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.