The following week was defined by feelings from all ends of the spectrum during the grand Bamako sub-regional workshop. There, I met 3 other EWB long term overseas volunteers based in Senegal, Ghana and Burkina Faso, all of which are working at different levels on the Multifunctional Platform Project. I was anxious to dive into the Malian culture after my wonderful stay in the village, but we were lodged in what here is considered a fancy hotel, living and eating like tourists for the entire week. This is when it occurred to me that Malians working in our development NGO live very comfortable lives, to say the least.

One day, at the end of the scheduled workshop, the first rain of the season was pouring down violently. The conference room where we were located was about 200 metres from the hotel. Within minutes there were United Nations Development Program (UNDP) SUVs lined up to drive people back to the hotel. How ironic! The SUV represents in all its glory the antithesis of the humble development approach. That day, during a workshop, I almost fell off my chair when I realized that a 27 million dollar budget was going to be spent on the next phase of the project. I hopped in an SUV that day to spare everyone an inappropriate sight of me in a soaked white shirt, but I couldn’t help but wonder what proportion of this budget will go towards these luxurious vehicles, the numerous drivers and the deliciously inflated “overhead costs”.

One thing that struck me that week is the lengthy and sincere salutations. You cannot walk by somebody without saluting them if your eyes happen to cross. Contrary to what we are used to, a polite smile will not do. Basic salutations include: “Hello!”, “How is your family?”, “How is your health?”, “How is your husband/wife?”. And the most impolite thing you can possibly do is to approach somebody and start talking business or asking for a favor without this essential salutation ritual. It is likely more impolite than eating with your left hand, which is strangely the more widely-known “faux pas”. Amongst EWB volunteers, we became used to inquiring about each other’s bowel movements on top of the regular salutations, since those were generally the defining factor for our overall attitude on any given day...

It is important for me at this point to give an overview of the Multifunctional Platform (MFP) Project. This project started in Mali in 1998, with the intention of providing an efficient solution to poverty alleviation. The project proposes an appropriate technology to lighten the intense workload of rural women. The objective of the services offered by this technology is to liberate time that can be invested in education, caring for children, improving sanitary conditions and creating activities that may generate income. The success of the MFP is explained by the comprehensive social, economic and technical approach.

The MFP is in fact an 8 to 10 hp diesel engine mounted on a chassis that can power various agro-processing machinery like a mill, dehusker and oil press. It can also serve to generate electricity to activate a water pump or power a 250-bulb lighting network. The MFP can simultaneously charge batteries or power welding equipment. The approach also integrates an alphabetization program since the MFP is simply an energy business created and managed by women cooperatives. These cooperatives consist of a few female villagers who may not have had the chance to attend school and that are empowered by the management responsibilities resulting from the platform operations. Local artisans are trained to ensure the adequate maintenance of the machinery and the technical sustainability of the MFP. The female cooperative is responsible for mobilizing 8% of the initial equipment costs of $11,000 for the basic model including the engine, mill, deshusker and battery charger. All operation and maintenance costs are also responsibility of the women cooperative upon start-up, while the rest of the amount is financed by the MFP project through partners like the UNDP.

The three of us Junior Fellows were never really supposed to attend the workshop and it was a last minute decision to include us all, but we were kindly asked to keep a low profile. So the circumstances made for a very strange week. Presentation after presentation, my head kept getting filled with more and more questions that I could not ask openly. For instance, I really wanted people’s opinion on the Burkina Faso initiative to promote the privately owned and managed MFPs instead of the female cooperative management strategy adopted in Mali. Sure the affordable energy services remain to liberate time for women to improve the livelihoods of their families, and these benefits should not be undermined, but what happened to the important aspect of empowering these women through the alphabetization program and management training? It seems like this new wave of the project loses a significant part of the added value of the program that should not be neglected.

Approximately 535 platforms have been installed over the past five years. The audacious plan for the Mali MFP Project is to install 1500 more platforms over the next three years in an attempt to contribute to the achievement of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) for 2015. The MFP project actually tackles three of the eight MDGs more directly by promoting gender equality, achieving universal primary education as well as reducing hunger and poverty.

I did learn a lot throughout the week as the countries were focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of the program, their lessons learned and the urgent actions to be taken. By sitting through some long discussions I was able to grasp the important challenges that will be faced in the second phase of the program, enough that I could identify areas to which I can contribute and shape my internship accordingly. In particular, I discovered the roles and dynamics between different levels of management of the program, which will certainly come in handy given the importance of hierarchy in the Malian workplace. I also witnessed the interesting dynamics of our work groups, the difficulty of facilitators to control the workshops, and the interesting habit of giving a never ending introduction before a question, critic or comment!

We finally left Bamako and were driven by one of the many chauffeurs of the MFP Mali project in a good old SUV to Sévaré, where I am supposed to settle for a while. It felt so good to leave the movement, craze and alarming poverty of the sidewalks of the capital. I have always been comforted by the small town atmosphere and the stronger community feeling that gives hope to even the poorest of the poor. Somehow people’s shells are not as thick in less populated areas, and villagers are less inclined to turn a blind eye to their neighbor in need… Not to say that the reassuring community feeling was not observed in Bamako. This is Africa after all and the strong sense of solidarity is one of the riches that no one has yet succeeded to steal from its citizens. This preference of mine rather found its roots in Canada, where I have never seen someone sleep on the streets of my tiny rural hometown but where I saw countless homeless people make a home of the busy Toronto sidewalks. Perhaps things will be different from Bamako (or Toronto) in Sévaré. But I am well aware that when exploring a country that stands in the bottom five ranks of the Human Development Index, it is unreasonable for me to even hope for small towns without a single soul holding on for dear life on the side of the street. I knew I would find out soon enough when the sun came up.

Notre séjour dans "la brousse"

So I have a lot of catching up to do… First, I need to share our 3 day escape to Sido. Three of the five Junior Fellows who ended up in Bamako were scheduled to work on the Mali Multifunctional Platform (MFP) Project. Rest assured, more details on this amazing project will surely come in my next entry. Well, it turns out we made it into the country exactly a week before the sub-regional workshop held in Bamako. Now, what I had in mind for such a sub-regional activity was nothing huge. This is why I was rather surprised to get here and find out that my project and responsibilities for the summer had not been discussed in much detail due to lack of time... because of the crazy planning for this event!

I will attempt to make an analogy that will perhaps illuminate a few of you. Imagine an intern starting a position at the EWB national office one week before the yearly national conference. Everyone in the National Management Team, without exception, is running around like a chicken with no head trying to get organized. If you’re thinking that this isn’t a problem, and that all you need to do is send the poor intern to spend some time with chapter members in a university close by, think again. Clearly, chapter members across the country are busy putting together presentations that the Director of Chapter Development (or whatever Chad was) is demanding for end-of-week…

So it turns out this sub-region that the workshop was targeting is actually all of the West African countries participating in the MFP project. In other words, try to picture three of us in a similar pickle as this poor EWB intern filled with good intentions. Believe it or not, this is how we turned a few days of downtime into an amazing learning opportunity. Please let me introduce Mike, a cool chap from PEI and long term overseas volunteer based in Sévaré where I am also supposed to be based, at this point, for the summer. Jean-Luc, Véro and Mike came up with this fantastic plan of splitting the group into two teams. Each team is to make a surprise visit to a random rural community and to spend 3 days with the locals to learn about their way of life. The idea was clearly to get out of Bamako and live the real Malian experience while we had a chance. You may care to note that three quarters of the Malian population is located in rural areas, hence why the city life cannot itself fulfill our desire to understand the true Mali. Mike, who has been working on the MFP project since February and who will be doing so long after my return to Canada, suggested two random villages equipped with a platform.

I am still under the charm of the hospitality of the villagers of Sido. We were welcomed and treated like family, though they had previously never heard of EWB before. We explained to the mayor and dugutigi (chief of the village) who we are, our plans for the summer, and expressed our desire to spend some time in their lovely community alongside villagers to participate and learn. We explained that it would be extremely helpful for us to feel and understand the reality of the people we are truly trying to help through our work here in Mali and back home. They were absolutely enchanted and impressed at our preference to stay with locals overnight rather than to settle between the tall walls of the Mairie.

Within five minutes of hopping off the bus, I was given my Malian name: for the next three months, you can call me Awa Doumbia. It turns out that my name sounds very much like the word “yes” in Bambara, which is “owo”. And this word clearly comes up a lot, so I end up looking around to see if anyone is trying to get my attention every time that somebody agrees with another. If you’re thinking: “Come on, Cat, the world doesn’t revolve around you, nobody must know your name by now, anyways…”, well, I have news for you! People around here remember our names oh-so-quickly. They find it so entertaining that I have a Malian name, and kids and adults yell my name when I walk around the neighbourhood. It’s funny how the colour of your skin can turn you into a star overnight… The fact that I misunderstand the word “owo” 50 times a day as a call for my attention actually reminds me of math lectures in high school. I would hear the digit 4 in French, “quatre”, and always jump up on my seat thinking the teacher was about to ask me to shut up in the back row… You know. Quatre… Catherine…

Well, moving on. It took me a few hours to realize that the great majority of the residents of this community are Doumbia’s. It is apparently a custom here to rename foreigners, perhaps to make everyone’s life (but ours) simpler. Here is how it makes things a bit complicated for us newcomers. There is a very interesting phenomenon in Mali called “cousinage”, and my best attempt at a translation will be “the cousin thing”. Every last name comes from a specific ethnicity and hence comes with a great deal of history. Certain family names are therefore slaves of another family, and so on. This is all a big joke, and though it may have come from a truthful base, no one will take out a whip and claim another to be his slave. They simply kid around and tease each other according to the status of their last names, saying things like: “I saw your wife cooking dog”, or “I saw you eating beans” and a lot of other funny quotes I don’t quite understand yet…

Actually, in Sévaré where I am now based, they very much dislike Doumbias, because they are metal workers and they were animists. I am absolutely terrible at handling this teasing and though I could easily come up with random insults, they would likely be irrelevant. So for a while I just told everyone that they were hurting my feelings. I could tell that I was kind of ruining the game, but I didn’t want to blurt out something hurtful in return! But when I went to get my visa renewed, I met a kind lady who told me why all these people seemed to have a beef with my folks, and more importantly how to respond. Apparently the majority of the population around here is Peul, and these people are shepherds. All I have to do is call them thieves because they stole my livestock, and that they cook their meal over dried animal doo-doo. Ha! Now that I think of it, respect to them, for without them would have no walls…

During this stay in the village, I got to experience a lot of interesting “firsts”. I saw my very first multifunctional platform. You need to understand that I had been reading up on them for a while, finding out about the wonderful effects that it can have in people’s lives, and finally, I was standing next to one, wide-eyed. I also got to eat tô, which is a typical Malian meal of interesting texture that most households consume daily, and it is served with some kind of sauce. There are different varieties of sauce, including the Baobab tree leaves. Yummy… I will have to explain better when I can include a picture. For now, I have one word: gooey. Tô is supposed to be really difficult to cook, but my neighbour insists that I hang out with his wife to learn so that I can make some for friends and family in Canada. I got to mill grains manually for the first time. It didn’t last too long. The women would simply steal the tool away from me and laugh. Now I’m determined to purchase the necessary tools and prove myself that I can do it too. Sleep is overrated, anyways. On a more serious note, countless hours go into food preparation. It is a full time job. There is no way that I could manage a day job and come back home to cook dinner in the traditional way over a charcoal stove. Besides that, it was also my first time seeing walls made of cow poop and straw roofs, as well as using the hole as a toilet… Last but not least, I enjoyed my very first shivers in Mali early in the morning as I was having my first bucket shower of the summer!

I learned lots of the local language with kids, pointing at things and getting translations. They took out a cherished picture book that some other American toubab must have left them, and we looked through the beautiful images together looking for new words that they could teach me. At one point the ladies started pointing at my hair and their facial expressions weren’t too tactful in telling me that something had to be done. I couldn’t agree more, so I let one of my hosts have her way with my hair. She was braiding away as she was breastfeeding her child. Now that’s what I call multitasking! It took her about two hours to finish my cornrows. That’s right, cornrows! Those are the tight braids that stick to the scalp that have never looked good and never will look good on a white person. We were only halfway through the braids when the mayor called us in for a meeting. Way to make a good impression with my ghetto half braided hair straight out of a rap video… And this is the story of how I adopted the permanent head scarf.

The meeting with the mayor was an eye-opening experience. He had his entire council gathered for this meeting and we discussed about Engineers Without Borders, our individual projects and NGOs, and our goals for this surprise visit. In return they drew us a fair portrait of the situation of the community. They were so well aware of their strengths, needs and challenges that it made us all question for a moment how in the world we can come to this country and think that we have something to offer, especially knowing that we are far from being the kind of NGO that will dump a lump sum of money for a project and pack up.

The mayor spoke so eloquently about the importance of international cooperation and outlined the direct and indirect benefits on their community that we were encouraged nonetheless. They kindly asked us to write up a report summarizing our observations through this experience so they could capitalize on our fresh outlook. Véro pointed out that there were many more things for us to see to get a better grasp of their reality. They willingly agreed to guide us through their health clinic and school, where we had in depth conversations with staff and teachers.

Both of these stops offered shocking sights for my western eyes. Yet they walked us through with great pride, conscious of their advantage over the dozens of surrounding villages deprived of the proximity of such services. The health clinic was composed of five rooms, three of which were reserved for maternity care: the pre-natal room, the maternity room, and the post-birth room filled with beds and accompanying pink mosquito nets. My heart skipped a beat when my eyes met the baby bath tub filled with muddy water in the maternity room.

Another room was the “Magasin” with the refrigerator for vaccinations. It didn’t occur to me at the time because I was in a state of pure absorption rather than critical thinking, but this town is not electrified, so this refrigerator may actually be powered by batteries that the multi-functional platform charges every night. The last room was the pharmacy, with almost bare shelves from ground to ceiling. I had a peek at a jar that was at eye-level, and read the label to find out about some medication for venomous snake bites, which are apparently fairly common… Fantastic! So it seems as though the main activity in this clinic is maternity care. The other rooms of the clinic are filled with charts and old “Symptoms/Diagnosis/Medication” posters with the help of which the rest of the sores and pains must be identified and rectified. How dare do we complain endlessly about health care and refuse to step up when it’s time for our country to support Official Development Aid?

The school visit was another interesting experience. This was mid-afternoon on a Thursday and two teachers were hanging out in the middle of the school yard computing averages for end-of-year. This was exam period and only the grade six students had to write an examination that day, so most children were in the field helping to prepare for the shortly expected rainfalls. The teachers answered our questions and amongst other things discussed the difficulty to find and hire teachers, as well as their obligation to resort to an average of 110 students per teacher because of the sparse government resources invested in education. Their meagre budget goes towards teacher salaries and school materials, which are either inadequate or insufficient. The teachers attested that male attendance throughout the year is noticeably higher than female attendance because the girls’ help is required for the women of the household to accomplish their daily tasks.

I tried to take a quick peek at a classroom as the others were moving on quickly to another building, but I ended up staying a while to do a visualisation exercise. Or maybe it only felt like a long time. I stared at the school benches. Think cafeteria style, made of old wood, somewhat similar to the black and white school pictures of the olden days in Canada. I could not picture with all my might 110 kids packed in this room no bigger than our regular-sized classrooms for 30 students back home. Even the most patient teacher in North America with the best intentions would likely be tempted to crush fragile children fingers with a ruler in an attempt to discipline this kind of crowd I could imagine at that moment…

The last day of our visit, there was a village assembly organized to welcome a member of parliament for his passage through their community. Before the official beginning of the celebration, an old woman insisted that Noémie and I dance with her in the middle of the assembled crowd. We looked liked absolute fools but joined in with huge smiles that must have earned us forgiveness for sabotaging such an otherwise pretty sight. The villagers were amused and cheered us on, meanwhile I only had one wish to turn into an ostrich and dig my head into the sand. But then I started dangerously enjoying myself. You have all heard of the saying: “Dance like nobody is watching”. Indeed it makes the world of a difference. I have always loved to dance and this wasn’t about to change because a hundred people were staring (okay, and laughing)… Finally the three of us sat down for the beginning of a traditional dance with beautiful costumes and antelope masks. I sat in awe as two very fit local men danced ever dynamically to the sound of the djembes and traditional string instruments, watching the rivers of sweat stream down their beautiful dark skin. Jean-Luc explained to us that he had visited the museum in Bamako and seen such costumes exposed, but had thought to himself that he would unfornately never get the chance to see these worn. But all of a sudden these costumes were alive and performing an extraordinary dance in front of our eyes. I had butterflies in my stomach the entire time, and in fact they never left until I hopped on the boiling hot bus.

During the ride back to Bamako, I was determined to keep an eye out for the national brewery, which makes Castel, a decent blond beer. I am still a Molson girl after my 2 co-op terms at the Toronto brewery, and was curious to catch a glance of an African version. I missed it on the way to the village because it is so difficult to stay awake in this draining heat, and it was unfortunately no different upon our return. Another mid-day snoozefest to recharge my batteries!