Zac Mason in the News!

Two generations of Masons - one a doctor and the other an actual mason - are quoted in the New Canaan Patch on how this recession is taking a toll on the hopes and dreams of 20-somethings.

Though I want to clarify that I vehemently live in Vista, New York and not New Canaan, Connecticut as this article erroneously implies - my only tie to the place is that my dad works there.

And if any other foot soldiers in the reserve army of the unemployed are looking for career opportunities, the Peace Corps is always hiring!

Zac Fends Off a Prokaryotic Attack!

Tonight I find myself in the Peace Corps Medical Unit after undergoing a serious operation. I had to be brought to the hospital so that a surgeon could save my limb from a very grave injury. I had an ingrown toenail.

Back in the States where it is cold most of the year and CVS is open 24 hours a day, an ingrown toenail isn’t such a big deal. But in Mali, where I walk or bike anywhere I go in open-toed sandals and sand and dirt and dust is flying everywhere and by the end of each day my feet are caked in a brand new layer of filth, an open sore is an invitation to the African continent’s mighty bacteria. Here infections get really nasty really quick.

To illustrate how much more severe the simple flesh wound becomes in the tropical climate, a fellow Volunteer recently had a whitehead on her upper lip and so she popped it – the next day, the broken skin gave way to such a ghastly infection that her lip swelled up to the size of her nose.

When I had realized that part of my big toenail was protruding under my skin, I first thought that it was nothing that I couldn’t treat myself with my pocketknife, tweezers, bacitracin and time. But after a week had gone by and I was limping around village with my big toe wrapped in duct tape and it got so bad that a withered, pigeon-toed old man told me that I was walking funny, I decided that it was time to get on the next van to the Peace Corps Medical Officers.

The whole procedure went rather quickly. Within the span of 90 minutes Dr. Dawn Camara drove me to the podiatrist where they laid me on a bed, washed my foot with iodine, and then they stuck a needle in my swollen big toe and it hurt like a bitch because they were juicing it with anesthesia and the podiatrist told me to look away because I couldn’t feel a thing and snip snip snip there was a little bloody mess but they cleaned it up, stitched my toe back together and wrapped it up in gauze et ça, c’était fini!

With everything said and done, I have nothing but glowing reviews for the health care provided to Peace Corps Volunteers. Even though I am in one of the most remote, undeveloped countries in the world, my doctor did a damn good job of saving my big toe from becoming gangrenous and getting amputated. And the best thing about this treatment is that I don’t have to pay a cent out of pocket because – though the operation was carried out by a private, top-rate Malian podiatrist – my health care and all of my medications are subsidized 100 percent by the United States government.

The moral of the story is that if the United States government can provide me with such good health care in Mali, without sacrificing value of service and without me having to wait on any lines, then I think that the United States government can very easily provide health care of a comparable quality to each and every one of her citizens on American soil. Also, especially if you are living in the African bush, never ever cut your toenails too short or you will be sorry.

PS. This is why I am in Bamako and will have regular Internet access for the week. If you arrange a time, I can go to the bar and talk to you on instant messenger!

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!

A Preamble of Sorts

Amherst College > Vista, New York > Bamako > Tubaniso

Having received my college degree from Amherst College – the illustrious piece of sheepskin which Western civilization deems to be the beginning of my life as an adult member of the work force, this particular homo sapiens had little doubt as to where he was destined. With graduation, it was time for this boy to leave the cozy little gardens of my suburban upbringing and my private fancypants liberal arts school, to put down those books and to finally do something in the world to demonstrate my manhood... so that I could be a great big manly man with a deep booming voice... like Tony Marx.

Before handing to me that illustrious sheepskin, Tony Marx boomed with his stentorian voice “We’re in the business of graduating people who will make the world better in some way… That’s what justifies the expense of the education.”

Marx’s words were nothing truly original, but merely a paraphrasing of the long, great tradition of Massachusetts liberalism which John F. Kennedy espoused on the other side of the freshmen quad 45 years prior. When the great intellectual president came to dedicate our new library named after his favorite poet, he made it clear that this federal book depository was not being constructed “merely to give this school's graduates an advantage, an economic advantage, in the life struggle. It does do that. But in return for that, in return for the great opportunity which society gives the graduates of this and related schools, it seems to me incumbent upon this and other schools' graduates to recognize their responsibility to the public interest.”

Before the advent of Pell grants and affirmative action, when Amherst College was much more explicitly a playground for rich white men, “Privilege is here, and with privilege goes responsibility ... And unless the graduates of this college and other colleges like it who are given a running start in life--unless they are willing to put back into our society, those talents, the broad sympathy, the understanding, the compassion--unless they are willing to put those qualities back into the service of the Great Republic, then obviously the presuppositions upon which our democracy are based are bound to be fallible.

Just as I was graduating, a short drive away to Wesleyan’s campus future President Barack Obama gave my entire generation a stark choice; “You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should by. You can choose to narrow your concerns and live your life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America’s… But I hope you don’t. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, though you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get here, though you do have that debt. ’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter in America’s story.”

I think there’s a law some where that says that every college commencement speech, and of course everything ever uttered from the mouth of a Kennedy family member is supposed to culminate in a call to arms to fight for democracy, freedom and the American way. And you know what – I fall for that schmaltz hook, line and sinker. I’m such a sentimentalist, in fact, that I decided to sign up for the Peace Corps!

So... joining the Peace Corps has been a long, arduous process which I have been doing for more than a year (and it won't be over until I officially swear in September insh'allah). This is no mere entry-level job. Asides from the innumerable essays and interviews, I have had to demonstrate myself to be medically, psychologically and dentally - yes, dentally - fit to work overseas on behalf of the United States government. I have had every tooth X-rayed, every orifice thoroughly examined, and I have even had to spend an interesting afternoon in the Harlem NYPD precinct office to get fingerprinted so that the F.B.I. could investigate my record.

And last February I received a package in the mail which has made my greatest dream come true, inviting me to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali. The first thing I did was look at my map of the world on my dormroom wall. I saw that it was a big landlocked country split between the Sahara Desert and the more humid Sahel, that it was colored green for some bizarre reason, and that it looked awesome. They wanted me to be a Water Sanitation Extension Agent, which would entail the digging of wells, construction of water pumps, soak pits and irrigation systems. I called my recruiter back and gave her a very enthusiastic "Yes, m'am!"

(... continued on next post)

A Tribute to Alice

After a few days of orientation and vaccinations in Philadelphia, I have arrived safely in Mali where I will be working for the next two years constructing water sanitation pumps, digging wells, soak pits and irrigation ditches. I am now writing from Tubaniso; the Peace Corps training compound outside Bamako. Though I have spent so much time writing essays and conducting interviews and getting my fingerprints taken and collecting gear preparing to do this, and after so many months of waiting I am finally here, there is very little for me to say about my own life for there are far more important things on my mind right now. Namely, one of my dear friends and one of the most special people to ever grace this planet has just been killed in a tragic accident, crushed by a garbage truck as she rode her bicycle to work.

Anyone who knew Alice Swanson would agree that she was perhaps the kindest, gentlest and most determined soul whom they had ever met. She had that effect on everybody for good reason – because it was true. Perhaps it was her grin which showed off every last one of her pearly white teeth, perhaps it was her flowing locks of Nordic blonde hair which left every passerby in sheer rapture of this cutest of souls. Alice was a petite woman and almost childlike in some of her features, such as her unabashed love of animals which she wore on her sleeve – or rather, her dress which she had embroidered with the likeness of a wizened owl. But her small stature and innocent looks belied a great sophisticated woman who sure as hell knew about and did a whole lot in the world around her.

When Alice Swanson came from Worcester to Amherst her first year, in violation of school policy she brought her pet hamster to keep her company, wandering the hallways of her dormitory in its plastic ball. Out of love for all creatures great and small she naturally found her way to the Zü – Amherst’s vegetarian cooperative house – so that she could refrain from contributing to the mistreatment of a single Holstein cow by adhering to a strict vegan diet. That same year she also took charge of the Progressive Student Alliance which she used to organize her friends into simple acts of kindhearted activism from working at the farm to grow vegetables for a local food bank to raking leaves for the homeless. All sorts of animals, especially humans, were direct beneficiaries of Alice’s selfless nature.

Alice was no merely cute young woman, however – I think that was signified by the nose ring which signified that she was a badass rebel to the nth degree. Alice Swanson was possessed by that rare spark which convinces earnest young idealists that they too can change the world. She was an anarchist in the fully romantic sense of the word, with boundless faith in humanity and our capacity to take charge of our own destiny. She studied Spanish and Arabic to fluency, but majored in history; her stated intention was to be that world-historical individual in the Hegelian sense who was going to liberate all of the Middle East and Latin America from autocracy and neocolonialism. Alice cared quite earnestly about the plight of the Palestinians and under occupation, the exploited workers at Mexico’s maquiladoras, not to mention the poor and disenfranchised of Western Massachusetts. If couldn’t get others to join her, she would continue plying away on her movement for peace and justice even if she had to change society all by herself. And she did.

The first time I met Alice Swanson was naturally on a trip to Washington for an antiwar demonstration that she had organized. At the time I was a freshman who had a very difficult time making friends– and I couldn’t find anybody on campus who was interested in conversing with me about my monomaniacal obsession on Iraq, not a single person – that is, until I met Alice. Not only was she patient enough to engage this troubled soul, but she was kind enough to befriend me and invite me to the Zü and eat curry and teach me all about the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan environmentalist movement. Whenever I had a burning gripe about all of the violence in the world and needed a sympathetic soul to help sort out my anxieties, Alice acted as an older sister-type figure of sorts, a mentor and role model as she opened her revolutionary literature-strewn dorm room into a refuge for the angst-ridden and alienated of Amherst College. She was an oracle of the possible, an ever-smiling beacon of hope.

During a typical solace session I would burst in Alice’s room shouting about whatever it was that had outraged me that day – usually unannounced, and she would tell me to have a seat, hand me a plate of oatmeal-raisin cookies, and deftly transform my grief into more healthy sentiments. At one memorable exchange I was so distraught by recent events in Fallujah that I woke her up from a nap in search of sympathy, and Alice put me in my place with one of the best pieces of advice that I ever received: “No matter how concerned you are about the war, there’s no use in moping around and feeling sorry for yourself. Why don’t you do something constructive instead?”

Alice’s optimistic turnaround made an impression on my malleable psyche. Doing something constructive was then beyond the stretch of my imagination, so I asked her what she had in mind. Her preferred method of establishing peace was working in education; organizing lectures, helping local immigrants study for their citizenship exams, and going to Egypt to study Arabic and teach schoolchildren English. Alice’s deeds made quite an impression on my tender mind; she persuaded me to start Arabic lessons myself so that maybe one day I too could go do great things like her.

Alice was supposed to have lived to be 100 and lived a long, full life of tending to the poor and downtrodden. Quoted in a local newspaper, her father said, “Alice wanted to help people, but now that’s not going to happen.”

… Yet I would not speak too soon. Because of Alice Swanson, there are now immigrants in who were able to become United States citizens, schoolchildren who can now speak English, and a few less people who went to bed hungry at night. And as trite as this may sound, Alice’s spirit lives on in every life that she touched – from Worcester to Washington, from Amherst to Managua and Cairo and everywhere in between, there are now countless souls are possessed by that crazy notion that we can make a difference, that we too can change the world. As I write from the flickering computer at Tubaniso, I can say with confidence that Alice’s radiant example is why I am in Mali today. Instead of moping around, I am learning how to dig wells for people without potable water. Those pieces of Alice’s courage, grit and passion which rubbed off on me will always be an integral part of who I am. And I know that I am not the only one.



I’m going to miss you, Alice.