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.)
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