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...