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I shook hands with a guy who shook hands with the guy who shook hands with the devil

I am a boy hiding under a desk in a nuclear war.
I am looking down, walking through traffic.
I am a 4 year old’s question.
I am a writer’s block on a tight deadline.
I am the sideline on an in-bound call.
I am a chess match.
I am a split horizon between night and day.
I am a photograph, stuck in time.
I am searching for Carmen Sandiego.
I am a tug rope at the office pic-nic.
I am digging for a creative well.

One could say that I’ve been busy. In truth, I simply haven’t taken the time to sit down and write my impressions, especially of la fête de tabaski. Now, I’m afraid I will lose them.

At 9am, every mosque is filled to capacity by men who will then return home to sacrifice a sheep to Allah. This is done to thank Allah for sparing Abraham’s only son’s life when he was willing to sacrifice him. Well, if you’re wondering, I am not a sheep killer. My colleague Tounkara came to pick me up right after the prayers were finished at the mosque. I may not have killed a sheep but, from my apartment to his family’s house, I sure saw enough of them hanging from tree branches and being butchered.

Once slaughtered, the sheep is dissected by the men of the family. They work meticulously until each edible part is passed onto the women. It is now their turn to each prepare the meat in a different way. One could call this the Malian version of a “cook-off”.

After there was nothing left of the sheep, I wish I could say that there were exciting rituals of song and dance. However, the rest of the day consists of 2 activities: eating and resting. Just when the button of my pants popped, I’m told it’s time to visit some friends and family… where more sheep meat awaits.

As for the social side of these festivities, I can put it simply by saying that I now have an adopted family here in Bamako. Tounkara’s family, probably without realizing it, showed me why this is, for me, the most human place on Earth.

We now fast forward to December 24th, where I’m with the MFC Director Ibrahim, his wife (my supervisor) Johanna and their two daughters, Batoma and Sira. We celebrate Christmas with a succulent meal followed by the presents. The next day was much less quiet since Ibrahim invited about 20 family members to do what people here do best during the holidays, eat.

I can honestly say that I haven’t been homesick during these past few weeks, as everyone is spending time with their respective families. That, I think, is a testament to the family and friends I have made here (without forgetting my own of course!).

On a slightly different note, I can proudly say that I shook hands with a guy who shook hands with the guy who shook hands with the devil. Confused? My friend Adama recently took me out in a village called Kati, 15 km outside of Bamako, to spend the afternoon with some of his family. He introduced me to them one by one and last but not least was his uncle, “le colonel”. As I took a seat beside Le colonel, he quickly found out my nationality and proudly said that he served Lt. Gen. (Ret) Roméo Dallaire in Rwanda for 6 months. He was the leader of the Rapid Response Team that was directly under Dallaire’s command. Umm… words to explain this… wow?...

These things never happen with any warning or time to prepare the thousand questions that are floating in your mind. Just before I was able to grab a few of those questions, Le colonel politely asked me my age. Only men of 50 years or more were “allowed” to sit in this area so he kindly thanked me for coming to visit. Adama and I then went to have some tea and a delicious lunch with our demographic.

The following night, I went out with Tounkara and his friend, “le petit commandant”. Based on these two encounters, I’m convinced nobody in the Malian Military actually has a name. Le petit commandant is indeed a short man, but that didn’t stop him from spending a year in Darfur with the African Union forces. He recently returned in mid-November and, unlike my meeting with Le colonel, I had the chance to pick his brain. It’s the kind of experience you never really imagine because all of a sudden, a conflict that seemed so distant – physically and metaphorically – has a face to it.

So what’s next? I think I can only hope to, one day, shake hands with the guy who shook hands with God. His name is .

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Sheep and mango trees

“Did you realize there was a live sheep in the trunk?” That’s a question I never, in my right mind, thought I would ever ask someone but alas, the man sharing a taxi with me (and another MFC intern) proved me wrong. There are sheep everywhere. Dozens lie on top of buses. Others sit, tied to a pole while counting down their last days. Most people in Mali are muslim and therefore, preparing for the fête de tabaski where they will savour some sheep in large families.

A colleague has invited me to spend this holiday with him and his family and I told him it would be an honour to join them. I guess you could say that the turkey is going to look a little different this year…

It has been the first sign that the holidays are coming. No Santa Claus paraphernalia at every street corner. No decorations coming out November 1st. And certainly no pressure to empty bank accounts on scented candles and power tools. In fact, the thought of the holidays hadn’t even crossed my mind until last week when I got an email from my parents asking me what I wanted for Christmas. Would it be too much to ask for every child in Mali to get an education and a full stomach?

I’m currently reading The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs and it has been difficult at times, especially when he discusses how easily malaria can be mitigated in Sub-Saharan Africa by distributing bed nets and anti-malarial medicine. You can’t find a bed net anywhere in Garalo, either in a house or a store. Colleagues at work sometimes seem to disappear for about a week and every time I ask, the answer is what I fear: malaria.

It’s probably too late to suggest this as most of this blog’s readership have probably finished their shopping but I want to throw it out there in your consciences anyway. Consider making a donation on behalf of a friend, brother, sister, cousin, neighbourhood barber, yodelling teacher, local 7-11 clerk, father, mother and/or step-(all of the above). If you don’t know where to start, here are some places:

One Sky
Amnesty International
UNICEF

If you are worried about the way your money will be used, I suggest One Sky’s Sowing A Seed program as 80% of it goes directly to buying school supplies (the other 20% is for administration costs to keep the program viable). If I’ve won you over with the bed nets in Garalo example, send me an email and we can figure out a way to get some there.

As sheep replace turkeys and mango trees replace Christmas trees, my thoughts will be with all of you back home. Joyeux Noël et Bonne année à tous.

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The Bottomless Oil Well

If the village of Garalo and the work of Mali-Folkcenter Nyetaa are a sign of things to come for rural Africa, the future is bright. My latest journey to this rural village in the south of Mali began when I was asked to accompany a Dutch engineer, Sander, and a masters student (Inge) because they were in need of an interpretor. They were leaving the next day for what became a 6 day trip; this is what I have come to expect while working here... Plan A's don't really serve a purpose.

There is no doubt in my mind that MFC Nyetaa and the villagers of Garalo are going down in the record books. The electric current in Garalo was generated for the first time from vegetable oil in what has become the largest bio-fuel electrification project in Africa. The 125 Kva generator – one of three at the power plant – that feeds electricity into over 170 homes gives light, refrigeration and security to about 4,700 people.

And I was there to witness it.

The scale of this project is overwhelming when you walk around the village at night or see the sheer size of the generator running. Through my role as an interpretor, I was lucky enough to better understand the mechanics of both, even down to specific details like the piston pressure adjustments required to switch to bio-fuel. This was mostly thanks to Sander, the engineer who installed the generator sets last May. He began working on ships at the age of 17 as an apprentice until he became chief engineer a decade or so later. Having now started his own company, Brodtech, he has installed generator sets not only in Mali but also Tanzania, with many more on the horizon and has done so at one third of the price other companies had quoted because, as he told me, he just wants enough money to put bread on the table.

Two of my days were spent accompanying Inge while she surveyed about 35 households, mainly through the family chiefs. Her research looks into consumer use of energy in terms of appliances currently used and potential ones in the future to determine how much the grid could handle. Most interviews were done through a translation train starting from english, to french, to bambara and back the other way again. After that experience, I've realized that a message is initially so fragile when being transmitted through a roller-coaster of interpretation. The ride gets even bumpier when the message is only understood by engineers or mechanics, both of which I certainly am not.

The interviews gave me a much better understanding of the villagers' opinion of this newfound access to electricity. Some people, mostly the less fortunate living off their land, found the monthly fee of 6,500 CFA Francs (about 14$ cdn) too much for their budgets. They were collectively asking to change from a monthly fee system to a meter-based system where you pay for what you consume.

If only it were that easy...

In order for this whole project to be sustainable, it was decided that a private company (ACCESS) founded by the Mali-Folkecenter Nyetaa would be responsible for the operation of the power plant. Currently, ACCESS barely makes any profit, only enough to continue growing. They have explained to their customers that as the number of total subscribers increases, they will be provided with longer hours of operation (it's currently 5 hours every night but they are about 20 new customers away from being able to offer 6 or 7 hours nightly) and perhaps be able to switch to a meter-based system. Without having to delve back too far into my managerial economics courses (I still get shivers when I hear someone say "marginal cost"), the simple explanation is that there is a base cost (fuel, salaries,etc) that ACCESS needs to cover and this meter-based system, combined with an insufficient base of subcsribers, would cause immediate losses.

This is where the debate of economic development to eradicate poverty begins... but I will leave it there because it's one where I am sitting on the fence.

Jatropha crops are growing and people will soon be able to sell them in exchange for some extra income that could potentially go towards paying these seemingly pricey electricity bills. One villager described jatropha as being their bottomless oil well. If this cycle does become sustainable, the future looks bright in terms of access to electricity for rural Mali and perhaps all of rural Africa.

I'd like to end this post by welcoming "Monsieur P" as a contributor to this blog. If his next posts are as humourous and insightful as his first, we are in for a real treat.

Sugar and cucumbers

To reminisce,


Things can go from bad to worse, but it's best not to think that way. After having lost keys to a secondary school, my weekend couldn't get any better. This blog isn't to complain about that situation, but rather to remind me, and all of us, to just stick with it.

Comically, depression was setting in as a dreaded confrontation with a strict straight-as-an-arrow principal was on the horizon. How to explain incompetence...hmm. Only about a thousand prepared excuses could do the job. After having visited all my past visited locations, in a 50cm snowstorm I might add, I decided to just let time pass until the inevitable confession of the loss. (By the way, those keys cannot fall into the wrong hands). Since cooking is my favorite thing to do, making stuffed zucchini should have worked beautifully. However, I would suggest never mistaking a cucumber for a zucchini, you won't go far. But hope was not lost. Let's put salt on those cucumbers, and relax yet again. Now. I'm not sure how things go in Iran, but if my very foreign roommate put the sugar in the salt shaker, he sure managed to confuse the hell out of me. Sweetened cucumbers taste brutal by the way. Try that Monday on for size. Miraculously, Tuesday, someone had brought a random set of keys to the school office. I think it was Jesus.