Evolution

Eating in Mali is – like all other basic life functions – tremendously more difficult and infinitely more times likelier to get you sick. There is an entire ceremony to every meal; the men sit around their communal food bowl on the ground and the women sit around theirs. Starting with the oldest man, the men pass around a tin can full of water to “wash” their hands i.e. dunking them in a basin of increasingly dirtier and dirtier water. The eldest man says a prayer, and in unison all the men plunge their right hands into the food bowl which is usually full of either toh or rice. Everyone squeezes their clump of food and shoves their entire hand into their mouth up to the knuckles to ingest every last morsel. If there are any pieces of meat or vegetables in the sauce, they are usually left in the middle for it is considered rude to gobble up the solid matter – in fact, it is considered polite to grab the chunks of sheep tripe and toss them towards the other side of the food bowl and insist that their guest eats the good stuff. “A dun, a dun” No one talks, the men just stuff their faces until they can eat no more, at which point one licks their hand clean, says “Barika” (thank you) to each and every person sitting around the bowl, and walks away.

Only after the last man can eat no more, the women and children may begin this procession on their own. Often a family only owns one bowl, so the women and children essentially eat leftovers for every meal. And anything the women and children don’t eat goes to the dogs and the cats. The animals know that they are served last, so they put up a fight to not be forgotten.

It goes without saying that Malian men have everything going against them when they try dating American women.

All of this pomp and ceremony notwithstanding, eating in Mali is really animalistic. I say this not because we are eating with our hands and without conversation, but because the whole time we are surrounded by very hungry animals. Dogs have learned to wait for their human masters, but cats have no patience and so we have to put a grass basket on top of them while we eat. But the one species which no one in this country has ever figured out how to keep from the communal food bowl is the chicken... Until now.

I fucking hate chickens. They are the worst animals ever. They are not cute, they are not cuddly, and they do not ever appreciate the company of humans. Chickens cannot be tamed, they have no respect for their human masters, they are dirty, filthy animals which eat carrion and garbage and they carry all sorts of parasites like worms and giardia cysts and amoebas which they can transmit to people. The only reason why God put these obnoxious creatures on this Earth was so that humans could chop their heads off, pluck their feathers and slow roast them over a fire with a garlic-pepper glaze so that we could savor the flavor their succulent breasts and chew the dark meat on their haunches.

Having lived amongst locally-raised, organic, free-range chickens for almost a year now, I can personally attest to the value of factory farms. By letting these awful beasts enjoy their natural liberty and walk wherever they like means that they too swarm around the communal food bowl when tigadegana is served. I have to swat cocks away with my left hand while I eat with my right, and these persistent fuckers cannot take no for an answer and try to make a run for my rice and peanut butter sauce over and over again. I don’t care what miniscule emotions might be felt in these vermin’s pea-sized reptilian brains – it is within the rational interests of human beings to cut off chickens’ beaks, cut off their claws, and force-feed them cornmeal in 12” x 12” chain-link cages so they become delicious sacks of plump white meat via minimal interaction with man.

A week ago something ticked as I was trying in vain to eat my tigadegana while simultaneously swatting away ravenous chickens. I had had enough.

“Ça, c’est absolument ridicule! J’en avais assez!” I proclaimed, stormed over to a small wooden table, brought it back to the circle of men and put it under the food bowl.

Karitie apparently thought this was a pretty ingenious idea, “If you raise the food on a table, … then chickens can’t reach it! Why haven’t we thought of this before?”

And from that day on, we have always eaten from a table.

And the world will never be the same.

The Adventure Begins

Tubaniso > Bamako > Sinsina, Kulikoro Province

After disembarking from the airport in Bamako, I spent the first four days of Mali in a little bubble of Americana with authentic Malian scenery, the Peace Corps training center at Tubaniso – in Bambara the name literally means “The House of Doves.” Tubaniso is kind of like a halfway house for recovering Americaholics so that we can adjust to life in Mali. You see, before even beginning to try to overhaul the country’s water sanitation infrastructure Westerners like me have to learn to simply exist here – which is extremely difficult. To begin with, July is the height of the rainy season, which in practical terms means that on a typical day it is like 95 degrees with 97% humidity, which means that I have slightly more energy than a particularly unfriendly sloth.

Also, having never before been to Africa means that my body has never yet met the continent’s many exotic and variegated germs. This rude awakening to my poor body was like running into a brick wall, only the bricks themselves are composed of these very many exotic germs. What exactly the symptoms of my multiple ailments were I will leave to your imagination…

… But to prod your imagination along, let me explain how interesting the bathrooms are! Well, they’re not quite “bathrooms” per se, for that would imply the existence of a bath. In Mali, one goes to the “nyegen”, which is quite literally a hole in the ground. And toilet paper doesn’t really exist here; the method employed by locals is known as “bolo numan la”, or “the left hand.” And afterwards, Malians point their butt up in the air, taking a plastic teapot full of water and do a trick which after a little practice is like a makeshift bidet – you have to use your water resourcefully and do it perfectly each time, or else you’re stuck with a messy conundrum. Female Peace Corps Volunteers tell me that this is a great kegel exercise!

Like toilet paper, utensils are a rare luxury used almost exclusively by white tourists. People in Mali also eat with their hands. I don’t mean like a dainty little nibble – people just stick their right hand in the communal food bowl to grab a handful of rice, squeeze all the grease out, and then put their whole hand in their mouth and lick each one of their fingers clean. Needless to say, this is done only with one’s right hand. N.B.: If someone ever offers you food with their left hand, this is a grievous insult.

As you can see, despite all of these fancy ideas in my head about historical dialecticism and Solow growth models and the categorical imperative, I have had to forget about my utterly useless fancypants liberal arts education and relearn how to perform the basic functions of a gastrointestinal tract all over again. This ignominious process was shared by all 77 Peace Corps Trainees en masse, so one could say that each and every one of us has already bonded in a very personal way. One might even say that Peace Corps folk are so open and interested in each other’s bodily functions that squeamish civilians should not sit down at a table with two or more of us at the same time.

After teaching us to say a few rudimentary phrases of greetings and introductions, the Peace Corps sent myself and 4 other Trainees to the village of Sinsina about an hour’s drive from Bamako for some cultural assimilation shock therapy. Sinsina is a small agricultural community of roughly 4,000 people, very indicative of Mali as a whole. People spend most of their time during the rainy season farming millet – which is the staple crop, and to a lesser degree rice, beans, onions, mangoes, and peanuts. People also raise chickens, sheep, rabbits, cows and donkeys. This is truly subsistence agriculture; you eat what you farm, and if you have a poor yield due to drought or blight, then you don’t eat very much that year. Whatever you grow but don’t eat can be traded for soap, flashlight batteries, cell phone credit and individually-sold cigarettes, but other than that trade is for the most part very rudimentary. Keeping in mind that GDP only measures final goods and services, Mali’s GDP per capita is roughly $1,500 – which ranks it as the third-poorest country in the world.

The men in Sinsina are working in the fields just about all day, and the women are always busy either fetching water, chopping firewood, cooking food or cleaning. The first people whom we got to know were of course the children; about half of the population in Mali is under the age of 15. And since mom and dad are working all day, there is no school in session and no day care, the only people with whom we really interact during the day are little kids. They are enraptured by these strange, white “Tubabu” who have descended upon their village, and are content to stand and watch me brush my teeth in the morning. They also think that my "boloshi" - armhair - is quite fascinating, and are wont to pet and tug at it until I slap them away.

The families here are large and vibrant. By that I mean that according to the Bambara interpretation of Islam, men are free to have as many wives as they wish, so long as their original wife have consented to a polygamous arrangement prior to marriage - which is always. And each woman has an average of 7 children over the course of her lifetime, though that is tempered by a staggering infant mortality rate of 106 deaths for every 1,000 live births. People prefer to have many children, because it is seen as a sign of fertility and wealth, but paradoxically the more children one raises, the more mouths that millet and rice has to feed. For instance, I live in the compound of my host father Salif Doumbia, who is married to his two wives Kadjatu and Maryam. Amongst his two wives he has five children, which is relatively few for a 40-year-old man Malian culture – but as they can eat meat on a regular basis they are also relatively well-off.

Salif has christened me with a new Bambara name: I am named Mamadou, after his father. So in the village of Sinsina no one knows me as Zachary Mason – here my name is Mamadou Doumbia #5.

I am currently trudging along with my Bambara. It is a fairly logical language to pick up; verbs are not conjugated, and there are very few words to begin with. There are also a lot of words borrowed from French and Arabic, which helps – e.g. the word for mosque is “misiri”, which literally means “from Egypt”. Though it is quite discouraging going about my day and being stopped in the street to converse with people having the vocabulary of a precocious three-year-old. One day I belted out “N be dimogo caman faga!” – I kill many flies – and the kids in my host family cheered with delight.

One day the kids showed me their rabbit hatchery and pulled one unlucky bunny by the ears to show off – I tried to explain to them that that hurt the poor animal, and that they should cradle the rabbit from the bottom so that it is more comfortable. “E be Zhunzu fe?” – do you like the rabbit? – they asked. I replied, “Owo, n be zhunzu fe kosebe” – Yes, I like the rabbit very much. So when Salif came home at noon he snapped the rabbit’s neck, slaughtered it, and we had rabbit for lunch! The moral of the story is that in Mali, if you say that you like something that is because you like to eat it, so if you are particularly fond of a cute, cuddly animal, NEVER EVER TELL ANYONE!