Door to Door

In Mali you get a lot of traffic knocking (or not knocking) on your door. Beyond the ubiquitous flow of children visiting Rex - you get shoe cleaners and toothbrush sellers (oddly both of these merchants have their own special song so you can recognize them from far away). There are also the religious figures/beggars who sing songs asking for money. The other day, I had a woman, wearing a badge, come into my courtyard and wait patiently for me to calm Rex down and come over. I asked her what she had and she said - medicine. I looked in her big blue bag and saw a slew of Chinese male enhancement potions. I said no thanks. Mali is launching their national census this week, too - so Malians are fairly used to these types of interruptions and visitations.

Nevertheless, going house to house is a daunting challenge. We (my survey team) has already done about 70 of these visits. It's been amazing to see the diversity within Bamako (languages, income, houses, perceptions of wealth, politics, etc). We use a map of our target school district and draw a grid over it. The I have an online randomizer pick the quadrant where we survey for the day. We start in the middle of the quadrant and flip a coin to determine which direction each team goes in. We then stop at every 5th house and ask if they would be willing to take our survey. We've interviewed a 90 year old guy, former civil servants, sex segregated households - I have had to go talk to the women while my male colleague talks to the men-folk, Arab households, Peul households, Songhai households. One house randomly selected yesterday belonged to an American.

People are overwhelmingly generous with their time and everything else. People generally listen carefully, bring us water, and give us blessing for our work. So far households have been surprisingly open, very few times have we been refused. Yesterday, we went to what Malians refer to as a "Wahabyi household." It was a house where women wear black burquas and face coverings, which stand in sharp contrast to the bright loud fabrics Malian women usually wear. We saw a woman come out and i admit I was a bit scared to go inside and ask if we could do our political survey, but the man inside was more than welcoming and one of our most attentive and frank interviewees. I am very fortunate to be in such an open and communcative country for fieldwork. I can't imagine how hard it would be to try to do a 45 minute survey with political questions in a more closed society.

Best of Bamako - Review

I thought its time to give a shout out to of my favorite new spots in Bamako (there didn't make it into the tourist guides). They deserve the publicity - for any of you thinking coming through the BKO these are must sees:

1. Le Flayboyant - The Flamboyant is a "cultural space" in Niamakoro - right next to city UNICEF. Thur - Sunday entrance is free, beers are cheap (about $1.20 a piece), and there is live music and dancing from 10:30 till 6 am. There are two lovable men - we refer to as the Grandpas who hold it down on the dancefloor regardless of the crowd. Grandpa 1 favors a solo salsa style dance, usually smoking a cigarette with one hand while the other is suavely placed along his abdomen. Grandpa 2, or "my grandpa," favors a more free style energetic style and often grabs crowd members to join him up on the floor - Drissa and I are both past victims. The MC/singer is another older guy who sings from his chair - surrounded by beer bottles and gives love to the crowd throughout the night. Their slogan is "on est ensemble" - we are together - which people shout out after every song. The chairs and tables are set up around the stage which hosts the band and dancers. They have palms and other large trees covered with X-mas lights and you almost forget you are in Bamako. It's the outdoor music space I alwasy wanted in BKO. I am working on becoming a regular.

2. Broadway Cafe - The only place in Bamako to get a real hamburger - cooked medium - realy medium with pink inside. This place is owned by a Malian who lives in the US. Broadway's menu boasts coke floats, burritors, cheeseburgers, and American style breakfast foods. The restaurant has funkyish decor and is air-conditioned with wireless. This is a refuge when you are missing home....

3. The Cactus - owned by a older Canadian couple who've been here since 1979 - the Cactus has hands down best food I've had in Mali. It's about 12k outside Bamako toward Kabala - past Kalabancoura - I give it 100 stars! First time I went, they treated us to an assorted salad plate - macaroni salad, potato salad, tuna salad, and german pickles. Last night we had mexican beef, beans, rice, salad in home made tortillas - it was phenomenal. When you go - the patron - usually suggests food or drink and you just roll with it and its amazing. Last night we had margaritas - with lime picked from the neighboring tree, followed by bloody marys (what he happened to be drinking). It was amazing!!! He has two adorable granddaughters who come visit the clientel as well as a never ending stream of interesting guests. We met a guy who was driving a 1954 Landrover from the UK to South Africa. His headgasket blew in Bamako so he was staying at the cactus while the repairs were being done. Go to the cactus and I promise excellent food, conversation, and drinks.

Celebrations and Obligations

With all my work, I had fallen out of the Malian social circuit. It was time to pay my dues and spend some time sitting, waiting, and eating. I decided to accompany my Malian Aunt to her "ton." A ton is an association - a group of men or women who get together occasionally to eat and hang out. Most importantly, tons function as credit associations. Members contribute a sum once a month and then one member is selected to receive everyone's money each month. They can use that money to invest in a small business, pay for big expenses, whatever they want - as long as they pay for the others every month. My Aunt - Djeneba - is in what we would call the high rollers club. It's an association of women who work a commerce triangle between Benin/Togo, Nigeria/Accra, and Bamako. They put in about $100 a month each (big money in a country where GDP per capita is still around $300) and the selected person gets about $3000. When we showed up, we were presented with a huge plate of fish and rice. Other groups of women, all very large and well dressed - we eating their own large plates of fish and rice. Women had brought various imported fabrics that they were selling to their friends at wholesale prices so the friends could resell at retail. There was a mini fashion show of various women trying on various outfits. There was laughter and happiness. Then conversation turned to the governing rules of the association and somehow a disagreement arose over interest rates and order of who goes when. These are all the kind of women you don't want to mess with. There is a reason they have been able to conduct business in Lagos. There was screaming, some crying, and hand gestures that bordered on slaps. The place seemed like it was imploding. The somehow, someone threw a plastic soda bottle at someone else - and the mood changed. The 20 or so women slowly started giggling - which erupted into laughter. The most upset and angry -tried to maintain their sour expressions but most frowns dissipated and the fashion shows recommenced.

My second social outing happened the next day. One of my nephews was turning one. While birthday parties are something that most people my age in Mali never experienced - its something they want for their own kids. His mom, who is only about 15, organized a birthday party for him. Drissa and I packed 10 nieces, nephews, and neighbors into our car and drove them to the birthday party. The children were sat down around an open circle where we all waited for about an hour (this is standard for most Malian gatherings). Eventually they got the radio working and all the little kids were encouraged to dance in the middle. I began to notice scores of 16year old girls arriving in their most glamarous outfits, as well as a substantial gaggle of boys (who were supposedly their for technical support) but it all appeared to be this pseudo flirtatious air between the young men and women permeating the kid's birthday party. The girls at one point cleared the dance floor of kids and shook it themselves for all to see. The boys stared from their chairs and later approached and joked with the girls. In the US, I can't quite imagine this kind of age/activity integration.

Kalaban Sports Club

So 3 times a week, I head back to the first neighborhood that I ever lived in in Mali - Kalabancoura. I return to a dusty cement basketball court - where I first played in 2002. The court is surrounded by open space where there are usually multiple soccer games (official and pickup) taking place. This kind of large public space is rare for Bamako these days -its about 2 football fields by 4 football fields large. While its great to see hundreds of kids playing side by side - the lack of houses and trees mean that its a mini-dustbowl. (I am convinced that this dust was the source of my mysterious throat swelling).

The space is surrounded by a large public school, a mosque and madrassas, and the houses of the two coaches - Amadou and Kamba. I've known Amadou for 7 years now. He is amazing. He started out as a public school teacher - was posted in Mopti for a while and then was pulled into the Min of Ed's primary department. He used to be an awesome basketball player - I know because he used to play with us back in 2002. He and his friends used to play on this court and he was one of the leaders in securing aid from a French foundation to re-do it. Amadou coaches every day as soon as he gets off work until around 7:30. Kamba is a university student - finishing up his thesis. He also comes every day - often morning and night for double sessions - and gives free tutoring to those kids preparing to take the bac.

Unlike most other clubs in Bamako - ours is free. All the coaches are volunteers with day jobs. This helps to contribute to our high numbers of girls and the diverse socioeconomic backgrounds of the players. There are about 80 some kids who come every night - a group of novices, a middle group of boys and girls, and then the oldest boys. I work primary with the 14-16 year old girls and then sometimes go play with the older boys. It's pretty cool cause one of the girls that was just starting to play in 2002 now plays for one of Mali's best female teams and also joins -as well as another former female player who just comes to work out with the older boys. In the US it would be rare to see this kind of gender integration on the court past the age of 13 or so.

When I coach - its a mix of French and Bambara. When Kamba works with me he translates into Bambara - when I go solo I use a lot of demonstration to make my point. I present the toughest, strictest version of myself here as the levels of discipline on the court aren't really up to US standards.

We are working on a Self Help Grant from the Embassy to try to electrify our court - which would enable us to work more hours and add mores kids. In 2007, my mom helped organize a sneaker collection and when she, my aunt, and dad visited they donated their suitcase space to bring over 100s of pairs of shoes. The team and the kids were sooo excited. I would like to do this again, the problem is that the shipping costs are prohibitive. Unless someone is flying over - FEDEX is like $400 for 20 lbs. Argghh the dilemma of being land-locked and in Africa!

The Hot Season Continues

I am writing this blog entry from my roof. My roof is usually a good 10 to 15 degrees cooler than my house. Unfortunately, today it's not. It was very hot today. I took a couple of showers, shifted between fans, laid down, got up, put on my Malian booty shorts (=regular thigh baring shorts) and a tank top. For the hottest of days - my newest strategy has been to go work out with my basketball team. Somehow the act of running suicides, playing defense, and doing wall sits in 100 degree heat brings me back to summers of un-airconditioned gyms in New Jersey - where you are supposed to sweat and be hot. This in stark contrast to the image of you sweating into your couch and any other furniture as you try to format survey response sheets.

The good news is - it's mango season. It all happened in one day - the mangoes appeared. Our mango tree is filled with greenish nodes (about as big as a jalapeno) - some which missle down on to the ground below prematurely. Mangoes will be a fabulous fruit complement to my oil+starch+onions diet.

We finally set our survey start date for this Sunday. Very exciting, but lots of forms to clean up before then - we need survey questionnaires in French and Bambara and response sheets in French and Bambara. I am looking them over again to make sure I am not missing any crucial questions and to make sure all the questions I have are important. We have GPSed the location of all the schools, churches, and mosques in our first school district (Faladie) - we are going to be make a map to help us look at where parents send their kids as compared to where they live.

Meanwhile, my RAs have been busy entering the 200 university student interviews into an excel sheet. Really interesting to listen to student responses about perceptions of education and politics in Mali. So far everyone who we have interviewed has been very gracious - hopefully this continues.

Day Off

It's Saturday. Doing fieldwork I had never anticipated that it would be hard to take "days off." I sorta thought the research would be cushioned by a lots vacationy type days. This has not been the case. My research assistants come over from 8-4 Monday - Thursday and 8-11 on Friday (They have half day to go to mosque). However, they usually arrive between 7:30-7:45 and stay past four - browsing the internet and completing the third prayer of the day. This means that its only after 4 and on the weekends when I can work on a slew of administrative chores/my master plan. The other thing - its hard to know when enough is enough - you are swimming in a sea of potential data and you don't really know how to evaluate what is worth throwing your time into and what is just an interesting distraction. So you try to do lots of things - hoping that a couple will be relevant.

So what does a work day look like: One of my RAs and I went to visit a madrassa the other day. I had met the director through Drissa's dad a couple of years ago. He was very welcoming, although he didn't shake my hand, and took me around to visit the packed classrooms. Boys on one side and girls on the other. All the girls were wearing some kind of head covering. All the classes stood up to great us in Arabic and giggled at me when I spoke Bambara. I had been wondering how integrated madrassas are into the government education system. In my visit, I witnesssed school officials coming to monitor curriculum. The 9th grade class was covering civic education and the violent events right before the Traore dictatorship was taken down. In addition to the director, we interviewed four different teachers, some who shook my hand and some who didn't, who spoke about their experiences. Upon leaving I got to meet the directors first wife, who was covered in black without even an eye slit showing, but I could see through her veil that she was pretty young. She was stopping by to visit him at school. Then we went back to my house and joined the other RAs to keep coding the university student interviews.

So now its the weekend. I slept in, but paid the price and woke up sweating. I went to take a shower, but the water was cut. I wanted to go to the pool today, but the radiator in our car broke - so its day 3 off Drissa at the garage and me homebound. There is a lot of action in our neighborhood. Rumor has it - one of the families down the block is marrying off 6 of their daughters today. (It is some tradition where they all get married together - can you imagine if we had that in the US - no siblings can get married until everyone is ready to do it at once?). There are multiple cows tethered outside their house - so I know this is going to be a big party.

Things I Miss from the USA

(Minus the snow)

Hidden Treasures

Bamako's population is estimated to be somewhere between 1-3 million. However, it often seems like a small town - most times that I go out I meet someone I know (a former co-worker, my little host sisters' friends, basketball players). The great thing about Bamako is that, unlike Ithaca, there are a ton of hidden treasures waiting to be found! This last week was a great example.

My parents graciously purchased a $30 membership for Drissa and I to the American Club. The American club is a mini-suburban oasis in Bamako - they have volleyball Fridays where Americans play volleyball with Bruce and AC DC pumping in the background as gaggles of mixed race expat kids run around the lush grass lawns. It all feels very 4th of July party- until you pinch yourself and realize its march. I had no idea that you could become a member until I saw a flyer. So last Friday, we signed up. On Sat I showed up at my private little country club and there was no one there. I splashed around in the pool by myself and did some work on my laptop under the cabana and then in the air-conditioned dining area. Drissa and I joke that its our second home, cause noone else is there (except for a couple of French kids taking tennis lessons). There are tennis courts, an air-conditioned weight-room, pool, and hi-def movie viewing room. A nice break from the water and power outages in my real home. It's fun to be a faux expat once or twice a week.

Then Sat night, we went out to this AMAZING live music spot less than a kilometer from Drissa's parents house. It's free entry, great live band with rotating singers, and a lively dance floor. The crowd sits under the palm tree covered grounds sipping $1.25 beers. Much props to the mayor of Bamako -Brandon- for finding this place. I cannot believe I been there before; it is the Bamako nightlife I have always fantasized about and its 3 days a week every week! Everyone was super friendly and really into the music. At one point, I was swept up to the dance floor by a drunk, 60 something patron and thrown around in an attempt at salsa.

Sunday, we hosted a rooftop party in honor of the mayor's 10th anniversary in Bamako, his friend's first and only Sunday in Bamako, the prophet's bday and international woman's day. I strung up x-mas lights and we drank dabalini (hibiscus flower and sugar) cocktails with a various assortment of Bamako based Americans.

Rooftop wake-up call

All is well on the roof. We are woken up every morning around 5:00 by the call to the first prayer. It's call to prayer in surround-sound as there are multiple mosques in our neighborhood - so the repetitive (sometimes off key) Arabic chanting comes at you from multiple directions. Around the time, the German Shephards on the roof a couple of blocks over realize that we are up there sleeping on the roof and they start barking. It's funny here, but there are a lot of dogs in my neighborhood on rooftops - rather reminiscent of the Go Dogs Go Tree party - except they are each on their own branches. It's a warm morning welcome.

We have completed 3 days or interviews and are embarking on our fourth and final day. This morning I dropped my 3 RAs off at our third campus to collect the final 30 or so interviews - bringing us up to about 200 complete interviews. Our interviewing coincides with student union rep elections, which appear to be rather competitive/militant. Campuses are covered in campaign posters - my favorite being - Omar Diarra dit (called) "Obama" with a picture of the candidate super-imposed next to Obama. Gaggles of students ride through on motos wearing their candidates' colors and holding up pictures. Two days ago there was clash between machete wielding student groups disputing election results. The police came in and hit one of the students - now all the students are on strike again. My strike-o-meter is as follows - in roughly 5 weeks of working for me since the school year started - Djenebou - my intern has had exactly 1.5 days of class. (Professor strikes then student strikes then these new student strikes). It's going to be very interesting to hear what these students have to say about the Malian school/political system. We will start coding the taped interviews this afternoon.

Hot Hot Hot

As Winter struck Ithaca early this year, there were many a snowy/freezing November day when I looked out my window and swore to myself that I would never EVER complain about the heat once I got to Bamako. I am proud of my heat tolerance= the way that some people are proud about "never burning" when they go to the beach. But as we all know - everything has its extremes. It's almost 10 pm in Bamako and its currently 91 degrees. It was about 105 today and will be about 100 for the rest of the week. I usually try to measure the heat by the number of showers it takes me to go to sleep. As I tried to take a nap yesterday afternoon at 3 pm I had already logged five showers in the first hour. The strategy is - you run into the bathroom - shower then run out of the bathroom wearing minimal clothes and lay in bed and try to fall asleep before you dry off and get hot again.

Lately, Drissa and I have moved to phase 2. When it gets really hot - you go sleep on the roof. I can tell my heat tolerance is way below most Malians, because no one else is on the roof yet. I also know its going to get much hotter because I know at some point - everyone does sleep on the roof. So its usually just us - sleeping on a bed of double sleeping bags - it usually cools off enough by midnight to put a sheet over us (which serves as protection from mosquitoes as well).

Today, my research team launched our first attack. We invaded the university campus with our questionnaire sheets and voice recorders. I sat back and supervised as 2 of my RAs went at a time talking to university students about their educational experience/opinion of the Malian state. They took turns interviewing and most students were pretty into it - speaking loudly into the voice recorders as if we were doing a BBC special on university systems in Africa. The University campus was reminiscent of an American campus with some Bamakoise touches. The grounds were dotted with old copying machines and black plastic bags, laundry was flying like flags from the balconies of the imposing concrete dorms, there were fashion photo stalls, food vendors, shoe vendors, and parking lots filled with 1000s of motos. Clearly the student population makes up a lucrative market. Student attire ranged from all out suits, to burqas, to traditional Malian garb, to straight outta brooklyn colored skinny jeans. Everything went pretty well - got almost 60 interviews done before the heat started to strangle us and we headed home.

Alright, I am going to go take my 4th shower and off to the roof!