Perspective

Nouhoume: Madu, what is it like in America?

Madu: That is a very difficult question to answer… I don’t quite know where to start…

N: Is there millet in America?

M: Not really. It is so dry here in Mali, so it makes sense for Malians to grow millet. But we have a lot more rain in America, so we can farm a lot of wheat and corn and rice instead.

N: Do you farm peanuts in America?

M: Yes, we have lots of peanuts! Particularly in the American South, there are lots of peanut farmers. In fact, peanuts are such an important staple of the American economy that there was one peanut farmer who went on to become President!



N: Do you have the Moon in America?

M: Um… well, the Moon isn’t in America per se… but we can see the Moon from America, if that’s what I assume you meant.

N: But America is so far away!



M: America is indeed far from Mali – but we can see the Moon in America too, because the Moon is just as far from America as it is from Mali. (grabs a soccer ball for reference) You see, Mali is to the East of America, and the Earth rotates counter-clockwise from the West to the East, so though we are both seeing the same Moon from both countries, in New York we can start to see the Moon about five hours after it can be seen from Mali.

N: What about the stars?



M: We can see most of the same stars in America. But America is further North than Mali, so there are some stars of the Southern sky that you can see here but we can’t in America – and there are some stars in the Northern sky that you can see in America but not in Mali.

Do you see that thing between the stars that’s a different color than all the rest? It looks red.



N: Yes. Why is that star red?

M: It's not a star at all! It's another world revolving around the Sun just like Earth! It is called Mars. After the Moon, it is the closest body to our planet.



N: What about the Sun? The Sun is so much bigger!

M: Yes, the Sun is much much much bigger than Mars, but it is also much farther. If the Sun were as close to Earth as Mars is, then the whole world would be much too hot for us to live!

N: Are there any people there?

M: No, it is much too cold on Mars for any people to live there. And though there is air there, it is not like the air here on Earth - if we were to go to Mars we would not be able to breath... But a few years back America sent some machines to Mars that can drive around and take pictures and study the rocks on the Martian surface. They are still there today.

N: Wowwwwwww...

So Madu, why are all of those stars in a big line there?



M: That, Nouhoume, is what we call "The Milky Way".

You see, there is this force called "gravity" which attracts any two objects in the whole Universe towards each other. Gravity is attracting you to this soccer ball right now, but both you and the soccer ball are so small that you don't move towards each other. But Earth is really, really, really big - and you are so much smaller, and that is why you stay on top of the Earth. Even though the Moon is big too, Earth is a lot bigger, so the Moon is attracted to the Earth. The only thing big enough and close enough to Earth to attract it is the Sun - that is why Earth revolves around the Sun once every 365 days.

Stars work the same way. Gravity pulls stars towards each other if they are big enough and close enough, and when they get really, really close stars will rotate around each other as well! Eventually, millions and millions of stars start revolving around each other and make a big spiral like this (draws a spiral galaxy in the dirt). That is what we call a "galaxy".



Our Sun - our star - is revolving around with other stars in a spiral like this. Our star is on one of the arms of the spiral, which is why we can see so many other stars. When you see all of those stars clumped together in that big, thick line called "The Milky Way", those are just more stars in the same arm of the spiral that ours is on.

Most of the stars that we can see are in our own galaxy, but there are billions and billions of other stars in their own galaxies. We can see some of them, but it is very difficult because they are so far away.



N: Wowwwwwww.....

Madu, can you see all of these things in America too?

M: Yes, America and Mali are both on Earth, you see, so like I explained most of the things in the night sky that you can see here we can see in America too - but not all of them.

N: Madu, I have another question.

M: Shoot.



N: Do you have fire in America?

M: Yes.

Chappy Chanukah from Sanadougou!

Madu Sogoba: So you see, Little Boy, thousands of years ago a very mean tyrant was trying to kill all the Jews – as usual, and all the Jews thought that we had only one day’s worth of oil to fuel our lights. But to our surprise we had a full eight days of oil! And so that is why every year we Jews celebrate the Festival of Lights which we call “Chanukah” by lighting a new candle each evening! And since we have so much oil remaining, we make little fried potato cakes! And we play games and win prizes!

Little Boy: What kind of games?

Madu Sogoba: Like Dreidel!!! So the Jews, we make these little toys which we call “dreidels”, and four people sit in a circle and we each take a small pile of peanuts. Peanuts!!! You Malians are gonna love this !!! So you spin the dreidel, and depending on which side it lands – Gimel, Shin, Nun or Hay, you win peanuts in different ways.

I roll first…. I got Shin, you I put a peanut back in the pot. Now it’s your turn!

Little Boy: … What’s this?

Madu Sogoba: Gimel!!! That means you win all of the peanuts!!! All 20 peanuts are yours!!!

Little Boy: … Are you kidding me? My dad’s granary is full of thousands and thousands of peanuts. This amounts to chump change.

Madu Sogoba: Yeah, but you won 20 peanuts!!! You won!!!

Little Boy: This game sucks.

Madu Sogoba: Um… Maybe I could go buy a bag of milk candies and play with those?

Little Boy: How bout you take some serious money, break it up into large coins like 500 franc pieces, and we gamble for some real cash like all the men do! That would be motherfucking dope!!!

Madu Sogoba: Little Boy, you know that I can’t encourage gambling…

Little Boy: Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, you self-righteous, two-timing piece of shit!!! You can't take me for your little chump!!! You just told me that you lost and I won, bitch, so cough up some serious motherfucking cash!!!

Madu Sogoba: Y’know what, Little Boy? I’m trying to share my cultural heritage and you’re trying to turn it into yet another way of skizzeling me for moolah… I’m going home to play with the only people in this village who have no interest in currency…

Snoop! Jamesy! Let’s celebrate your very first Festival of Lights! Let’s play dreidel!

Snoop: How’re we supposed to spin that thing? We don’t got no opposable thumbs, jerk…

Madu Sogoba: Well… we can light the candles to commemorate the eight days of oil we miraculously hoarded in times of yore!

James Brown II: We’re also terrified of fire!!! That shit’s just an accident waitin’ to happen!!!

Madu Sogoba: … Peanuts?

James and Snoop: We’re carnivores.

Madu Sogoba: I almost forgot, I got you both a special treat at the market!!! Dried fish, and pieces of goat bones that still have slivers of meat on them!!!

James and Snoop: Yayyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

James Brown II: Hey Madu, we’ve managed to scrounge up some presents of our own!!!

Snoop, whip out that gift you been hidin’…

Madu Sogoba: You found a gift for me? How thoughtful! What is it?

Snoop: A boner!!!

Little Red Doggy Boner: (boink!)

Madu Sogoba: Snoop, that’s… disgusting. And it’s not even special – you give me a boner every day, even when it’s not Chanukah…

Snoop: You said I give you a wut wut?

Madu Sogoba: Every day, every time I so much as call your name, you give me a boner.

Snoop: He he he he he... You said... he he he he he...

James Brown II: So Madu, do most dogs give you a gift like this?

Madu Sogoba: No, no dog but you, Snoop!!! You give me a boner all the time!!! Chanukah or no Chanukah, 365 days a year you’re the horniest horn dog in all of West Africa, and you just pop boners left and right. I say “Snoop, eat your dinner” – you get a boner. I say “Snoop, go home” – you get a boner. Especially when I roll you over and check you for ticks, you get an enormous boner. It’s really gross, so please cut it out.

James Brown II: So you’re not impressed by Snoop Dogg’s Chanukah present? You’re gonna hurt his feelings!!!

Madu Sogoba: Well then, no offense Snoop, but I don’t think I can accept your present.

Little Red Doggy Boner: So… I take it I’m not welcome… Fine, I can take a hint… (slurrrrrrrrp)

Madu Sogoba: And good riddance!

James Brown II: Don’t forget – I got you a present too!

Madu Sogoba: As long as it’s not your own genitals, let’s see what it is...

James Brown II: I got you a headless chameleon!!! There’s still some good meat left on the haunches!

Madu Sogoba: Thank you!!! That’s… just what I’ve always wanted!!! How did you know?

James Brown II: Had a hunch!!! And y’know, sometimes when ya gotta hunch ya just gotta make good on it!!! So I gotcha a headless chameleon!!! When I originally caught it, the thing had a head and all… but I was hungry and I couldn’t help myself!!!

Madu Sogoba: Nonetheless, it’s the thought that counts, and I really appreciate it. In’i che kosibe!

Snoop: You too, buddy.

Madu Sogoba: But you know what I could really use from both of you? So that everyone back home can vicariously extend their Chanukah greetings?

Snoop: No, what?

Madu Sogoba: A tummy rub!!!



Dedicated to: everyone in Ameriki. I miss you all very, very much.

May Allah grant you a Chappy Chanukah, a Merry Christmas, and a Joyous Kwanzaa.

May Allah grant you a New Year of peace, happiness, and many cows.

May you eat many beans!!!

The Revolution of Rising Expectations

November approaches. Operation Sphincter Plug trudges into its second month. It seems as though my campaign to rid Sanadougou of water-borne diarrhea is going to be a long, hard slog. The more I realize that so few people have any means of measuring the depth of their well water with the metric system, I now measure the man of the household’s forearm and tell them to measure their wet rope with the relative unit of “arm-lengths”.

The further I travel into the murky depths of the Malian fecal-oral cycle, the more I realize how incredibly primitive is the system of English units. It is a system intended for people who do not understand the concept of abstract scientific constants. The only reason why I need to teach this very limited system of measuring things in relation to one’s arm is that I am trying to teach well treatment to a largely illiterate population whose grasp of mathematics is more or less confined to counting. In a society where the decimal point is comprehended only by a select elite, this system makes sense. Though it boggles my mind that the United States of America – the most powerful, most wealthy, most technologically-advanced society in the history of human civilization which has split the atom, sent men to the Moon, and decoded the human genome – still measures things in relation to a 12th century English monarch’s foot.

The wide, deep chasm between the material conditions of technological development and the actual understanding of that technology also continues to baffle me. This most directly hits home when I spend each day maintaining the village water pumps – but people would rather drink from their murky wells. Modernism and medievalism coexist like corn and beans.

My favorite case study is that of my new all-time favorite technology: solar pumping. A few years ago a French NGO recognized that during each dry season a significant portion of Sanadougou’s respective herds of cows, donkeys, sheep, goats and pigs would die from dehydration, and that the seasonal water shortage posed an acute problem for this agricultural economy. And so they decided out of the goodness of their hearts to build a solar pump. This fascinating contraption pumps excess groundwater from the rainy season to two storage towers about 20 meters high; during dry season it gradually releases a stream of water into concrete troughs for the farm animals to drink. As the name suggests, the pump and release system is powered by its own array of solar panels programmed to track the Sun’s direct radiation.

The people of my village understand very well that during dry season when the streams and ponds dry up, they should herd their animals to the watering trough. But they apparently don’t really get what those shiny blue metal things are. I realized this when I biked over to inspect the solar pump the first time early one morning to discover that the chain-link fence surrounding the solar array was draped with some lady’s laundry – blocking the most direct of the sun’s rays. I was eventually able to find the owner of the offending laundry and tried my best to explain to her that a solar array is not a very good place to hang her clothes.

“But my dresses and blankets are wet”, she protested. “If I do not put them on the fence, they will not dry.”

It’s not as though the people of Mali are completely sheltered from the outside world. Even in my remote village, everyone gathers around the family television set which shows them images of the Western life of running water, credit cards, the Internet. Imaginations are surely whetted by these general concepts and they really want these great new things, but they have difficulty understanding that progress comes gradually; e.g. that before they can build a swimming pool they should concentrate on treating their drinking water, that before I can teach them to speak English they should focus on the alphabet. History books call this “The Revolution on of Rising Expectations.”

I have come to learn about the boundless optimism of my neighbors very well as I go door to door and ask people about how we can work together on local development. What I have in mind is to building covers on wells and digging pits next to people’s latrines as rudimentary septic tanks.

One old lady says to me, “you should build an airplane.” I thought this was hilarious… until I realized that she wasn’t laughing – she was dead serious.

“If you build an airplane, then we can sell our peanuts in France.”

Trying my best to not be impolite, I asked her who – if I indeed built this airplane - would drive it all the way to Charles de Gaulle International Airport.

“Me”, the shoeless, toothless farmer replied, “I have driven a boat many times.” To understand this statement, in Bambara the word for “airplane” is pankuru – literally “jumping boat.” Every few months the farmers hear a high whistle as they are hoeing their fields, they look up and see this metal thing flying across the horizon. In the logic of the Bambara language, but for the fact that one goes in the water and one goes in the air, a Boeing 747 cannot be fundamentally all that different from a wooden canoe. After all, there is no means of ever knowing, because I can guarantee that the shoeless, toothless farmer with maybe $100 to her name will never ever set foot upon an airplane.

I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, especially when this boundless optimism and desire for change is the manna upon which the Peace Corps feeds. But it’s a difficult sell trying to channel this dreamy liberalism into a passion for eradicating diarrhea and cleaning the streets of shit and piss.

Ini Che a Sanadougou!

Note: official directives from Washington prohibit me from revealing my true location on the Internet for terrorists and other such evildoers to see - and so I will affectionately refer to my village from here on out as "Sanadougou". All of the material here is true, though the actual names of places must be changed to protect the innocent.

The first few months of living at site are kind of like first-semester freshman year. I am not really expected to just plop down and start digging wells; first I have to spend most of my time getting a feel for my new village, putting my home together, just drinking tea and chatting with my new neighbors. And like it was that first semester, it is quite overwhelming trying to learn all of these new names. Everybody in Sanadougou’s last name is Sogoba, and apparently the Sogobas have some ancient blood rivalry against the Doumbias who previously named me, and hence I have been rechristened Madu Sogoba. In the Bambara tongue, Sogoba means “elephant”, or literally “big meat” – which I find to be quite flattering. Also, there are twenty other Madu Sogoba’s in town, so I am known as either Madu Sogaba #21, Madu Sogoba the Fat and the Hairy, or simply “The White Guy.”

Sanadougou is a village of roughly 4,000 people, which for Malian standards makes it a fairly large town. It is also the Chef de la Commune - which is the equivalent of a county seat - so the good news is that there are a lot of people who want to work with me. In addition to the traditional gerontocracy there is a formal Office of the Mayor, and significant public facilities like a health clinic, a kindergarten, an elementary and a junior high school, a public library and a bustling market on every sixth day. Sanadougou is a mostly Muslim community with four mosques, but there is also a significant Christian population which maintains a vibrant church. Everybody wants the new Peace Corps Volunteer to help out at their respective workplace.

Like most other villages in Mali, pretty much everybody here is engaged in farming in some way, shape or form. Right now is the tail-end of rainy season – the only season that people can grow the staple grains of millet, rice and corn, so my neighbors are very busy. As people are done harvesting their staple cereals, they dry them in the sun and stock their granaries for the rest of the year, and since it is nearly impossible to grow water-intensive grains the rest of the year, Malian farmers rotate their fields to cultivate vegetables and fruits which can be grown with much less rainfall. Now the markets are starting to teem with a lot of okra, yams, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, eggplant, this thing called nkoyo which is like a really bitter pepper, hot peppers, and of course a plethora of beans. Sanadougoucaw also grow bananas, plantains, yellow melons, watermelons, oranges, lemons, mangoes, papayas, guavas, pomegranates. And in terms of animals, they raise chickens, guinea hens, pigeons, rabbits, goats, sheep, cows, and pigs! After eating plain rice and millet for the previous two months, the abundance and variety of food makes me very happy about my site selection.

My village is in a very wet region near the border between Ségou and Sikasso provinces. In economic terms, that means that the townsfolk of Sanadougou have so much water during rainy season that besides growing millet and okra for their personal consumption and trade with their neighbors, they can also grow Mali’s main cash crops: cotton, peanuts and shea nuts. The end result is that some rich European or American people are buying clothes, candy bars and shampoo made from their raw materials, a little bit of those profits come back to where they belong. In addition, the market in Sanadougou (which is large enough to allow for a real division of labor) is significantly larger than that in my homestay village Sinsina (which seemed to be more reliant on subsistence farming). Though people from very small villages also come to the Chef de la Commune market town to sell their goods, that little bit of additional income which results in living right next to the big market makes a difference. For a country where per capita income hovers around $400 a year, Sanadougou is relatively prosperous (emphasis added on relatively).

It is really baffling to me how economic development works in Mali. The vast majority of kids walk around barefoot and will inevitably contract hookworm because their parents can’t afford to buy shoes. And though the public schools are free they are not obligatory, and so most people in Mali are illiterate because their parents decided it would be in the family’s financial interests for them to work in the fields instead of going to school. But it seems that everybody has a cell phone – even if they will never make a business call they can play Space Invaders. And a surprising number of people have found it within their means to purchase a television set so they can watch these awful Brazilian soap operas dubbed into French – even if they do not understand a word of the dialogue, they still love to watch their televisions. The concept of keeping up with the Joneses exists in Mali too, but unfortunately it gives disproportionate weight to expensive entertainment technology instead of basic expenses on health and education… just like in America!

The most obvious problem here in regards to water is that, asides from rainy season, there is simply not enough of it. During dry season – so-named because there is absolutely zero precipitation – many men sojourn to the large cities in Mali in search of work. Dry season through the end of the grain harvest at the end of rainy season is known as “hungry time”, because the only food to eat is whatever dried grains and vegetables are stored in the granaries. In the long run I would like to try to do some work in regards to water storage so that people might be able to have more water for their immediate drinking and washing needs, maybe even water a small kitchen garden during dry season – but this would be a very technical undertaking which would require some major financial investment.

My town could use some work in regards to water sanitation. There are no toilets in rural Mali, only a basic latrine called a nyegen which is literally a walled-off area inside each family’s concession with two holes; a deep hole in the ground where people poop, and a hole on the bottom of the wall (hopefully but not always the lowest point in the nyegen) where people should try to aim their pee. Unless a family lives on the periphery of the village, the pee-hole of their nyegen leads to the street – which means that there are many, many algae-filled puddles of sewage trickling out into the dirt roads where people and animals walk. I have a feeling that I am going to spend the bulk of my time over the next two years working to minimize the amount of raw sewage festering in the streets of my village.

A less discernible but even more profound water-related problem in Sanadougou is that of disease transmission. You cannot see it directly – if you are eating dinner with a family and they hand you a cup of water, it probably looks crystal clear. But after spending a day at the local clinic watching parent after parent in tears carrying their delirious or even comatose children, it is apparent that there are some potent disease vectors in the neighborhood. The sole doctor for this Commune of 16,000 people tells me that the most grave health issues here are diarrhea and malaria – both of which fall into my field of water sanitation because the many microbes which cause diarrhea are transmitted through untreated water and poor sanitary practices, and malaria is spread by the Anopholes mosquito which breeds in standing water. The two most deadly causes of infant mortality in Mali are also the most easily preventable, so my job is clearly set before me. If I can make even the tiniest dent in the incidence of either malady, then I will be very content.

That is all for now, but be prepared for future updates. And remember: just as this blog is fully interactive, you can help me implement the directives of Mission Number 0079 from the comforts of your air-conditioned cubicle! Though the Peace Corps is training me well and provides vast resources of technical manuals, I appreciate any suggestions you might have - and it doesn't have to be water-related, and if your idea is within my ability, then I just might do it and tell all of the loyal followers of Zacstravaganza just how wonderful of a person you are. Epidemiologists, doctors, carpenters, welders, farmers and agronomists – I am all ears!