90's Flowchart

Pema's Insight

"to be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest; to live fully is to be always in no man's land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh"

The Malian Context

The following text is quoted directly from the Mali Folkecenter website but I thought summed it up rather well:

Geography

Mali is a vast landlocked republic located in West Africa. It is located in the heart of the Sahel, a region threatened by drought and desertification. It lies between Mauritania to its west and Niger to its east. The northern 65% of its land area is desert or semi-desert, and the vast majority of the population are directly dependent on their environment (herding, farming or fishing) for their livelihoods. The capital city is Bamako. Other major towns are Sikasso, Segou, Mopti, Timbuktu, Gao and Kayes. There are 8 administrative divisions or regions (see figure 1 below):, Kayes, , Koulikoro, Sikasso, Segou, Mopti, Tombouctou, Gao and Kidal. The country is further subdivided into 703 rural communes (communes). Its population, growing at a high annual rate of 3 percent, is approximately 12 million people. The national territory extends over 1 241 000 km².

Statistics

Mali’s Human Development Index ranking is 164 out of a total of 173 countries. It has a population of 12 million, over 70% of whom live below the poverty line of $1 a day. Life expectancy at birth is 51.5 years. Infant mortality is 142 (per 1,000 live births). The adult literacy rate is 41.5% (48.9% for men, 34.4% for women), and the average number of children born per woman is 7. HIV/AIDS exposure is increasing. (Statistics: UNDP Human Development Report 2002).

The population is mostly made up of subsistence farmers living in villages of 500-2000 people. Around 15-30 villages make up one commune, 20-50 communes make up a district, and around 4-7 districts make a region. There are 8 regions in Mali. Farmers rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, growing cereals for food and often cotton as a cash crop for export. In rural areas 80% of energy needs are met by firewood and charcoal, and people use kerosene lamps and torches for lighting. This does not include, of course, animal and manpower, which is tiring and time consuming. Rechargeable car batteries are also used for lighting, TV and radio, and a very small minority of people have solar panels or a generator. In rural areas, modern energy services, particularly productive (i.e. income generating) uses are very limited, making efforts to stimulate local economic development difficult.

Energy situation in Mali

Less than 12% of the population has access to formal electricity services, and the majority of these are in the capital Bamako and the principal towns. For rural areas, home to more than 60% of the population, less than 1% has access to electricity. Opportunities for substantially improving the health and qualify of life, longevity, and infant mortality rates for the country are hampered by the lack of reliable electricity and energy services throughout most of the country.

Supply possibilities

Mali has no fossil energy resources, meaning that fossil fuels must be imported from the coast at considerable cost. This means that generating costs for grid electricity are generally around twice as high as Cote d’Ivoire for example, but Mali is significantly poorer as a country. Much of Mali’s hard earned foreign currency is lost on fossil fuel imports, as there is heavy dependence on imported petroleum products that represents about 8 % of the national energy balance, weighing heavily on the foreign exchange and trade balance of the country (more than 100 million USD in 2000, and 75 million USD in 1998). However, in terms of Renewable Energy Sources, Mali is rich in solar, hydro, biomass and, in some parts of the country, wind. There are few places on earth with a better solar resource, with 5-6 standard sun hours per day.

Decentralisation

Mali has been democratic since 1991, and is often held up as a model for other emerging West African democracies. Mali has been among the first countries in West Africa to undergo a pioneering decentralisation process that is moving decision making power away from the central government to the regions, districts and above all to the communes, bringing essential decisions closer to the communities most affected by their outcomes, in order to improve governance and increase democratisation. All the administration, local development policy and programmes are in the hands of the commune members who are elected for five year terms. The communes are now responsible for prioritising their needs and writing their own Communal Development Plans, which are the basis for all development activities in the communes.

Rural Exodus – draining communities of young talent

In rural areas 90% of the population are engaged in farming, which takes up nearly all of people’s time for 5-6 months of the year. But during the 6-7 month dry season, young people, feeling that opportunity is lacking in the villages, move to the cities to find work. Every year, some of them stay on to live there. This rural depopulation is increasing every year, and besides reducing the human resource base of the villages, with an important and dynamic section of the community leaving, it contributes to overcrowding, crime, delinquency, drug problems, prostitution and AIDS in Malian cities, particularly Bamako. It is more cost effective to prevent this rural exodus than to try to treat its symptoms: the integration of these young people into the cities is more difficult and expensive than the improvement of their living conditions in rural areas. The rural exodus is a real danger today, not only for these villages but for the whole country, threatening the government's decentralisation policy.

For example, the infant mortality rate is extremely high, at 123 deaths per 1,000 live births (2000 est., UN HDI) Life expectancy at birth for the total population is barely 47 years. The total fertility rate is almost seven children born/woman (2000 est.). Many of these children never reach their fifth birthday. It is clear that there is a profound need for substantially improved health services in Mali, and electrification of rural health centres can contribute substantially to overall improvement in life expectancy and infant mortality rates.

Literacy, defined as the percentage of the population age 15 and over that can read and write, is only 31% for the total population. It is 39.4% for men and only 23.1% (1995 est., UN HDI) for women. Substantial increases in the levels of social and economic development will require greater and more extensive education, as well as dramatic improvements in health, from the prenatal period through adult life. Electrification of schools to allow evening education will be an essential dimension of improved education for the entire population as the adults, especially women, are very occupied in the day time, so at the evening it is more easy to get to school if there is lighting there.

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Africa Africa

Toubabou. That is what they call me in Bambara and it means “homme blanc”.

The Flights

It didn’t take long to get acquainted with my seat partner on the plane leaving from Montreal because he was also going to Bamako, but to work for a Canadian mining company in the East of Mali. He has been working there for about 18 months with a pretty nice routine: 2 months of work, 1 month off at home. It was quickly apparent, however, that we were there for different reasons and in different capacities but I did not let that affect my impressions of him.

The flight from Paris to Bamako was delayed for about an hour because there were 3 Malians being deported back to Mali and they were cuffed at the ankles and the wrists, something the other Malians in the plane did not appreciate. They certainly vocalized their opinion, which quickly grew into a shouting match on the plane where the police came onboard and intervened by taking off the 3 “prisoners”. The unfortunate thing is that, had the other Malians been quiet, these refugees would have returned home instead of spending another few nights in prison. That said, sometimes a person’s convictions outweigh any logic and there is certainly honour in that.

The Arrival

It felt like a heavy, musky wall of heat as soon as I stepped off the plane. Passing through customs was very easy and the challenge lied more in grabbing my luggage from the belt and passing through security. As soon I stepped out of the airport there was a crowd of people and I missed my “Benoît Rivard – MFC” sign. After about 2 seconds of panic, I found a phone booth where I made a few phone calls and found the MFC driver that had come to get me.

The first night was spent at Johanna and Ibrahim’s house (my supervisor and the MFC director, respectively). It’s a beautiful home in a not so beautiful setting; of course this is basing “beauty” on a completely different set of standards. The next morning I met their 2 gorgeous little daughters Batoma and Sari (I think those are their names, not 100% sure). Batoma is 4 and already speaks 3 languages: Finnish (Johanna is from Finland), Bambara and French. It becomes quite humbling when a 4 year old is translating what her 2 year old sister is saying to you because she only speaks Bambara and Finnish.

Mali Folkecenter

Yesterday was my first day at work and my first impressions were of amazement at how much the MFC is doing simultaneously. I won’t go into detail on their projects because their website already describes most of it but one project worth mentioning is how they have developed and installed a power plant that runs on jatropha oil. It feeds electricity to a village of over 4,000 people so this is no run-of-the-mill bio-diesel generator. I will eventually make a field trip with some of the staff to take pictures and write about this project so more details will follow in the next few months.

The MFC office has wireless internet so I will be able to stay “connected” to a certain degree so feel free to send me an email if you have questions that I am not answering in my posts.

Varia

It is always hot, day and night. People drive with about a 2 inch buffer zone between cars or motorcycles. The local neighbourhood kids have already come to see me about 5 times in 2 days, one of them is called Bogaah. I am sharing my living accommodations with a family of lizards. Nobody speaks French in the market, only Bambara. All the vegetables are miniature compared to what we are used to eating. Bamako feels like a maze of identical streets and main roads; reference points are your lifelines. I am having a lot of difficulty remembering people’s names at the office. I have yet to play my guitar so I will go do that now.

I have posted the pictures I’ve taken so far on my flickr page (link in the side bar) but there aren’t many of the city itself because apparently the police will confiscate your camera if they catch you taking pictures.

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Il est temps de partir

Ce fût une semaine étrange.  Une semaine de rattrapage ainsi que d'efforts de clairvoyance.  Comment se préparer pour un monde tellement inconnu?  On pourrait presque jouer le jeu où tous les gens d'un groupe doivent choisir un objet à apporter sur une île déserte; voilà mon sentiment.

C'est quand même évident que je ne puisse pas être entièrement équipé de tous ce qui sera essentiel.  Comme de raison, je vais oublier quelque chose... il suffit tout simplement que ce ne soit pas mon passeport!  Ou peut-être même l'idée que je vais au Mali pour changer le monde.  Mes intentions ont changé depuis le début de mon stage puisque maintenant je me considère plutôt comment étant un observateur, un étudiant, une éponge.  De cette façon, j'espère ne pas être trop découragé par l'omniprésence de pauvreté qui va sûrement me toucher au coeur.

Ce fût une semaine étrange.  Une semaine où je dis au revoir non seulement à mes ami(e)s et ma famille mais aussi à moi-même, sachant qu'une aventure comme celle qui m'attend va agir comme catalyseur pour certaines convictions personnelles dormantes.

Si ce fût vraiment une semaine étrange, par contre, il sera difficile à décrire les prochains 5 mois...

Le prochain article sera en direct de Bamako dès que je réussis à m'installer avec une connection Internet au bureau.

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... and Sweet

This will be short, I promise.  There are a few thoughts I wanted to share from conversations I had today with various people.

A teacher once told me that an idea can sometimes ring so true inside that one immediately adopts it as a Truth rather than filtering it through a filter of judgment.   There is an inherent danger in falling for this trap.  This advice was offered when a discussion led to me mentioning how everyone on this planet should watch An Inconvenient Truth.  Her response was not what I expected but it was very much a valid point: to firmly believe in something, one needs to be able to argue as convincingly for either "side".  In other words, one should take information from Al Gore with as much skepticism as if he or she were watching CNN or Fox News.

This, of course, is the opinion of a certain individual and although I don't wholeheartedly agree, she definitely makes a valid point.  It has served mainly as a personal reminder when taking in new information.

Today was a day of stimulating (and long overdue) conversations with friends.  I'm still surrounded by this overwhelming sense of naïvety when I think that I will be in Mali in a week from now.  It's both exciting and a little scary but I feel clarity in the reasons why I'm going and doing this.  Whether I will adhere to this plan for the duration of the internship remains to be seen.

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Une journée d'hiver

Tomorrow will be my last day in Smithers before I leave Friday morning. The past few days have been engulfed in both retrospect and a focus on the horizon; analyzing the last 3 months through 20/20 lenses while trying to wrap my head around how I should best prepare for an entirely different reality.

Hiking up to Crater Lake while thinking of Africa is the most accurate microcosm of my experience in Smithers and it was pointed out even before I left Ottawa by a friend who contemplated the logic behind going to Northern B.C. to prepare for West Africa. It's odd to say the least but here I am...

As a final thought, I have this strange impression that the next time I blink I will be on a plane crossing the Atlantic, saying goodbye to family, friends, and a version of myself that I will one day see as disconnected both from my Self as well as the world around it.

Updates

First, I would like to apologize to my readership for the lack of posts but in my defense, you were warned!

Vancouver was an interesting return to the urban jungle filled with the cackling of traffic and the blinding lights at night. Having only been in Smithers since early July, I wasn't expecting this much of a shock during my return to a big city. I found myself craving for the deaf calm of downtown Smithers and the accessibility of all that is essential.

I also realized that living in such an over-stimulating environment like Vancouver doesn't allow one much time to truly reflect either introspectively or on small curiosities like how a blind person knows when they should stop wiping (never quite figured that one out yet).

Being back in Smithers has been full of signs that I am leaving in a short period of time. I have been popping pills and experiencing their side effects but they have definitely ceased. I will only have to take mefloquine once a week instead of doxycycline every day (and it's also an antibiotic, which I'm told can be very hard on your system if taken for prolonged durations).

As for details on the next few weeks, this might be useful to know (subject to change of course):
October 12: I'm arriving in Ottawa at 11:30 pm
October 12-14: In Ottawa
October 14-17: Running around in Cornwall
October 17-19: Back in Ottawa for the Matthew Good show (17th) and to see my Habitants kick some butt at Scotiabank Place on the 18th.
October 19-21: Back in Cornwall for some last minute, panick-ridden to-do's.
October 21: Leave from Montreal for Bamako.
October 22: Arrive in Bamako in the evening.

I was given details today about my accomodations and it looks like the Mali Folkecentre rents out a 2-bedroom apartment for international workers. The apartment is in a compound that shares a courtyard with local families, which will be a great way for me to meet new, non-expatriated people. I intend to take djembe drum lessons while I'm there and learn some Bambara.

Although posts have been few and far between, I will make a better effort in writing because it's also my chance to reflect on what is going on inside of and around me.