A country called Mali

Source : Google photo of Timbuctoo in Mali today.

Synopsis : Each country I have visited or lived in during my long years of working in rural development is unique so Mali is also unique but its people are so mired in poverty and hopelessness that touches your heart. They are just like other poor people who aspire for a better life but their dreams are left unfulfilled. Centuries ago they had a glorious reputation as a centre of education and trade in Timbuctoo but can any people live on their past no matter how glorious?

Imagine a country 2 times the size of France with a population of only 19 million that is only 1/4th of the population of France . Imagine a country that is vast in area of 1.2 million sq. kms but most of it is desert where only the hardiest of nomads eke out a pitiful living by herding their goats and cows. Imagine a country so mired in poverty and poor infrastructure that boggles the mind. It is called Mali that most people in the world do not pay much attention to let alone find it on the map.

Source : Map of Mali

But one day I was invited to work there as an agronomist so I packed my bags and arrived at the airport of Bamako with my young wife , a baby boy and a newly born daughter in the blazing heat of summer and tried to shield our children from the heat to save them from dehydration.

The airport was a bleak place with very few people so it had a deserted look apart from its shabby and dusty arrival area where a bored policeman stamped our passport with indifference and probably wondered why anyone would ever bother to come here because the country was such a desolate place full of poverty, disease and corruption.

We were driven to the huge monster of a hotel near the Niger river called Amitie hotel where the elevator was wrapped in boa skins. This is where the foreigners stayed because the other hotels were quite substandard so they paid the high price. The air conditioner brought relief from the oppressive heat outside but there was not much to see outside anyway. The river looked inviting because it looked cool and green but we learned soon that bathing in the river was full of danger because its water carried the larvae of the deadly insect that caused a disease called bilharzia or river blindness. The larvae would enter your body and end up in your eyes causing blindness. Later I saw people with this disease that gave me shivers but the worse was yet to come.

Behind the hotel some weavers are found squatting in dirt weaving colorful strips of cotton cloth on a homemade loom made of bicycle spindle and ropes so they could only weave a 4 inch wide strip that they would later join together to make a wider piece of fabric. I would see later a variety of handicraft that are crudely made but were bought by the foreigners who saw originality in the crudity of Mali.

If you wander toward the downtown, you will be assailed by the stench of garbage and the gutters full of sewage but the Malian tourist brochure calls Bamako a dainty town. You will see huge Malian women in colorful but shapeless gowns that fail to hide their goiters. The urchins gather around the only small store where the foreigners can buy imported chocolate or ice cream among other things but you soon learn to ignore their out stretched hands. The mostly French made vehicles on the streets are driven mostly by the foreigners to remind you that Mali was a colony of France not too long ago and still remains firmly under their influence.

You will be surprised by the number of vehicles driven by numerous foreign NGOs with their insignia stickers on the side of the vehicles. Later you will meet some of them and learn about what they really do in Mali. They gather in a few restaurants like Trois caimans and Lido outside the city because eating street food is risky for those who may have weak stomach or a dislike for tasteless mashed cassava or sorghum paste that seems to be the mainstay of the Malian diet along with dried and smoked catfish that gives out a strong stench in all directions.

I was new here but soon noticed something that made me think of something sinister in the offing in this God forsaken country. It was when I saw a fanatic Muslim shouting insults and curses on a shop owner who was selling beer. No one paid him any attention but it made me think that it could be the start of something very bad that was to happen sometime in the future. I will get to that later in this blog.

Then you head off toward Sikasso which lies some 400 kms to South East but the road is drivable because there are very few vehicles on the road. The only sizable town midway to Sikasso is Bougouni where you may stop to eat in a shabby restaurant full of flies run by some Lebanese fellow who offers a menu of very limited choice but an audience full of children in rags who stretch out their hands to you in supplication.Their unwashed faces full of flies that they try to get away from with very little success show the extent of poverty in Mali that you soon start getting used to. The women in colorful gowns and goiter are not too far behind who can be seen squatting in the shades of trees to escape the brutal heat but not the flies.

Source : Google photo of Fulani woman with huge gold ornament hung with rope

Along the street you will find small markets where the Fulani women and others sit on the dirt with whatever they have to sell. The Fulani women wear huge gold earrings that they hold with strings tied to their head because gold is heavy. You will be surprised at this display of gold in a country so poor but then you are probably unaware of the history and natural resources of Mali so I will tell you.

The Fulanis are the nomads I mentioned above who own cattle, sheep and goats. They move around a lot with their herd searching always for green grass and water for their animals so they make temporary shelters outside the villages. They sell the milk and the butter and sometimes the goat and sheep for meat. They save their money and buy gold ornaments for the women and also buy necklaces made of amber. They do not believe in banks so carry all their wealth on them as they are nomads.

Source : Google photo of Fulani woman with amber and gold jewelries

The other Malians are sedentary so they live in small clusters of villages made of round or square mud houses with thatch roof that may be quite far from each other and quite remote. I was to find out how remote later on but we saw some such villages along the main and only highway going South East to Sikasso where I was supposed to stay and work.

One thing you notice right away as you leave the outskirts of the capital is that there are no roads away from the main highway so there are only dirt roads to their villages that are nearly impassable whenever it rains. Their primitive villages do not have water, electricity. roads and primary schools or healthcare centers but always have a mosque where the Mullahs run Koranic schools for the kids because most Malians are Muslims.

Source : Google photo of a villager spinning cotton thread near his grain storage bin

You will not see neatly planted farms from the road but you will see the endless wilderness of small shrubs and acres of termite mounds called toad stools. There are no massive farms because farming is strictly done by hand although some farmers have ploughs pulled by bullocks. The farmers grow cotton, corn ,sorghum, peanuts and some rice in some lowlands so corn and sorghum is their main food source. The protein comes from occasional smoked dry fish or chicken.They wear home spun rough cotton clothes while women go bare breasted in villages wearing only a sarong to cover lower parts.

Long ago Mali was a country in the cross routes of sub Saharan trade that passed through Timbuctoo in the north that became famous for its university that flourished centuries ago . It became a rich trading center bringing in goods from many countries as well as scholars who studied at the university. Its library was rich in books , scrolls, documents and ancient manuscripts some of which still exist but in sad state of tatter in decrepit shelves . Timbuctoo has lost its glamour and its place as the center of education but some trade still goes on as before. You can still see the salt laden camel caravans that stop there.

Source : Google photo of the Touaregs in the Hoggar mountains of Algeria

North of Timbuctoo, you will come to the southern border of Algeria full of Hoggar mountains where the Touareg nomads live in Tamanrasset and in the region between Mali and Algeria. They are like the Fulani nomads with a stark difference. There is a violent streak in them that breeds Islamic fundamentalism that is now spreading in southern Algeria and Mali that threatens the whole region with bloodshed and terrorism. The cursing Islamist in Bamako I mentioned earlier was just the start of this movement that later would claim thousands of lives.

It is said that harsher the living conditions, the more ruthless the jihadists become in their zeal to spread their brand of Islam using violence and sheer terror so Mali became an ideal battleground given the very harsh living conditions up north. The Niger river flows up there in a curve and passes through Niger in the East that provides them some fish and a river transport route but little else. The fish they find there are dried and smoked for easier transport to other parts of the country.

Mali is called resource poor although some gold deposits are found in some parts. The Fulani women carry more gold on them than anyone else I know in the world although the workmanship remains poor at best. Where they find so much amber is not known. The Fulanis protect their women and their herd of animals with guns.

The southern part is endemic to malaria so people suffer and die needlessly because there is a cure for malaria . I mentioned bilharzia and goiter problems but there are many other types of ailments that come from poor nutrition , lack of basic health care in rural areas and non existent roads and culverts that prevent government services to reach remote areas. People die of cuts, bruises or goring by animals because they get infected and cannot bring them to a hospital that is far away. There are no ambulance services because of bad roads.

Mali is ruled by an authoritarian government that is ineffective in ruling the whole country given its vast size and the shortage of funds to develop the country. Whatever development you see is often the result of poor planning, poor implementation and poor administration . Often the Europeans pass on to them their obsolete technologies like in telecommunications that are costly to maintain for a very poor country like Mali. Then there is corruption that comes in many forms.

One form of corruption I knew personally was that of the so called educated class that believed that they had the answer to all the problems in their country if only they had the resources. Their arrogance had no upper limit but they lacked substance to their claim of being the educated elite. Their fault could be traced to their education system in a country of illiterates that ill prepared them to tackle the problems but you will never find someone to admit it.

Once a year they all gathered to discuss the problems of their country in some fancy air conditioned hotel in Bamako where they made long arduous speeches and proposed endless resolutions to solve all problems, passed them ceremonially and considered their job done. It did not matter to them that the previous resolutions passed had never been implemented. They appeared in their embroidered boubous for the ceremony that was purely farcical in nature but repeated every year. They could have 5 hours of meeting to make speeches but there was no substance or concrete solution to anything so the country remained undeveloped, poor and destitute. I called it the intellectual corruption that had few equals.

In the meantime the jihadists made steady inroads in the countryside where they killed villagers at will who only wanted to be left alone so the French government finally sent some military help to crush the terrorists who then disappeared like mist only to reappear somewhere else. They knew that the Europeans will not stay long but they were there to stay to create more trouble. Their counterparts elsewhere like the Boko Haram, ISIS affiliates or others were sucking the blood of simple people in order to force upon them their harsh ideologies.

There were others who were also determined to bring the heathens to their brand of religion. They are called the Christian missionaries who penetrated the remotest parts of Mali to spread their religion who were known for their perseverance.

I was a mute witness to their insidious effort to change the country, their culture, their belief system and even their clothes. They counted their progress by the number of people they converted and in terms of the degree of spirituality in their dirt poor subject but nothing else.

Source : Google photo of Dogon dancers

There is a fascination in the French speaking part of Europe for the Malian music, their crude handicraft, the tribal dance in Dogon country, their black magic and their pagan rituals. It brings them some tourists who take some photos to show back home how primitive but colorful these poor people of Mali are but it brings no improvement in their lives so they remain dirt poor and backward.

Source : Google photo of Malian handicraft

This story of Mali is repeated elsewhere in many African countries that share the same misery with Mali that brings them nowhere near any solution to their problems. The NGOs collect massive amount of data on almost any subject but fail to make useful contributions to solve the Malian problems. Other projects come and go but leave no trace of anything useful they have ever done but the consultants keep coming with new project proposals that bring in more foreigners, more vehicles and more meetings they call brainstorming sessions but the Malian brains can not be stormed so easily.

The people of Mali are poor and destitute but they too have aspirations and they too have hopes of a better life but who will bring to them a brighter future? Who will get them out of the swamp of poverty they are mired in ? Who will one day bring roads and basic services to their remote villages? There are no answers.

Please also read the chapter 8 called Abject poverty of Mali, West Africa in my autobiography below to learn more about Mali.

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