Hard Work: Mali vs America

What's a hard days work in America? While there are several different levels of working - retail, restaurants, offices, manual labor, etc - we each feel as if we put in a hard day's work everyday, right? Even when I was living in Washington, my senior year of college, I was going to school full time and working part time while running a conference the other part time. I considered myself pretty busy. An active day would consist of waking up in my comfortable heated/air conditioned room, checking my email, showering with hot water, eating breakfast or heading out the door to catch the metro to work where I would grab a Starbucks and normally proceed to sit on my butt for the next several hours doing what I called "work." After those hours, I'm sure I would eat some lunch, chill, check my email about a billion times and just hang out. After lunch I would head back to GW, have a class or two, walk around a bit, grab another coffee or a Diet Coke and continue up to the 4th floor of Marvin Center and sit in the IAS office, sometimes doing WAMUNC work, often just sitting around talking. By the time I made it home, sometimes it was late, but I would sit and watch an episode of Family Guy, sit in front of my computer and talk on the phone until it was time for bed. Tough day, huh?

Now, I admit that there were days that were much harder than this one - and we've all had hard days. But lets be honest, we've all had easy days too. Isn't it funny though that with this account above, I would consider it a hard day? Can you imagine what I would have considered it had I actually been doing work?

Well, in Mali, a typical workday is quite different. I know that I've been here for 2 years, but living in Bamako brings a vastly new perspective to things. Bamako, more than New York than DC, is the city that Malian's come to in order to make money. Like any person growing up in Small Town, USA, one thinks that moving to the big city is easy and is going to solve all of life's problems. Well, it doesn't. I've had a lot of work to do in Bamako and since we're not allowed to ride on motorcyles and that riding one's bike in a skirt is a practical death sentence, I've taken to walking or to public transport (more on that in the next blog). While wandering around the really dirty streets of Bamako - we're talking African capitol city here - my eyes are introduced to new sites everyday. The site that prompted this blog entry was the following: seeing a young man, of 25 years old, average height and build, pushing a cart filled with 300 kilos of rice for delivery from market to a person's home. Now, for those of you not familiar with the metric system, 1 kilo=2.2 lbs. That means that we're talking about over 600 lbs of rice being pushed, with all the strength and might of a man who weighs about 150 lbs. The sweat that pours down his face is unbelievable, but there's nothing you can do. The even sadder ending to this story is that he'll make, maximum, $2 for this hard work. Another difficult site to see and watch is a man, normally about 40 or 50, riding the world's most decrepid bike, with up to 50 lbs of cucumbers, feed for the animals or sodas, stacked up on the back. I myself will confess that in my first months here I tried carrying a small child to market on my top of the line, Peace Corps issued bike, and I made it about 3 blocks until I was huffing and puffing wondering how anyone can carry weight on their bike. And now we're talking about 3 huge bags of cucumbers?!?! And what about the women and children - often between the ages of 5 and 10 - who sit at market or along the road where public transport frequently stops, to sell water or peanuts, making maybe an extra dollar a day? The idea that the family doesn't have the money or the interest to send their female children to school, but would rather earn a little extra. I mean, we hear about these things happening in the "3rd world" and in far far away, but, open your eyes people, it's happening right here! I know more people than I would like who wake up at 5 am and don't go to sleep until midnight because they're trying to make extra money for their families.

If nothing else, sit back at your desk while you're reading this, having one your really "hard" days at work, and be thankful that your life is as easy as it is.

Life in Sikoroni - Educating the People

I recently realized that I haven't really told you all about life in Bamako. Scratch that, life in Sikoroni, my neighborhood of Bamako. We all know that Bamako is gritty, expensive and utterly unattractive, but Sikoroni is less of those things. While there is the usual "Toubabu" at every waking moment, I have met some pretty nice people along my street, even people from Sevare/Mopti, so we have an opportunity to sit around and reminice.

Sikoroni - set in this quaint area on the hillside. There's a school in the foreground and Sikoroni extends all the way up the hill.

The community itself is divided into two smaller communities: Sikoroni and Sourakabougou. It's actually in Sourakabougou that we're building the health center. Apparently, I've recently learned, there is a bit of jealousy/tension between the two neighborhoods and while a health center already exists in Sikoroni, a lot of the people from Sourakabougou refuse to go to it, putting their health at greater risk. So, the idea is to give them equal access to care so that they're use it!

Yesterday we had an event called "L'integration des Images," whereby we had an artist create these health posters and the members of our Community Health Action Group (CHAG) got together to present the posters. MHOP normally works on malaria initiatives, but we've recently begun to spread out. So, yesterday's event focused on other health problems that plague the community like hypertension, diabetes, lack of protein and vitamin A, what to do when you have a fever, and other simple health problems that can be easily treated.

Though in Bambara, and therefore can only be appreciated by my Bambara speaking friends, below you'll find a series of the health presentations. Our three star CHAG members, Soukena, Oumou and Adama, totally took charge on a day when our Director, Modibo couldn't be around. They did a great job and here is the fruit of their labors. Oh, and I think the audio is pretty awful, but try to listen anyway!