Power

"She's only a bird in a gilded cage, A beautiful sight to see, You may think she's happy and free from care, She's not, though she seems to be..." -Arthur Lamb

Note: I added links to the entry entitled Pressure. I'm working on getting my pics uploaded but unfortunately the connection at the cyber cafe is very slow.

Tchou Tchou


Coumba


Sogonna


Habib, Fa, and Chaick

Sogonna leading discussion on AIDS at a garage




It was good to be back at work today. I missed Coumba, Tchou Tchou and Sogonna. We had breakfast together. I had paté, boiled eggs and onions fried in dough, and Tchou Tchou and Sogonna had brochette, a good-sized portion of baguette stuffed with onions, french fries and sausage. Coumba didn't eat. We all had tea too and Coumba didn't. Maybe it was because she came in a little later...when Soumaiyla had already gone to the store to get our breakfasts. (I love the way the name Soumaiyla rolls off their tongues. It sounds like a song.) I used my tea bag to make some tea for Coumba and insisted she take some of my paté, the same way she does to me, saying "Tiens," in way you really can't refuse. It's funny because I've started to take on others mannerisms the same way children take on the mannerisms of the adults they are around do because they are learning and absorbing so much. I'm sure Coumba recognized her own mannerisms in me.

Quite a few women have been coming into the clinic for HIV testing, as the three-pronged prevention strategy indicates is best: abstinence, faithfulness to your partner, use of condoms and of course knowledge of your HIV status. Unfortunately the clinic is out of the reactionary agent that detects whether or not HIV antibodies are present in one's bloodstream. Tchou Tchou says perhaps they will receive the reactionary agent next month. Perhaps? In the meantime, I wonder how many of these women who are turned away will return.

I talked to some other coworkers about the strike and they said it wasn't at all about the price of millet. They said that the government has absorbed 21 businesses in the past decade, such as fabric-making businesses and that it cannot afford to continue sustaining them all. Slowly it has divested itself, selling off businesses, but has not shared any of that money with the workers who may lose their jobs as a result. So the strike only affected government workers, and me because Projet Jeune is an arm of the Ministry of Youth, as they agitated for workers' rights.

It turns out I did the most during our small vacation. Everyone else rested at home. As I recounted the story of Fa I thought about how crazy it is that I meet strangers and go to their house to have tea with them. I can't imagine doing that at home, but at the same time it's because I already have my network there, my family and friends that I go out with...and while I am open to meeting other people, it probably wouldn't transpire in quite that way.

I have figured out an ingenous way to get money out of my US account. At least I think I have... Besides using Mieko, that is really a last resort because the process is a bit burdensome for her. There are tons of Western Unions here and I thought I would go to Western Union online and send myself money. Sort of like an ATM, but with a 10 dollar charge instead of a 2 dollar one. Nice idea but I think the computer realized that the sender and recipient had the same name and it said the transaction could not be processed. So I think I will have to actually visit a Western union and plead my case to have access to my own account. I'll let you know how that goes...

Yesterday I saw a huge open-backed truck, kinda like the one filled with police that time, except it was filled with young people cheering for someone for the upcoming elections. They had yellow banners, posters, and loudspeakers. I wanted to take a picture but could not get my camera out in time. Overnight posters sprung up on compound walls and doors as well. I have to find out when the actual elections are. One thing I noticed is that clothing is used to make statements. More than just the random t-shirt, since cloth is made here there are designs that incorporate slogans. Once they are fashioned into a blouse and skirt for a woman, or a shirt and pants for a man, the person becomes a walking political statement. I have seen outfits that say 'God is with us', 'The future of a society depends on the status of its women', and 'Mali's future is dependant on the new way of agriculture.'

It strikes me how thos who control production, control the prices. I never really thought about it before. But of course it makes sense. Here I am in Africa, a place where even though Mali is an arid country, a variety of foods are present. But the foods are fleeting. They have to be eaten today. Many do not have refrigerators. Meats are smoked to keep them a while. Fruits are juiced but on a small scale. For the most part everything must be consumed now. I could buy a ton of mangoes for a few coins but to buy a box of mango juice is relatively expensive. Why, when the mangoes are everpresent? Because the facilities to create the juice, and the box in which it comes, are not located here. The same with pre-produced clothing sold in the store. It's much cheaper (and a better fit and more creative as well) to bring raw material to the tailor and choose a design from the various pictures they have. So goods (fruits, wood, fabric) leaves the country for a penance and returns in the form of high-priced produced goods. Hardly seems fair.

Funny enough, fish from the sea (brought in from neighboring Senegal and Ivory Coast) are more abundant here in Mali and cheaper than the fish from the river though Mali does not touch the sea, and it's only source of water is the Niger River. No one has yet been able to adequately explain that phenomenon to me. Maybe it's because there are more fish in the sea, literally!

Rodney said residents of the region of Gao have taken to planting and harvesting eucalyptus trees as a source of income. Since Gao is basically in the Sahara, eucalyptus is one of the few things that will grow there, that, and date trees. While the wood from the trees fetches a lot of money, environmentalists have decried that the tree actually ruins the environment, making the land even drier. Pressure is mounting for people to stop planting eucalyptus as a source of revenue. The governor of Gao has said they will not stop unless an alternative source of revenue is provided. Rodney said when they brought mangoes as gifts to Gao, people's eyes lit up as if they were getting gold. Note: Gold is found abundantly here so people don't value it the same way we do. It's not to hard to be literally covered in gold. Very deep yellow gold too. I've never seen that color gold at home.

I keep getting questions about the people in the U.S. Fa's brother Chaick said he knew a lot about the States and he wanted to know why people in the States didn't know a lot about Africa, about how people lived here and what was going on. When people ask if the U.S. is wonderful I say yes it's good but we have our problems too; it's certainly not perfect. I question how much Chaick really knows because he says he xants to visit New York, California, Oyo, Detwa and Magahmary. It took me a while to figure out the last three were Ohio, Detroit, and Montgomery, Alabama. Interesting choices... I asked if he knew people there, why he had chosen those cities. He said he wanted to see where all the cars were made in Detroit, that he had a friend in Ohio, and that the heart of the struggle for blacks civil right started in Alabma and he wanted to go there. Wow!

The only thing I could say to Chaick to answer his question is that the US is and has always been isolated and for the most part, the average person does not seek to know about other countries. His question reminded me of my own question when I attended an elite private high school in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Franciso. There was so much culturally that I knew about the kids that I attended school with, that they did not know about me. The general ignorance of a good number of my classmates, as well as an unwillingness on their part to put themselves in a position to learn more, irritated me and I gravitated towards those who were willing to learn as much from me as I could learn from them.

As I reflected on Chaick's question and the other questions I had been getting I started to think more. Wasn't I in a position in America to know more about the dominant culture because it benfitted me more to do so? Wouldn't it be detrimental to my growth and success not to know more? And then, isn't that pattern simply replicated on a larger scale? While I am a member of a minority culture in America, I am still American. And since America is still seen as the dominant power in the world, isn't it more beneficial for Chaick to know about America, than for us to know about Mali? Knowing how it felt to be on the other side of this equation though I am committed to resisting the imbalance of power and working to restore it as much as I can. There is much that I want to learn about Mali, about the world. And I know that a bird that rests in a gilded cage is still caged nonetheless.