DANCING IN BAMAKO

Dancing in Bamako

Don’t you love the scenes in period films where they dance the quadrille or some other stylized dance so beautifully? I always wish I knew the steps so I could join in.

Driving in Bamako is a little like one of those dances, and I’ve actually learned to enjoy it! For one thing, one is not limited by nuisances such as red lights. Oh, they are there, but they don’t always mean Stop, like in America. Sometimes they mean, Turn left now that oncoming traffic has to stop. Or turn right now that the motorcycles have to stop. (There’s not a blanket “Turn right on red after stop” rule like in America; do this at the wrong intersection and you risk getting a ticket)!

I most enjoy the intersections where the traffic lights are not functioning. That’s where you really learn to dance, edging forward to look for your opening and then plunging gracefully through.

It’s not all as graceful and perfect as it sounds, of course. Remember the scene in BBC’s Pride and Prejudice when Lizzie Bennett had to rebuke Mr. Collins for his missteps? The local minibuses which provide public transportation to the masses, called SOTRAMAs, are the Mr. Collinses of Bamako traffic. They go where they will and as they will. Most of the drivers have not learned the correct steps to the dance (I’m not even sure if most of them have actually learned to drive), and they don’t care to, either. They plunge willy-nilly into traffic as if they didn’t even know it was a dance!

Finally, imagine again that scene in P&P. What if a prankster had released hundreds of cockroaches onto the dance floor, and suddenly everyone had to dance La Cucaracha at the same time as the minuet or the scotch reel? That is what it’s like dealing with the myriad motorbikes of Mali, massing and merging like a swarming horde of maggots, making the dance miserable and maladroit.

If it weren’t for them, driving in Bamako would be perfect. Almost. [To be fair, Bamako traffic was evidently the worst part of my daughter's-in-law trip here last year, so not everyone sees it from the same perspective.]

WHAT IS YOUR AMERICAN NICKNAME?

When we first came to Mali nearly three decades ago, everyone wanted us to take Malian names. We ended up with Yacouba for Jim, which is the local equivalent of his real name (Jim = James = Jacob = Yacouba), and Djeneba for me (kinda sounds like Jennifer, right?).

So shortly into each semester, I challenge my English students at Go Global Mali to take English names. Turnabout is fair play, right? They have been quite good-natured about it, and I confess I have enjoyed “dubbing” them with some of my favorite names.

First, I recommend they do what Jim did – use a cognate if it exists. Equivalents often do in the case of religious names. So Moussa becomes Moses, Issiaka becomes Isaac, Daouda is David, Saran is Sara, and so on. My students don't always want to use these, however, so Adama chose to become Alexander. Can you guess the English equivalents of the following: Harouna, Nuhun, Yaya, and Issa? (Post your responses in the comments or on Facebook, and no spoilers allowed if you have ever lived in West Africa!)

Next, I suggest they try to choose a name which begins with the same letter as their real name – it helps us all remember, and it seems logical. However, there are always those who want to name themselves after a popular TV or movie character. So there is a Jack (Jack Bauer, 24), a Linc (someone from Prison Break, a show I have never watched – would someone please tell me if he's a good guy or a bad guy?!?) and Palmer (Pres. David Palmer, also from 24).

For those who opt to take names using their first initial, I supply a list of choices. And to be honest, this is the most fun part for me because I sneak in the names of family and friends and even my favorite TV characters. So this semester, Kadiatou, whose local nickname is Kady, chose Kate. I think she was thinking of Kate Middleton, which is cool so we call her Princess sometimes, but it also makes me think of my Aunt Kate.

M is a common first letter here, with all the Mohameds and Mamadous and Mahamanes, etc., so I always have to give a fairly large selection of M names for guys, and I was delighted when one chose Marshall (after my cousin of the same name), another chose Moe (our niece Rosanne's husband), and – my real coup – someone chose Malcolm, as in Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly.

One student's name is Cheick, and it was challenging to find names for him. I listed both “Sh” (because Cheick is pronounced with a sh sound) and “Ch” options. I wanted him to choose Charles, because that was my father's name, but I was also rooting for Sheldon (another cousin), Shawn (Psych), and the one he eventually chose, Chauncey (a very good friend from Wilkens Ave. Mennonite Church).

And by the way, my student, Djeneba – the same as my Malian name – picked Jenny. :-)

BLOGGING THE COUP

It’s Day Four since we’ve been in “hibernation” due to the coup d’état in Mali. This has provided a lot of time for reflection, but also for boredom, so it’s a good opportunity to add to my blog for the first time in six months!

In brief, I was headed to Bamako on Wednesday with the team from Christ for Humanity (Ronda Tyson, Vicki Ray, DeMarco Taylor), after a productive ten days in Kayes, and anticipating three days of training ESL teachers in Bamako. Arriving in Kati, about 15km/9m (one hour) from the capital, the bus offloaded us, saying there was a “little problem.” We assumed this was a mechanical issue, but soon learned that there was a strike or a demonstration on the road between us and Bamako. We hoped to get moving again in a few hours, but instead the bus turned around and headed into the bush for protection in case demonstrators resorted to property destruction. By then, we were the only passengers left on the bus, and were in contact with the US Embassy. We learned that the “demonstration” was actually a failed coup attempt. The Embassy advised us to stay in Kati and found us an American lady living here with her son who was willing to take us in.

In the morning, the mutinous soldiers successfully seized the presidential palace and announced on national television at 4.30am the success of their putsch. The reason for the coup is the dissatisfaction of certain factions of the army with the conduct of the war against the Tuareg rebellion in the north of Mali. Tuareg mercenaries returned from the conflict in Libya with state-of-the-art weapons and resumed their decades-long, on-and-off insurgency. Malian troops are undersupplied with arms and even such basics as food, and their weaponry is definitely inferior to that of the insurgents. [To familiarize yourself with the history of the Tuareg conflict, check out the second hyperlink below.]

Our hostess is a poli-sci major, and her Malian friends come and go, so we spend a lot of time discussing “the situation.” Some obvious questions present themselves:

Malian presidential elections are scheduled in one month. Why overthrow the government when the “end” of the current administration is in sight? One Malian man said, “A month is a long time when you are a soldier lacking ammunition and hungry.” Point taken, but one goal of the new ruling committee is to restore democracy. Exactly how does canceling upcoming elections restore democracy?

Where are the generals? The highest ranking officer involved in the coup is a captain, and the president of the Democratic Committee is only 39 years old. Young soldiers are literally running wild in the streets, confiscating vehicles, shooting rifles in the air, looting shops, and assaulting women. No wonder people perceive that their new leaders are not in control. Speculation is that the older soldiers are loyal to the president, or that they have been arrested.

Unintended consequences include giving an advantage to the rebels in the north, who are making a move southward to take advantage of the instability. Furthermore, the north and east are experiencing the worst famine in over a decade, and for the time being international aid has been cut off.

For these and many other reasons we are greatly concerned for the future of our adopted homeland.
Please click on the third link below, which is the blog I wish I had written!

1. My five minutes of fame (I am quoted in this article): http://www.tunisia-live.net/2012/03/22/malian-military-stages-coup/

2. An explanation of the roots of the Tuareg conflict (written by a journalist we know who attended Dakar Academy): http://www.tunisia-live.net/2012/03/23/the-malian-coup-decades-of-rebellion-and-one-night-of-gunfire/

3. An excellent early analysis of the situation: http://africasacountry.com/2012/03/23/malis-coup-first-thoughts/

4. A map of the Tuareg conflict region: http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/Tuareg-Rebels-a-Threat-in-Unstable-Mali-144089386.html

5. 10 Malian political parties condemn the coup: http://www.malijet.com/actualite-politique-au-mali/40657-declaration-commune-de-10-partis-politiques-au-mali.html

HOW LOCAL IS LOCAL?

I just finished Barbara Kingsolver’s fascinating book on her family’s year of eating locally, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I was happy to be challenged about the food choices I make, based on how much fuel and energy are expended to get my food to market.  There is also the issue of supporting local farmers, instead of those in another region or another country.

Initially, I was patting myself on the back, because most of the produce we buy is local. We can even eat bananas till they come out the whazoo (a food Ms. Kingsolver’s family must pass on since it comes from the tropics). But then I remembered those Moroccan apples in my fridge. Morocco is on the African continent, but it’s two countries away from here. Oops.

There’s also a section of our market here which sells produce trucked in from the Malian Region of Sikasso.  Is that local? It’s in Mali, but it’s about as far from where we live as you can go without entering Côte d’Ivoire.  It’s about 1000km from here – that’s 600 miles. Now Ms. Kingsolver suggests a standard of 100 miles for those living in fertile areas, such as southern California, or in her case, Virginia. But she used to live in Tuscon – a very Mali-like climate – and in that case she suggests 250 miles.  So even by that standard, I should avoid the Sikasso section of the market.  Hm.  On the other hand, a lot of the vendors in the local section buy their goods in bulk in the Sikasso Market, so I may end up buying them anyway, but paying more.  (I also just calculated the distance my apples had to travel: almost ten times the generous limit for Mali or Arizona!).

But, really, fresh produce is not the issue here. We are strangers in a strange land, and as such we like to splurge on imported goods so we can eat like back home. It’s not even much of a splurge (except for cheese). Cans of veggies, jars of jam, containers of applesauce can all be found in my pantry, most from the European Union, and fairly reasonably priced.  How about coffee: at least our instant coffee comes from the neighboring coffee-producing country of Côte d’Ivoire, but our “real” coffee is shipped from there to be processed in France, and then back here.  Double jeopardy on hydrocarbons!  (To be fair, you can buy ground Ivoirian coffee here, but as my daughter, Danielle, says, it tastes like ground peanuts. The Ivoirian instant actually tastes better than the Ivoirian ground coffee).

Still, I have not even touched on the biggest food import problem in West Africa.  What if the local people wanted to eat locally? They are pretty much good to go as far as produce is concerned, and few are rich enough to buy imported canned goods and cheese anyway, so they don't miss them.  Even the sheep and cattle butchered here are all local (we see the cows being led to the slaughterhouse every night on foot). But the center of the Malian diet is RICE. Where does that come from? Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, the USA…   Definitely NOT local.

How did people become so dependent on a food they do not produce?  First of all, some rice is produced in Mali (Sikasso again, where it is more tropical than savannah, and has a greater rainfall), but it costs more than imported rice, and there is not enough of it for everyone if the whole population decided to start eating it. 

Are there alternatives? There are several, the primary being millet.  The problem is that all of the alternatives are more labor intensive than rice. Rice is Fast Food! All you gotta do is pick over it a bit, wash it and cook it.  Millet needs to have the husk pounded off, then winnowed, and then it needs to be milled. It’s a lot of work. Malian women already work much harder than Western women in food preparation. Who can blame them for wanting to simplify their lives a bit with the convenience of rice? Furthermore, although rice is more expensive than millet, it goes farther. Say you can get 2 cups of cooked rice from a pound (pulling numbers out of the air here). A pound of millet only yields 1½ cups cooked. So not only do you have to work harder, you have to prepare more of it. At certain times of year, the price becomes almost equivalent. And finally, most people like the taste of rice better.

I don’t know what the solution is for my Malian friends.  They are all addicted to green tea from China, and there’s no way they are going to give that up.  I don’t even have a good solution for myself! I am going to ask for Malian rice at the market from now on, because I can afford to pay the higher price.  There are also some Malian produced jams, which although expensive, I will try to buy to support the local industry.  I could also make more jams myself.  But what about my applesauce and cheese and coffee and canned corn and Moroccan apples and powdered milk? That’s a hard one!  I guess the important thing is to be as conscientious as possible, making every effort to buy locally, even if it’s not practical to do so 100%.  Wish me luck! (And read the book – I highly recommend it!)

You know it's Hot Season in Mali when...

Recently my friend, Sharon, in Bamako started a discussion thread on Facebook by posting as her status: “You know it’s hot season in Mali when…” I think you’ll find the responses enlightening:
…you don't need a towel, you air-dry in less than a minute.
…you take showers with your clothes on so you can have the illusion of cooling as your clothes dry.
…your ankles sweat.
…even the Malians say, “Boy, it’s hot.”
…you are showering your kids and they scream, "No, it's too hot. Turn on the cold water." You reply, "This IS the cold water!"
…you can bend candles into any fancy shape you want.
…you wear a wet towel as a shawl.
…you refer to a day where it doesn’t hit 115F as “cool.”
…your clothes feel like they've been freshly ironed when you put them on.
h/t Sharon Goertz

We often hear the question, “How do you stand that heat?” especially when people hear that we live in one of the three hottest cities in the world, only 50 miles from the edge of the Sahara, where the temperature-in-the-shade can top 125F/51C. We want to cry, “We DON’T stand it. We complain a lot. We leave for the whole month of May. We do crazy stuff (see above) and it still doesn’t help!”

Nevertheless, I thought you might be interested in hearing about some of our coping strategies.

WATERBEDS: When waterbeds became popular in the 70s and 80s, someone decided they were the solution to a missionary’s problems in hot climates. I remember people telling us we HAD to get one. After all, if you can get a good night’s sleep, it goes a long way toward helping one cope with the strains of the day (which is true). So we got one. How do you say ***raspberry***!?!

I have since become convinced that this waterbed promotion was a conspiracy by waterbed manufacturers to advance sales. All their soon-to-be-dissatisfied customers were moving overseas, so they had nothing to lose.

The problem is that water tries to equalize itself with the air temperature. For a large body of water, like an ocean, the difference remains significant, so you can still have a cool dip in hot weather. But a relatively small body of water, like a mattress, quickly approaches the ambient temperature. Even if the room cools off at night, the warm water is contained in a huge rubber “bottle” which releases heat slowly – a month or more after the end of hot season, but certainly not in a few hours!

We’ve heard funny stories about people trying to cool down their waterbeds. One family bought blocks of ice at the local ice house, siphoned out some of the hot water, and refilled it with the ice water. A time consuming, temporary, and ultimately futile effort at best. They had to choose either to H.ave a Life, or play with the waterbed.

We used to soak towels, and lay on top of them, with other wet towels on top of us, wearing as few clothes as possible, with fans pointing at us. This worked for about 20 minutes at a time before the towels dried out (our humidity is less than 20% most of the time, so the air just sucks up that water!), and it made the bedroom smell mildewy much of the time.

Ironically, in cool season (Dec.-Jan.), the water would become so chilly that we shivered and were in danger of hypothermia (which is why waterbeds are sold with heaters in the States – who knew we would need one here?).

Finally we bought an inch-thick foam mattress for the waterbed. On top of that, we place a sheet, then a bedspread, then another sheet. This makes the bed sleepable in all seasons but defeats the original purpose!

SHOWERS: Did you notice how many people in the responses at the beginning referred to showers? Don’t be surprised if you come to my house and I answer the door dripping wet – if it’s not sweat, then I’ve just taken a shower fully clothed. It’s even more effective if I can sit in front of a fan afterwards.

SLEEPING OUTSIDE: We might have avoided the waterbed fiasco altogether if we had investigated how the local people tolerate the heat. Quite simply, they move outside to sleep at night. It’s even better for those whose houses have a flat, concrete roof to sleep on.

We have a locally made bamboo bed frame on our back veranda, with a thick foam mattress, and a mosquito net suspended on wires above -- although in the very hottest time we don’t even need the net because it’s so dry there are no insects. When it’s really hot we also bring a fan outside and go to bed in wet clothes.

FANS, SWAMP COOLERS, AND AIR CONDITIONERS: We have lots of fans, but when it gets really hot they just blow hot air. However, they aren’t too bad if your clothes are wet.

A swamp cooler is an evaporative cooler or humidifier, common in the American southwest, that blows air through water. We have a portable one which is helpful at siesta time. Some of our friends have mega-units which cool big rooms or even the whole house, but we haven’t made such an investment yet.

We don’t have a/c either, but Jim dreams of eventually getting a split for the bedroom. We do have it in our car though, which is nice when it works.

SWIMMING: There’s a great swimming spot on the river about 10 miles out of town and we enjoy going out there, especially when our kids are home. Not far from there is a rocky area with swimming holes and waterfalls which stay quite cool even in hot season, and we love to explore there as well. During Spring Break we sat on a flat rock under a waterfall which was a fabulous experience.

For years we dreamed of having a pool in Kayes, and finally a big hotel installed one. That has been a great relief as well, although it potentially has the same problem as the waterbed. It’s a relatively small body of water which absorbs heat. Last year the pool got to 98F/36C in hot season! This year, however, they drained it to make repairs before it got hot, so it was refilled relatively recently and has not achieved ambient air temperature yet.

VACATION: This is the ultimate solution to Beating the Heat: leave town. We save up all our vacation time and head west to the coast of Senegal for the month of May. Interior Senegal is just as hot as Mali, but the coast is quite pleasant (besides the obvious benefit of being close to our children). And in just 15 days from now, that’s what we’ll be doing.

But until then, I’m here today, gone to Mali…

PS As I was finishing this, yet another friend here, Tim, posted his Top Ten Reasons to Love Hot Season in Mali:

10. Working late at the office takes on a whole new significance - Free AC.
9. The Malians finally agree with you when you say it is hot.
8. If you have problems deciding what shirt to wear, no problem. You'll be wearing at least 3 today.
7. A chance to practice your Fahrenheit-Celsius conversion with big numbers like 41 or 46C (106F or 114F).
6. For those of us who have no hot water heaters, we can finally take a hot shower!
5. It's a great time of the year to do swamp cooler maintenance.
4. Everyday household tasks become an extreme sport.
3. Clothes have that wonderful "fresh out of the dryer" feel when you take them out of the closet.
2. The oven is automatically "pre-heated", and hey - most food is already pre-cooked.
1. A daily occasion to regale your facebook friends with complaints about how hot it is (just as they are expressing joy that it is finally getting up to 70F!)
h/t Tim Tillinghast

Wednesday without Words... a day late

Living in the Third World does not necessarily mean doing without.

Wednesday without Words

The rare coat hanger tree.

The Trials and Tribulations of Travel in West Africa, Part I

I have a love/hate relationship with traveling anywhere in the world, but especially here in Africa. On this side of “the pond” it weighs out a bit heavier on the “hate” side of things because it involves a lot of waiting, not one of my strong points; e.g.

• Waiting to leave. (Bush taxis don’t leave until they are full; this is only 7 passengers, but it may involve a wait of many hours or overnight to get that last passenger. Sometimes I’ll buy the last ticket to move things along, but if there are two or more empty places, I usually can’t afford to buy more than one.)
• Waiting for officials at roadside police posts to inspect ID cards or merchandise so they can extort bribes. (They don’t bother Americans, but in spite of international agreements allowing free travel between African countries, local officials will find a pretext to charge a fine to each traveler from a different country.)
• Waiting for repairs. (From a flat tire to a broken chassis, we’ve seen it all!)
• Waiting to arrive at my destination. (The 500 mile trip to visit my children, for example, is an all day voyage; we have spent as few as 11 hours and as many as 45 [!] depending on road conditions. Currently, I am happy to say, most of the road is in good repair or at least being worked on.)

The “love” part of such trips is finally getting where I am going, especially if it’s a visit to see my kids. And you’ve never enjoyed a shower as much as the one that comes at the end of a long day on a dusty road. Or if Jim & I are traveling together, it means having a whole day to ourselves with nothing to do but talk or fall asleep on each other’s shoulders. Plus, the vehicles are pretty tightly packed, so we end up snuggling as we haven’t done since the early days of our romance (but on the “hate” side again, if I’m traveling alone, that means the same close quarters with a stranger, possibly a man).

Another thing that’s really fun about these trips is shopping enroute, but that’s another post for another day. Until then I’m here today, gone to Mali…

Short Term Pros and Cons: An Epistle

My cousin, Drew, who is also in what he calls a “do-gooder” profession ;-) sent me this link to an article called The End of Service Trips? by Tim Ogden:
http://www.philanthropyaction.com/articles/the_end_of_service_trips/

The author challenges the value of overseas service trips (such as missions trips) in terms of value for dollar. He says, “My epiphany on the pointlessness of such trips came while spending a month volunteering at an international NGO’s famine-relief operation in Ethiopia. Despite my good intentions it was abundantly clear that I had no useful skills for the situation.”

He also sites an op-ed from the Wall Street Journal, The 'Great Commission' or Glorified Sightseeing? by Evan Sparks. Sparks, who has himself taken numerous short-term missions trips, is even more critical: “The billion-dollar question, however, is whether they're worth the cost. Are short-term missions the best way to achieve the goals of Christians? Critics argue that sightseeing often takes up too much of the itinerary, leading some to call short-termers ‘vacationaries.’”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122359398873721053.html?mod=djemITP

My husband maintains that the value of such trips is the exposure of Americans to how “the other half” lives. He feels that every American church member should make such a trip to the Third World. Andy Crouch, executive producer of Round Trip, a documentary film-based curriculum designed to improve church service trips, echoes this sentiment: “To experience the absolute poverty in parts of the developing world, to see people who couldn’t possibly be doing anything more to escape poverty, can be a transformative experience. It begins raising systemic questions that don’t necessarily get raised when you see the relative poverty in the United States. It’s very important for people in the rich world to be exposed to absolute poverty and I don’t know how you do it without an encounter with a real person.“

But Ogden responds, “Evidence suggests that these trips have no lasting impact on the participants, however.” Sparks cites Calvin College sociologist Kurt Ver Beek, who surveyed U.S. [short-term] missionaries who built homes in Honduras after Hurricane Mitch in 1998. “After coming down from a post-trip ‘high,’ the short-termers did not evince much change in their lives. Only 16% reported ‘significant positive impact,’ including in prayer, friendships and financial giving.”

Sparks says further, “Indeed, if you were to ask an economist about short-term missions, many of which involve such manual-labor projects, he would have a simple answer: Ditch the traveling team members and send a check. A career missionary knows better what manual labor needs to be done on-site, and he can hire local laborers for much less money than what flying in unskilled Americans requires. Using local labor contributes to the local economy and avoids perpetuating a culture of dependency and powerlessness. A career missionary is also fluent in the local language and culturally aware, so he can be more effective at evangelism, discipleship and social-justice ministries.”

So where do I stand on this issue? Firmly straddling the fence! The above statement is correct about providing employment to and empowering locals. Yet we want short-term teams to come here, to see what our lives are like, and to meet the people in whom we have invested ourselves. We believe that long-term missionaries are often called through such an experience (though I have no empirical statistics to back my claim).

As for the advice above for people to stay at home and send a check, things just don’t work that way. I remember a time when we were building a church, and a builder’s team came from the States. The local pastor commented, “With all the money these people are spending on travel, we would have more than enough to finish the building.”

What we told him was that if those people had not come, they would not have sent us their money instead. If they paid for the trip themselves, they would have simply spent it on another trip. If the members of their church contributed to help them, it was because of the participation of people they knew. Contributors get more excited about the involvement of a person they know than about a building project. If they can’t go themselves, they feel good about enabling someone else to do so. There’s not as much vicarious satisfaction in buying a brick.

Crouch suggests, “The trips only make sense if they are part of a comprehensive program of changing peoples attitudes and behaviors. Evidence is shockingly clear that a single trip has no impact. No matter how well you do a trip, especially when you’re talking about teenagers, they are at such a high-velocity developmental stage that I don’t think any single experience is going to have an ‘impact.‘...If you want to see any lasting change you can’t have the trip end when people get back, or even after that one meeting where everyone shares their pictures. The organizations that have thought about this the most and are doing the best job are making these trips part of a much longer engagement with the issues. For instance, there’s one organization that requires a year-long commitment and the trip occurs in the middle—they meet just as often after the trip as they do preparing for it. What we need to do is go out and have our world rocked and then come back and in a sustained way make some real commitments to change and be held accountable for enough time for those changes to sink in. The grooves in our culture are too deep for us to escape from without that level of commitment.“

We have been impressed by a program of the Cooperative Missions Network of the African Dispersion (COMINAD), called Adopt-A-Village. http://cominad.com/

Adopt-A-People has been a popular concept in missions circles for the past decade or longer. This means “that a church, congregation or fellowship group makes a serious commitment to do all they can to reach their adopted people group by working in partnership with the mission agency of their choice.” http://www.adopt-a-people.org/ One criticism of this approach, however, is that it is too big. It’s hard for people to feel intimately involved with a whole tribe of people.

So COMINAD (and others) came up with the idea of allying a single church with a single village. In the COMINAD model, members of the American church visit the village annually, or more often, so they are returning to the same place over and over again. Pictures are taken of each villager, and each member of the US church commits to pray for one of the villagers. The villagers also receive pictures of their prayer partners. The American church also agrees to support a church-planter to live in the village. He will build relationships with the local people, and work or farm alongside them. There may be development projects eventually, but the focus is not on financial benefits, but rather on relationship.

As an African-American organization, the focus of COMINAD is on reconciliation: reconciliation with the descendants of their African brethren who sold them into slavery centuries ago, and reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ. They say to the Africans, “We all know that our ancestors could not have been captured as slaves without the participation of the local people. [Here the villagers nod their heads and/or avert their eyes.] But what they intended for evil, God intended for good (Gen. 50.20). When our ancestors went to the United States, they learned about the Gospel of Jesus Christ so we can bring that back to you.”

This more focused approach on a smaller group of people, with repeated contact, has proven fruitful for COMINAD and other organizations.

Finally, our daughter, Ruthanne, and son, Benjamin, both went on overseas summer trips with Teen Missions International. We are very impressed with this organization as well. For the same amount of money that a young woman in our church was paying to go help missionaries in Costa Rica for two weeks, our kids had two weeks of “Boot Camp” training in Florida, then a month or more of work in their country, followed by a week of follow-up debriefing. We would recommend TMI highly and would love to get one of their groups to come here as well! www.teenmissions.org

If after all this, I have not discouraged you about short-term missions, here are a few helpful links!

Reconciliation Ministries International:
http://www.RMNI.org
Christ for Humanity:
http://www.christforhumanity.org/
Teen Missions International:
www.teenmissions.org
The Alliance for Excellence in Short Term Mission:
http://www.aestm.org/
Christianity Today’s ST mission site:
http://www.roundtripmissions.com/
Short Term missions database/search engine:
http://www.shorttermmissions.com/?STM=0a041825abfa34c137309bced555bb09
United World Mission’s short term opportunities (note: these are for one-to-two year terms, as recommended in the Ogden article):
http://uwm.org/ex237/
And oh, yeah, don't forget about us:
malibowers@gmail.com

Further reading on this issue:
Churches Retool Mission Trips: Work Abroad Criticized for High Cost and Lack of Value By Jacqueline L. Salmon
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/04/AR2008070402233_pf.html

Cloth Heaven

Tomorrow I’m going to a wedding, and with any luck, I’ll be wearing the same dress as most of the other women there (and it’s not because I’m a bridesmaid)!

One thing that is very different here from back home: In the U.S. if a woman walked into church or the office wearing the same dress as another, the reaction would be great chagrin. Not here! Fabrics come and go in popularity, and everyone will buy the same print to have an outfit made, so you often meet people wearing the same thing. Additionally, for events like weddings or holidays, groups go out of their way to buy the same material and wear it together. It’s called a “uniform.” In fact, every year the Malian Association of Evangelicals puts out a Christmas design so that we all go to church on Dec. 25 wearing the same thing.

The textiles are one of the most fun and interesting aspects of Malian life. Brilliant colors and designs guarantee that life in this often-brown (due to the dust) country is never dull. Interestingly, many of the best-quality fabrics are manufactured in the U.K. and Holland, where they have textile industries entirely for export to Africa consisting of loud cotton prints which no European woman would be caught dead in.

Ready-made clothing is rare here. You buy the fabric you like and take it to a tailor. Unlike in North America and Europe, a trip to the tailor is not an expensive luxury. It’s an everyday necessity and quite affordable, and a common profession among men.

Some of the patterns I’ve seen over the years in church, in shops, or on the street:

• Lots of florals and geometric designs.
• Numbers and letters.
• Soccer balls.
• Disembodied fingers.
• Chickens (one of the first uniforms I ever had had chickens, roosters, and chicks on it, with lines of eggs all around. UG-LEE).
• A hand holding a spray can, with a triangle of spray being squirted.
• Eyes.
• Insects.
• Leaves.
• Matches.
• Badminton raquets & birdies.
• Neckties.
• The backs of ladies’ heads showing hairstyles.
• One Sunday in church, I saw a shirt covered in laptop computers.
• I also saw a lady with a large safety pin design on her dress, where the tailor had rather unfortunately located a pin across her buttocks so that it looked like she needed it to keep the seam together!
• Images of people, such as the president of Mali, the First Lady, or perhaps a popular imam (Muslim preacher) and of course, Barack Hussein Obama! One of my Peace Corps friends boasts two different BHO outfits.

If you want to see a sample of African Obama fabric, check out #6 in this gallery:

http://wonderwall.msn.com/tv/Emmys-Undressed-The-Worst-4285.gallery?GT1=28151&photoId=14266#m=sNZM_QbGmxs

Whose Fault is it Anyway?

As we drove to Bafoulabe for our week of Bible teaching with 2 old friends, Moise (Moses) & Ananias, we were asking what they knew of many mutual friends. We got to a certain career soldier named Jacques, there was a pause, and one said in surprise, "He died! Two years ago (we found out later it was 7 years ago)! Didn't you know?" Since he could only have been about 40, I exclaimed, "Was it an accident, or was he sick?"

"He had AIDS," I was told. That's always an uncomfortable pronouncement, since AIDS is sexually transmitted (here almost always heterosexually) and Jacques was a Christian.

Ananias filled the silence: "He was stationed in the far north (Sahara Desert) so he left his family back home and just visited them from time to time. It was those (Tribe x) women who infected him up there!"

It turns out that Jacques' wife died about 6 months after him (no big surprise there) and their only child shortly thereafter (she was probably conceived after her mother was infected).

Later, as Jim & I processed this conversation, we noticed that even though adultery is a sin in the Christian faith, it wasn't Jacques' fault he and his family died -- it was those (Tribe x) women! Perhaps this was said in the interest of not speaking ill of the dead (although those prostitutes are probably dead as well!), but I think it goes deeper than that.

For one thing, Malians believe that if a man goes without sex for too long, he'll become crazy or unstable. So the unspoken message is that not only could he not help what he did, but that he needed to do it.

Besides, Jacques is our friend, and those prostitutes are strangers...

Jacques is a believer and those (Tribe x) women were Muslims...

Jacques is from "our" tribe and they were from "another..."

So it was the fault of "those (Tribe x) women," not our poor dear brother who was only doing what is natural to a man in his situation.

And we think Western society is guilty of avoiding responsibility...

What Color is God's Skin?

Our friend Neema (nay-mah) passed away last week. She was 35 y.o. and the only truly single person I've ever met here, because she was slightly handicapped. She had polio as a child, and the left side of her body was affected: she limped and had trouble getting into cars that were high off the ground (like most 4x4 vehicles owned by missionaries!), and her hand was twisted. In recent years she was quite sickly, tho I never knew exactly what with; she was always on the prayer list at church. They always referred to it as her sickness, tho I doubt it was still polio. She also had bad gum disease and therefore, terrible teeth.

So I told Jim that I've been picturing what she looks like now that she lives in heaven: standing up straight, with 2 strong arms and a full set of straight gleaming teeth. I imagine she is quite lovely now. He then asked me the funniest question: "Do you still see her as black?" What does that have to do with beauty?? Of course, she's still black!

Now lest you think my DH is a racist, he hastened to explain that his question was not based on which skin color is the most beautiful, but he was speculating whether something which has so divided people on earth will still exist in heaven.

I argued, "How else will we know each other if we don't basically resemble ourselves?" and...

"If God were to make us all one color, which would he choose?" To prefer one over another would simply justify the prejudices of this earth. Unless he went totally far-out and opted for green, purple, blue...

In heaven we will see the wrong in all our prejudices and not feel them anymore. Not all prejudices are based on skin, anyway, so changing that alone would be rather arbitrary. I reminded Jim of a pastor friend we have here, definitely a believer whom I expect to meet in heaven, who is clearly prejudiced against another ethnic group. They and he are the same color, but different tribe, and he is constantly making racist generalizations about them, something he has inherited from his culture, and a blind spot in his life. To him, his remarks are not racist, because he believes them to be true. That's the essence of prejudice, isn't it, the conviction that your beliefs cannot be racist because they are founded on truth?

There's a song that goes like this:
"What color is God's skin?
What color is God's skin?
I said, 'It's black, brown, it's yellow,
It is red and it's white,
Everyone's the same in the good Lord's sight.'"

Like the writer of that song, I don't believe heaven will consist of eliminating our differences, but rather of rejoicing in them.

How well traveled I am...

I thought this would be a pretty interesting quiz since I've actually traveled quite a lot. But for Africa, they only gave you the choice of 4 places I've never been ... not quite fair, since I LIVE in Africa and have travelled to several countries & capitals! The rest, however, is fairly accurate.

Your Travel Profile:

You Are Very Well Traveled in the Northeastern United States (71%) You Are Very Well Traveled in Western Europe (64%) You Are Well Traveled in the Midwestern United States (50%) You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in Canada (40%) You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in the Southern United States (31%) You Are Mostly Untraveled in Eastern Europe (20%) You Are Mostly Untraveled in the United Kingdom (13%) You Are Mostly Untraveled in Southern Europe (7%) You Are Untraveled in Africa (0%) You Are Untraveled in Asia (0%) You Are Untraveled in Australia (0%) You Are Untraveled in Latin America (0%) You Are Untraveled in New Zealand (0%) You Are Untraveled in Scandinavia (0%) You Are Untraveled in the Middle East (0%) You Are Untraveled in the Western United States (0%)

How Well Traveled Are You?

Politics in Everyday Life

FIRST OF ALL, HAPPY 3RD BD TO DYLAN H.!

Today I realized that when I think of politics, I mean Republicans & Democrats, House & Senate, Libertarian & Leftie, etc... But at this moment, in our work here in Mali, we are involved in a political brawl of sorts that has nothing to do with parties or elected representatives or any of that. We are trying to dig a well in a remote, dry, crummy little village. But because of ethnic politics, we are being blocked from performing this good work for poor, destitute people who really need water.

Dictionary.com defines politics as:
1. the science or art of political government.

2.	the practice or profession of conducting political affairs.

3.	political affairs

4.	political methods or maneuvers

5.	political principles or opinions:

Pretty straightforward (boring) stuff. But then you get to the definition that describes our situation with the village here:
6.use of intrigue or strategy in obtaining any position of power or control, as in business, university, etc.

Or even better, here's the idiom to "8. play politics:"

a.	to engage in political intrigue, take advantage of a political situation or issue, resort to partisan politics, etc.; exploit a political system or political relationships.

b.	to deal with people in an opportunistic, manipulative, or devious way, as for job advancement.

Now we're getting down to it. Politics is about power.

Here's the situation: We are working in a village which is really 3 villages. Ethnic group A were the original inhabitants of what we'll call the A Quarter. Ethnic Group B has had their own 'neighborhood,' the B Quarter, for as long as anyone remembers. The C Quarter was formed over 15 years ago when the C people group were chased out of their homeland (a country ruled, incidentally, by Ethnic Group A) and became refugees. So the local A's in this particular village invited the C refugees to live in an uninhabited sector of their village, perhaps even seeing it as a kind of compensation for the wrongs perpetrated by their brethren in that other country.

Mind you, the A's were not making any great sacrifice. The reason this sector was uninhabited was that it was nearly uninhabitable. It's very rocky, unsuitable for farming, but not too bad for livestock, and group C just happens to be a shepherding tribe. So for them it wasn't too bad, except for one little detail -- no water. They were able to dig some shallow wells which were filthy, plus each day they would send a donkey cart to the A Quarter, a mile or more away, to fill several barrels with clean well water -- a job which takes about 5 hours daily. So when my DH started visiting the C Quarter, b/c of his interest in this ethnic group, all they could talk about was their need for water. They were coping, but certainly not thriving.

The last time we tried to do a water project for C, the leadership of A said, "Only if you help us first." (This project was a less expensive option than a deep well, a first effort). So we did our project there first, and they said, "The C's can keep coming here for their water. You are not to do a water project there." Within a few months, that water project failed. There were a lot of reasons for this, but could the hand of God have been part of it?

To make a lo-o-o-n-n-n-g-g-g story short, we managed to find some funding for a well in C neighborhood. There is an African-American organization that wants to do a lot of good things for the C's, and the C people have said, If you get us water, you can do anything else you want. There is a C Christian worker who wants to promote education, hygiene, improved animal husbandry, farming, and not incidentally, preach the Gospel. Water is the key to all.

This time, DH asked the C village chief to go to his A counterpart and negotiate. (Let's keep the foreigner out of the picture!) Chief A told Chief C, "That's fine, we're all one here, if you can get a well, go for it!" Mind you, this is a culture where you can never say no to someone's face. So his response was really the only thing he could say within the confines of his world view (but it is also okay to stab your neighbor, at least figuratively, in the back.) Nevertheless, DH decided to go to the next higher political entity, the mayor of the commune, to get official permission. You're supposed to do that anyway, so the government knows what's going on.

So there was a meeting at the mayor's place in another village. The chiefs & elders of A & C were all there. The A's were conspicuously silent. So the mayor wrote up an official document, authorizing the well. They were delighted, in fact, since it is a project of this country for every village and hamlet to have clean water, and they can't afford to do it all.

So the day came for the ground breaking, last Monday the 12th. There were several local officials there to each dig up their token spadeful of dirt. No one from A Quarter tho -- in fact, the mayor said Chief A had called him that morning to lodge a protest. "Why didn't they speak up when we all met together?" asked the mayor. "It's too late now, and besides they know that these people have a right to a well!"

By Tuesday 13th the work had been stopped b/c Chief A contacted the next higher government authority, the prefect, who has authority over the mayor. So now we wait...

Okay, so what is political about all this? Lots of things:
1. The person who controls the water holds the power. If C Quarter gets water, they will be less dependent on the A's.
2. If the little boys of C are freed up from getting the water for 5 hours every day, they will be free to attend the village school, where as yet no C children attend. Education is power, too!
3. Chief A says he fears that if C gets water, more people will come to live there. Again, he feels a threat to his power.

There are ethnic conflicts going on here, too, but this is too long already, and I don't want to go into that anyway. One really hard part is that we have a burden for the A people to be reached with the Gospel as well, and are praying for Christian workers to come to our Region in that capacity. We have showed the J film in the A language twice in the village. We fear that this conflict is cutting us off from future positive contact with these A's. :-(