll ask my women what time they hold their Association meeting. "Afternoon," they tell me, and then pointing upward state, "when the sun is at about that point in the sky." At the public telephone, men and women will regularly give the store-owner a piece of paper with the telephone numbers they wish to call: the store-owner must dial since many villagers cannot read numerals.

It's not possible to label this First World infiltration into the Third straight away as a 'good' or a 'bad' thing; I think most of us can agree that vaccinations are a good thing, that telephones are a good thing. On the flip side, I'm regularly frustrated by the families who I see buying soft drinks (250 CFA or 0.50 USD) or cell phones (15, 000-30, 000 CFA) who also have malnourished kids--in Mali, you can feed a family of five for about 300 CFA.

These things are notable to me because I happen to find my work at this messy intersection of the technological west and the rural non-west. For example, vaccinations are performed every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning at our clinic. Vaccinations must be kept cold, therefore, the vaccinator and I commence when enough people show up.  With enough children, the vaccinator can then take out the medicine, knowing he can get everyone through before the medicine goes bad in the hot African heat. Women, frustrated and impatient, will often leave to cook lunch when we don't start soon enough. How much easier vaccinations would be if both the clinic had reliable refrigeration and families owned clocks. And of course, if people were able to read said clocks.

In a similar vein, women come to prenatal consultations at least once per trimester, twice in the third. Like in America, I write on each woman's card the date when she should return. Anything relating to a date is tricky here--there is what is called 'the white person's calendar' which is what the developed world runs by, the Bambara calendar, about a month off the white person's calendar, and then the Muslim calendar. Not that any of this matters of course, because most people don't have calendars, and if they did, women can't read them. To bypass all of this confusion, I'll write the date on her card and say "come back after three markets time." And then at the beginning of prenatal consultations, I'll look at every woman's card, and send away the women with a date that has not yet arrived. After all, being told to come back in three or four markets...I would most likely lose track too.

Development organizations are aware of these hurdles and are trying to address them. For example, clinics sell tablets to impregnate mosquito nets with repellent for up to six months. While the instructions are written in French, development organizations--including USAID- have tried to accomadate rural africa by accompanying each written step with a very explicit picture of, say, an African Woman measuring water, and then dissolving the tablet in the water. I sat down with my neighbor to help her treat her mosquito nets, and she was completely baffled by the pictures. Why? She went to Qu'ranic school for five years and her long deceased husband only read and wrote in arabic. Looking at the instructions, she continued to move from right to left (as one does when one reads Arabic), trying to make sense of the pictures, and then just became confused. The pictures are helpful, yes, but in a village where most people have never seen a book or maganize, they just can't do it.

This is the value of a Peace Corps volunteer. I often feel like I am a liason between all the development efforts of the First World--vaccinations, modern medicine, mosquito nets, etc- and the reality of the Third World. I have simply treated mosquito nets with many people personally, walking them through the instructions since they were too mystified by the shiny, glossy pamphlet. I have explained to friends in my village that I think in some instances, using traditional medicine (very popular in my village) is fine, but in certain severe illnesses, you can not waste time, and must treat yourself with more expensive modern medicine. And I myself have fallen into the flow of being in a village: time passes by where the sun is and how many markets have passed, rather than according to a numeric time or date.

The next night, the mayor's office has paid the town crier to announce vaccinations which will be 'just after breakfast', and then the theft of someone's moto. My old woman and I listen, then I blow out my lamp and we are plunged into darkness. Tomorrow, I will get up, eat breakfast, and go to the clinic, hopefully on time to set up for prenatal consultations.

After all, I don't have a clock either.




(Malian hot season is now in full swing. I finally cracked the day it got to 110 F.)

It's (not) personal!

"Hey, fat woman, move over!!"


I imagine if an American bus driver yelled this to one of his riders on a packed bus, the bus company would find itself with a lawsuit by the week's end.

In Mali, I don't think I've ever not heard this phrase yelled in a crowded bus. Or any other slew of things Americans would be shocked about--fat woman, ugly woman, old man, old woman, peul woman, crazy man. I am often referred to as the little white woman.

At first I thought of this as being tactless. Then as un-politically correct. Now I don't see what the problem is.  After all, they're just calling it like they see it, right? Who are you to take it personally?

In Mali, there is both a distance and closeness to all interactions.  Everything both is and isn't personal. For example, any reference to your size, age, attractiveness, skin color, ethnicity, intelligence, and disability is up for grabs. Anyone can say anything about these things, and a Malian has no idea why you would take offense or be hurt. I have heard mothers called their own children ugly to their faces. One day in my village, the crazy woman dropped a bucket of water, and the deaf woman started pointing and laughing. If you trip and fall, a Malian will point in laugh, then call over other people, who will also point in laugh. After all, it is funny.

But lets take another routine instance: Malians buy sodas from glass bottles, requiring a deposit upon purchase, and then the return of that deposit upon the return of that bottle. My friend, the clinic's vaccinator, didn't have the deposit on him for the bottle, but as the friend of both the store owner and vaccinator, I will vouch for him--"Trust my vaccinator-friend" I tell the store owner. "If he is friends with me, he will return the bottle." Any number of things are accomplished this way--price negotiations, a prime seat in a bus, someone helping you with lost luggage at the airport. Things do or do not get accomplished due to your level of friendship with someone.

Yet Malians have a way of taking the person out of personal. Even a favor system isn't necessarily because of personal influence. You'll do me a favor because of all the people I know. And then if you mess up, I will tell all of my friends, who will also tell all of their friends.  And then you yourself will never get anything you want done again.

What on the surface is a favor system, is really a series of actions based entirely on friend or family relationships that have gone back and back and back. So for example, why does this entire family refuse to use the clinic? Because the old doctor's first son is married to this family's third daughter. I might ask, why do you always give medicine to this family for free?" "Ah, because he's family!" And they will rattle off some obscure chain of relations, then end with the phrase, "so it's personal!"

I have learned in Mali not to take anything personally. After all, I am little, and I am white. If someone passes me in the city and greets me as white person, I'll greet them right back.  After all, here, being white is my most outstanding characteristic.

But in my village? That's another story--that's personal.

***

To fill in my lack of photos, my brief hiatus from blogging was due to a trip to Senegal, among other things.

I waved from across the Atlantic.

Need a little help? The way we get by, part 2

When I'm sick or need, say, a tetnus vaccination, I usually would call the nearest health center, schedule an appointment, and pay the necessary fees to clinic. When I need to pass an important exam--SATs, LSATs, MCATs, take your pick- I study, appear at the appropriate testing center, and receive my results a month or so later.

In Mali, for both of the above, you call up your friend who owes you a favor. If you're sick, this friend will give you the necessary tetnus vaccination, malaria injection, or IV drip. Never mind not only that he's not only not a doctor, but he didn't finish highschool. And just before or after important exams in my village, you'll find many of the female students frequenting their instructors' houses, often at night.  I don't think it's to make tea.

Last week, I wrote briefly on the micro-view of giving and receiving help. There is something I love about the fluidity of aid between Malians; most 'help' is never considered a big deal the way it is in the US. Yet this same practice which mutually helps everyone get by also has some problems on the macro level.

For certain situations in the US, I'll call a friend: such situations include bringing in my mail while I'm on leave, proof-reading an important manuscript. Yet when I'm sick, I go to a doctor, if I have financial problems, an accountant.  I might not know him or her very well, and I'll have to pay a small fee, but I take for granted that these professionals have my best interests at heart. In the US, I have a basic 'trust' in this impersonal system. And if this system runs afoul, I have faith that bad doctors will not practice for long, that an accountant who steals money will be convicted and appropriately punished.

In Mali, it's not that people don't like strangers or aren't friendly. They're very friendly, in fact. But right now your friend is going to give you an injection that will make your malaria better, and he'll let you pay him later to boot.  In contrast, at the local clinic, you'll pay a fee for the doctor, and then another fee for the medicine. Then there's the fact that the clinic's director didn't properly store the new tetnus vaccine.  And why should I pay for a vaccine anyway, since last year I got that vaccine and mosquito net for free from an NGO?

When you speak with citizens from the USSR or any of Eastern Europe, even today, there is a fear of doctors, lawyers, police--really, any professional- because such public servants were affiliated with a corrupt State, a State which didn't represent the people's interests. In Mali, there is none of this Soviet-style suspicion of public institutions. Rather, there simply were no institutions to begin with. So Madou, a few houses over, just started to set people's broken bones when there was no one else to do it. You didn't pay him, but you did help him out next rainy season by giving him a few bags of millet. And everyone was satisfied, so everyone starts getting broken bones set by him and just repaying him with food or labor. And all the way up to the present, there is still this guy named Madou who sets broken bones--he has no medical training, I don't think he's even literate.  Yet if I broke something, my village would most likely trust Madou over our clinic's new doctor.

But even now, with a set of budding institutions and infrastructure, the informal system still makes more sense to Malians. There are at least two other 'doctors' in my village who dispense medication and medical advice in exchange for repairs on their houses. This means the clinic loses money, which it needs in order to pay salaries and buy medicines. But the clinic will not let you take credit, since giving out credit was how the clinic institutionally fell apart the first time around. So between receiving no medical treatment or having a 'friend' give questionable treatment for free, which should I recommend? Likewise, school teachers are poorly paid or just not paid to start with when a village runs out of money. So a teacher might pass you on an exam since he knows you're smart. Or demand a small fee or 'favor' for passing--after all, you rarely get your own results in the mail anyway, so why study?

Malians have been operating in an environment of poverty for so long that everyone mutually helps everyone else, often with no money attached. But where is the line between 'appriate aid' and 'corruption'? Between quality hospitals, schools, police and an ineffective untrained bureaucracy? In my own village, it's impossible to point people out and say what he or she is doing is purely corrupt and selfish or purely good and altruistic.

So where to go from here? I love the attitude of Malians--that my mother here feeds me free of charge, because she knows I'll buy her bread and develop her photos when I go to the city. I love that I don't have to worry about a dog or a securtiy system because I know my entire village makes sure I'm safe and would punish anyone who harmed me. I love that there is no shame in saying 'I can't do this, come do it for me.'

But I think an improved infrastructure (trained doctors and teachers) will create more confidence in public services. Further, if people begin to make more money and overall literacy increases, Mali will start to seriously attach monetary units to goods and services. Finally, no-strings-attached aid needs to end. Currently, mosquito nets are provided free of charge and the World Food Program provides porridge powder for small children, again, free of charge. This is not only unsustainable, but villagers actually refuse to buy nets or make their own cheaper porridge since they know they can get these commodities for free. I do think mosquito nets should be subsidized and malnourished children given extra medical help and attention. But Mali must start to attach monetary value to goods and services if it ever wants to get out of poverty and dependence on foreign aid.

How to have it all-- the rural warmth and immediateness of personal help? The efficiency and standard of a well organized public institution? And finally, the unbiased oversight to regulate it all? Until that time comes, such is the way we get by in Mali.