The Assassination of James Brown

Straight-up – being the one non-Bambara tribesman in Sanadougou and being constantly watched and gossiped about and petted and accosted for my bicycle and my underwear all day, every day, 7 days a week is emotionally and spiritually exhausting. And it is even more frustrating and damaging to one’s sense of self-worth when I go walk over for a friendly chat with the dude for whom I just built 3 brand new, cement nyegens complete with soak pits and feeling all bright and optimistic and accomplished and he screams at me for being a “nasty, greedy Tubabu” because I won’t give him U.S. A.I.D.-financed cement to line his entire house and I walk home flustered and fed up and not a single person in this entire town can relate.

But who needs people when James Brown and Snoop Doggy Dogg are waiting at home to play with me? Even on days when my homologue thinks I’m useless and my jatigi thinks I’m lazy and the entire village thinks I’m a stingy bastard, my doggy and kitty think I’m the best person in the whole wide world and Snoop rolls over so we can play the “kick me in the face” game and James climbs up my shoulder and rolls into a huggable, purry furball and at least some creatures on this planet appreciate my existence. And everything is alright.

So the other night I was sleeping in my tent in the papaya patch when I was woken by a deafening BOOM as though a car had backfired just outside my garden. Though I didn’t think anything of it and rolled back to sleep.

The next morning I couldn’t find Jamesy… I went over to my jatigi’s house – James had recently been spending nights with their ladycat – but he wasn’t there either. I was told to go to the house of Seydou Cafa – the night watchman at the clinic across the street. Maybe he knew where James was...

So I stormed in demanding answers when I am greeted by my kitty James – he was hanging from Seydou’s gwa with his head chopped off, skinned to dry for that evening’s sauce. The logic of what had happened that night became all too apparent:

1. I am hungry. (Given)
2. Look… a Cat! (Given)
3. BOOM! (Chain Rule 1, 2)


I went ballistic.

“What’s the big deal?” Seydou asked, “It’s just a cat.”

“That’s not just a cat – that’s my cat you killed!!! You stole my cat and you can’t give it back!!! So now you have to pay up.”

“Whatever – I’m sorry. It will not happen again, insh’allah.”

“No, that’s not going to cut it. You just killed an expensive cat. I vaccinated and treated that cat, and it cost 5,000 CFA. I’ll give you a choice; either you pay me 5,000 francs right now, and while you’re at it give me a goat for good measure so I can kill one of your animals and eat it too – or else I’m going to explain to the Commandant that you’re a lunatic who hunts other people’s livestock with a shotgun on the clinic grounds in a crowded neighborhood 80 meters from where I sleep and 100 meters from where the Commandant and his wife and his children sleep.”

Unlike litigious Americans such as yours truly, Bambaras shy from using the official legal system and instead use their own traditional form of settling grievances. There is kind of an adversarial trial before the dugutigi (the village chief) who resolves both parties’ claims. This was actually a big deal; in an agricultural society, livestock theft is one of the most serious crimes which one can commit. If a Bambara steals another Bambara’s cow or sheep, the thief is usually pressured by his elders to compensate the victim in currency or in kind.

Though unbeknownst to me at the time, even in the extralegal Bambara trial using informal laws and informal procedures, the plaintiff is generally expected to employ an extralegal lawyer. Usually people have the eldest male of each respective adversary’s family do all the negotiating – and so I should have delegated responsibility to my jatigi Karitie Sanogo. For yours truly – former Mock Trial lawyer, material witness for a real-life courtroom disposition and citizen of the U.S. of A. where 23-year-olds are just as full members of society as their real fathers – it never occurred to me that I should employ someone else to redress my own grievances. Thus by stepping into the dugutigi’s gwa to act as my own counsel, I apparently disrupted the gerontocratic social order and already had one strike going against me.

Nevertheless, I put forward an argument based on what I felt was incontrovertible logic:

1. Individuals are granted by their Creator a natural right to Property. (Bourgeois Capitalism)
2. “To steal” is to take another person’s Property without their consent. (Definition)
3. If an Individual steals another Individual’s Property, the Thief must pay the Victim in order to re-establish the State of Nature. (Bourgeois Capitalism)
4. I had a Cat. (Given)
5. My Cat cost 5,000 francs. (Given)
6. I never told anyone that they had permission to take my Cat. (Given)
7. Seydou killed my Cat and his wife is preparing it for dinner. (Given)
8. Therefore, Seydou stole my Cat (Chain Rule [1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7])
9. Therefore, Seydou must give me 5,000 francs. (Chain Rule, Bourgeois Justice [3, 5, 8])
10. And a goat. (Revenge)

The dugutigi agreed wholeheartedly with my proposition. However, Seydou had a right to defend himself.

1. I am the Night Watchman at the Clinic. (Given)
2. The Night Watchman is equipped with a Shotgun in order to protect the Clinic. (Given)
3. Therefore, it is my solemn duty to protect the Clinic as well as myself with my Shotgun.
(Chain Rule [1,2])
4. Evil Sorcerers exist, and they wish to do us harm. (Incontrovertible Fact)
5. Evil Sorcerers can take the form of Cats. (Incontrovertible Fact)
6. While guarding the Clinic last night, I saw a Cat. (Given)
7. Therefore, the Cat which I saw could have been an Evil Sorcerer in disguise.(Chain Rule [4, 5, 6])
8. Therefore, there is no way that I could have known that that Cat was not an Evil Sorcerer. (The Law of Epistemological Positivism [6, 7])
9. Therefore, it was my solemn duty to shoot that Cat with my Shotgun in order to protect the Clinic from Evil Sorcerers. (Chain Rule [1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8])

The dugutigi gave much credence to Seydou’s defense. “He’s got a good point there, Madu – what if your cat was a sorcerer?”

“NO!!!!! I know for a fact that my cat could not cast magic spells. If Seydou believes thinks that he should shoot every single kitten that walks his way because it might be a sorcerer, then he is delusional and insane and he should not have a job which entails holding a shotgun at a health clinic!!! Witches and wizards are not real and they cannot be valid reasons for slaughtering other people’s animals!!! You know what? Maybe Seydou’s cow is a sorcerer!!!! I should kill his cow!!! And maybe his goats and his sheep are all sorcerers too!!! If Seydou’s defense is valid, then I should be able to shoot all of his animals and eat them to protect myself from evil spells!!!!

Unfortunately for my case, the dugutigi also believes in witches and wizards – hence he let Seydou’s defense stand.

“The night watchman had good reason to believe that his very life could have been in danger of black magic, he shot your cat out of sincere self-defense. So Seydou must not give you a goat to slaughter as you demand… However, since you now surely want a new cat and you want to vaccinate it too, Seydou must give you 5,000 francs to cover the cost of cat medicine.”

But the important issue to me wasn’t the money; I wanted Seydou to pay 5,000 francs merely to make his reckless behavior really, really expensive and hopefully to deter his assassination of future cats. What mattered to me is that now my life in the peaceful gardens of Xanadu is lacking a huggable, squeezable furball to curl up next to my pillow and purr me to sleep.

Though this tragedy concludes with a happy ending of rebirth and renewal; within hours of this fiasco, in such an insular village where my nail-clipping habits are considered juicy gossip, every man, woman and child in Sanadougou knew about the untimely assassination of my feline friend who would so often follow me and climb up on my shoulder to accompany me around the hood. James Brown was a Sanadougou celebrity in his own right, and his presence was immediately missed. And by the afternoon the community poured out in sympathy and dozens of people offered me brand new kittens to offset my loss.

I accepted one baby kitten, and his name his James Brown II.

Upholding and Defending My Own Constitution

In more personal terms, upon my arrival the dugutigi (village chief) let it be known that I ate was to be adopted as a son by a teacher Karitie and his family who live down the road from me. This arrangement could not possibly be any better for yours truly. Karitie speaks fluent French, so he is able to teach me the nuances of Bambara quite well. Besides being the best cuisinière in town, his wife Durukas is also one of the most educated and informed women whom I have met thusfar in Mali – she is an advisor to the Mayor. Their sons Kam and Jafete and their daughter Diko act as my teachers as well; they are helping me navigate Malian youth culture, to fully appreciate American hip hop and Jamaican reggae, and with the their help I have received the worst haircut in my life – I should have known it was a bad sign when la coiffure muttered “I’ve never given a white boy a haircut before.” So in conclusion, I tried to make lemonade out of this lemon of a situation and I shaved my head.

… But I digress. So I reiterate that during the first three months at site I am supposed to take it slow and get a feel for the community in which I am living and working – I’m not just plopping down here and starting to dig wells willy-nilly. Even without constructing a new water pump, merely getting my own house in order and understanding what is going on here is difficult enough for the time being.

My number #1 priority at the time being is to carry out the first imperative of Mission Number 0079 and maintain the Constitution of Zachary Asher Mason. I reiterate that with all of the mosquitoes, flies, ants, beetles, termites, hookworms, roundworms, tapeworms, centipedes, millipedes, crickets, cockroaches, praying mantises, amoebas, giardia cysts, lizards and other organisms who would like to feed off of yours truly and my own supply of nourishment, this is no simple undertaking.

At this incipient stage of my existence as a member of Malian society, my modus operandi has been heavily influenced by the strategic thinking of George Kennan. As the Red Army had ensconced its dominion over Eastern Europe by the conclusion of hostilities in 1945, Kennan realized the futility of attempting to roll back the Communist bloc by sheer force and the dangers which such overreach could impose on America’s immediate national security interests. Likewise, I believe that I must first focus on the maintenance of my direct interests in surviving through September 2010, and even if I do nothing more than strive incessantly to preserve my own health and to contain the spread of water-borne diseases to my own person, the worst that can happen is that the strength of my example will rub off on my neighbors so they might improve their sanitary practices in kind.

The most difficult aspect of maintaining my own health is not the direct hazards of any non-humanoid organisms per se, but rather excluding myself from what water sanitation extension agents refer to as “the fecal-oral cycle”; in other words, how germs get from your poop to your mouth. In Mali, certain cultural practices make this mode of disease transmission rather facile.

As spelled out in the classic Sanitation Without Water – a must-read for anyone interested in the anthropology of anal cleansing,

“A basic distinction between people is that some are ‘washers’ and some are ‘wipers’. There words refer to how people clean themselves after they have excreted. Washers use water, wipers use some solid material like grass, leaves, paper, sticks, corncobs, mud balls or stones (Winblad and Kilama, 1985).”

The vast majority of Malians are what Winblad and Kilama would categorize as “washers”, and though most adults have had extensive practice with the plastic teapot method, from time to time even the most experienced washer inevitably gets a little bit of poo on his or her finger.

If everybody here ate from their own separate plate from their own separate utensils, this would be no big whup; but the traditional method for Malians to eat their meals is for everybody in the family and any guests to share from the same common food bowl – and everyone eats with their hands. And so it is not very difficult for the layman to understand why the fecal-oral cycle is such a common means of disease transmission, particularly for such illnesses which result in the symptom of messy diarrhea which will inevitably get all over one’s fingers such as cholera, dysentery, giardiasis and amebiasis.

The fecal-oral cycle could be easily discontinued if those who suffer from nasty diarrheal disorders were to wash their hands thoroughly with soap after taking a dump and again before eating from the communal food bowl. And that is why every time I sit down to eat from Durukas’ bowl of delicious rice with peanut butter sauce, yams or beans, I see to it that everyone eating with me washes their hands like it’s their job – because it actually is my job.

The very simple practice of washing one’s hands with soap is without parallel the easiest, cheapest, most effective means of reducing the transmission of potentially fatal diseases; however, many people are still reluctant to do so. As continued in the literary masterpiece Sanitation Without Water,

“In all cultures there are taboos surrounding defecation practices. Your enemy, if he gets hold of your faeces, can cause you great harm. Evil spirits may live in the pit… Religion may even lay down rules for cleaning after defecation (Winblad and Kilama, 1985).”

Many times when guests come to dine at Karitie and Durukas’ house, they are taken aback when I tell them to wash their hands with soap. It’s not an economic issue – everyone has soap to clean their clothes and their dishes, for soap is widely available and easily affordable. Pretty much every woman in Mali is involved in the collection of shea nuts and cooking them into shea nut butter soap.

Washing one’s hands with soap is more of a problem of superstition. You see, in Mali people are accustomed to washing their hands with only water, for soap is thought to wash away one’s luck. More specifically, I was told by one man who was reluctant to soap up his hands that if he did, then he would render himself vulnerable to the shubagaw – sorcerers who could then curse him with evil spells. He then lifted up his right hand curled in deformity, explaining that sorcerers wishing him ill transformed into bees and stung his hand to cause its present condition.

I cannot articulate in words just how frustrating it is to try to explain germ theory and disease transmission to someone who believes that sickness comes from magic spells.

So when put on the spot, I have to be blunt, "Today you were working with your father's cattle all day long. And the last time you took a dump, maybe a little bit of your poop got on your hands. You cannot see them, but there are little pieces of poop on your hands. If you dunk your hands in water, all you're doing is getting the little pieces of poop wet. I don't want to eat poop, so if you want to eat with me you have to wash your hands - with soap. I want to see bubbles."

I understand that it is a sensitive topic - nobody likes to talk about ingrained cultural practices regarding fecal matter when they are sitting down to eat. But my host family is on my side, so when push comes to shove they tell their guests that the village wanted a Water Sanitation volunteer for a reason, and that I am right - and that they should wash their hands with soap when they're dining with me or not.

I try my best not to be patronizing, especially with adults. But I don't want amoebas living in my gut, so sometimes spelling out the fecal-oral cycle in graphic detail is necessary when it comes to preserving and upholding my own constitution.