After a slow start to my time in Mali things have started to pick up. I feel much better as the heat has died down. The nights where I would sweat probably three litres are over and it usually below 40 degrees. I swear there is something that happens when your surroundings are at a temperature above your core.
Work is going well. I spent almost two weeks in Maourolo, a village of 227 inhabitants. We are going to install a press there for jatropha oil extraction. The village already harvests the seeds from the 2621 meters of jatropha hedges around town and uses them to make soap and sometimes oil. I know it is 2621 meters because I counted. The counting was combined with what I thought I first was sun tanning, then I realized it was sun burning and maybe in 10 years I will find out that it was just me getting skin cancer. I am very excited about our work there. Essentially they are going to take something they already do only do it better and on a large scale. I feel especially good because we are responding to a requested need of the village.
It took me about three days in the village before I started to think the village is poor. I am no longer fooled by dirty clothes, naked children and mud houses as signs of poverty. The exterior can be deceiving. The community was so happy and seemed so free that I could not imagine they were poor. They laughed in the shade and drank a lot of tea. There were no deadlines and everyone is his own boss (unless you are a woman; then your husband is your boss). However poverty has many dimensions. The people were truly happy and united but many of them ate only once a day, an observation that takes a while to make. They have almost no opportunities other than farming four months a year. There many more children under 5 than between 5 and 10, which is a quiet yet unsettling and scary observation. They are free to relax under a shady tree but they are not free to travel to Canada or work as an engineer. They have little way to cope with shocks, such as a poor harvest, since agriculture is essentially their only livelihood option. I have a lot of hope for the village because they are motivated and understand that they can help themselves change their situation. With our partnership they have diversified ways to earn an income and be self sufficient in fuel, controlling their own energy supply. Working with bio-diesel is my own little way of giving big oil companies the finger. Anyone out there who thinks prices at the pump are high in Canada try paying $1.50 CAD for a litre when you make $2 a day.
My favorite part of my time there was a dance party under the moonlight. A tape player powered by a 12 V battery blared out Ivorian dance music. I danced with five year old girls and 60 year old men who each have more spirit than a Texas cheerleading squad. It was a beautiful, spiritual evening. I think it was the purity and rawness of it all that I loved. Things were not complicated with superfluous crap, it was an evening that was about people, connections, and community.
Everyone here is waiting for the rainy season to start. In the south of Mali it has been raining for a while already. After my time in Maourolo I finally have internalized why people pray for rain. You can be told something a hundred times but seeing once will make you understand. Seeing and talking with people whose lives are so dependant on rain, which is completely out of their control, showed me how you could simply turn to God. If seeing something is better than hearing I figure doing is going one further. In the name of learning about African agriculture I have become a peanut farmer. I am sharing a little over 1 hectare of land with my 72 year old landlord Luc. He’s the brains of the operation and I’m just around for comic relief. I have 50 kg sack of peanut seed sharing my bedroom, although it’s not the best cuddling companion. I’m pretty pumped about the possibility of peanut butter self sufficiency by October. In fact, my house should be a net peanut butter exporter.
There are now four other EWB volunteers in Mali and we all met up a couple weeks ago. My neighbors are the local suppliers of chapalo (millet beer). You can often find them through the darkness by following the beautiful sound of their balafon, a local instrument like a xylophone. At night their dark courtyard often has a few non Muslims sitting on wooden benches drinking calabashes full of beer taken from a giant communal pot. We decided it was within our budgets to pay $1.80 for three litres. Amazingly none of us got sick, although we did make a friend Adama drink about half of our stock.
I had my first motorbike accident recently. There I was driving on dirt paths past fields dotted with giant baobabs staring at a bleak saheling landscape as women passed every now and again carrying wood on their heads. I felt like a real African development worker. I would have made a great promotional video with my hair blowing in the wind, looking like a dead sexy hard core wannabe African. Then the dirt turned to sand. I got through a couple patches and had my confidence grow. Then I tried to combine turning and driving through sand at the same time which soon left me lying on my side asking my companion if she was okay.
Through the beauty of short wave radio I found out quickly about the G8’s decision to forgive the debt of 18 countries, 14 in Africa including Mali. This will do wonders for the people here. People are ecstatic. I feel this shows the power of campaigns like Make Poverty History (www.makepovertyhistory.ca) and public voice. For those in Canada please keep the pressure on our government and corporations to act responsibly.

I am woken up by the banging of pots outside my door. It is still dark and well before five am. There is also the sound of a broom sweeping the dirt and leaves in front of my door. My neighbor Mamu has started working. In the mornings she sells breakfast in front of the school where two of her children go. School starts at 7:30 am so she has be there will her breakfast ready. She doesn’t have a kitchen like a Canadian family. She has some pots, a mortar and pesel and a charcoal stove that sit on the ground. After and hour and a half of preparation she puts a table with a charcoal stove on her head with her youngest daughter Ami on her back and walks to the school. Her older three children accompany her with school bags, condiments and foods taking up all possible spots on the tops of heads and in hands. She’ll come back home around 11:00 am, still with a that large wooden table on her head and Ami on her back. Then she must go to the market to get food for the rest of the day and be back in time to prepare lunch. The market is only about a kilometer away so it doesn’t take her long to walk there and back. The afternoon she sometimes gets some rest but often she is a laundry cleaning machine. Her and the other ladies in the courtyard chat while they clean telling jokes and laughing. This is the time of day with the least work. I get back from work around five and she always has a beautiful smile with eyes that are bright and joyful. She only speaks Bambara so we can’t converse too much but she laughs at whatever I say. Not understanding more than a few sentences makes our conversations all funnier. Mamu uses me as a good way to make Ami stop crying. When she starts to cry she’ll often grab her and sit her down in front of me. She instantly stops and stares in confusion at the funny looking guy making faces at her. She forgets why she was crying and is all smiles again. The work doesn’t end as for the evening she helps her daughters sell donuts and french fries in front of our house. At the same time she is preparing supper. Usually by nine pm the whole family is asleep.

Mamu is the most cheerful lady in my compound. Even though we cannot communicate well with words we understand each other and she is part of my motivation in learning Bambara. She is creative and always doing little activities to make some money. Although her family is the poorest in my concession in material possessions, and one of the only ones without electricity, I think they are richer than others in their happiness and unity. Her husband does not work. He was in the Malian army and fought in the war with the Tuaregs in the nineties. When he came back he was unable to work. No one knows what is wrong with him but he has a mental problem that occurred during or after his time at war. He sits in a lawn chair all day beside the road and never talks to anyone. In Mali it is tough to get a medical diagnosis for problems like his. Maybe he has post traumatic stress syndrome but even if we knew what he had there where would we learn how to improve the situation. The shock of the main income earner ceasing to earn an income can be devastating. This means Mamu is left with four children and a husband to support when she has no job experience or education as is the norm for most women her age. She has to use the small amount of assets she has. I think her greatest assets are good humour and determination. She doesn’t complain or wait for others to help she simply does what she needs to do and with a smile. She always brightens my day. I see her as a role model for women in Mali. She is empowered and finding creative solutions to poverty.

I have decided to write about one person who has impressed, amazed, empowered, helped or generally given me good vibrations. Like a good Samaritan or inspiration of the month. For the month of May I have dug into old journal entries to find what I wrote about Lucuis who I met in Benin. Next time the entry will be specific for the person of the month.

Last night I had the best conversation of my whole placement. I sat down at the dark table of the boiled manioc lady and started eating 12 cents worth of supper. A guy whose face I couldn’t even really see sat down in front of me. After I’d finished eating he asked me if we could chat. I said yes, since I hadn’t had many good random conversations lately. He took about 4 more minutes eating before we started.

It started slow with how’s it going, and the family and the job. Soon I realized this was not a normal Beninese guy. In fact he was from Chad, N’Djamena to be exact. He asked me tough questions about what I liked in Benin, always making me explain my answers. He knew of Canada’s bilingualism and where to find Quebec. He told me he also spoke English because he’d studied computers in Ghana. We began chatting about Ghana. I sat spell bound while he weaved stories about gold and buses and religion into a beautiful tapestry that made me feel like I had already been wrapped up in the country. I was like a child listening to his father tell stories of a far of land that I could only imagine. He had great insights into the role Christianity played in making Ghanaians so friendly. He lived in a hostel there with people from many countries because it was cheapest and you could use as much water and electricity as you want. Ghana sounds like the Promised Land to a guy sitting in Benin.

He is going back when he can get organized. In Cotonou he makes 25 000 CFA ($62 CAD) a month which is less than my volunteer stipend gives me. It became apparent he was both smart and wiser than me although his options are more limited. He has friends in Accra and will go back to continue working where he can save money and enjoy a higher quality of life.

We spoke of travel and the richness it brings the traveler. He felt he had gained great wealth because he had traveled to Sudan, Niger, Burkina, Ghana, Togo and Benin. His Anglophone friends tell him he speaks English but thinks like someone who speaks French. I told him that the difference might come from the education systems of each colonial power. We agreed it made one a better person by viewing how others live and trying to think like they do. He will travel for a lot longer. His year in Benin will soon come to a close. Although he loves Ghana he won’t stay. He wants to see the whole world. Normally I would have been sad for him. Sad because he cannot see the whole world because he doesn’t have the money or the right citizenship. I have both. It isn’t fair. Instead I was happy because he was a man following his heart. He was upbeat and positive. Gaining everything he could wherever he was. He didn’t concentrate on what he didn’t have but what he did have. That’s what was important to him. It wasn’t that he wasn’t able to go to Quebec it was that he could and would go to Cote d’Ivoire and take the most out of it.

I feel very lucky to have met him. Only after we finished did I learn his name is Lucius. Maybe we’ll meet again in Ghana in a month. He taught me a few things and further solidified my opinion that true richness is not in the material realm. He is much richer than many people I know with thousands of dollars.

As a follow up I saw him again a couple days later. We hung out at his friends tailor shop and chatted for a few hours the day before I left for Ghana. It’s too bad we didn’t meet sooner; I would have loved to have spent more time together.