Captain Sanogo and CNRDRE Create an Economic Catastrophe

             Amidst the sudden coup d’état and disintegration of military positions in Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu, the international media has begun to accord the West African nation of Mali its share of due attention. However, beyond the capital city of Bamako, behind the frontlines of the North, a tremendously more consequential and lethal but less photogenic drama is about to unfold in the towns and villages which constitute the majority of the Malian population. Absent a sudden turn of events, a completely unnecessary, man-made catastrophe is about to unfold, and the international community can do little but watch as it all happens in slow motion.  

            The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has given the CNRDRE mutineers a 72 hour ultimatum; either step down and abdicate all powers which they now illegitimately control, or the regional organization is about to shut Mali off from all international trade. If CNDRE does not abdicate power, the ECOWAS nations – including the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Guinea, and Niger – are going to close their borders and restrict all trade with Mali – a land-locked nation. ECOWAS will suspend Mali’s account at the regional central bank, shutting it off from cash reserves. The deadline for this ultimatum is Sunday night.

Observing what is about to happen to the Malian economy is akin to watching a car speed down a two-lane highway and a much larger vehicle is driving in the same lane straight towards it, for one brief moment you can see exactly how this head-on collision is going to occur, and there is nothing that you can do to stop it.

To understand what these sanctions are going to do to exacerbate the misery of an already impoverished nation, one must understand the Malian economy in this particular stage of development. Mali’s economy is already the third- or fourth-poorest in the world, with a per capita GDP of only $1,300. The vast majority of the population is engaged in subsistence agriculture of millet, sorghum, rice and corn. This year even the rural farming class is beset by a massive food shortage as precipitation last year’s growing season was pitiful. Malian farmers call the time of year before the millet harvest in September “hungry season” because the cereals stored in their granaries is now down to the last dregs, and many families reduce their consumption to one meal a day. This year, “hungry season” has already begun for many families in March – and the next harvest is six months away.

To boot, hundreds of thousands of Tuaregs and Songraï from the North have fled from the advancing MNLA forces, creating a crisis of refugees and internally-displaced persons where a population of displaced farmers can’t farm, and their reluctant hosts don’t have food to feed them. Already, absent any government interventions, Mali is facing one of the worst food crises in a generation. Rice is now hovering around 400 to 500 CFA a kilo (~$1), which is a lot seeing that that 500 CFA is a good full day's wage in a country where very few people are even employed in the formal sector, and each wage-earner has to support between 1 and 4 wives, each with an average of 7.4 children per woman, as well as his parents, grandparents, and extended family.

A food crisis is more complicated than a mere shortage of food. During the Great Global Food Crisis of 2009, there was millet and rice in Malian markets, it was there to purchase. However, due to a global shock caused by a devastating drought in Australia, stockpiling by Thailand, speculation on the global commodities markets, the price for rice soared around the world. In just any plain food crisis, the market in food is so shocked by a massive spike in prices that a significant swath of the population cannot afford to buy it. A spike in the price of rice has a dire affects among the population of consumers who purchase all of the food they eat – namely, the urbanites of Bamako, Ségou, Sikasso, Mopti, Gao and Timbuktu. But the 2009 Global Food Crisis was not so bad for the country folk who grew most if not all of the food they eat – in fact, it was a good year for a number of farmers who could demand more money in exchange for surplus grains.   

But this food crisis of 2012 is a monster of its own. This time, there is actually a great, endogenous shortage of millet, sorghum, corn, rice, and everything else. The people who farm cereals did not produce enough to feed themselves - let alone sell a surplus they don't have. A lot of subsistence farmers are dipping into their seed corn and slaughtering their draft animals. Many otherwise subsistence farmers are now forced to sell what little they have of economic value – cows, goats, sons, daughters – to purchase their food at market.

To fathom the impact of the impending ECOWAS sanctions on Mali, one must appreciate the absolute precariousness of the already-existing humanitarian crisis. When I call my friends in my erstwhile home, they tell me “the villagers are running out of millet, rice is too expensive to buy.” Rice is now between 400 and 500 CFA/kilo, but it is feared that that price might skyrocket to 1500 CFA/kilo. The Malian economy is already so impoverished that it is difficult to imagine how much more miserable it can become. We are about to find out.   

The Malian agricultural sector does not produce enough food to adequately feed its own population, so the food economy is significantly dependent on rice and other foodstuffs imported across the borders with the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Guinea. If the nations of the ECOWAS bloc close their borders to Mali, all Malian imports of rice, corn, and all other foodstuffs will cease (but for the inevitable black market). Mali’s food crisis will deepen even further.

The Malian economy is completely dependent on imported gasoline which is shipped from the Persian Gulf to the port of Abidjan, then trucked overland across the Ivory Coast to the Malian border. As of Saturday, March 31, the price of gasoline had already spiked from 750 to 2000 CFA per liter. Without gasoline, transport and commerce will come to a standstill beyond the local village economy, what little goods can be sold by foot, bicycle, donkey cart, and canoe. Mali’s urban population of roughly 3 million, entirely dependent upon a commercial economy, without any fields to farm, are going to suffer as Malian commerce completely and utterly collapses into a subsistence economy.

            In addition, ECOWAS is about to freeze Mali’s account at the central bank from which the Malian Ministry of the Treasury receives its currency to put into circulation. If all goes as planned, on Monday the various private banks of Mali will have no more bills and coins to distribute to account holders when they come to withdraw money. Last week, the banks were already like a scene out of It’s a Wonderful Life; people are waiting in lines 50 people deep to withdraw from their accounts, and the banks are telling patrons that they can withdraw a maximum of 500,000 CFA (~$1,000). By Monday or Tuesday, the banks will have no currency to distribute at all. Soldiers in the Malian Army, gendarmes, all civil servants and teachers will be unable to cash their paychecks.

The point of the ECOWAS sanctions on Mali is to replicate what occurred in the Ivory Coast last year when dictator Laurent Gbagbo refused to abdicate power to the elected president Alassane Ouattara, and ECOWAS froze the Ivorian account. Without the power of the paycheck, the pro-Gbagbo forces demonstrated that their loyalty was contingent upon a paycheck, and they lost all will to fight. Some innocent people suffered, but Gbagbo fell within a few weeks.  

If ECOWAS does in fact impose crushing sanctions on Mali beginning this next Monday, one might hope that the embargo succeeds in achieving its intended goal: Sanogo & Co. step down as soon as possible. However, there remains the distinct possibility that the CNRDRE mutineers cling to power for an extended period of time, during which the Malian people are going to suffer dearly. Even after the disaster of collectivized agriculture, the droughts of the 1970s and 80s, this impoverished nation might know a period of deprivation unlike no other.

Capt. Sanogo and the CNRDRE junta apparently don’t care. In judging his reaction to recent events, is clear that in Sanogo and his junta have only contempt for the international community and brazen disregard for the Malian people whom they purportedly govern.

Make no mistake; the ECOWAS sanctions on Mali are not the result of other states' "imperialism", but the inevitable conclusion of the CNRDRE mutineers' virulent conduct towards its  economic partners. The junta showed its true colors by preventing a delegation of ECOWAS heads of state from landing their planes. Planes carrying the respective presidents and prime ministers of Ivory Coast¸ Burkina Faso, Niger, Liberia, and Benin were in en route to Bamako to meet with the CNRDRE faction to diffuse the politica crisis, when they turned around amidst reports of a security breach at the Bamako airport. The press reported that the airport runway had been taken over by a violent demonstration of junta supporters. Read between the lines; the Bamako airport is one of the few government installations which the CNRDRE mutineers tangibly control; they have prevented almost all planes from coming or going since the coup began. "These protesters... couldn't have got to the runway if the military didn't want them to," says Bruce Whitehouse, an anthropology professor at Lehigh University. In other words, instead of negotiating with ECOWAS presidents and prime ministers, Sanogo & Co. chose to orchestrate a threat on their lives in order to prevent a dialogue from even commencing.

Therefore, the Presidents of Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso and Benin did not come to Bamako to negotiate with CNDRE to step down because CNDRE effectively threatened to assassinate them if they landed at the Bamako airport These are not grown-ups we are dealing with, but children armed with AK-47s. The New York Times reports that when ECOWAS met to issue its threat of sanctions on Thursday, a senior advisor to Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara said that Capt. Sanogo’s reaction to the regional body was "basically the equivalent of telling us (fuck) you.”

            As Capt. Sanogo and his cohorts jostle with the ship of state as though it is their plaything, 14 and half million Malian civilians are going to suffer as the collateral damage of a few warlords’ lust for power and wealth. It is not out of hand to predict that tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and particularly children are going to die needless deaths in a completely man-made famine, all but proving Amartya Sen's thesis that famines don't occur in democracies. The cruelest element of this catastrophe is that it is not a matter of natural cause and happenstance, but the will of a few evil men.  

It's Time to End the Embargo on Cuba

“I think it’s time for us to end the embargo on Cuba”, Barack Obama declared as he was running for the Senate in 2004, “The Cuban embargo has failed to provide for the sort of rising standard of living, has squeezed the innocents in Cuba, and utterly failed in the effort to overthrow Castro – who has now been there since I was born. So it’s time for us to acknowledge that that particular policy has failed.”

Since Obama recognized this matter-of-fact truth, the embargo on Cuba failed to overthrow the Castro regime for an additional 8 years, thusfar failing for a grand total of 52 years and achieving the dubious distinction of being the longest-running blockade in in the history of the world. It would be fair to say that the U.S. embargo on Cuba has been the worst trade policy ever made.

So why don’t we just call a spade a spade and finally open up trade with Cuba? Now more than ever, American businesses desperately need to access new markets and increase our exports to other countries. As the Obama administration has sold free trade agreements with Panama and Colombia as part of the Recovery Agenda, it’s time to repackage trade with Cuba as a means of expanding markets for American farmers and manufacturers and creating more American jobs.

Trade sanctions are more than just a means of making a statement; they are economic policies with real world ramifications for the markets of the United States, the targeted country, and third party markets as well. Trade sanctions must be subject to the same cost-benefit analysis as any other economic policy. If Congress were to ban the export of tear gas to Bahrain, that would have a targeted effect on the abilities of the Bahraini state to repress its own people and only a minimal effect on the U.S. economy. The benefits would far outweigh the costs.

However, if you compare such a nominal targeted sanction to our comprehensive embargo on Cuba which prohibits almost all economic activity with the island nation, this policy cannot withstand the scrutiny of any rational analysis. The costs of the United States' self-abnegation from the Cuban market disproportionately outweigh the benefits – that is, if there are any benefits at all.

In the 1960s when Castro was harboring Soviet nuclear weapons and threatening to foment Communist insurrection throughout the Americas, the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations were arguably justified in restricting trade with Cuba. At a time when Pentagon hawks were advocating for a ground invasion to topple the regime and all-out war with the Soviet Union, economic blockade was a reasonable alternative to gambling with nuclear Armageddon.

But half a century later, the Cold War is over, the People’s Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam are among our most important trading partners, and the strategic value of containing Cuba is paltry-to-nonexistant. Uncle Fidel is 85, ailing, and has relinquished all official powers; his anti-American subversion now consists of writing the occasional editorial on his sporadically-updated blog. In the year 2012, Cuba is no more a threat to the national security of the United States than the left-wing Caribbean nations of Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.


On the other hand, the costs of the embargo on Cuba to the U.S. economy are enormous. Cuba is a market of 11 million consumers and a GDP of $57 billion. The island nation needs to import $9 billion worth of mostly food, refined oil, farm machinery and chemicals every year. And because of the Helms-Burton Act which codified the embargo into law, this promising market only 90 miles from the Florida coast is all but completely off-limits to American businesses, taking $9 billion in potential U.S. exports, untold billions more output from the ancillary commerce which could result, and effectively flushing them down the toilet.

It is still fair for observers of objectively-discernible reality to decry the Republic of Cuba's contemptible human rights record. The government remains a dictatorship which muzzles opposing views, jails political prisoners and the like. There is a convincing human rights-based argument that we shouldn’t sell them tanks, helicopters, rifles and bullets that could be used in the act of political repression.

But now that Communism is an anachronistic novelty, is there any reason why we shouldn’t be able to freely sell the Cuban people American-made food, clothing, medicine, and toys? Is there any reason why the U.S. should single out Cuba’s lack of multiparty elections to maintain the most restrictive trade sanctions on the books? Even in our own hemisphere, why is Cuba more deserving of embargo than, say, human rights abusing Venezuela ($55 billion in trade in 2011), Colombia ($35.7 billion), or Bolivia($1.5 billion)?

The U.S. embargo of Cuba is so severe that it severely infringes upon the rights of American citizens. Section 515.204 of the Cuban Assets Control Regulations prohibits any person subject to U.S. jurisdiction from engaging in any transaction relating to any product which is of Cuban origin. Section 515.204 doesn’t prohibit the travel per se of U.S. citizens to Cuba, but it does make it a crime for U.S. citizens to so much as pay the bill at a Havana restaurant without an elusive license from the Treasury Department. Any U.S. citizen found guilty of making such a transaction can be fined up to $250,000 and/or imprisoned for up to 10 years.

The cold winter of the unilateral U.S. embargo is beginning to thaw. In January 2011 President Obama quietly issued an executive order easing the travel ban to Cuba – allowing the Treasury and State Departments to authorize “purposeful travel” by academic, religious, and cultural groups to the island. Obama’s executive order also allows for the transfer of funds to Cuban religious and civil society groups – but pointedly refrained from allowing the unrestricted flow of remittances from Cuban-Americans to their family members on the island.

Imagine the possibilities for the U.S. economy if President Obama were to go further and act on his campaign pledge to completely do away with the draconian ban on travel, if he were to use his executive power to eliminate Section 515.204 of the Cuban Assets Control Regulations so that any American citizen could come and go as they please…

Analysts from the Cuba Policy Foundation estimate that if the federal government were to completely lift the travel ban, approximately 1 million Americans would take advantage of their newfound liberty in the first year alone. This would not only be a boon to the Cuban economy, but to the American tourist economy as well. Lifting the travel ban would create thousands of additional jobs at US airlines, cruise ships, tour operators, travel agents, hotels, restaurants, etc. The CPF estimates that in the first year the U.S. economy would grow by about $545 million in GDP and 3,797 new jobs in the first year. As business becomes more established we could be talking about the range of $2 billion in additional economic output and 12,180 new jobs in the United States alone.

Why stop there? Raúl Castro has taken significant steps to liberalize the Cuban economy by allowing private citizens to own their homes and establish small businesses. Why doesn’t the Obama administration allow U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba to meet aspiring entrepreneurs who might want to take out a micro-loan? If a Cuban guy in Holguín wants to open up a pizzeria, why should U.S. trade law prevent him from importing Cabot cheese and Hormel pepperoni?If a lady in Camagüey wants to open up a beauty parlor, is there any logical reason for the U.S. Treasury Department to prevent her from importing Revlon makeup and Pantene shampoo? As it now stands, draconian U.S. trade regulations are stifling Cuba’s transition to a market economy!

Thanks to a crack in the embargo enacted by Congress in 2000, the Treasury Department now allows a modest amount of food exports to Cuba for “humanitarian” reasons each year. Embargo notwithstanding, many Cubans are voracious consumers of American-made rice and beans, mayonnaise and hot sauce to the tune of $560 million a year. Nevertheless, these food exports are subject to extremely stifling banking regulations which prohibit direct wiring of money for transactions. Any wiring of funds must be conducted through third-party countries, and much of the transacting is relegated to cash. If Congress were to relax the Cuba-specific banking regulations to the same level as regulations on money transfers to, say, the Dominican Republic, American farmers could be making between $200 to $300 million in additional revenues.

The Cuban market imports $9 billion of refined oil, food, farm machinery and chemicals every year. It should be one of the greatest markets for U.S. goods. But U.S. goods now constitute only 6.3% of the country’s imports because the market is dominated by the Venezuelans, Chinese, and Spaniards whose governments allow essentially free trade to the country. Even the mighty Canadians are beating us in the competition to meet the Cuban market. We could add billions of dollars to the United States GDP by simply deleting a couple of antediluvian trade restrictions from the U.S. Code.

So why doesn’t Congress simply repeal the Helms-Burton Act and allow Americans to trade with Cubans? There remains the disproportionately powerful bloc of Cubans émigrés still smarting from the events of 1959. Both parties see Florida as the sine qua non of victory in the presidential and Congressional elections, so most "serious" candidates are scared of casting a vote that might let their opponents cast them as “soft on Communism.” Moreover, now that Cuba hawk Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fl.) is the Chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the prospects for reform are stalled so long as the Republicans maintain a majority in the House.

But yesterday's electoral calculations of Cuban-American/Floridian politics are now as relevant to modern needs as a VHS rental store. Nowadays, a clear majority of Cuban-Americans are in favor of ending the embargo and normalizing relations with the Cuban government. Indeed, many second- and third-generation Cuban-Americans are willing to rethink the embargo because - historical injustices aside - they realize that they would stand the most to benefit if it were curtailed. Fluent hispanophone Cuban-American youth are going to be the most valuable employees in boomtown post-embargo Miami.

The embargo on Cuba has never been an effective means of strangling the Communist regime into submission, it never will be, and it’s about time that Congress finaly adopts a trade policy with Cuba which reflects the facts. It's also about time that Congress adopts a trade policy with Cuba which reflects the needs of the United States economy. The Cuba hawks who vote to uphold the 52-year-old embargo are like the Imperial Japanese soldiers found guarding Indonesian islets well into the 1970s because they never got the memo that their war was over. We can no longer afford to continue humoring the old Cold Warriors’ delusions. It’s time to finally open trade with Cuba.

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.

It All Looks the Same on the Way Out

My loyal readers continue to complain that this blog wallows in the muck of human excrement and should devote more attention to the vibrant, joyous aspects of Malian culture. I reiterate that the Republic of Mali and the Village of Sanadougou have specifically requested my presence as a result of my expertise in water-poop management infrastructure development, and thus my thoughts linger in the bowels of the imagination these days. But in order to throw a bone to hose snobs of haut culture, I devote this post to the subject of Malian cuisine before it is digested and evacuated.

In order to understand Malian cooking, the first given which one must grasp is that the vast majority of Malian agriculture is centered on the cultivation of millet. Despite its coarse kernels and bitter taste, millet is a hardy crop which can produce dependable yields without irrigation, its cultivation requires little to no capital investment, and it provides sufficient calories in order to sustain human life. In a society in which very few can afford to purchase food in a monetary economy and variety is a luxury, the utilitarian attributes of millet cultivation make it the primary staple of the Malian diet. Since most millet farmers have many children and struggle to adequately feed them all, almost all millet is consumed in the farming communities in which it is grown and comparatively little surplus makes it to the cities – millet is the marker of subsistence agriculture.

For lunch and dinner, day in and day out from the day they are old enough to eat solid foods until the day they die, most Malians eat toh, a dish made from millet kernels pounded into powder, mixed with water and then baked into a grey gelatinous goop. Toh is rather bland on its own, so Malians dip it in a concoction of dried baobab tree leaves, peanut oil and on special occasions some little salty dried bottom-feeder fish which combined form a sticky sauce which has the consistency of mucous and tastes a lot like what would expect leaves, oil and bottom-feeder fish to taste like. For diplomacy’s sake I will refrain from offering my opinion of Mali’s staple dish, but I can boast that I have lost 25 pounds since arriving in country.

Coming in a distant second, the next most important crop in Mali is rice. The cultivation of rice requires a generous supply of water – when you think of rice farming you might think of Vietnamese peasants wading in inundated paddies – which is why it is really limited to those fertile lands directly adjacent to the Niger River, its tributaries and irrigation channels. Due to its abundance of vitamins and minerals, its wholesome taste and versatility, rice is in every way a superior good to millet. Hence rice is a much more lucrative commodity to be sold at market, and the frequency of rice consumption is a fairly accurate indicator of a person’s wealth in this country. Only in Mali’s cities which are all located along rivers does the population at large consume more rice than millet. In rural villages rice is consumed only by the elite few who can grow it or pay for food; in my villagerice can only be grown in the aqueous and therefore wealthiest Filablena neighborhood.

Every other food item found in Mali is really considered a nafen – a “sauce thing” to put on top of either millet or rice – though if a Malian can afford to eat vegetables or meat on top of the cereal staple then they are more than likely eating rice. For most millet farming peasants, rice itself is a treat and only on special occasions like the end of Ramadan, Eid al-Adha or weddings will a typical Malian family have a meal of only vegetables and meat. Any solid nafen is thoroughly overcooked until it becomes a semisolid absent any resemblance to its original shape and composition – which is a shame due to the many nutrients which are lost. Malians like their food soft and mushy. However, there is good reason for the overcooking of all nafenw which are placed on top of the rice; due to the lack of refrigeration and completely unsanitary butcheries eating raw meat is a fool’s errand, and since very few people over 50 have a whole lot of teeth crunchy vegetables are not an option.

Thankfully, my village of Sanadougou is located on the southern-most edge of Ségou province, which means that it is a relatively fertile region where even if the bulk of my neighbors’ caloric intake comes from toh, there is also a lot of rice, corn, fruits and vegetables grown here. My host family is relatively well-off according to Malian standards – the father Karitie Sanogo is the director of the Commune’s school system, their three sons are all in private lycée or medical school – which means that they eat a lot of rice and they can afford to put vegetables and even meat in their sauce just about every day. When Durcas Dembele is not busy campaigning for Mayor she cooks sweet rice siri for breakfast, and usually rice with peanut butter sauce for lunch and dinner. About once a week she will make a meal of beans, sweet potatoes, yams or – something radical in this culture – a salad. I emphasize that my host family is the most Western family in the village.

Don’t think that I’m missing out on the authentic Malian experience – I eat everything with my hands out of the communal food bowl placed on the ground where I have to fend from ravenous dogs, cats and chickens. And I am served toh on a regular basis – I usually feign a little nibble to humor my host family and then realize “oh look at the time… I told Daoudaou that I’d measure his well ten minutes ago!” and run back to my kitchen where I have a constant stash of sweet potatoes and spaghetti packets waiting for such occasions.

The agreement I worked out with my host family is that I am welcome to eat three square meals a day and in exchange each week I fill my backpack with all the vegetables I can find at market to raise their level of actually well-balanced nutritious meals. But even with my supplemental vegetables and the fact that Durcas is hands down the best cuisinère in town, my body has a hard time stomaching straight glucose on a constant basis. There is a good reason why Peace Corps Volunteers in the Health Education sector often focus on teaching mothers about nutrition, and our medical officers advise us to cook at least one meal for ourselves every day: the typical Malian diet which consists almost entirely of carbohydrates simply is not healthy. To eat millet or rice three times a day is only slightly more wholesome than three square meals of pixie sticks.

Not that I’m a historical materialist or anything, but I trace Malian malnutrition as with just about every other problem which exists in this country back to the economics of subsistence agriculture. Especially in regions like southern Ségou province with its high water table, even during the months from October through April when there is zero precipitation people can still grow fruits and vegetables in their gardens with well water – well-watered gardening constitutes just about the entirety of food production between the months of October and April. In my village gardeners grow onions, garlic, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, okra, lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, manioc, this eggplant-like thing called ncoyo, squash, peppers, hot peppers, watermelons, oranges, lemons, papayas, bananas, mangoes, ginger, mint and tamarind.

If each farmer and his family ate everything they produced, one could theoretically have a sufficient intake of vitamins and minerals to supplement the empty calories of toh; however, there is this thing called “money”. In this subsistence agriculture economy absent anything resembling life insurance or pensions, a man breaks his back working in the fields and eats what one grows until Allah willing they become an old patriarch with so many children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren working in the fields that they can sit back, drink tea and be waited upon by their many offspring. Out of his rational self-interest to ensure and maximize his consumption of food later in life, a man in Mali has every interest in having as many children as possible. Kids need a certain number of calories in order to subsist, and from the perspective of the rationally self-interested patriarch it makes little economic sense to give fruits and vegetables to children to eat when those garden products could be sold at market for money to buy more millet to cook even more toh – thereby using garden crops cost-effectively in order to maximize total caloric consumption. Why let your children eat a nutritious squash for a day when your children can eat millet for a week? When you put it all together, the subsistence logic of reproduction mixed with an inchoate market economy creates a perverse incentive for farmers whose gardens might very well yield a wholesome cornucopia of vitamins and minerals to eat very few of their own fruits and vegetables – all but guaranteeing that every member of their family will suffer from severe malnutrition.

Other fans of Zacstravaganza gripe that my blog does not shine a light on the happier aspects of Malian culture, and somehow I manage to write a disheartening post about a subject as tame as cuisine! Well, there are very good reasons why most of my descriptions of life here are quite gloomy; Mali ranks near the very bottom in some of the most important statistics – i.e. per capita GDP, literacy, life expectancy, infant mortality – which all but define a society’s standard of living. Nutrition is not an exception.

Though to end on an upbeat note, there are a number of Malian recipes which I find to be quite delicious and plan on bringing back to the States. Durcas makes this thing called wosonama which is a sweet potato mash with tomato sauce, she makes yams with meat sauce, rice with fawkoi which is a meat and leaf sauce which unlike toh sauce carries strangely pleasant taste, and of course her tigadegana peanut butter sauce is absolutely delicious especially with sweet potatoes and cabbage added for texture. There is also this lady in San named Fatimata who sells fried plantain-sweet potato fry-fried meat sandwiches with onion sauce which might just be the most fattening things in the world but constitute 6 inches of utter bliss. Guinea hen meat is more tender and richer than chicken, and since none of the fruits are genetically engineered to be unnaturally humongous they actually have this thing called “taste”. And there are few things in this world more fun than eating a bowl of peanut butter with your hands.

And if you would like to do your part to enrich the Malian diet and maybe even jumpstart some sustainable economic development, send me some seeds for fruits and vegetables that have yet to be introduced to this country! I know jack about agriculture, but I do know that while I’m tilling my plot of organic paradise there’s really little societal benefit in me trying to grow crops that people here have known how to cultivate for generations – but if I leave here having done nothing more than introduced my village to the wonders of spinach, cauliflower or zucchini, I will consider my two years well spent. Think vitamins, think minerals, think of the Sahel’s bizarre precipitation patterns. I’m all ears!