Anything Goes BUT Clothes

The title really says it all, but it was a birthday party for a couple of PCVs. So we had a fete and it went well. Here's the Belushi photo of our last party altogether in San.




Costumes were pretty impressive, I myself sporting some brooms and loofah.



Ah, the Belushi's. What will I do without them?

A Return to Normalcy

Not just a campaign slogan for Warren Harding but also my general state of being for the past 2 months or so. It all started when I went on vacation to Togo and Benin. I mean, things were strange, don’t get me wrong – I was in a ridiculously developed country, comparatively speaking. Things were very strange. But at the same time, things were so normal. Sitting on a bus for 3 days to arrive at a destination, whether we had seats or not, was normal. Sitting on this transport with goats, sheep and chicken both in and outside of the car, is normal. Eating meat, chicken and hot dogs from a street vendor (read, a guy with an empty oil barrel and fire heating a grill on top and sitting on the side of the road) is normal. Walking down the street and getting cat called at and asked to be married is normal. Showering 4 times a day, just to cool off….again, pretty normal. Seeing family’s of 3, 4 or 5 people on a moto, on their way to school is normal. Being so modest that I feel scantily clad if my knees show for a second, is normal. Eating with my hand, and completing boycotting utensils – that’s scarily normal. Drinking water from unknown sources, that’s just survival. But what I want to know is when these things changed from being weird and foreign to being an everyday part of my life. Granted, I’ve been here for two years now, but I still feel like these things should make my head turn and not seem to everyday. I think it’s a survival mechanism. You deal with things as they come at you because if you don’t, you’re going to go crazy. It’s funny how things seem so normal here.

As Usual, Long Time...

Yes, it's been awhile but I just got back from vacation. I may post photos of Benin and Togo later, but no promises.

I want to say that I'm going to start a "series" of blog postings on different subjects here. They'll vary from my feelings about certain things to the differences between Malians and other West Africans to Consumerism, comparatively in Mali/West Africa and America.

That's just a preview.

Things are a little hectic now and will be that way for a couple of weeks. So, these postings will come, but not immediately.

Fashion Show, Douentza, Ansongo and Gao...Yeah, we've been busy here!

Okay, so it’s been forever and a day since I’ve written anything, but I have been active, if not completely busy out of my mind. I had a couple of down days because I’m kind of bored right now. I don’t really have much work to do and I’m just waiting on money for the cow insemination project (shameless plug, really: ) and I was down. Then I took to the road! For about a month it was Festival Central here with festivals in some major towns which brought some great musical acts and artisanal products from all around. It all started in Segou with the Festival sur le Niger which brought Habib Koite and Salif Keita and then continued in Mopti with Amadou and Mariam and then went to Douentza for a cultural festival and even continued all the way to Ansongo for a Songhay festival. The past week I went to my old stomping grounds, Douentza, for the Dogon cultural festival and then continued to Ansongo (though I didn’t make it in time for the festival), which is pretty close to the border of Niger and then back to Gao. The trip was twofold. One, I needed to get away from site and two, I have friends whose site’s I wanted to visit and see them in their elements, living their everyday lives.

So, here’s the recap, in photos, of course:

First of all, there was a fashion show with people from Farafina Tigne. Of course we did it Peace Corps Baba/Farafina Tigne style and went all out! My teammate Beth and I were the two token white people in the procession and we were decked out.

Group shot of many of us.

So, it was kind of like carnival as we promenaded down the streets of Mopti.

PC Baba, of course, wearing bogolan and riding a white stallion? Where he even found the horse is beyond me!

Me and Bozo (That’s his name because that’s his ethnic group, though he is pretty silly!)

Me and Vielle, the single handed best djembe player in all of Mali – that I’ve met anyway.

Then on to Douentza. Douentza’s festival was a cultural festival so not many tourists were there, which was awesome. I haven’t talked about how much I dislike tourists, but I’ll make that an entry soon enough. Anyway, there were Dogons from Bankass, Koro, Bandiagarra, Mopti and Douentza and each town was represented by dancers. Here are some highlights.

Here’s a huge toguna that was constructed especially for the event. A toguna is a meeting place in Dogon culture where only older men are allowed to go. It’s built close to the ground so that a man can’t stand up quickly, if angry, to leave the meeting. It’s also adorned with Malian flags. Verte, Jaune, Rouge, go Mali!

Dogon’s are infamous for wearing this indigo cloth which they themselves dye in Dogon Country. They were all decked out in it, looking fabulous.

Some Dogon men dancing with their swords.

This is the essential “Dogon” wearing costumes for dancing. They are what tourists come to see.

Also, here are some videos of different groups of Dogon's dancing:







After being lied about transport times, I finally made my way to Ansongo (which is like 600 kilometers from Douentza) and I was exhausted. I got on the bus at 3:30 AM only to find the window was broken (remember, it’s the desert-ish area so it’s still chilly at night), plus an old Peulh guy that couldn’t sleep and was screaming so that no one else could either. Thanks to an iPod and a sheet I had the foresight to bring with me, I slept until Gao. I arrived in Gao, waited for 5 hours and then we left for Ansongo. The scenery was pretty, it’s more of the desert there, and I made it in two hours, to see the Ansongo festival finishing up. I was there to visit my friend Joanna and we spent two days seeing the town and I went with her to her baby weighings at the clinic. We also took an afternoon boat ride to these gorgeous rocks that are in the middle of the Niger River.

Here are the rocks at sunset.

We climbed the rocks and I’m standing with the Niger in the background.

Joanna and Dave, Ansongo teammates, with Ansongo town in the background.

So, after two days, I headed back to Gao ville to experience all that is Gao. It’s really pretty there, this kind of sand blown city in the desert. The population isn’t that large, but it’s really spread out. So, I went to visit my togoma, Sarah, and we had a great time. She’s a tourism volunteer so I visited the Gao Tourism Bureau, and of course part took in some tourist activities. I visited the Tomb of the Askias which is the tomb of the famous Askia Mohammed. It was constructed in 1495 and is remudded every two years to preserve it. Inside, there is the body of Askia Mohammed and also other valuables that came from his travels around, like gold originating from Egypt. All of his descendants are buried on the ground of this tomb, which is pretty cool. It’s still used as a mosque everyday for men and on Friday’s for non-menstruating women. I also visited the infamous Dune Rose which is this gorgeous sand dune a couple of kilometers from Gao ville.

The view from Sarah’s roof of the pirogues on the Niger river at sunset.

Sarah and Sara.

Tomb of the Askias.

Me, standing at the Tomb. Okay, so Malians can’t really hold camera’s straight.

Traveling nomad on his trek across the Dune. There is a series that go all the way to Timbuktu. I wonder where he’s going.

Gorgeous black sand on the Dune.

Me at the Dune Rose.

Sarah and Sara and our friend, Chaka.

Milk is so Important

Good Morning from Mali –

How are you all doing? Most of you know I’m not big on the mass emails, except for certain occasions. As you can gather, this is one of those occasions. Things here in Mali have been going really well and I’m doing well. Cold season is unfortunately close to over because I’ve been warm the past two days. This is not a good sign. But, we’ll make it through!

Anyway, I wanted to tell everyone about a project I’m working on. Despite working with PC Baba and Hallmark for the bogolan bag project, my ‘real’ job here is with a dairy co-op. We have a project going right now to do some cow inseminations. Trust me, I never thought the words ‘Sara Rosen’ and ‘cow insemination’ would be in the same sentence either, but they are. I’ve filled out a project proposal we call a Peace Corps Partnership Proposal and what happens is that this project is posted online and then friends, family and interested groups can donate. The good thing about this type of proposal is that the community is required to donate to the project, so it’s not just a hand out. My dairy co-op has donated 25% of the total cost with the hope of the American public funding the other 75%.

This is where you can come in! I would really appreciate if you could give even a little bit. The total that we’re looking for is $5,860, but I don’t expect that to be raised in an instant. I’m willing for it to take some time, but I hope it gets filled before the end of my service here! I would love to see this project through to its end. You can see this information on the website, but here is the summary of the project:

Due to the breed of cows in Mali, their output of milk production is low. With the insemination of these cows with sperm from French or Netherlands cows, and therefore hybrid offspring, milk production will at least double. The increased production will allow greater income generation to befall on Laiterie Suudu Baaba (dairy co-op), but will more importantly ensure the supply of dairy products to the community that demands them. Suudu Baaba has been very forward thinking with its project ideas thus far and knows how to expand their business and satisfy the community. Money for the large scale insemination is the only thing holding them back. The dairy co-op is asking for 76 cows to be inseminated and has the capacity to pay for 20 of those. It asks that you help supply funding for the remaining 56.

With the help of funding from the American public, Suudu Baaba can continue its business and continue to provide dairy products at low prices for all to afford them, not only those financially stable. It is their desire and hope to be a successful co-op in the region and sustain themselves for years to come. Without an increase in raw milk to transform into the products it offers, it will not be able to stay in business to see the next several years.

So, there you have it. Here is the website address that you can visit to donate.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/resources/donors/contribute/regioncontrib.cfm?region=africa

If you scroll down to Mali you’ll find my name and the heading Increased Milk Production. If you can give, I’m pretty sure the donations are tax deductible. In addition, please let me know who you are and you’ll definitely be thanked by me and my Malian counterparts.

If you have any other questions regarding the project, I will be more than happy to answer them. Don’t hesitate to ask. Also, if you can forward this on to other people or groups who might be able to help or who might be interested in giving, that would be greatly helpful.

Thanks so much, in advance, and we’ll talk soon!

Too Many Innocents Abroad?

Recently published in the New York Times Op-Ed was a commentary by the former PC Country Director of Cameroon. I’ve included the text here:

Too Many Innocents Abroad
By ROBERT L. STRAUSS
Published: January 9, 2008
Antananarivo, Madagascar

THE Peace Corps recently began a laudable initiative to increase the number of volunteers who are 50 and older. As the Peace Corps’ country director in Cameroon from 2002 until last February, I observed how many older volunteers brought something to their service that most young volunteers could not: extensive professional and life experience and the ability to mentor younger volunteers.
However, even if the Peace Corps reaches its goal of having 15 percent of its volunteers over 50, the overwhelming majority will remain recently minted college graduates. And too often these young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.

This wasn’t the case in 1961 when the Peace Corps sent its first volunteers overseas. Back then, enthusiastic young Americans offered something that many newly independent nations counted in double and even single digits: college graduates. But today, those same nations have millions of well-educated citizens of their own desperately in need of work. So it’s much less clear what inexperienced Americans have to offer.
The Peace Corps has long shipped out well-meaning young people possessing little more than good intentions and a college diploma. What the agency should begin doing is recruiting only the best of recent graduates — as the top professional schools do — and only those older people whose skills and personal characteristics are a solid fit for the needs of the host country.

The Peace Corps has resisted doing this for fear that it would cause the number of volunteers to plummet. The name of the game has been getting volunteers into the field, qualified or not.

In Cameroon, we had many volunteers sent to serve in the agriculture program whose only experience was puttering around in their mom and dad’s backyard during high school. I wrote to our headquarters in Washington to ask if anyone had considered how an American farmer would feel if a fresh-out-of-college Cameroonian with a liberal arts degree who had occasionally visited Grandma’s cassava plot were sent to Iowa to consult on pig-raising techniques learned in a three-month crash course. I’m pretty sure the American farmer would see it as a publicity stunt and a bunch of hooey, but I never heard back from headquarters.

For the Peace Corps, the number of volunteers has always trumped the quality of their work, perhaps because the agency fears that an objective assessment of its impact would reveal that while volunteers generate good will for the United States, they do little or nothing to actually aid development in poor countries. The agency has no comprehensive system for self-evaluation, but rather relies heavily on personal anecdote to demonstrate its worth.

Every few years, the agency polls its volunteers, but in my experience it does not systematically ask the people it is supposedly helping what they think the volunteers have achieved. This is a clear indication of how the Peace Corps neglects its customers; as long as the volunteers are enjoying themselves, it doesn’t matter whether they improve the quality of life in the host countries. Any well-run organization must know what its customers want and then deliver the goods, but this is something the Peace Corps has never learned.

This lack of organizational introspection allows the agency to continue sending, for example, unqualified volunteers to teach English when nearly every developing country could easily find high-caliber English teachers among its own population. Even after Cameroonian teachers and education officials ranked English instruction as their lowest priority (after help with computer literacy, math and science, for example), headquarters in Washington continued to send trainees with little or no classroom experience to teach English in Cameroonian schools. One volunteer told me that the only possible reason he could think of for having been selected was that he was a native English speaker.

The Peace Corps was born during the glory days of the early Kennedy administration. Since then, its leaders and many of the more than 190,000 volunteers who have served have mythologized the agency into something that can never be questioned or improved. The result is an organization that finds itself less and less able to provide what the people of developing countries need — at a time when the United States has never had a greater need for their good will.

Robert L. Strauss has been a Peace Corps volunteer, recruiter and country director. He now heads a management consulting company.

There has recently been some debate on the merits of his comments regarding PC volunteers. A discussion arose amongst PCVs and their friends and families and I thought I’d jump on the band wagon and add my two cents. Why not, right?

Something that Strauss comments on is about the lack of maturity and experience of recent college graduates. These comments can never be widespread and applied to the general public, but currently in Mali, I would say that he’d hit the nail on the head. With my group of volunteers who entered, the mean age was about 25 or 27, I can’t remember. That means that there were some recent college graduates, but that also means that there were a significant number of older volunteers who had other volunteer or real world experience. I feel like my group had a really good head on its shoulders and that we each brought something to the table. Now, with our new group of volunteers, I don’t know if I feel the same way. Granted, it’s a group of 70 volunteers, and I don’t know them all, but the majority that I have met are right out of college and not to say that they don’t have the skills to apply, but they’re some of the most immature and/or inconsiderate people I’ve met. Honestly, sometimes I wonder what’s going on in the interview process in America. I’m hoping that they’re just new and in a new environment and will grow out of it. Hell, maybe we were like this too, but I don’t think so. There’s still time to see if things will turn around with them, but I do wonder which characteristics are being sought after in regional PC offices in America.

Now, here’s what I don’t agree with Strauss about. This sentence in particular really bothers me: “..that while volunteers generate good will for the United States, they do little or nothing to actually aid development in poor countries.” After being a Country Director for some time, I wonder what he was doing with him time, other than being a patron in a West African country. It’s the CD’s job to help volunteers promote development within a country. Peace Corps isn’t one of these aid agencies where all of the volunteers are leading lush lives and only hanging out with other Americans. For the most part, volunteers live in the country/en brousse, in a mud house with no electricity and/or running water. There are volunteers who are just here for the cross cultural experience, but there are others who truly want to make some sort of lasting impact, whether it be a cereal bank or millet grinder in their village or building a well and having a training on well maintenance or even helping artisans work on their design ideas for their products. We’re all here for a reason, but I can’t say I understand Mr. Strauss’ reason for sticking around Cameroon if he wasn’t 100% devoted to helping his volunteers. I can definitely say that our Country Director is invested in the work that we do and it’s important. If your boss didn’t care whether or not you were living in West Africa, would you stay?

I will agree that Peace Corps should review and evaluate what it’s doing and what tools of monitoring and evaluation it’s using. It’s the same thing with the United Nations Security Council reform, or less sexy, it’s the same thing as businesses reevaluating their prices for goods – something that Malians don’t often do. We all need to reevaluate our lives and work and what’s going on. Every single person, business, agency and organization must do this to improve. For example, we here are required to write quarterly reports and send them to our APCD in Bamako. Each time I send it, my APCD says, “Great work, I’ll get back to you with comments.” I’ve sent four quarterly reports now and I’ve never received feedback. So, in my mind, I’m doing a great job and I’m one of the volunteers actually invested in being here. If the APCDs were actually reading these reports, they would see that some volunteers sit at their site and don’t do a thing. These are the volunteers I don’t quite understand and I don’t get why they’re here, but it’s their life. These are the same people that complain about the heat and the food and using an outhouse and say that they’re suffering. Um, this is voluntary. Go home if you’re not happy.

One thing that some other volunteers and I have talked about are the benefits of being in the Peace Corps. Most of us are doing this for ourselves or to promote our future careers. I don’t know anyone who says, “Alright, I want to rough it for two years, where can I go?” but I’m sure they’re out there. Currently our benefits include a small resettlement allowance when we return home and an opportunity to join in the non-competitive job pool for government jobs. There are some educational opportunities, but the better ones are available if you start your Master’s before Peace Corps. So, what would be better? My friend and teammate suggested making it a little more like the military. Make it a 4 year commitment and give those who make all 4 years educational benefits, just the military does. I can imagine the applicant pool becoming intensely competitive or kind of thin. Not that many people want to commit 2, let alone 4, years of their lives to development work. But on the other hand, there are those who would love it. Why is the American government saying the Peace Corps is an important agency but not doing anything to get the great development workers interested instead of making it a fun club to be a member of? If we’re trying to improve our image abroad, let’s do it right. An increase in the contract of a PCV would also let them complete more in the time span. Currently, two years isn’t really enough to get anything done. Your first year is spent as a 3 year old trying to struggle through the language barrier, and by the time your second year has rolled around, 9 to 12 months is tough to accomplish everything you want. It’s something PC HQ should think about.

Development doesn’t just happen overnight. Anyone who thinks that needs to take another look at the developing world or take their head out of their ass. I’m not going to lie, there was a point that I thought I could “save the world.” Don’t we all? Growing up in rural, upstate NY and then moving to DC for university, I thought, “Damn, this is just the beginning, now I can do anything I want to and fix anything I put my mind to.” Well, I was right about doing anything I want, but wrong about fixing anything I want. Potable water doesn’t just appear for 1 billion people overnight. Neither does the eradication of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. You can’t introduce literacy and numeracy to a population of 12 million overnight. Hell, it’s tough for most of us to get Malians to wash their hands with soap before they eat. And that’s a 2 year, uphill battle that we win, but what happens when we leave? Why would they continue to spend the precious few CFA they have on soap when water seemingly has the same effect?

It’s a two way street, development. We’re busting our asses to help the people we live with and around to better themselves and their families. But, if they don’t want the help, you can’t force them. Some agencies try that or promise that if they change the agency will give them money. So, what happens? Villages change for 3 months to get a large sum of money and then immediately return to the ways that they’re used to. Behavioral change is a headache. But, in the end, if you can get even a small population of people to change and start believing in something better, it’ll have been worth it. Maybe I’m still young and naïve, but I truly believe that leaving a lasting impression on even one person will have made my two years in Mali worth it. Luckily, I know there is more than one person who will remember me and my hard work.

Globalization, Outsourcing and Mali

I know, those three words don’t necessarily fit in the same sentence, or do they? You probably don’t know enough about Mali to understand that under normal circumstances, these three ideas are just crazy together. However, I’ve recently come to realize that it’s not that crazy of a notion.

I’ve just read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman which is a ‘brief history of the 21st century.’ It was written in 2005, so I’m a little behind the times, but it’s an amazing book. It talks about how with the spread of globalization that countries are becoming more open and more likely to trade with one another or outsource or offshore and that with the borders being opened, the world it becoming more flat. Now, not only does Friedman have a great writing style that kept me hooked through all 470 pages, he also brings up good points about why India and China are on the rise but African countries are not. India and China have stable economies and they have something to offer – intelligence, services and cheap labor. The same isn’t true all throughout Africa, especially not Mali. I learned the other day from the American Ambassador here that Mali has the 3rd highest energy costs in all of Africa. That’s 3rd out of 54 countries. And after talking to Malians, I learned that energy costs are only going to go up. It’s crazy. How can Mali even think about supporting manufacturing or international exporting and therefore development if the cost of a running some sort of manufacturing plant will be ridiculously expensive? They can’t and that’s not fair. Now, I’m not saying that Mali is by any means to start a project like this, but it’s just an example.

But, I do want to talk about the ‘outsourcing’ that does occur here. Now, I don’t know the official Webster’s definition of outsourcing, and for that matter I don’t even know if it necessarily has to be an international thing, but for the sake of me talking right now, I’m going to use my own definition, and by that I mean through example. Let’s take Farafina Tigne, Peace Corps Baba’s shop, for example. When I first got there and saw all of the amazing jewelry inside, I was like, “Wow, Baba makes all of this?” Over the next several months, we were too busy with Hallmark for me to get a good grasp of the business transactions taking place. But recently I’ve noticed that outsourcing does take place. Recently Baba Fima created a new necklace made with black and clear glass beads and an ebony pendant in the middle. It’s really pretty, but it took him the better part of the day to string one necklace – it did have 6 or 8 strands of beads. So, instead he told me that he’d drop off all of the materials for someone in market in Mopti who would string all of them. Then I got curious and asked the price. I was astonished to find out that he would pay 250 CFA – less than $.50 – to make this necklace. Granted, he’s already paid for all of the materials, but $.50 to make a necklace? What’s better is that his friend could make 50 in one day, giving him a net profit of 12,500 CFA – about $30. For someone to earn $30 here in one day is amazing. It’s not common and when it does happen, they’ve normally worked hard for it. So, this is my idea of Malian outsourcing. Baba Fima knows that it’ll take him 5 times as long to make all of these necklaces and therefore outsources them to someone who can do it better. In the end, he’ll still sell these necklaces for 5.000 or 6.000 CFA and make a good profit, but he’s being a smart businessman. While his 50 necklaces are being strung, he can focus on other work and double his profit. Well, then I started to think about everything in Baba’s shop. We do the finishing touches on a lot of things like adding the ear wires to earrings, or artistically stringing necklaces. But, there’s a lot that we outsource to our partners also – like Peulh earrings, Tuareg metal work, and bogolan. This is a stretch, but we’re a mini Dell of Mali, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Who says Mali isn’t ready for globalization and outsourcing?