There Is No Place Like Dairy

Badi



Badi drove me to Aguelhoc (or, in French) phonetically, in English it should be something like Adjel'hoc -- Aguelhoc is the old colonial spelling) as we had agreed. Badi's jeep impressed me. I usually don't react to vehicles, but really thought this machine spoke to its owner's personality -- it was white and glossy and clean in a country where nothing is white and glossy and clean, with the exception of the seven o' clock Brazilian soap opera that shuts cities down more effectively than the call to prayer.

In addition, the jeep was equipped with a huge antenna for radio transmission, a spare tyre, and GPS. It gleamed of foresight, another rare commodity here, since poverty and corruption rarely leave room for horizons.

I met Badi at a hotel inhabited by a group of French who knew Badi from before, and a couple of loud Americans. Badi wore a deep violet turban and a turquoise complet and didn't talk much. I immediately knew that I wanted his approval. Incidentally, most things I said he disagreed with. I now think this was a way to make me defend things, to see if I would hold my ground. Sometimes I did, other times I got nervous and blabbered. Nonetheless, I decided that his offer to drive me to Adjel'hoc, where I would live with a Tamashek family he knew for just a share of gas costs amounted to some sort of approval. Approval or some sort of scam that would get me into a lot of trouble. I was pretty sure it was the former, and I have not been disappointed. My family is wonderful, and I have learned more than I could have ever asked for in a couple of weeks. More about this in a second, but first:

Fred B. Jones

Unlike Badi, the Americans at the hotel did not impress me. Maybe because they tried very hard to seem jaded and impossible to impress, which they thought would impress people.

One of them was overweight and made noises when he moved. He sighed when he sat down and grunted when he got up. He went to bed early, after suggesting I make his travel companion an object of study. "This is a nomad", he said, and puffed to get out of his chair.

The nomad's name was Fred B. Jones, and he scared me. He sunned himself in his friend's admiration for a moment, then turned to me and pretended to want to play it down: "Well, I just haven't really lived anywhere since nineteeneightysix." He spent most of the evening telling me about how much more of a real traveler he was than his friends. In fact, they were not really his friend, they were just along for the ride, and kept insisting on air conditioning. "Me, I just sleep in the car"

The car was a 4x4 he had bought in Slovenia, and driven down to sell at a profit in west Africa, thereby paying for his trip. He said things like "Last year I was hitchhiking -- like I always do" and "Yeah, I was bummed I didn't have time to do Mongolia and Tibet" and his whole being frightened me. Maybe because so many of the things he said sounded a lot like things I say, but he sounded like someone I never want to sound like.

He belongs to a class of wanderers that I have met too many of, and that I am terrified of ending up as. It's the type that can turn what must have been thrilling experiences into trivial anecdotes that aim only to brag and that no one wants to listen to.

During the course of the evening, he managed to bring up his homelessness and lack of belonging at least three separate times. I quietly promised myself to impose a strict quota on my own declaration about not having lived anywhere for an extended period of time since the age of seven.

Sometimes people corner me though, by asking where I live. I really don't mean to brag or be funny, I honestly don't know what to say. Where I am from is easy, but most of my material possessions of importance are in Mali, while my parents live in Sweden. I do have a bed in their house, but I have never lived there. My bank account is still in Maine, mail has to be sent poste restante, and my friends are scattered. I guess this will all change next year, and I will admit that it terrifies me to think about it -- living in Boston, working in Boston, having a mailing address and probably an apartment and a routine. But I will have an answer to where do you live, that's always something!

My new(est) home is called Tinégérouf, although I would never have guessed it has a name. I have hitched a ride down from the north for a few days, because i could, and because I felt it my duty as an environmentalist to reduce the per-person-CO2-emissions of the drive down, and maybe also a little bit because I wanted to let people know I am not only alive, but very very well...

...En Brousse -- "In the Bush"

Mohammed's jeep -- every story here begins with a vehicle -- is an old Land Cruiser with many layers of paint showing through the numerous scratches along its sides and a circular sticker on the dashboard advertizing a tourist company based in Ségou. Inside the sun visor crude felt pen block letters assert the power of God: "RIEN NE PEUT CONTRE LA VOLONTE DE DIEU." Me, I would place my bet on the desert -- the wind, the sand, and the unforgiving sun --- over Allah any day.

Then again, maybe that's what God is.

The hood and the doors of the Land Cruiser have begun a slow revolt against conformity, encouraged by rust and boredom and dry desert air, and bulge away from the parts of the car they once fit smugly together with.

There was drama in the way Mohammed drove his Land Cruiser, spinning the wheel this way and that even when it wasn't entirely necessary. There was drama in the way he drove, and there was grandeur in the way he pointed out little villages along the way. We drove through sand and dust and over large boulders past Enemzel, a small collection of half-story mud houses with metal doors painted bright blue. Enemzel, I was told, has a school and a little shop and we stopped there for gas. Then comes Intafouk, a yet smaller collection of mud-brick houses that no one had much to say about except "it has few assets". Finally, after a wide stretch of gravel comes Barrage, which was condemned as essentially useless, except for one thing: recently discovered water. Barrage means dam, or construction, which is exactly what it is named after: construction around water. And since water is such a useful thing in the desert, and around Barrage you strike it at only 2.5 meters, I would be very surprised if the hot season won't see rapid growth in Barrage.

During the 35 km drive, Mohammed often took his eyes off the road to shout greetings to what appeared to be bush, but never failed to materialize as a turban with a man inside it. Despite his lack of attention and my misgivings about the beat-up Land Cruiser, it rolled into the campement, hiccuped once, and settled quietly into the lazy shadows of the afternoon.

On each side of the jeep's parking spot crouched a low rectangular tent. I was directed to the eastern-most one, my new(est) home. It is also home to Mohammed, his young wife Taghalass, a few dozen goatlings and the occasional scorpion -- or that's what they would like to think. Consequently, we spend a lot of time chasing away the goats and stomping the scorpions to the scorpion-afterworld.

On the initial drive north to Adjel'hoc, we stopped to watch sand dunes, petrified trees and neolithic tools, and to eat dinner. Around the camp fire, I brushed away a bug with my hand, and Badi calmly told me "Attention, sometimes there are scorpions." His advice for what to do if I do find a scorpion was "Get on with your life." He later added "First move quickly, then get on with your life." I believe the complete list is First move quickly, then kill the beast, then get on with your life. I am not particularly fond of scorpions, but I am pretty sure they kill fewer people than malaria, and there are no mosquitoes at the campement.

There are many goats, though, and a significant number of scorpions. The goats are hairless -- compared to Mongolian ones, that is -- and bouncy and like goats everywhere fart a lot (a close inspection might in fact reveal the gases emitted by their herds to be pastoral societies most significant impact on the environment). The scorpions are the color of the sand, and small, and supposedly harmless. I still shake my clothes out and turn my shoes upside down before pulling them on.

The tents deserve an entire chapter of their own, as they are as versatile as the sand they stand in. They face south during the cold season, since the cold winds blow from the north. During the rainy season they face east, also due to how the winds blow. There are some variations, but I think the most common one is the kind I live in: a rectangular wooden frame with a relatively thin cloth draped over it. All around the tent stand taller poles, to which the canvas is tied. In the back the cloth is roped down all the way to the ground, and in the front it is often strapped up at roof height, which reaches my shoulders or a bit lower. When the wind blows, you pull it down to about thirty centimeters off the ground to keep out the sand, and then crawl in and out. You can even break off the needles of a surrounding acacia and pin other shawls to the canvas, to cover the gap to the ground entirely, and the sand you want to keep out can be piled on top of the shawls to weigh them down. It is ingenious, really.

The sand also serves as refrigerator, storage, oven, and mop. You pile sand on top of the camp fire coals, and it preserves them until morning tea. You move your fire out of its hole, and instantaneously gain an oven in which you can bake your bread -- and it is amazing to me how little sand you end up chewing, for something baked literally in the sand. If you spill on the floor, you simply sweep out the sand -- there is plenty more underneath. Even in the village Adjel'hoc, few house owners have bothered to cement the floors, and simply lay out mats on the sand like you would in la brousse.

So, in the tent next to mine live the rest of the family, including Taghalass's one-year old girl, Bakata. There's Awrekan, Mohammed's father, and clearly the head of the household. When we met in Adjel'hoc, an indigo turban framed his face, and a dark mustard colored kaftan hung from his shoulders down over pinstriped pants and clean sneakers. Then there's Mohammed's youngest brother, Youssouf, age about 12 if or 19 depending on who you ask, and a slightly retarded sister of indeterminate age named Fatma. Two middle brothers live elsewhere, and Aghali, also in the middle, works for Badi.

Awrekan's wife, Semou, has a long, slightly masculine face of burnt umber, lightly tainted indigo. Her wide forehead is framed by greying hair neatly parted down the sides of her face and in one perfect circle on top, ending in chin-length, thick braids. She also has a big heart, aching joints, and Bakata calls her Mom.

Since none of Awrekan's sons are "young enough" to remain herders -- truth be told, none of them want to -- there's also Mohammed the herder. "I pay him every month," Awrekan confided, "and he is a good worker. He doesn't talk too much." Indeed, Mohammed doesn't really talk at all. Instead, he calmly and rhythmically traps the goats' and sheep's' hind legs in the fold of his own leg to milk them. Every now and then he tells me "Faut laisser" when I hold on to a goat that should be let go, and "Faut prendre" when I fail to hold on to one.

There's No Place Like Dairy

Much of my time with Mongolian nomads circulated around the milking of animals, and the subsequent processing of dairy products. Here, the animals are different -- I met no one in Mongolia who bothered to milk their goats, and there are no horses here, or yaks, but plenty of camels and donkeys. The resulting milk products are different, too, but when I watch Mohammed bring container after container of sweet, frothy milk to the evening camp fire, and when I help shake the milk-filled goat skin to turn it into butter in the morning, I feel strangely, profoundly at home.

The first two days, I drank a lot of milk. I have drunk a lot of milk every day in the campement, but the first two days were different, because I got violently ill. I had to drink a lot of milk: I needed to learn the difference between fresh sheep milk and fresh goat milk (the former is sweeter and "richer in vitamins") and I had to taste (read: drink several half-liter portions of) the curdled milk that is left after the evening's cheese and the morning's butter have been separated. I connected the illness and the milk, but it annoyed me -- all the Mongolian dairy I stuffed into an equally unprepared stomach left it unperturbed, so why would a few measly bowls here knock me off my feet?

The answer came when first Mohammed and then Awrekan came down with the same exact thing, and I'll admit to feeling a bit relieved -- it wasn't the milk, after all. Then Bakata got the same symptoms, and I just felt worried and helpless. She's recovering, but it was harder on her little body than on ours.

One thing I can't get over is how similar the life of African desert nomads is to Mongolian nomads'. The details differ, but remain somehow superficial. When a visitor comes, the first reaction is to give him or her milk, or airag, or tea, and no visitor goes hungry. Life circulates around the making of tea, one tea strong and sweet and served in shots, the other milky and salty and drunk by the liter.

And in both places, it seems to me, the nomads that thrive are more often than not the ones that diversify away from a purely pastoral livelihood, and the children of nomads more often than not desire another life altogether... But I will expand upon this later. It is too big an issue for today, and I have already taken up a lot of your time.

Going to the Desert to Take a Shower?

My last note seems to have worried more than it amused, so here's a second one, hopefully not as "scary," before I take off for the great north, early tomorrow morning.

Yesterday afternoon, as running water drizzled down on my head for the first time since my arrival in Mali, I couldn't quite get over the paradox of undertaking a 20 hour journey to arrive in a desert town in order to take a shower!

But indeed I journeyed, I arrived (safely), and I showered too, in one of Mali's largest cities, Gao. One of the many things that the US State Department does not tell you about Gao is that the city used to be one of the western Sudan's most important commercial and cultural centers. It is easy to see why Gao once thrived, as it spreads out from a strategic position on the Niger river into the vast Sahara, with its trade routes and romantic lure.

Today, history has left Gao with little but its size -- very limited importance, wide sandy streets with rectangular architecture, and only half of the population of its glory days.
Coming here was long but surprisingly easy. We set off on time (15:03) in an old, but durable, and crowded, bus. The road stretched, like the view, and pulled together in smooth curves, and stretched again. As the bus rattled through the fallen night, I could feel the desert draw nearer. The trees grew further and further apart, and began hugging the earth, as though they were afraid that one day gravity would abandon them and they would have to hang on for their lives.

In the headlights of the bus, I could see the earth near the road turn from ochre dust to copper rocks to sandy off-white.

During the first part of the drive, we must have stopped every 15 minutes, to allow swarms of girls and women squeeze into the aisles to sell oranges or cookies or slices of papaya. At some stops, men in thick winter jackets sold meat that they sliced with long knives, and afterwards the smell of grease and mutton and lazy contentment lingered.

As we got further north, the powerful soundtrack that the driver had been providing got shut off, and most passengers dozed with full stomachs. At stops now, less and less of the would-be passengers' faces showed, the rest hidden behind colorful turbans, and I don't think I just imagined the increased tension among the security guards or whatever they were. I didn't even know we had security guards until Bamako had drifted far out of sight. Then three of the passengers began getting off in camouflage clothes at every stop, one of them carrying a gun that he carefully displayed.

I don't know if the gun was mainly a show of strength to demonstrate his own importance and manliness, or if it was a response to some perceived security threat. In any event, the people who climbed on board were every bit as kind and friendly and civilized a those already seated, in my eyes very unlikely bandits indeed.

A woman who sat down behind me covered beautiful thick braids and a baby boy under a dark blue veil. By the time the road led us into Gao, her little boy dared to peak out at me, and even smile. I took it as a good sign, just like the welcoming committee on the bridge across the Niger: a herd of camels smilingly blocked our way across, as if to say Be patient, you're almost there; be patient, because this is the desert. It all seemed very appropriate.

Early tomorrow I head north, north. I look forward to telling you all about it.

So Many DON'Ts for Every DO

Friday night, on my way home from a great evening of dancing to the Super Diata band, as we crossed the river Niger and taximan only narrowly avoided a herd of cattle that suddenly scampered over the right lane, to their herder’s loud but ultimately fruitless dismay, I was jolted into thinking-mode.

When I opened my eyes again, the rusty machine had somehow maneuvered past every single unpredictable cowtail, and in the rearview mirror, the turban-wrapped herder and his frenetically swinging stick quickly shrunk as we continued our brakeless journey/

It was probably the closest I had come to disaster since my arrival here (apart from the little malaria-scare-ia that turned out to be a simple cold, but that nonetheless kept me in town for much longer than planned) but, paradoxically, had I plunged off the bridge in a cloud of long-horned cattle, the event would have entitled very few people to “I told you so”s or “If only she’d followed my advice”s. I hadn’t done very many don’ts, nor had I neglected too many dos. That’s something I can’t say about very many other evenings.

As we continued sliding through empty streets, carefully avoiding sharp turns, since they have been known to cause problems even for taximen with functioning breaks, I began a mental list of the advice I received before and since coming here – dos in the left column, don’ts on the right.

What struck me was the speed with which the right side overtook the left, and how, finally, I was left with a half-empty handful of recommendations, and enough to fill a bucket of restrictions.

Out of all the means of transportation that have taken me places, taxis come – by far – the highest recommended, and yet a taxi got me closer to death than any of the others have. Sort of like my English friend’s Canadian friend who had been strongly advised not to have her baby in Africa, and subsequently came within inches of being killed together with her baby in a Canadian hospital by a double dose of anesthetic.

I have been told never to get on the soutramas – hollowed-out minibuses painted bright green that plow and bump their way through crowded quartiers in Bamako, taking you almost anywhere for a quarter. The safety glitches on public means of transportation are too many and too serious, so don’t use it.

Even more condemned, and more rightly so, is riding on motorcycles. The Swedish health advisory pamphlet for sub-Saharan Africa spells it out for you in caps: DON’T DO IT. WE REPEAT, DO NOT DO IT. This is the same pamphlet whose warning regarding alcohol in hot climates ends with “If you are having trouble falling asleep sober, you might have a problem.” I am inclined to agree that motorcycle-rides are among the most dangerous undertakings in this city, since every guy on the road, including the one driving the bike you are on, think they are the only guy on the road, and only a serious accident can dispel that notion. A bus or a bumper knocking your kneecaps all the colors of the rainbow does not qualify as serious.

So having ruled out soutramas and motorcycles, you are basically left with either taxis or teleportation, since walking the streets at night is obviously also out of the question, and I don’t think they’ve published anything on the long-term health effects of teleportation, which would leave it on the DON’T-hand side of the list.

Priscilla or Patricia the Belgian teacher lady who has lived in Bamako for two plus years told me “Never eat salad” and especially not in the street, because she knows toubabs who have ended up in the hospital because of salad. And toubabs whose teeth have shattered against little stones neglectedly left among the beans, and surely there is also something wrong with the 20 cent plates of rice soaked with delicious peanut sauce, it is just so good that there must be something in it that kills you. And the cool water in the curvy clay pots in my courtyard certainly don’t have an unbroken seal, so that’s a don’t drink, I suppose. Then again, Pamela or Portia I think is screwing a Malian, which must receive a higher DON’T ranking than salad, no?

I guess really one shouldn’t go out at night, that way you can avoid committing half of all the transportation DON’Ts, and to avoid doing the second half, you should probably stay at home during the day, too/ And if you do have to venture out of your room, to, say, go to the bathroom, make sure you’re covered in long-sleeved 100% DEET-drenched clothing, and that a mosquito coil is burning in the toilet.

Except I guess I should avoid my room too, because it is not netted, and sewage flows in the streets outside, and with all the chickens running around, I’ll probably complement my malaria with aviary flu just by looking out my window. I guess coming here in the first place is a DON’T.

Going north of Gao, where I am headed tomorrow afternoon to hang out with Tamashek families, is a big no-no as well, according to the US State Department, but I get away with it, because I am not American, and the Watson only enforces country-wide travel warnings. I am not more worried about it than most other things, and in this case I actually think that the public bus will be much safer, mainly because it is a lot less likely subject to banditry than some fancy jeep, even though the jeep might be less likely to break down.

I think my next post will list all the neglected DOs that I think should be included in the standard list with guidance. One, for now, is go to a maki (bar) where you are the only toubab, and dance your heart out.

Least Reassuring Comment of the Week Award

...goes to Sue, a British NGO worker who drove me home last night. As her red Toyota bumped its way to the gate to my house, we splashed through the sewage stream that the men in space suits sprayed with scary fumes the other week. She took a good look, let me out of the car, and said, in the same breath as she wished me good night, “Yeah... you might get malaria.”

On Censorship

“But it's normal! You can't just diffuse anything on television.” Bouba smiles and lets his outstretched fingers wiggle in the air between us, possibly in an attempt to imitate the circulation of television information, but I think he has it confused with radio waves. He has a diagonal way of grinning, only one corner of his mouth ever really changes position, the other one rests pegged to his chin like the RMB to the dollar. We've been having this conversation regularly the past few days, ever since my neighbors' cousin was on a Malian literary TV show called “En toutes lettres”.

“And why is that? I don't think it is normal at all. He should be allowed to say whatever he wants, anyone should be able to, even if it's not popular!” I stomp my foot, a little too aggressively, because the tall man with the fake gold wristwatch who just joined the conversation widened his eyes and took a step back. Momo and Moussa Djiré look at him and laugh, they have gotten used to this woman who argues louder than most men. Actually, I am not entirely sure they count me as a woman, not really. I think toubab women are essentially considered some sort of third category. They drink beer, they dress like men, they argue politics.

Tanti and Kadi are good reflections of all that I am not. Friday night, waiting for the show to come on, they both looked great. Kadi's baby was sleeping, and she had dressed for the evening in a red creation that was thin enough to double as a mosquito net. If it hadn't been so red I would've been inclined to believe that it didn't really exist.

Tanti, her pillowy curves wrapped in stretchy black velvet, nonchalantly ignored the shoulder straps that kept sliding off, revealing most of her massive breasts. She is very quiet, and if a man needs to sit she stands up without a word, and gives him her seat. She has stopped covering her upper arms now, with a shawl, like she did when I arrived. Friday night, the bright courtyard lights accentuated the pink parallel lines that break the smooth monotony of her soft dark skin.

Me, I can't help it, but my eyes gravitate towards those lines, too often. I don't know if she notices. I remember not knowing what to do with myself when she explained what had happened. It was my first week here. “My husband whipped me,” she said, without emotion. How stupid of me to ask. Did that faint smile of hers indicate a bit of embarrassment too? And if so, was she embarrassed about the incident, or about my question? Since then, no one has mentioned it. Intermittently, other women will pass by and lift up her shirt to apply iodine to the cuts, or just to look at how they are healing, but everyone else just goes about their own business.

En toutes lettres airs on Fridays, we had been told. Or Sundays, maybe. We weren't sure. But we knew we wanted to see it. If your cousin is going to be featured on national television, you want to see it with your own eyes, and you want everyone else to see, too. Especially if you attended the recording of the show, and hence might show up yourself in the audience. Being in the audience didn't actually mean that you heard much anything of what was said, though, because the audio technicians failed to deal with a nasty echo in the studio. Consequently, I was also looking forward to actually hearing Moussa talk more about his book.

Come Friday night, we had thus been sitting outside the gate the entire afternoon and evening, making and drinking tea, waiting eagerly for the show to come on. Don't get me wrong, everyone would have been sitting there even if there were no TV show, but this way the sitting had a purpose. We were waiting for something, and not just the arrival of tomorrow.

We would regularly send kids inside to check the status, to make sure we wouldn't miss the show. When Ablo came running it had already been dark for several hours. Cell phone in hand, he yelled, someone told him the show will be on any minute now. This was at twenty-one twenty-six.

Everyone sprang up from their seat. Momo picked up the tea pots and the charcoal burner, and sprinted the ten steps into the courtyard. Djiré and I grabbed the chairs, and hurried after him. The chairs are made up of plastic wires wound around a metal frame. The majority of them miss a number of wires, letting a section of your butt slide between the gaps, uncomfortably drawn towards the ground by gravity, and subsequently squeezed by the plastic.

Once in the courtyard, we put down the chairs, sat down, and continued making tea. We joked about a Bambara quasi-rhyme that two of my friends made up. “Toubabou – lakalakato, farafine – kekomani!” Tanti almost fell off her chair laughing. She ran off somewhere, and we heard her voice like an echo on the other side of the mud wall, as she repeated it to the neighbors, who also cracked up. Toubabou are white people. Lakalakato means crazy. Farafine is the equivalent of toubab, just black, and kekomani means clever, like a fox.

Tea is made in rounds, filling every new pot up with water and sugar. It's a long procedure, I believe more aimed towards killing time than producing tea. The first round is fort comme la mort, strong like death, the second one is doux comme la vie, mild like life, and the third is sucré comme l'amour, sweet like love itself.

At twenty-two twenty, the old man whose name I don't know but who has been coughing his lungs out in front of the television beckoned us. The show was on. We crowded sixteen or seventeen people in front of the box, sitting on everything from armchairs, to wooden stools, to water thermoses. We wowed when Tanti showed up on the screen, we boohed when the cameraman filmed -- twice in a row! -- the people right in front of Bouba and Mohammed. The audacity! We didn't really listen to what Moussa or the interviewer had to say. In fact, as it turned out, the most interesting part of the show was what they didn't say. Or what they said and we didn't hear.

“But he's the president! To me, there is really no point saying things like that about the president, c'est pas la peine!” Bouba leans forward for emphasis, and narrowly misses being hit in the head by a football kicked too hard, too far right. He jumps up to run after the guilty kid, giving me time to think.

On Friday, Moussa, mentioned the fact that Amadou Toumani Touré, commonly known as ATT, was currently in Washington. I'm pretty sure it was Washington. Mali is right now collecting quite the jackpot of aid from the US and the European Union, and Moussa said “All those billions he is receiving right now, when he comes back, where are they going?” (It's billions in CFA, not in many other currencies. Still a lot of money, though.) Why don't we know where the money goes? A very legitimate question, I think. In fact, Bouba thinks so too: “They are all con-artists over there. They are robbers and bandits.” But still, opinions like his and mine and Moussa's should not be aired on TV.

In the middle of En toutes lettres a man showed up in the doorway. He had very white teeth, and I didn't like his way of showing them. Tanti had her back to the door and didn't notice him until someone gestured his way. Then she squealed and jumped out of her seat, and they went outside. “That's her husband. Did you know she was married?” Mohammed explained what I had already guessed.

I asked, as discreetly as I could, where the husband lives. “Well, you see he lives in Badalabougou,” Momo hesitated a bit, and continued “She is staying here for a while now, she is resting a bit.” And that was the end of that, he turned his attention back to the television screen. Resting, that is a good euphemism, ey?

So why does Bouba think one shouldn't be allowed to badmouth the president, or even point out things the government may be doing wrong? Well, he doesn't think the average Malian will understand it. They will take it the wrong way, and it could lead to all sorts of trouble. Rebellions, social upheaval. So better not to talk about it. People won't understand, and really, it is the sort of thing you should keep within your circle of friends. Not something you should say on TV. Maybe this is also why we don't talk about Tanti's violent husband? Average people (women?) would not understand the greater picture, and might rebel, freak out, destroy the calm. It is possible that she prefers the subject not to be discussed, but maybe others invented the silence for her...

Yesterday, a woman told us about a televised meeting of merchants she had attended a few weeks back, where ATT himself took part of the discussion. Apparently, the meeting degenerated, and some of the questions angered the president to the point where he insulted the merchants present, and the Malian population in general. “He doesn't know his people,” she commented, “otherwise he would not have this reaction.” Obviously, that part of the exchange did not show up in the media.

I wonder if the journalists here don't censor themselves to a much greater extent than ATT, or other government members, would even want them to. I have been told about incidents of imprisoned journalists, but I doubt that it was for airing silly little insinuations like Moussa's... Journalists don't think ATT wants to hear what people think about him, so he doesn't hear. Consequently he can never respond to people's allegations. And when he is confronted with the realities of people's opinions, he reacts violently, because it comes as a surprise to him...

This is my unapproved translation of the letter that won Moussa (Ag Assarid) 15,000 km of train travel through Europe (see my previous post). It can be found in his book, “Y'a pas d'embouteillage dans le desert !” and the passage embodies to a certain extent both what is good and what is slightly annoying about the book: his snapshots of European life and values are sometimes very sharp, and his descriptions poetic, but at times he becomes very moralizing, and makes vast generalizations – both about French and Western people, and, I think, about his own nomadic people, and their culture and values.

Papa,

Let me tell you my current feelings and impressions. I write to you from a high-speed train (TGV) that leaves Montpellier, where I study, for Paris, where I will tell Touareg stories and legends at a library. It is a blue train (the color that you love), very fast and very comfortable, that travels a thousand times faster than your big white dromedary and is as long as a caravan of one hundred camels. In less than four hours, I cross France from south to north, around 800 kilometers like between Timbuktu and Tamanrasset!

Outside the window, everything parades by at an enormous speed. Often, I cannot manage to make the distinction between the cows and the sheep. But papa, these sheep do not resemble yours: in France, they are fat and hairy and are not as free as at home. Here, the animals have the possibility to eat at will. The landscape is all green. The fields are shaped in beautiful geometric formations, a little like our saddle blankets. The climate varies along my journey: thoroughly sunny at the outset, rainy mid-way through and cold at the point of arrival.

Inside, the comfort is absolute with large reclineable seats and little tables for writing or eating. The passengers sit next to each other but they do not speak enough for my taste. Everyone has something to read or to do. It is a pity. But today's western world would do good to draw some lessons from us. And here, every person is their own TGV except that he “does not take the time to go fast,” does not take advantage of the beauty of the nature and walks right by what is essential.

Papa, you know, even with the luxury and the comfort here, I would prefer to live the nomadic life with you and the camels, the goats and the sheep, free like the wind and to go where I wish like a hirondelle on the moving sand dunes of the Sahara. But, despite this, while I wait to return, the fantastic magic of the TGV allows me to remain nomad in an incomparable manner.

I kiss you, and until we meet again, soon, under the tent.

Many of his criticisms of the west are my own (apart from a few places where our views strongly diverge), and one pearl of advice on raising children comes from how Moussa's father punished him when he wouldn't listen. “He never hit me, but he would refuse to speak to me, figuring that if I weren't listening to him, it served no good.”

It will be interesting to see how the book is received in Mali, as it could be seen as a paradoxical finger-pointing to those Malians striving for a better life, often in the image of French lifestyles they can witness on television. He admits believing, when he was younger, that having a TV would make his life better, but now he has realized that all those material goods he has access to in France are worth little, that the relationships that exist between people in the desert are what make life worth living. It is the kind of assertion that is just that much easier to make when you have all those things at your fingertips...

No traffic jams in the desert

So this morning I attended the release party of Moussa Ag Assarid's book, entitled "Y'a pas d'embouteillage dans le désert !" -- There're no traffic jams in the desert.

He originally wanted to name it "Vous avez l'heure, j'ai le temps !" which is hard to translate, but essentially plays on a French distinction between the time our clocks show, and the kind of time you have on your hands. The closest I can get is "You have the time, I have time!" One of the most striking impressions French society made on Moussa was the fact that everyone always knows exactly what time it is, and what they will be doing, hour by hour, for the next year. "In the desert," he said, "we have space, and we have time."

Somehow the cousin of my very sedentary neighbors (I doubt that I will ever completely understand family relations here), he left the desert for France several years ago, and has returned intermittently, and now latest to promote his book here in Mali. It was released seven months ago, and has already been translated into Spanish, Italian, and -- slightly randomly -- Korean.

I have yet to read his book, an account that began with a letter to his father, but will let you know what I think when I am done. The beginnings are interesting enough, though: he was describing the TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse, basically French for really fast train) and its up-to-300 km/hour speeds to his father, who mainly travels by camel in the sandy Malian north. Then he heard, as by accident, about a competition that was announced in conjunction wih a TGV anniversary of some sort. It entailed writing about one's relation to the TGV, so he submitted a copy of the letter to his dad, and won!

He made a number of interesting observations, one regarding psycho-analysts and the relationship between the need for such "curers of mental illnesses" and the absence of time. "I will cure you, they say, come to me and I will cure you. But really, all they do is listen. Because no one else has the time to listen."

I am looking forward to experiencing this place, this desert, where certain material resources may be scarce, but where space, and time, abound.

On Slavery, Beans and Rhythm

demba foli, originally uploaded by Arriving at the horizon.

Written in early November.

When I stepped out of the Bamako airport, I felt as though I had never before experienced darkness. There was a lit-up walkway leading out of the airport, probably to a parking lot or a road, but the lights along it seemed to serve the only purpose of intensifying the darkness around us. Walking towards the thick night with all my luggage, I was closely surrounded by taxi drivers and families eagerly waiting for rides and loved ones, and I felt relieved that Maxim and Violetta, a French-Polish couple I'd met on the plane, had offered me a ride into town. They were staying with a friend of theirs, and there was a spare seat in the car.

I had no idea of where in town they were going, where they were staying, or -- slightly more importantly -- where I was sleeping. I had had the foresight to call ahead to a hotel to make sure I could tell a taxi driver to go to a place where a room would await me, but had left the address to said hotel in a book somewhere in some bag I wasn't sure where. In the rush of getting us all into the cab, I didn't manage to get the book out, so I sheepishly shrugged my shoulders when they asked where to let me off. After a few minutes of chatter, I managed to figure out that Moussa, Maxim's generally unintelligible friend, was telling me about a hotel near his house where I could stay, and I agreed. The rest of the ride, I stared out the window, trying to catch a glimpse of this town I had arrived in, but saw only fragments of run-down buildings, gravelly narrow streets, and slow people, walking with tomorrow as their only destination, and without being in any particular hurry to get there.

Once at the hotel, we had to figure out how to handle payment. Because we had hurried so to leave the airport, I still had a wallet full of only Euros instead of CFA, and therefore it was decided that I should leave my passport with the Chinese hotel owner as security until I had exchanged money. The Moussa character offered to take a 20 Euro bill to the bank, and return the next morning with CFAs. I had all the contact information of his European friends, knew enough about him, and was tired enough to decide to risk it. It was also at this point that I began to realize that although Moussa takes the prize as most impossible to understand, French here is overall a different breed than the French I know. “Comment tu t'appelles?” becomes “C'est quel nom?” (it's what name?), and You want some bread (Tu veux du pain?) can become “C'est le pain?” (It's the bread?) Takes some getting used to, and since I typically imitate those around me, a few months here will turn my French into a sad sad shadow of its former self.

The hotel room was air conditioned (to the point where I woke up shivering during the night), but there were indications that its previous inhabitant had put it to very enthusiastic use. I'll leave the rest to your imagination, but I have since found out that the Chinese supposedly operate a system of hotels, restaurants, and bars in Bamako whose primary purposes are not sleep, food, and drinks. Despite this, I slept OK, much thanks to the protection of a thin silk sleeping bag that my mother's (and my) friend gave me a while back. I woke up to a hot day, red soil like a carpet below my feet, ladies slowly rocking their hips past my window, balancing clay pots and plastic containers on their heads. Ah, I thought, so I am in Africa, then?

And Africa welcomed me. Adventure vibrated in the air like the heat, and the people I met radiated even more warmth than the sun. Before noon struck on this first day, I had bumped through little streets on a motorcycle, successfully dodged the police who don't allow three people on one motorcycle, and lazily enjoyed the shade underneath a roof of leaves. Before the afternoon was over, I had been installed in a tiny room on Moussa's grandmother's courtyard, eaten a falafel-sandwich lunch with an English woman who runs an NGO on pastoral issues, and been given a Malian name by my neighbors. Before I went to bed, I felt pretty overwhelmed by the slow intensity with which everything was happening, but also felt happy, and safe.

And intense it remains. In my first three days, I made it to a wedding dance, a djembe lesson, and to two different Makis, little bars where musicians' hearts beat in rhythm with their drums, where white people are a rarity, and the beer watery but cheap. Towards the end of this first wedding, the speed of the drum beat rose, and dancer Djennebou's feet were more airborne than grounded -- she was consumed by the music. As she swung her arms and legs, no one but me seemed to notice the flock of fifteen sheep that suddenly raced by the musicians, and through the circle of lookers-on. I was left to question whether it even happened.

Within the first five days, I began feeling comfortable sending little boys off with money to fetch me things from the corner store, asking the woman who always wears a shawl over her shoulders what the cuts were from (“my husband whipped me”), and vegetating in the shade of my neighbors' tree. After the first week, I had promised Djennebou to dance at the next wedding I attended, and I had begun ignoring the green-headed lizards that scramble up all walls at all times, and the old men, wearing skull caps or wool hats, no longer made me smile as widely as they did the first couple of times I walked faster than they pedaled... I am still reveling in the temporary disorientation this country has me experiencing, and in the sunsets that soak the sky in the same bright red color as the dust below, but the little kids of my street are no longer terrified of me.

Update.

Yesterday, Habib, six years old, decided that he will come home to Sweden with me, I danced at a baptism after-party, and I think I might appear on Malian television this evening.

Mongolian Tradition and Gold Digging

Mongolian tradition.

Mongolia saw me off with a kind wave. I forget where I left you. I rode around the Mongolian countryside a fair amount more, well-equipped with a traditional deel, the calf-length robe that has kept Mongolians warm in double-digit negative temperatures for centuries.

There were brilliant moments. I give you as an example, this one evening out in Biluite valley, where a Swedish woman named Anneli lives. I met her mother on the Trans-Siberian railway last year, and decide to visit Anneli. She lives in three-wall ger, in a remote valley, with her husband and a handful of cows who had generally given up on giving milk for the winter by the time I got there. Gers come in different flavors, mostly depending on how many lattice-walls they are made up of: three walls is as small as they get. Four walls is common, and five is big. Anneli got three calves this summer, and two foals. The foals were eaten by the wolf, and two of the calves also met their destiny in the form of sharp teeth. Suffice to say it's a hard life out there.

Ellen, another Watson fellow, was traveling with me for a few days, and we hitchhiked out to this valley, where I had left my horses a week or two earlier. Her Watson project deals with how life experience influences folk music in the circumpolar north, so we listened greedily to the songs that are generously dished out by pretty much every driver in the country. Mongolians sing a lot, and they sing well. In any given vehicle filled with any given fifteen (or seventeen, or twenty-three) people, thirteen (or fifteen, or twenty-one) of them will have breathtaking singing voices, and the two that don't are usually the foreigners. You sing when you are driving somewhere, you sing when you are riding across the steppe, and you sing during dark evenings.

One such dark evening in Biluite valley we spent singing. Upon arriving, I had given Bold, Anneli's husband, a bottle of vodka, as thanks for watering and taking care of my horses for a week. He stuck it inside his deel, and carried it around until bedtime. When we, the women, were about ready to go to bed, Bold was sitting at the altar part of the ger (the northern part of a ger is sacred; it is where you burn a bit of incense, and wax candles, and have pictures of your old mom and the Dalai Lama) and suddenly a half-empty vodka bottle appeared in front of him. And by appeared, I mean that he drank half of it in less time than it took us to realize he had even sat down.

He then proceeded to give us women a night cap in the form of “zuun gram” -- 100 grams of vodka. Anneli then suggested that he sing for Ellen, since he had drunk the vodka we gave him. But in Mongolia, you don't just sing, it ain't that easy, you also have to drink airag, fermented mare's milk. So we drank airag. And we sang. Anneli filled up a 4-liter metal jug, and from the jugs you pour half-liter bowls, which whoever is singing holds on to, and drinks after the end of the song. And Bold, being the only Mongolian in the vicinity, made up tons of rules that benefited him, under the auspices of “Mongolian tradition.”

-- Why does the youngest person have to drink more?

-- Mongolian tradition.

-- Why can't we sing together if the song is in English?

-- Mongolian tradition.

And so on.

Luckily airag is more along the lines of beer than liquor as far as alcohol content goes, but the next morning, Anneli counted that we had consumed about thirteen liters of horse's milk. That's a lot of milk, whether it is fermented or not. When we were ready to go to bed for the second time, Anneli uttered the best-ever end-of-an-evening comment. As we reluctantly ventured outside into the cold to go to the 'bathroom,' she said “Damn, I am glad that I only have one cow to milk in the morning.” It made my day.

Gold diggers.

A few more things are worth noting about Biluite valley. It is part of Khangai Nuruu National Park, some 150 km from Kharkhorin, Chinggis Khan's ancient capital. It is a valley whose families were asked to relocate for the summer. Find somewhere else to stay. Every family received a little paper note, explaining that the valley is overgrazed, and that they need to move elsewhere. Most of them used it as toilet paper, or to light the stove in the morning.

Grazing is hard on the valley, that is true, with too many households and too many animals residing there. For families whose single biggest expense in a year is transportation between seasonal dwellings, the question remains: “Who is going to pay the extra costs of moving further away?” The government collects taxes, I was told, but contributes very little to people's lives. Children need to go to school, families need water, but they do not help pay for boarding in the village, they do not help maintain wells. And it was to no one's surprise when, a few weeks after the little paper slips demanding relocation were distributed, big machinery rolled over the hills into Biluite with government permission to prospect for gold.

When you wake up in a ger that is below freezing in the morning, you understand people's attitudes towards regulations that prevent wood-cutting for fuel – the attitudes are about as negative as the temperature. If you in addition have little or no reason to believe that the government's pretty words about environmental protection are anything but empty public relations stunts, you might as well use their fancy notes to wipe your behind, right?

After I left Biluite came the challenge of selling the horses in late September (advice: if you ever have to sell a horse in Mongolia, don't do it in the period September – November). All the potential customers wanted horse meat, but I thought my horses were too good horses to become sausage, so I kept looking. At this point I had about two days left before my flight was leaving, and I was still in the countryside. Finally, a couple I had gotten to know quite well bought them, with a lovely red vest that she had made as partial payment. Soft hearts may not make a lot of money, but I think they are happier in the end.

Immigration statistics and Expensive Apartments

On the right side: Fully expensive furnished 2-room apartment...

Any takers? (UB Post, August)

On the left: immigration statistics. If they weren't so incredibly muddled, you might find some interesting facts there... Like, the increase of foreigners enterring Mongolia in the first half of 2006 increased by 60.8% compared to the same period in 2005. And 0.1% of those foreigners "had Middle East region citizenship."

Old News - Mongolia Solves Nuclear Crisis?

I guess Mongolia failed in this task... "to resolve the Korean peninsula nuclear weapons issue peacefully."

Mongol Messenger, September 13

"On September 5 at Parliament House, Prime Minister M. Enkhbold met Korea's Defense Minister Hwang Kyu Shik, who invited Mongolia to help with negotiations to resolve the Korean peninsula nuclear weapons issue peacefully."
I am glad Mongolia is becoming an important player in the field of world politics... Er... Anyway, on October 12, the UB Post stated that the The Mongolian Government expressed “deep regret” in reaction to the news that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea “conducted a nuclear test on October 9, 2006 in spite of the will and demands of the international community.”

Nasty, Brutish, and Short... Making peace with UB

Balcony IV, originally uploaded by Arriving at the horizon.

Taking pictures of little beautiful things hiding in the pollution is one way I try to remain on speaking terms with UB. Above is a picture of the plastic wall of my balcony.

It seems appropriate that I, on my last day in Mongolia -- unavoidably spent in Ulaan Baatar, the city I love to hate -- try to reconcile our differences, and make peace; I should leave in peace.

No matter how much I dislike this city -- it's rude, it colors my lungs black, and it leaves a taste in my mouth like too many beers the night before -- there are moments when I feel I judge it too harshly.

Peace Avenue is far from peaceful. It is a place of pollution and loud cars, where "nasty, brutish, and short" seems like a very accurate description of the life of man. But sometimes, you can gaze west along it, through dryer-fuzz-colored air, and rest your eyes on a mountain at the horizon. If your timing is right, just before dusk, the mountain is on fire, bathing in the bright pink rays of the sinking sun.

Indeed, any street that continues long enough in any given direction will reveal flowing hills at its end, reminding you that Mongolia is not very far away, with its open spaces, endless horizon, and starry sky.

The colorless, dusty asphalt sometimes drives me nuts, but if you watch closely where you step, you can sometimes spot the imprint of a horse that stepped in that very same place, many years removed in time.

Somehow it warms my heart a tiny bit to notice those little departures from UB's right-angled industrial city facade.

Monkzul and Mundo Uno

Monkzul -- you live, you learn (IV), originally uploaded by Arriving at the horizon.

I love this portrait of Monkzul (and I will post more photos of her soon), and was very happy to discover that while I was riding around in the countryside (and taking more photos of her and her cousin), the group Mundo Uno displayed her on their front page...

Mundo Uno is a group that was formed during the most violent days of this summer's Middle East crisis. It grew very rapidly, indicating a wide-spread wish among people to stop the fighting, and the culture of war in general.

When I heard about the conflict on BBC World, I remember thinking how unreal it seemed. Indeed, terror threats and deadly shootings and suicide bombings feel more remote than the most far-away parts of Mongolia, very abstract and almost fictitious from this peaceful place.

As Mundo Uno state on their Flickr page, the group exists in order "to keep people united, to develop a culture of peace, share some knowledge, to support actions for peace" -- worthy goals, for sure.

Even though the first thing someone told me when I began thinking of coming to Mongolia was "Emilia, you're going to have to buy a gun" it does appear to me as an ideal place to share images from, in the spirit of peace.

The Art of Waiting

waiting for the dalai lama IV
Originally uploaded by Arriving at the horizon.

Mongolians are highly skilled in the fine Art of Waiting, much of their lives are spent waiting. The idea that time is money has little meaning here; no one is in a hurry anywhere, and the implications for an economy are rather interesting.

I've spent quite a lot of time this summer honing my waiting skills, but I still have a long way to go. Sometimes I'll just buy a bag of pine nuts and go sit on a bench eating them, waiting for nothing in particular, cracking the shells between my teeth, getting the little nut out, spitting the remaining shell on the ground. I'll watch it bounce on the pavement a couple of times, and move on to the next nut. I gaze around, looking at no one person or thing, just waiting.

People here can spend entire days waiting. Waiting for a vehicle to leave, waiting for food to be made, waiting for the sun to move across the sky. I have hired motorcycles to take me places for little more than the cost of the gasoline required to reach the destination. I guess that is what happend when the opportunity cost of a person's time is not just tiny, but literally zero.

Sometimes other things, like superstition, play into the waiting. Like when you are waiting for a vehicle. It's bad luck to ask how long it will take to get somewhere, and if a car breaks down, you don't ask what is wrong or how long it will take to fix it, because that too is bad luck. You just lean back and wait. Moxie and I had a textbook experience coming back from Kharkhorin: the micro broke down, and for hours and hours, in the middle of night, everyone in it sat and dozed off. Stared out the window. Snored. The driver fiddled and tweaked and took out the scotch tape, and finally also just sat down and waited for the battery to recharge itself.

I also think it would make a great Watson project (lately I have been spitting out Watson projects like it was my job) - the anthropology of cultures where waiting is a prominent feature of daily life, or perhaps the implications of such cultural phenomena on a labor market. If the opportunity cost of time is zero, and labor is abundant, what happens to wages?

I used to think that I was quite brilliant at procrastinating, but have realized now that I am but a novice, with much to learn about the noble art of waiting. The munklings in the picture are young, but already quite skilled.

Outlining Nomad's Land.

This blog is where I will be posting thoughts and photos and findings from my Watson year. It will contain long ramblings about my findings, and short snapshots and anecdotes. This first post will be a lengthy, and perhaps a bit dry, example of the former, but if you want to know what the project is all about, keep reading.

The idea behind my project, "Nomad's Land -- Development, Conservation and Nomads" is to spend a year talking to nomadic pastoralists who are caught between the forces of development and conservation.

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That economic development is hard to reconcile with environmental protection is well-established. The global economic system faces many challenges, among the most complex of which is addressing widespread poverty without jeopardizing the environment and our natural resources. Disparities in living standards between different parts of the world are rising, and increasing economic opportunities in poorer countries is an important means of reversing that trend.

However, economic development and industrialization have historically been very resource intensive, and have had detrimental effects on the environment through e.g. pollution and the depletion of natural resources. This problem is exacerbated in many poor countries, where governments struggling to provide basic needs for their populations are unable to shoulder the cost of environmental protection, and sometimes purposefully weaken environmental protection policies to attract investment.

Domestic and international environmental organizations therefore work to establish conservation zones to shield ecosystems and animals from the effects of development. Meanwhile, the lands that are often sought for development or conservation purposes are rarely uninhabited. Indeed, nomadic pastoralists increasingly find themselves caught between the two powerful forces of development and conservation, both of which pressure them to leave the land that their families have wandered for generations.

During two months of field research in Mongolia last summer, I set out to study the challenges facing conservation efforts. I reached very few conclusions, but discovered countless unanticipated questions that I reflected upon after my return home. The most intriguing of these relates to nomads and the effect that conservation has on their livelihoods. I had always thought of protected areas – legally established areas restricting human access dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity – as being unambiguously good phenomena, one of the best methods invented for preserving valuable species and ecosystems.

My goal then was to study the effect that mining and other economic interests have on this kind of conservation, but I came to realize that protected areas in fact have profound effects of their own. They reflect very particular assumptions about how ecosystems are best managed, and pastoralist lifestyles usually have little place within that set of assumptions: pastoralists’ land-use practices are seen as incompatible with conservation objectives and the herders themselves are seen as disturbances. Moreover, exploration for natural resources is being undertaken in ever more remote places, and recent discoveries on traditional grazing lands have attracted mining companies to the area.

Consequently, nomads who have prospered for thousands of years in hostile environments are struggling to cope with outsiders’ new and conflicting interests in that same land. Migration routes have been cut off by national borders, mining claims, and park boundaries, and migrants have been forced to move away from ancestral lands and to settle down. Most disturbingly, nomadic peoples have had little voice in decision-making processes.

This pattern holds true for nomads in all corners of the world, including the reindeer herding Sami in northern Scandinavia, the pastoralist Kuhi in Iran, the Fulani in West Africa, and the Kolla in Latin America. Despite the wide distribution of the problem, the issue has received remarkably little attention from scholars. Indeed, the 2004 World Parks Congress was the first of its kind to actually include indigenous mobile peoples, many of whom came to challenge the prevailing approach to conservation.

Many people working with conservation are trapped in their own perceptions of the world and their own views of how policies should be shaped, unwilling to listen to anyone who might challenge their most entrenched convictions. Unfortunately, this group often includes nomads, so their voice is not part of the conservation discussion. Don't get me wrong, I am a very green person (some would even go so far as to call me a dirty hippie), and I believe that preserving the environment for future generations is one of my generation's great challenges.

But perhaps we need to re-think how to best achieve this. This is why I want to listen to nomads. I want to listen, to record and to document; to be challenged, to be thrown off, to be surprised; to analyze, to break down and to understand.

By sharing my findings, I hope to help nomadic people overcome physical and cultural distances from national governments by obtaining a political voice and influence over their countries' development and conservation efforts.

This is one of the first steps of the sharing part. I hope you will enjoy reading about this at least a tiny fraction of the amount I will enjoy telling you about it.