Chapter 38: Traveling While Gay: Vigilante Squads, Unnatural Carnal Knowledge, and Plenty of Piña Coladas

Posted on January 11, 2019 by 2seetheglobe

At the airport in Malaysia, waiting to board our flight/escape unharmed

We were walking zombies when we arrived near midnight at the Sama Sama Express Hotel inside the Kuala Lampur, Malaysia airport. We were on our way to Vietnam, and we’d been traveling for more than 24 hours on three different planes that literally took us halfway around the world (in economy, no less). Now we had an 11-hour layover here until our next flight, and the only thing on our agenda was a steaming hot shower and sleeping while lying flat.

Thankfully we didn’t have to be coherent to check in at the hotel since we had booked and paid online a month before. And since it was located inside the airport, all we had to do was mosey over about two minutes from our arriving flight to the hotel’s front desk and flash our passports. Easy-peasy.

There were two young women at the front desk. One of them read from her computer, reviewing our reservation aloud: one night, standard room, checkout at noon, breakfast included. Then she abruptly stopped talking, looked at us, back at the computer screen with squinted eyes, then back at us.

“It says king bed,” she announced.

“Yes,” I answered. “Also, we’ll check out before ten since we have to make a flight.”

She looked at the other clerk with alarm. I wondered, were they upset we were leaving earlier than the established checkout time? Whatever—we just wanted to sleep.

Once in our hotel room, Jamey wondered if it was the king bed that had distressed them. After all, we were two males, and Malaysia was a Muslim country. While I usually looked into the LGBT situation in countries before we visited, Malaysia was just a layover and I had skipped the research. So I did a quick online search where we discovered that the front desk clerks’ discomfort was the least of our worries:

Malaysia:

20 years imprisonment, fines, and caning for same sex sexual activity.
Vigilante groups round up men accused of being gay and had them arrested.
Government officials deport any visiting foreign cabinet ministers or diplomats who are gay.
The People’s Anti-Homosexual Voluntary Movement lobbies for stricter criminal laws against homosexuality.

Then there was this fun tidbit:

The Malaysian Film Censorship Board announced it would only allow depiction of homosexual characters in movies as long as the characters “repent” or die.

Apparently in 2017 Malaysia tried to censor Disney’s Beauty and the Beast over some “gay moments.” I totally have to get a copy of that version.

Now, I’ve had some sleepless nights in hotels in the past for a variety of reasons–an air conditioner in Belize that chilled the room to meat locker temperatures, a room in Cairo without AC or a window or a fan or apparently oxygen—but this was a whole new ballgame. Would these clerks turn us in to the People’s Anti-Homosexual Voluntary Movement? Would we be caned in the airport food court, right in front of Starbucks? Would we be featured in the next season of Locked Up Abroad? We even pulled out the convertible couch and made it look slept in—just in case the vigilante squad showed up.

The next morning we checked out earlier than we had originally planned, did not make eye contact with the clerks, and loudly talked about football stats as we sped through the lobby. We finally stopped sweating when those airplane wheels left that Malaysian runway. See ya’ later, haters!

Jamey and me at the 1993 March on Washington for LGBT rights

The whole anti-gay thing has never made sense to us, and the fact that most of this bias is based in religion (you know, that institution that’s supposed to make humans better people?) makes it all the more bizarre. I’ve fought hard over the years to combat this discrimination—marching on Washington, volunteering for human rights organizations, speaking before city councils, writing a monthly article in a local alternative newspaper, picketing and boycotting anti-gay organizations, and writing an email nearly every week to a person or company who debases people because of their sexual orientation. But, c’mon! When I go on vacation, I don’t want to think about an anti-gay vigilante squad ready to bust down our hotel room door. Unless they are going to take us to see that steamy version of Beauty and the Beast…I’d be totally down for that.

In our travels around the world, we’ve mostly avoided these awkward get-put-in-the-slammer-because-of-how-we-were-born situations because, as a rule of thumb, we avoid countries that might maim or kill us. For example, there are ten charming countries that impose the death penalty for being gay (Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen) that will probably not be the spot for our next spring break hullabaloo.

Uganda was almost on that list. Home of the infamous 2013 “Kill the Gays” bill, they originally called for the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality.” Now I have met some very aggravating homosexuals in my lifetime, but to be clear, I never wanted to kill them. The punishment was later downgraded to life in prison (Whew! Thank goodness for small favors!) after most of the world threatened to withdraw all of their financial support from the country. Nope, I have little desire to explore a country where violent and brutal attacks against LGBT people are common and cheered on by political and religious leaders (and often performed by state officials). Nothing ruins a holiday more than a beating overseen by a Ugandan pastor.

Unfortunately, over the years we have slipped up and took trips to places that we really

The streets of Accra, Ghana. Wonder where he went to med school?

shouldn’t have. A few years back we tagged along with some friends on a driving trip around Ghana (For the sordid details, see my blog’s Chapter 15: Cause Every Little Thing is Ghana Be Alright). We didn’t research the country since our friends had made all of the plans. However, we had an inkling something was up when we saw that the windows of many Ghanaian cars were adorned with large adhesive letters that said things like, “I am covered in the blood of Jesus.” The drivers must have toweled off because, overall, they looked fine to me.

On the beach in Ghana, smiling even though they want to use those oars to beat the gay out of me.

For the first couple of nights we stayed at a rundown beachside hotel that gave new meaning to “seedy.” It was the kind of place that returned your laundry nicely folded, but still unwashed (yep, really happened). There was no Wi-Fi so we couldn’t research how Ghana felt about LGBT people. At one point I asked the front desk clerk if I could change some money, and as she was giving me my Ghanaian cedi she looked straight at me and said, “So you’re American. I don’t like that Obama. He legalized homosexuality.”

I wasn’t exactly sure how to reply. Maybe she was setting me up? Maybe she was just mean? Or covered in the blood of Jesus? So, I fake-smiled, took my wad of cedi, and racewalked out of there. Once we made it to the first place with Wi-Fi, I discovered these fun facts about Ghana–the country we would be traversing for the next eight days:

Ghana:

three years imprisonment for “unnatural carnal knowledge” (e.g. code speak for being gay)
physical and violent homophobic attacks against LGBT people are common, and often encouraged by the media, as well as religious and political leaders
reports of young gay people being kicked out of their homes are also common
reports of torture programs designed to “cure” homosexuality

Rest assured I did not hum a single show tune or discuss any episodes of The Real Housewives of Atlanta for the next week and henceforth did not get the gay tortured out of me.

Ethiopia. We’re just close friends, I swear!

We inadvertently visited other African countries where the laws don’t favor us, either because we tagged along with others, attended a conference, or just missed the info in our research. I mean, it’s not exactly publicized by their travel and tourism bureaus. “Visit Egypt! See the pyramids! Float down the Nile! And if you’re gay, crush rocks in a hard labor camp for 17 years!” Here are a few of the countries we naively visited:

Egypt: Homosexuality is not specifically outlawed, but “morality laws” are used to punish gay people–up to 17 years in prison with or without hard labor & fines.

Ethiopia: Up to 15 years imprisonment for same-sex sexual activity.

Morocco: Up to 3 years imprisonment for same-sex sexual activity.

Senegal: Up to 5 years imprisonment for same-sex sexual activity.

Tunisia: Up to 3 years imprisonment and fines for male same sex sexual activity.

Sometimes it didn’t even cross my mind that a country would be anti-gay. Take Bhutan, for

Trekking to Paro Taktsang (Tiger’s Nest monastery) in Bhutan, where we could have gone to prison for a year for making whoopie in the hotel room.

example, known worldwide as the first country with a Gross National Happiness index built right into their constitution. Everything the government does is supposedly weighed against this index, which includes a guarantee of psychological well-being. And yet:

Bhutan: Between 1 month and 1 year imprisonment for same-sex sexual acts

Well, listen here King Wangchuck (really his name) of Bhutan. If I’m a gay Bhutanese fellow, I’m not experiencing much of that Gross National Happiness you advertise. This hurts even more because King Wangchuck is young and handsome (seriously, clink on the link–he’s model-like) and is pals with Will and Kate. Surely he watches Will & Grace?

Another big travel blunder we made was when we visited the Maldives, that exotic string of islands in the Indian Ocean. We didn’t even think to check on the LGBT situation before we traveled there, mesmerized as we were by those over-the-sea bungalows we’d seen on screen savers and travel posters.

It was a painfully expensive adventure, but we sucked it up because, hey, those over-the-sea bungalows! And yes, it was dreamlike stepping off our veranda right into the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean and having a cabin boy decorate our bed each day with little pictures made of flower petals. Good thing he didn’t create a picture of the Maldives Penal Code which would have shown us this:

Maldives: Up to 8 years imprisonment with possibility of whippings, house arrest, or deportation for same sex sexual acts or…gay marriage!

I discovered this fun fact while lounging on the veranda of our Maldivian over-the-sea bungalow, sipping a tropical drink, and doing a search on my iPad. And let me just say, there weren’t enough piña coladas in the world to make us forget that we could be languishing in a Maldivian prison just because one day back in 2012 we drove to Iowa (one of six U.S. states at the time that allowed same-sex marriage) to get legally hitched after being together for 26 years.

Maldives. Can you please wait until after breakfast to whip us?

It’s one thing to feel disappointed when your vacay doesn’t turn out exactly as you planned—maybe it rained, or the hotel room had a mildew smell, or the hotel restaurant had stale bread. But imagine being on vacation and filled with dread just for being, well, yourself (while paying a whole hell of a lot of money for that privilege). Next time we want an over-the-water bungalow experience without the fear of a gay whipping, we’ll pass on the Maldives and head to places like Fiji, Cambodia, and the Philippines that won’t throw us in the clinker for being lawfully wedded.

We really began to understand the hateful side of the world when we decided to become international teachers, and began our search for schools. One of our first offers came from a school in Seoul, Korea where we really hit it off with the principal after several Skype interviews. He said we would be perfect for his school, and the last step was for him to get the final okay from the school owner. But a day later he informed us that he didn’t even make it inside the guy’s office—the secretary out front had stopped him dead in his tracks when he explained that we were a gay couple.

“You can’t tell him that!” she exclaimed. “That’s not allowed at our school!”

The principal asked, “What’s not allowed?”

“You know,” she answered. Then she mouthed the word “gay.”

You pretty much know when a school secretary can’t even voice the word “gay,” we weren’t going to be sashaying down the halls of that institution anytime soon.

It only got worse. As we started to look at schools with available positions, many were either in countries where gay people definitely would not be welcomed (hello Saudi Arabia!) or were religious-based schools where they probably mouthed the word “gay.”

To keep track, I ended up making a color coded chart that included every school (Green = gay friendly! Red = We will imprison/torture/kill you!). We discovered that nearly one third of international schools were off-limits to us.

Thankfully, both of the international schools where we ended up teaching were extremely gay-friendly and actually, just friendly in general. Our school in Shanghai even hung a banner across the front of the building announcing their support for LGBT people—it was signed by all administrators and loads of students. Both schools were also located in countries that did not discriminate based on sexual orientation. Same-sex sexual activity has been legal in China since 1997. In Mali, no laws against same-sex sexual activity have ever existed in the country.

Throughout our job searches and vacation searches, I can’t tell you how many times we heard someone say:

“C’mon, it’s safe for gay guys in _________! (insert name of obviously anti-gay country) They might have those laws on the books, but they hardly ever enforce them!”

In other words, “You PROBABLY won’t be stoned or imprisoned, so just enjoy your piña colada!”

Sorry, not worth the risk. There are just too many countries in the world that welcome me for who I am, where I don’t have to worry about the repercussions of bizarrely inhumane religious laws, or antiquated British colonial laws that treat same-sex relations as a punishable offense. If I want to spend a gazillion dollars a night for an over-the-water bungalow, I’ll do it in a country that appreciates and maybe celebrates my keen sense of fashion, knowledge of Bravo shows, and witty repartee.

Sadly, our own home country isn’t a bastion of gay friendliness either. Up until 2003, same sex relations were illegal in the United States (let’s just say I was a repeat offender from way back in the day). You know things are bad when communist China legalizes same sex sexual activity six years before the U.S. And to this day, it is still legal in America to fire an employee for being gay in these 28 states:

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Michigan
Missouri
Mississippi
Montana
Nebraska
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
West Virginia
Wyoming

It’s all pretty alarming to me, especially when I just read some research that shows that unequal treatment of LGBT people causes economic harm, leading to lower economic output for individuals, businesses, and even entire countries. On the other side, inclusive policies can actually boost a country’s GDP. Surely that news would spur countries to change, right?

Nope. Just over the last year or so, countries have become even more anti-gay. Russia, Uganda, Nigeria, and Brunei implemented new laws that increase penalties not just for being gay, but also for simply supporting rights for LGBT people. We’ve still got a lot of work to do in this world.

Which means, it’s definitely time for a piña colada. Or the whole pitcher. Oh, what the hell, just give me the bottle of rum.

Chapter 30: You’re Lookin’ Swell Mali: Saying Goodbye to Our Bamako Adventure

Posted on June 17, 2015 by 2seetheglobe

Clarence (right) with the goo-goo-googly eyes.

As a kid I was obsessed with Africa, mostly fueled by what I saw on TV. There was the TV series Daktari starring Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion, who made me feel both terrified and super sad at the same time (“Watch out! He’ll tear your head off with those powerful jaws…ohhhh, poor thing…what lioness will hook up with that walleyed creature?”).

There was the based-on-a-true-story movie Born Free, where we all boo-hooed when captive animal Elsa the lion is finally set free (in slow motion, of course) into the Kenyan wilds as that sappy, Oscar-winning Born Free song plays: Born free, and life is worth living, But only worth living, ’cause you’re born freeeeeeee. This is not to be confused with Kid Rock’s Born Free song in which he defiantly sings, “You can knock me down and watch me bleed, But you can’t keep no chains on me, I was born free! While technically those lyrics could apply to a freed African lion, poor grammar ruins the mood.

I can’t forget the classic film The African Queen where Katharine Hepburn manages to look glamorous in the Tanzanian jungles amidst the tsetse flies, high humidity, and a lack of toiletries. Glamour and jungle adventure all in one? Sign me up!

Ms. Hepburn…why don’t you sweat?

And then there was my favorite Abbott and Costello movie “Africa Screams,” where a male gorilla has a major crush on Bud Abbott and eventually saves him from being boiled up for dinner by some hungry cannibals. I used to think the whole cannibalism thing in this movie was horribly stereotypical until I read that in the 1890s the town of Ngandu in the Congo paved its streets with the leftovers from supper, in this case 2,000 polished human skulls. Oh well, they always say two (thousand) heads are better than one.

Despite the fact that I grew up in the Midwest, literally next to a cornfield, I fantasized that I lived in the wilds of Africa. The forest in the nearby park became the jungles of the Congo, and I would hack my way along the deep jungle trails with my trusty machete (well, it was part of a high rise handlebar that broke off of my Schwinn Stringray bike, you know, the one with the banana seat?). Now, I’m pretty sure that the jungles of the Congo didn’t have a Dairy Queen across the street like my jungle did, but a boy’s gotta have his Mister Misty and Dilly Bar after all of that jungle trekking.

A hungry, hungry hippo in lifelike plastic.

I even wrote a story in junior high about two boys who find an old map in their algebra book and stow away to Africa in search of treasure. Clearly I was doing some daydreaming during math class. I also daydreamed about the time I rode the Jungle Cruise at DisneyWorld, my nirvana. A ten-minute dose of pygmies, pythons, and gorillas, all while gliding along a refreshingly clean “river” with our experienced African guide (actually, an 18-year old high school dude named Jason from Fort Wayne, Indiana wearing a pith helmet). What more could an Africa-obsessed kid crave?

Hope there is some Pepto-Bismol in that bag….

So imagine my delight when I first actually stepped foot on the African continent, on a big detour during a college-era backpacking trip through Europe. Four of us had just arrived in Athens, saw a poster advertising cheap flights to Cairo, and within two hours were at the airport—despite the fact we didn’t have a visa for Egypt. After a weird chat with authorities at the Cairo airport in which we signed some papers that were all written in Arabic that might/might not have promised them my firstborn or my corneas, we were allowed in.

We enjoyed a weeklong adventure exploring the pyramids, riding camels in the desert, and learning that inexpensive, hole-in-the-wall restaurant food, while economically sensible, can cause explosive diarrhea two days later. But I was in Africa. AFRICA! It was as exotic and every bit as exciting as the Jungle Cruise, even though the Nile river water seemed a bit cloudier than the Disney “river.” But despite our watery stools, it was one of the best experiences of my life.

Just like the movie Casablanca, except actually filmed in Casablanca.

Some years later I got to experience Africa yet again. This time Jamey and I traveled to Morocco for a few weeks on a tour around the country, wandering the souks of Marrakesh, having tea with a Berber family in the Atlas Mountains, and seeing the hotel where the Marx Brothers filmed A Night in Casablanca. It was also here that we learned that Humphrey Bogart’s classic film Casablanca was not filmed in Casablanca, but rather in the exotic locales of Burbank and Van Nuys, California. Here’s lookin’ at you, California kid.

But it wasn’t until three and a half years ago that the idea of living in Africa presented itself to us. By that point we had abandoned hopes of continuing our teaching career in America, which had become about as pleasant as swallowing a mouthful of sulfuric acid-coated glass shards. Instead we were looking for international teaching jobs that would take us far, far away from the test-obsessed mess in the U.S. While there were international teaching jobs available in many countries, two openings fitting our exact skills popped up at a school in Bamako, Mali.

Mali! We pictured ourselves in pith helmets and khaki jackets, just like Jason the Jungle Cruise guide. We saw ourselves living in this exotic place of golden sands that was once home to a grand kingdom twice the size of France–so wealthy it made European royalty look like trailer park trash. We emailed the school and interviewed by Skype a few times, and after a couple of months received the news that we were hired. Surprisingly, safari fashions were not part of the conversation, but we were thrilled just the same to know we would soon be living and working in the exotic lands of West Africa.

Now granted there were a few bumps in the road in our journey. And by bumps I mean those speed bumps at the rental car places that are covered with sharp iron spikes. Because just a month after signing our contract Mali experienced a coup d’état, then a counter coup. The school closed, and we were offered the chance to cancel our contracts. But then it reopened and we went to Mali anyway because really, we figured, how much worse could it get?

Well, maybe a little worse. Within a couple of months Islamist rebels took over the northern half of the country, followed by a massive intervention by the French Army (who, by the way, wear really, really short camouflaged shorts). In the two years that followed there was a terrorist attack at a nightclub in Bamako, as well as an outbreak of Ebola. But other than that, things were dandy.

Aside from the troubles and a fluctuating student population that waxed and waned

Who wears short shorts, we wear short shorts, if you dare wear short shorts, Nair for short shorts… Source: http://ricorant.blogspot.com

depending on which countries evacuated their people, and the security advisories from the American Embassy cautioning us to avoid lots of places, we loved just about every minute of our time in Bamako. I realize that probably makes a few folks shake their heads, along the same lines as “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” But believe me when I say that Mali is so much more than rare viral outbreaks and military skirmishes in the desert by short shorts-wearing men. These will not be my takeaways from three years in Mali (okay, maybe I’ll remember those crazy short shorts).

So what will I take away from our three years living and working in Mali? What will I fondly remember? Here’s what:

The Colors

Nothing is dull-colored in Mali. Everything from the clothes to the carrots dances with vivid color. Even the dirt is fabulous, a sort of earthy orange hue that would look great on the walls of a Parisian apartment or on a gown going down the catwalk. Actually most of our light-colored clothes and linens turned this shade of orange, so we really will remember this tone for years to come.

The People

We had to arrive at school early because it took at least ten or 15 minutes to get through the greetings and joking with the school guards at the gate. Sure, there were teachers who blew right past these guys with a clipped “bonjour,” but they missed out on one of my favorite parts of the day. This is when we learned to speak rudimentary Bambara, including the basic greeting that can take about five minutes (How are you? How did you sleep? How is your family? How is the village chief? And so on).

This is the time where we began to comprehend the Malian sense of humor, in which they make fun of you but you don’t really feel insulted because they are so damn nice and have the most genuine smiles ever (“Your belly looks big. Did you eat everything in the house?” or “You look tired. Too much whiskey last night?”). We bonded with these guys, and plenty of the other local staff who we took the time to get to know, and saying goodbye to them was heart-wrenching.

We once visited a remote village with a colleague and his Malian friend who originally came from this village. Even though the villagers didn’t know us and we weren’t exactly dressed well (sorry Katharine Hepburn) we were treated like VIPs, always offered the good seat in the shade along with a welcome speech about how they felt so privileged to have us there. We even met the chief who welcomed us and told us we could return any time. Throngs of kids followed us as we walked back to our car. All I could think of was, “So this is what it’s like to be a member of One Direction!”

The Expats

It takes a certain kind of person to knowingly choose to live in a landlocked, developing, sub-Saharan country where kids still poop in the road and shirts are sold from tree limbs on the roadside, where embassy advisories pop up on our phones warning us to steer clear of public places. These are people with a sense of adventure, a bit of grit, an intense interest in culture, a humanitarian spirit, lots of passport stamps, and definitely a touch of insanity. And I loved meeting every one of them.

We met a UN filmmaker who shot a documentary about artists in Afghanistan. A former colleague organizes music festivals in remote areas of Mali in order to promote peace among different tribes. Another friend worked with transgendered prostitutes in various countries around the world. We met male and female Marines who, still in their 20s, have already worked in several countries most people couldn’t point out on a map. We even socialized with the US Ambassador and the British Deputy Chief of Mission.

The Weather

Our road turns into the Jungle Cruise.

There really should be a TV show about the weather in Mali (hey, there are shows called “Treetop Cat Rescues” and “Wives With Knives,” so a meteorological-based Mali program isn’t too farfetched). The wet season involves torrential downpours that dump so much rain in an hour or two that if there actually were storm drains they couldn’t handle it. So the roads turn into rivers–I actually saw fish swimming down on our “street” one afternoon. The hot season is so blistering hot and dry that it sucks the moisture from your eyes and makes blinking a chore. On the bright side (pun intended), it’s nearly always sunny so you are always cheerful as you slowly melt into the pavement. Surprisingly I must have adapted to the climate because a few weeks I actually found myself saying, “No, it’s not that hot. it’s only 100.” I guess to me, 100 degrees is the new 80 degrees.

The Arts

We took an African dance class our first year in Bamako, practicing on a patio outside our school, overlooking the Niger River, with live drummers who pounded away like there was no tomorrow. In our own minds we moved like the newest members of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; in reality we looked like two guys with some sort of nerve damage. But it didn’t matter because we were having fun and feeling a part of the culture—a culture that is steeped in the arts. We saw just about every top Malian musician in concert (Habib Koite played at one of our school’s graduation ceremonies), watched puppet shows, learned how to decorate mud cloth, and purchased enough masks and pottery and statues to open our own museum.

House Calls

Does the cat need shots? Car need a tune up? Feel like buying some Malian crafts? If so, keep your lazy butt on the couch because in Bamako everyone makes house calls, from the vet, to the mechanic, to the crafts guy. I did go to a dental office to get a root canal because I didn’t want blood and saliva to get on the couch.

The Simplicity

Bamako has a couple of million people, but is still referred to as a “big village.” I would add a “big DUSTY village.” There is about one high-rise building, and not many stoplights or sidewalks or paved roads. On the other hand there are plenty of farm animals gallivanting around the city, and you can buy most of what you need at the roadside. It’s a busy, crowded sort of place, but uncomplicated and not stressful.

Sure there are a gazillion vehicles/animals/people in the road, but you seldom move faster than 25 MPH. So it never feels like a crazy death-defying ride down I-95 like I was used to, with obnoxious drivers two inches from my bumper, honking at me to go faster when I was already ten miles over the speed limit. If you’re trying to pull onto a busy road in Bamako, people actually stop their cars and flash their lights to let you in.

Nothing seemed to rattle my Malian friends. If I was fried at the end of the day from trying to accomplish too much and not getting everything done, they would say: “Dɔɔnin-dɔɔnin, kɔnɔnin bɛ a ɲaa da.” (Little by little, a bird builds its nest). When the war in the north was raging and we were preparing “to go” bags in case of evacuation, they just said things like, “That’s life” and “It will all work out.” When our plane was delayed for hours and I paced the airport trying to find out what was going on, the Malian passengers stretched out across three seats and slept. I rarely heard a Malian complain, except for my janitor at school who felt the school cat didn’t deserve the canned food and imported Whisker Lickin treats I gave her because “she doesn’t really do any work.”

The Adventure

Listen, I won’t lie: Jamey and I like fancy places too. Provence in the south of France is divine…we enjoyed buying lilies at the outdoor flower market and eating at swanky sidewalk cafes and buying lavender soap and very expensive suede shoes (that did not work well in the aforementioned hot season in Mali). Venice was enchanting as we strolled over the Bridge of Sighs with a gelato and drank wine in Piazza San Marco and watched the gondolas drift by on the Grand Canal. Barcelona, Lisbon, Berlin, Budapest, Vienna, Paris…we’ve visited many proper cities and had enjoyable times.

Being fancy at a fancy Parisian sidewalk cafe with our fancy sunglasses.

But unless you are Jason Bourne being chased through Europe by CIA operatives and Interpol, these fancy places don’t involve a whole lot of adventure. You eat good food, you see pretty churches, you visit an art museum with Picassos and Monets. Pleasant, but for me not so memorable.

That’s why Mali struck such a cord with me. A simple Saturday drive through Bamako to the grocery store was more memorable than any stroll down the Champs-Élysées or the Ramblas. Right in the center of town a herd of longhorn cattle might cross the road in front of your car (which makes a unique excuse as to why you are late to something).

We always played played “What’s on the Moto?” in which we tried to find the most bizarre

photo credit: https://gerguinea2014.wordpress.com/

thing being carried on a moto, the small motorcycles that inundate every road in Bamako. Some of the contenders:

A guy driving his moto with three tires over his body (I think Wile E. Coyote did that once)
two guys carrying three live sheep (a very interesting ménage à cinq)
a guy carrying a 20-foot-long metal pipe (jousting never goes out of fashion)
a guy clutching a large pane of sheet glass (what could possibly go wrong?)
a guy balancing a 55-gallon steel drum on the seat behind him

You might also have an encounter with a Malian police officer in his royal blue shirt and jaunty black beret. If you’re new to town and stupid like we were, you actually pull over when they blow their whistle at you. Then you go through a long, drawn out ordeal in which they take your auto registration card, you tell them you don’t speak French, they speak louder and more forcefully, they mention that you can pay a “fine” on the spot to avoid a trip to the station, you try to figure out why they pulled you over in the first place, you call the American Embassy and hand the phone to the officer, he yells some more, he walks away with your registration card and phone, you get out and chase after him, and he either tells you to leave or you give him a couple of dollars.

What’s more convenient is to pretend you don’t see or hear the policeman at all, and just blow right on past him. It feels very Bonnie and Clyde, without the machine guns, thankfully. Speaking of guns, my first taxi ride in Bamako had four of us smashed in the back along with a Malian soldier in the front seat, his gun over his shoulder and pointing pretty much at my head. Every time we hit a bump in the road (in other words, every 3 seconds), I cocked my head in another direction to avoid an accidental discharge. All that adventure for a $1 taxi fare.

Adventure is at every turn in Bamako….a village on an island in the middle of the Niger River, right in the middle of town, that makes you feel you went back in time. A boat ride on the Niger in a pirogue loaded with cold beer, seeing people living in corrugated metal shacks next to mansions along the shore. Shopping at the Grande Marche outdoor market, a never-ending maze of stalls full of locals buying and selling everything from colorful fabric to toothpaste to soccer balls to warthog heads. Musical concerts in which an audience member always jumps on stage to dance with the musicians and the rest of us are on our feet dancing right along. Hippos. Crocodiles. Having a sheep ritually slaughtered for Tabaski right outside my classroom window. Massive peace rallies. Outdoor parties in the sweltering heat where your clothes are soaked with sweat but you dance anyway. Malian puppet shows where massive, bigger-than-life creatures dance to the beat of African drums. A horse and rider galloping down the main road, dodging the cars and trucks. Boarding your plane from a stairway from the tarmac like they did in the 1950s. Standing under a tall waterfall in the bush just outside of the city.

I like pretty, but I like adventure more.

Au revoir, Mali. K’an bεn. Thank you for fulfilling my childhood fantasy and better yet, for making me a better person. Until we meet again…

Chapter 11: Just Cross Over the Crevasse on the Spindly Tree Branches Precariously Positioned There

Posted on September 22, 2012 by 2seetheglobe

When we lived in West Palm Beach, we were always so thankful to the Jews this time of year since Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur meant days off from school. As luck would have it we also had Friday off here in Bamako, although it was for non-Jewish reasons. The Malians celebrate their 52^nd year of independence from France September 22, though I’m happy to report that French bakeries are still thriving here, as is the French language (though after I continue to labor through those Rosetta Stone lessons I’m not sure if that is a plus or not).

So with a day off we decided to let our hair down and join a group of our teaching colleagues on an overnight outing to southern Mali, about 50 kilometers from Bamako. It was close to here that the Empire of Mali was born in the 13th century. Among the hilly woodlands there are about 20 villages with some dating back to the Middle Ages, which make my former “historic district” neighborhood from the 1920s seem like chopped liver. It’s also home to the beautiful Arch of Kamadjan, a massive natural stone arch at the top of a stony hill.

The Arch of Kamadjan, seen from far, far away

Legend has it that a king cut the arch into the hill using his sword. I am sure Paul Bunyan and Ironman also assisted as this baby is massive. I was sure it would collapse on the day we decided to picnic underneath it, but I’m still here typing so you know that didn’t happen.

I purposely avoided asking a lot of details about this trip since many of my colleagues are very active, sporty types who opt for really adventury-ish type things that we tend to, um how do I say this, not do ever. Seriously, we thought we were pretty wild last week staying up to 10PM on a school night watching two Mike & Molly repeats on a Saudi Arabian channel. I did think I overheard someone mention that we were staying in “huts,” or maybe, I reasoned, we were going to be eating at a Pizza HUT. Sure, that was it.

We decided to drive our newly acquired Honda CR-V that our Malian mechanic Bill (that name can’t be real) just finished working on, fixing the AC (woo hoo!), replacing filters and fluids and whatever, and best of all throwing in matching sporty black and red (with flame motif) seat covers, steering wheel cover, and seat belt shoulder pads. If we were teenage boys in the U.S. in 1985 we would be SO popular right about now. Bill even Armor All’d the dash, so we felt ready to conquer the world.

Mooooove you darn cows!

We set out in a caravan of 3 vehicles at 10AM Friday morning, with a quick stop at the travel agency to pay for our tickets to Ghana for fall break next month. We appeared to be the only non-black people on the streets of this city of 2 million people so we were a bit of a spectacle. Since Jamey and I haven’t left Bamako since we arrived 44 days ago it was quite interesting to see how different it looked outside of the city proper. There were 4-lane highways with a concrete median, almost like we would see back home. Well except there was an occasional random donkey or long-horned steer standing on the concrete median in the middle of all that speeding traffic. And guys walking into the highway with what I thought were plastic tennis rackets except they were electrified devices for zapping flies (note to self: buy one of these for our roof deck ASAP). And there really aren’t “lanes” of traffic per se. While there are painted lines in the center these are ignored and sometimes there is just one big lane and sometimes they create 3 or 4 lanes when the motos squeeze in there (BTW, our group discussed what we saw the moto drivers carrying and this included: a stack of 10 chairs, two pelicans—which I might add are not birds that live within 1000 miles of Bamako, and a stack of tires with the driver playing the peg of a ring toss game).

No Photo Shop involved!

Our waterfall destination

As we got further out of town the road became just 2 lanes (or so) and the landscape opened up to reveal magnificently green fields punctuated by massive orange and grey rock hills that look like they just popped up randomly out of the ground. Jamey offered a scientific explanation but I was distracted by something shiny in the distance and I can’t remember what he said. These hills don’t gently rise. They abruptly jut from the ground and their faces show crazy patterns and shapes. As we got close to our overnight accommodations we saw a waterfall cascading over the top of one of these outcroppings and were told we would be swimming under this, just like Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins in Blue Lagoon!

We drove off of the main road onto a rutted clay “road” not unlike the one we live on in Bamako. But this was lined with mud brick buildings (surely not like the “huts” we would be staying in, I was thinking) and lots of rural villagers who stared at us and smiled and waved when we waved.

Huts-Are-Us

A half mile down the road, through a field with donkeys grazing, was the entrance to our encampment, Centre Culturel Bougu Saba, which I believe means “huts without running water.” The French owner threw open the metal gates which were framed by fuchsia bougainvillea, and we all drove in. It was actually beautiful—rustic, but picturesque. There were indeed a series of mud brick huts with thatched roofs and doors painted with African figures. But they were charming. Inside each were two beds canopies of mosquito netting, mosaic tile floors, and an overhead fan. The rest of the compound included a little bar and covered eating area, a large open-air multipurpose area with huge peaked thatched roof and carved wood pillars, and a bathroom area with composting toilets (you can Google it).

It also included privately walled but open air showers that curiously did not include a shower head . This is because you ladle water from a big blue 55-gallon drum into a bucket, carry the bucket into your mosaic-tiled shower area, and use a plastic mug to pour water over you as you shower. It sounds labor intensive but I have to say it was a delightful experience doing this at 6AM this morning as the sun rose and the birds serenaded me with some crazy birdcalls. The water and the air were refreshing, even though I stressed a bit deciding if I had scooped enough water to condition my hair as well as shampoo it too (don’t worry, I had just enough water to do both).

Under the spreading mango tree

We didn’t dawdle here at the compound very long as we had a full agenda for Friday, an agenda neither Jamey or I even knew the details of, and this as I explained earlier was on purpose. Our first inkling that this was going to be an adventury type day was when they told us to not bring our vehicle as it doesn’t have 4-wheel drive. So we jumped into the other manlier vehicles and took off to the arch for a picnic lunch. Unlike the St. Louis arch, this stone arch is not close to convenient parking nor does it have an elevator to get to the top. So we first rode up a clay pathway that were even more rutted than the road we live on in Bamako, if that’s even possible, where an occasional moto would appear coming at us around a sharp turn. We really looked like bobble head dolls in the car and I am very thankful I didn’t have to pee during this ride.

Just a little picnic lunch on a cliff

About halfway up our colleague driver stopped and said there was a trail at this point and we could continue riding in the air-conditioned SUV or we could walk the rest of the way. That’s like asking me if I’d rather have a Coke or a cup of glass shards dipped in rat poison. Two occupants opted for the walk and I’ll give you a hint that they weren’t from Florida. Once we reached the final stop for the vehicles I couldn’t see any stone arch cut by a magical sword. That’s because we needed to HIKE to it, and that’s a word that Jamey and I shy away from. because when we went on a little HIKE in Thailand it actually ended up being 6 hours through 100 degree, mosquito-infested, muddy jungle on steep slippery trails, and then we ended up in a remote village sleeping in a hut where I smelled campfire smoke all night (see last blog post about my aversion to campfire smoke, and no I wasn’t a Boy Scout obviously).

Under the arch (which did not fall on us)

This was no 6-hour Thailand hike thankfully, just a 10 minute climb up a rocky path. And plus one of our colleagues was on the trail with her baby in a backpack thing, so I figured if she can do it my lazy old self surely could too. When we got to the top it was certainly worth the expense of energy; the sweeping view was magnificent. We could see the flat plains which are lime green during this rainy season time of the year, dotted with lollipop shaped trees in a darker green. Then we could see the rocky hills jutting out of the ground in various spots, along with tiny villages here and there. We were in the shade on a flat rock ledge immediately below the stone arch, and it was here that we have our picnic lunch! Peanut butter and jelly on freshly baked baguettes never tasted better. We even had Pringles (hello 1985 again), some almonds (I figured that was a healthy-looking option to counteract the Pringles), chocolate chip cookies, bananas, apples, and Evian water. The others seemed to stand precariously close to the edge while chatting with each. Jamey and I hugged the rock wall as tightly as possible as we ate.

Crazy rock outcroppings caused by erosion

While we ate I noticed a group of boys gathered a few meters away (I’m trying to get into the whole metric thing they use here, so bear with me). They basically were watching us like we were putting on a play. Our colleagues who had been here before said this always happens, and that if you are a rural villager watching our antics is like watching a sitcom. They stayed with us throughout the day, along with their strong scent of body odor.

After lunch we had some options: rock climbing, hiking, or watching the rock climbers. Obviously the last option sounded attractive to us, but a colleague said it was just a short romp on an easy trail to get to the TOP of the arch where the view was even MORE impressive. We thought that sounded good and followed them to the “easy trail” that didn’t seem to be a trail at all, but areas of 4-foot tall grasses that surely were hiding various species of poisonous African snakes and such. But we kept moving on. Then it was up a mini-cliff of sharp rocks that didn’t seem to be secure, and up another little cliff that required us to wedge our shoe into tiny notches on a branch to propel ourselves upward. Then it was through a crevice in the rocks that I swear if I had eaten one more Pringles I would not have fit. After some more twists and turns that I didn’t pay too much attention to (more on that later) we came to a steep rock wall face that we shimmied up.

View from the top

After picking the grass and seeds from my teeth and hair I did take note of the stupendous view in all directions and was thankful we had risked our lives getting here because at least the photos would be awesome. Then our colleague says, “Now we just cross over this little bridge and climb that,” as she pointed to another steep rock face that seemed to go to the moon. The “bridge” was 6 tree branches laying

The “bridge”

across a crevasse. No handrails or safety net. But we crossed, and were relieved to see that we actually would not have plunged hundred of feet if we fell, just dozens of feet, maybe breaking an ankle rather than our whole spine. At this point I thought our colleagues were wondering if we were total losers, so I shimmied right up that next wall face ahead of them. Then I remembered how my travel pal Ilean and I had shimmied up a giant rock outcropping on the beach in Brazil, only to find ourselves unable to get down until a group of surfers rescued us. And there were no Brazilian surfers up here.

So sweat beaded up on my face, and our colleagues decided they weren’t going any higher since they had done this many times. They said, “You know the way back, right?” and of course I said yes and smiled and then threw up a little in my mouth as they bounded over the tree branches back to camp. When they were out of earshot I yelled for Jamey who was taking photos from a lower level. I told him I was stranded and he suggested I scoot down on my butt, ever so slowly. Now I don’t want to be dramatic but had I taken a little tumble I would have rolled off a really tall cliff and my death would have been the stuff of legends. But scoot scoot scoot I did, leaving a little skin and cotton material along the rock face as I made my way back down. I was shaking a bit, and I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, but I was alive. And of course you guessed already that we got a little lost going back but eventually we made it back acting like this had been a hike up an easy trail, just like they told us.

Jamey makes like Spiderman and scales a wall, except without using the web-stuff that squirts out of his wrists.

So how do we follow up this act of bravery? By rock climbing of course! Jamey started it by agreeing to scale a vertical rock wall, and doing so with relative ease. The climbers were all clapping and saying how manly and adventurous he was. Well damned if I was going to be the big weenie sitting on a rock filing my nails! So I also harnessed up, put on the tightest-fitting climbing shoes, and made my way up the same wall. Yes I scuffed my knee and knocked my head on an outcropping, and maybe almost peed myself a little at the top when you have to lean backwards and trust that the rope doesn’t break and the person holding the rope doesn’t trip or sneeze, and you zip downward toward the ground. But we both have to admit that it was a pure adrenalin rush and we totally see why people do this. Jamey wants to do more, and maybe even I do too.

Finally we headed to the waterfall, which also required a perilous walk up and down slippery trails full of sharp stones jutting upwards. Again the colleague with the baby on

Jamey (red trunks) and me (orange trunks) get pummeled by the falls.

back was ahead of us so we endured the hike. And goodness was the payoff worth it. The water fell from hundreds of feet above. There wasn’t an idyllic little pool of water below like in Blue Lagoon where we could swim naked like Brook S. and Christopher A., but rather sharp rocks covered in slippery moss. But even that anger didn’t stop us from maneuvering to those cascades of water where we let it slam down onto us, chilly but refreshing.

We ended the evening all gathered around a big table in the courtyard of a local restaurant that looked exactly like something I saw in Disney’s Animal Kingdom except real.

Dinner at an outdoor restaurant in Siby, illuminated by a single bulb powered from the battery of a parked motorcycle. Not flattering for the complexion.

We ate delicious couscous, chicken, and a great sauce and talked for hours. Back at the compound we sat in chairs under a big mango tree and sang songs as a colleague played the guitar. Sleeping was okay at first since the fan kept us cool. But the electricity stops at midnight in the village so I awoke to a hut with air so close and still I was thinking I had been laid to rest in a tomb. Not much sleep, but the mug shower the next morning woke me up.

The next day, on the drive back home we stopped at a village hut where they were baking bread, a bread different from what we get in Bamako.

Bread going in the oven…

It’s denser and even more delicious, not that I thought that was possible. We bought 5 baguettes for 500 CFAs (1 dollar!) and immediately started chewing on one like a dog with a rawhide.

…and the bread out of the oven and ready to go into our mouths.

Next we visited a place where women were making shea butter from the nuts, and where I performed a little magic trip for a group of little boys outside. (I’m pretty sure they think I am the king of the village now). Finally we spent an hour walking through their Saturday market where they sell fruits, vegetables, machetes, grappling hooks, live fish in a bucket, cloth, pans, delicious fried

Saturday market in Siby, much more exciting than the U.S. mall and a tastier food court.

dough and potatoes, baskets, and where Jamey and I bought boubous, the traditional robe/pants set that we will sport on Africa Day at school. Pictures to follow.

I do some street magic for the kids, and they think I’m a sorcerer.

Rock climbing, hiking across crevasses, mug showers, huts…have aliens taken over our bodies? I did spend a fair amount of time buffing my nails once we got home as all of that adventure took its toll, so I haven’t gone completely to the dark side yet. But there’s always next week….

Chapter 10: Kids…Watch Out for the Boiling Water and Caustic Chemicals

Posted on September 14, 2012 by 2seetheglobe

On Thursday I took my class on the first field trip of the school year. We visited a women’s cooperative where they create bazin, a hand-dyed polished cotton unique to Mali and known worldwide (well, except I had not actually heard of it, but I don’t get out much).

Rocking a bazin on the runway in Mali

Bazin is the mainstay of Malian fashion, used to make the boubous, which in my opinion is the best name ever for a robe and could provide much fodder for a sitcom:

Man: Those are some extremely nice boubous, ladies! And they hang so nicely on you.

Girls: (Recoiling in horror) What?! How rude!

Man: I meant your traditional Malian robes made of bazin, silly. (CUE LAUGH TRACK).

Anyway, this fabric is absolutely stunning and I was dying (pun alert) to see how it was made as I heard the process was fascinating and backbreaking. My American Embassy contact who is the Community Liaison Officer–or CLO (pronounced “cloh” for those of us in the know) hooked us up with a local woman who owns a facility just across town. This resourceful gal started a small bazin operation a few years ago with just a few workers and now has more than 100 people working for her.

Fabric to dye for…

I knew I could work this in with some cultural lessons so we set a date, and thankfully my colleague who teaches grades 2/3 did a lot of the paperwork and organizing so I would just basically show up with my class. Before we went I found a couple of YouTube videos about the local bazin industry, and at this point I’m thinking there is a YouTube video on everything ever invented or mentioned since the dawn of time. My students were chomping at the bit after seeing these videos, especially knowing that this would be a participatory experience–although the details of that were a little fuzzy (more on that in a minute). I also found a great song in French by Malian singing duo Amadou & Miriam that talked about bazin. I used Google translate to put the lyrics in English so we could analyze them but the kids made more sense of them in French. I, of

where the action happens (owner in foreground)

course, nodded and moved my lips as if I was reading and comprehending the French too though I’m not sure they bought it. Then I gave them an assignment: On the field trip they should document their experience with photos, videos, and writing so that next week we can create a music video about bazin, using the Amadou & Miriam song as a background. We will incorporate their photos, video clips, and poetry they will write once we return. They were quite hip to this idea, as well as the fact that we would be out of school for a large chunk of the day (that thrill is a universal one). On the day of the trip we loaded up 26 second through fifth graders, 4 teachers, 6 parents (2 Belgians, 1 American, 1 Canadian, 1 Japanese, and the Malian Prime Minister’s wife) into two small buses.

boiling water, sulphur fumes, campfire smoke, and lovely dyed fabric

Now in terms of prior field trip experience, I am a seasoned chaperone of jaunts to high quality art museums, fancy theatre venues, and turn of the century Palm Beach mansions. I’m used to dealing with fancy docents, exhibitions of Renaissance art, and Broadway touring companies. So keep these lovely images in mind as I describe our day at the bazin business. After a quick lunch on the grounds of the American Club, the buses dropped us off on a moderately busy, unpaved road. Which was the venue. Seriously. We stood in the road for a large part of the afternoon, dodging motos and taxis and SUVs and

freshly dyed and waiting for the drying line

the occasional donkey and making sure the students were not run over/trampled. The bazin facility was on both sides of the dirt road. On one side was a building with not many windows or interior lights and a really long hall that the kids disappeared into. I believe this was where the white cotton material was stored or folded or something, but I accidentally left my Ray-Bans on so I couldn’t see a thing. Somewhere in there I did score a free ink pen with the company’s name on the side. I don’t think I stole it, but it’s a possibility. The exciting part of the visit (and by exciting I mean like when a hungry tiger escapes into a zoo packed with visitors) took place across the street. This was the open air dyeing

Mr. Fessler! My hands are melting! My eyes sting!

grounds filled with Malian women hunched over giant black cauldrons heated by smoky wood fires. The cauldrons were full of boiling water, a sulphur chemical that bonds the color to the fabric, and various rich hues of bubbling dye. Everywhere there were stacks of freshly dyed wet fabric, plastic packets of that sulphur-based white powder, and lots of muddy puddles in many different rainbow colors. It was a massive beehive of colorful activity. The women wore elbow length rubber gloves and were constantly dunking brilliant white cloth into the water, or lifting out the colored results, or wringing it out, or pouring dye from one pot into another, or dumping the remaining dye onto the ground where it went into, um, the groundwater. Aside from the fact that smoldering campfires on their own produce one of my least favorite odors, there was the added scent of sulphur. So it wasn’t exactly like a romp through a lavender field in Provence. And really, what better place for a group of 7 to 10 years old to play for the afternoon?

Each woman actually specializes in a single color.

The owner, a tall stately woman, was resplendent in a fancy boubou and head wrap. She began explaining this whole scene, albeit in French. One of our parents started to translate, saying, “So she says that this is like a training school as well as a bazin business.” Before he could finish his French-speaking son, one of my students, offered his own version of the translation. He piped in, “She takes in women who don’t know how to do anything AT ALL!” Kids say the darndest things. Despite the dangers of third degree burns and various respiratory illnesses, I still have to say this was an amazing site to see. The women folded the fabric into intricate shapes, triangles, squares, wiggly lines, and whatever. Then they dipped parts of the folded fabric into different dyes. It ends up in a color that looks like a cross between vomit and chili—until they dunk it in water and then it turns into a completely different brilliant shade. When it’s unfolded it has crazy, repetitive patterns that you can’t even begin to figure out. The kids were dumbfounded (or maybe woozy from the fumes). One of my students said, “There is so much action here I don’t know what to write first!” I wondered, writer’s block or chemical-induced brain damage?

Clothes drying never looked so artful

Next they hang the freshly dyed fabric on lines across the street to dry, which makes for quite the beautiful scene. After that they are stamped with some sort of resin and taken to two huts in the back of the property where a group of six guys place the fabric on a curved piece of wood, then pound the hell out of it with a mallet that looks like something Wile E. Coyote would try to hit the Roadrunner with. They slam those mallets down one after the other, never hitting each other (at least while we were there) but coming awfully close.

The pounding guys…it gave me a pounding headache

And oh yes, in case you’re wondering the kids were inches away from this action and also got to pound things with the mallets. But wait…there’s more! Each student received a piece of white fabric and a pair of gloves. Then they got to dunk their fabric into really hot dye-filled water. I held my breath this entire time, mostly because it smelled really bad but also because I was super nervous I would witness a scene from Final Destination 6. Thankfully there were no horror movie-like events, and we all made it back to the buses in one piece, skin intact (I did a head count of the kids twelve or thirteen times to make sure nobody had disappeared into a vat of orange dye).

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble….

All kidding and caustic chemicals aside, this was an incredible experience that really showed the kids how self-empowered African women use their artistic talent to rise above poverty. In a country like Mali, one of the poorest in the world, this is a big deal. Of course my students were worried about the health concerns these women face, as well as the environmental impact of the dyeing business. I told them these are exactly the kinds of problems they will be solving when they are adults, balancing human and environmental needs, and they better do their darn homework so they are well-equipped to deal with these pressing issues (hello teachable moment!). Plus it’ a great way to pass the buck to the next generation.

My student Milo and his brother Oscar use the pounders on something other than cloth

Today, a day later and the odd smells finally gone from our skin and hair, we are still marveling over everything we saw. The kids started writing their poems today and I have to say they didn’t miss a sight, sound, smell, or texture (I had reiterated that a sense of taste would NOT be part of this assignment). I’ll post a link to the finished music video when it’s complete—it should be quite the masterpiece. Obviously breathing in caustic chemicals did wonders for our creative abilities.

Chapter 9: Maid in Mali

Posted on September 7, 2012 by 2seetheglobe

Me and Fati, the best maid and cook in the whole wide world.

Last week we negotiated a salary and a list of responsibilities for Fati, our Malian maid. The school had paid her through August, and it was up to us if we would keep her for the remainder of our time here. So basically, did we want to clean our own toilet and slave over a hot stove and wash and iron our muddy clothes and mop the expansive white tile floors and grocery shop and scrub the shower and pack our own lunches and clean our muddy shoes and make our bed and feed the cats…or have a full time maid do it all for us for $1 an hour? After an agonizing 2 seconds of discussion we decided to welcome Fati into the family.

Here’s me in the Indian restaurant, posing in front of a sign advertising vaginal cream.

Fati doesn’t speak English and we can say about six French sentences so far–none of which are useful in negotiating a contract unless it involves “I am allergic to garlic,” “Where is the toilet?,” and “Want to watch me eat this entire baguette at one sitting?” The Malians in Bamako also speak a local dialect called Bambera, and Jamey and I are learning a few phrases a week from the school guards who have made it their mission to teach us. But we still can’t say enough. So our fluent-French-speaking colleague Robin kindly offered to help us out.

Now the Malians are extremely gracious and mannered, and under no circumstances

Me and Niambele, our day shift house guard.

would they ever express negative feelings toward you, even if they were offended by something you did. So it was hard to tell if Fati was happy with our salary offer (which was pretty much what she was paid by the last family, and they had a 3-year-old that she watched in addition to everything else she does for us). Plus we were also a little concerned that working for a male couple might freak her out a bit since Glee and Will & Grace aren’t exactly must-watch TV here in Bamako. But when Robin translated Fati’s comment, it was something about how nice we were and how happy she is to be working for us and how she looks forward to getting to know us better! These are my kind of people.

Ami and me. She’s the woman who runs a fruit & vegetable stand on the corner outside our house. She stores her produce in our carport t night and we haven’t stolen a single banana (yet).

Our teaching career in the US did not afford us the luxury of household help. Or meat. Or name-brand toilet paper. (NOTE: Our Republican legislature in Florida actually did cause a change in our teacher salary in 2010 for the first time in 6 or 7 years. But it happened to be a decrease of 3%, requiring us to choose between getting rid of HBO or skipping a 6-month dental check-up.). So suddenly having a staff devoted to our well-being—a maid, a gardener, and 2 guards (as well as a driver at our disposal) is a little disconcerting.

Yesterday our house guard Niambele washed our car and today he opened the car door for me when we pulled in. Oumar the gardener was tending the vegetable garden he planted for us, and Fati had a freshly baked quiche waiting on the counter. The house was spotless, and the dirty clothes from yesterday were clean, pressed, and stacked on the dresser (If I could get these wonderful helpers to write lesson plans I literally wouldn’t have a thing to do aside from personal hygiene and grooming.). I will say that we do not take this all for granted as it makes us fully understand how damn lucky we really are. It would take Fati, mother of five, 22 years to earn what I made in a year as an “underpaid” Florida teacher.

Sunset, time for a G&T and a spritz of Deepwoods OFF

Speaking of many kids, our school is slowly growing since the U.S. Department of State just announced that the families of Embassy employees can return to Mali. That’s a good sign that coup-related worries are fading and that Bamako is safe. Although “safe” is relative. I just heard about these grotesque flies that lay their eggs in laundry that’s on clotheslines. Then the eggs hatch while you’re wearing the clothes and the larvae get into your skin, and supposedly that’s why the maid irons everything because the heat kills the eggs. That’s far from “safe” in my book. And thank god Fati irons like a demon.

Anyway, in just a couple of days our school received confirmation that 11 American

My Bennetton-commercial-worthy class

students were returning in the coming weeks. I already had an American kid come today (American mom, doctor dad from Niger who specializes in malaria…yay!). And the wife of the Nigerian ambassador popped in today to tell me her child was on the way as well. (Politically speaking, that so far gives me the children of 2 ambassadors, the prime minister, and an official of the African Union–and here I thought I was going to be tucked away in a little school in the middle of nowhere)). And because some other countries as well as many NGOs rely on the opinion of Uncle Sam (USA #1!) they may also decide to allow their employees and their families to return. So I may receive a few more little whippersnappers but it’s all good. I spend my days trying to decide which

Jamey with two of our school’s guards. We are first to arrive each morning, and they give us a little lesson in speaking Bambara.

creative activity to do next and the kids (and their $30,000/yr tuition-paying parents) appreciate it all. No piles of test data looming over my desk, no threats that I’ll lose my job or get a lower salary if my students don’t test well next April, no directives from on high telling me what/when/how to teach, no dread, no stomach aches, no FCAT pep rallies or FCAT reward parties to plan. And we have THREE recesses and as much bottled water as we can gulp down (I’m up to 2 liters a day!) This doesn’t seem real.

What also doesn’t seem real is this what happens when it rains. It doesn’t rain for long…maybe 30 minutes tops. But it pours buckets and because the ground is very clayish, the water doesn’t drain.

This is the “road” to our house after a big rainstorm yesterday afternoon. It flows like a river. Oh look! Here’s comes Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn on the African Queen!

And the “roads” have no drains (or curbs, or stop signs, or lines painted down the middle, or smooth surfaces). So the rain doesn’t just puddle up. It makes a river, a flowing river with rapids right down the middle of the road. It’s almost like a scene from The River Wild, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Kevin Bacon and Meryl Streep came rafting right down the centerline (if there was in fact a centerline on the “road”). And did I mention that the motos are still driving in this mess?

Another unreal experience happened last Saturday night when the U.S. Ambassador to Mali, Mary Beth Leonard, hosted a BBQ for our little faculty at her very sassy residence

Partygoers do a synchronized number as I hurriedly leave the dance floor feigning an injured achilles tendon.

(might I mention that this is the second time I’ve dined with her in the 25 days we’ve been in Africa). We dined outside to the music of a live African band and some dancing even ensued (and no it did not involve either Jamey or me doing African dance moves so get that picture out of your head). The food and drink was fantastic, but not as fantastic as she is…a down-to-earth, unassuming firecracker who is full of energy and spunk. I hope all of the U.S. ambassadors are representing us as well as she is. She even got into her bathing suit and swam with some of the faculty members’ kids. Later she came out with a bin of kitty litter for a teacher who had mentioned how hard it was to find that product in Mali. I was going to mention how I couldn’t find a 60” flat screen TV anywhere in Mali either.

I gave a reading assignment last Friday in which the students were to interview 2 adults about the concept of “perfect,” as in “What makes a perfect life?” It connected with the theme of a novel we were reading. When I was reading the assignments today I saw that one of my students, the daughter of a teaching couple at our school who also attended the BBQ, apparently interviewed the Ambassador while they were all in the pool!

The quilt-like art we presented to the US Ambassador at the party.

We presented her with a New England quilt-themed piece of art my class made (well, mostly me because I waited until the last minute) and had everyone in the school sign. She loves quilts and is from New England, and she said she was going to have it framed. What a night…a kitty litter giveaway, dancing under the stars, swimming and interviewing with the kids, a fullish moon, compliments about our art, and DEVILED EGGS! I almost forgot to mention that she had her cook make deviled eggs for us! And I bet that cook was smiling the whole time!

Chapter 8: Crisp Boxers & Stiff Drinks

Posted on August 27, 2012 by 2seetheglobe

By 4:00 each day in West Palm Beach we were home from work, plopped on the couch snacking, watching the latest Ellen show we had on the DVR and trying to decide where to get take out.

At 4:10 PM today we were on a patio next to our school with 3 colleagues, drenched in sweat, learning new steps to an African dance from a Malian dancer with tiny dreads who only speaks French and who we sort of understood, with three drummers pounding on interesting looking, handcrafted drums, and with the Niger River and the green hills as our backdrop.

Dancing With the Non-Stars (that’s me at far left totally in synch, and Jamey at far right just standing)

During our frequent breaks (and thank god they were frequent) one of the resident tortoises the size of a manhole cover ambled by. And the clouds were like a Jesus painting. Seriously, are we really here?

We were looking for a change of pace in life and I think we’ve found it, like when a child finds a surprise by sticking a fork in an electrical outlet (which, by the way, in Mali are round with 2 little prong holes). The world as we knew it is long gone, and we are loving the contrast.

Stopping at a roadside stand yesterday, we paid $6 for five bags full of fresh vegetables that in the U.S. would have cost $100 at Whole Foods. But at our next stop, a sort-of

Bananarama

Western style grocery store, we paid $40 for a sad little Made-in-China ironing board that’s dorm room size. Later four of us ate lunch for $5 each at a local restaurant specializing in heaping plates of traditional West African food, then at the drugstore around the corner I paid $75 for 8 Meflaquine pills. So I guess the moral of this story is if you want to stretch your cash when you come to Bamako, eat lots of local food, wear wrinkly clothes, and embrace malaria.

It’s been a week of especially crazy contrasts. The students returned to school. Well, 84 of the original 200 kids from last year actually returned. The U.S. still hasn’t allowed the dependents of its Embassy staff to return since the March coup (even though things in

Faculty of the American International School of Bamako

Bamako are A-OK) so we are short a whole gaggle of American brats. Apparently the Dutch and Danish, who never even evacuated in the first place, aren’t big scaredy cats like some countries I know. There is a senior class of one this year, a cool Malian-Dutch kid who is the sole student in Jamey’s AP Physics class (so much for sitting in the back of class texting while the teacher lectures!). He’s a shoe-in for valedictorian from what I hear, and definitely will be in top 5% of his class. On the elementary side of the school every other classroom is empty since three of us are teaching combined classes, K/1^st, 2^nd/3^rd, and 4^th/5^th, freeing up classrooms in between us. It makes for a spacious environment, plus I have pilfered everything from the now REALLY empty classroom next door so it’s like having my own private Target.

I have seven Grade 5 students and six Grade 4 students so far. From the minute the first student walked in during student orientation and told me my classroom smelled like gin I knew I was in the right place.

My expansive classroom/Olympic gymnastics venue

Among these 13 they speak Danish, French, Portuguese, Bambara, Hindi, Portuguese, Spanish, and English–only 2 speak English as a first language and half of them are tri-lingual! I have the child of the Danish ambassador, the child of the current Mali Prime Minister, and two children whose parents teach at the school too. No pressure (he says as he takes a swig from the bottle of Bombay Sapphire hidden in the crayon box).

The classroom discussions have been a tad interesting too. Example from the first day:

Me: Do any of you have teachers in the family?

Gin Student: My grandmother teaches college in Vancouver.

Me: Your grandparents live in Vancouver? I love that city.

GS: Well my grandmother lives there. My grandfather is gay and has a boyfriend and they live in another city.

Me: Did I hear the bell for recess? (swig, swig)

And what I found bizarre is during that exchange not one student even winced. Hell, even I don’t even know anyone with a gay grandfather!

One of the students’ Andy Warhol-style self portrait.

On Friday I played the song “Perfect” by the band Simple Plan, a heart wrenching, based-in-fact song in which the two brothers in the band sing about how they didn’t meet their father’s expectations (even though they are successful, wealthy musicians). I asked the students to analyze the lyrics for the main idea. PM’s son answered, “It’s just so cliché, Mr. Fessler.” They are keeping me on my toes for sure.

We bought a vehicle from a departed teacher (one who left the school, not one who died).

Bamako street scene

It’s a Honda SUV-something-or-other, totally not my style plus it cost a gazillion dollars to fill with essence (that’s French for gas, pronounced ess-AHHHNCE) But an SUV is totally necessary to drive on the things that pass as roads here. The red clay back road we take to school is less than a half mile long, but it’s an adventurous half mile with foot-deep water covering all of the road in places, mini jagged boulders, mud pits, parts that look like a smaller scale version of the Grand Canyon, and random bushes growing in what would seem to be the center of the road. Riding to and from school is sort of like getting a magic fingers massage from one of those vibrating mattresses, so it’s not all bad. I’m not an auto expert, but I’m thinking these conditions play havoc with all that stuff underneath the car (the other day we were riding with colleagues in their SUV and a shock literally fell off the bottom of the car into the tire).

Jamey did drive on an actual main road last Friday for the first time, which is far better than our crazy back road but still crazy in many other ways. Our director had invited the faculty over for happy hour, gin and tonics by the pool, and I couldn’t resist (plus Jamey was my DD). So off we went on Sotuba Road, two lanes that somehow handle 4 or 5 lanes of traffic, full of motos (motorcycles), cars, little buses, donkey carts, people hauling big carts of eggs or bananas or auto parts, and people walking everywhere. Thankfully everyone travels at a slower pace than most places we’ve visited, but having motos zoom up on either side of you at the same time when you have your turn signal on and they still stay next to you, well, it just makes for a surreal driving experience. The gin was good by the way, Bombay Sapphire, and she also had US-style junk food, like chips that tasted Ruffles-ish. Definitely worth the dangerous first drive.

Our home is looking better everyday. On Saturday we had a driver take us across town (which in and of itself is a complete thrill ride) to buy some curtains from a World Bank Brit

“Hakuna Matata” says our living room!

guy who was transferred to Senegal. African print material, well made, and featuring our current favorite POC (Pop of Color)…orange…which of course was inspired by the plastic dog I wrote about in a previous post. They instantly brought life into every room of our place and pumped up the Africa-ness. I also used one curtain panel to make pillow covers that I whipped up by hand (thank you Grandma and mom for teaching me how to sew when I was 9). Last step is having one of the maintenance men come to hang our many, many pictures—apparently the solid concrete walls almost require a jackhammer to get a nail in them. Even our gardener has done his magic, which is a miracle since we gave him directions in French (or what we think was French). We now have potted plants everywhere–along the porch, on the roof deck, in the house, at our front gate…come to think of it I may have mixed up the number 5 with the number 55 when I was ordering these. He also took the vegetable seeds we brought with us and planted a raised bed garden next to our house, so I’m looking forward to haricort verts, salade, and other French names that sound so fancy even though they are just plain vegetables.

It is truly bizarre having a gardener, a maid, a driver, and full time guards just for our house. I’m not used to having people open the gates for us, carry our backpacks or groceries in, keep the yard looking perfect, scrubbing the floors and shower and kitchen every day, washing and ironing our clothes daily, and fanning us with long palm fronds (okay I’m making that last one up).

View from our roof deck

Plus they do all of this hard work for so little money…a little more than $100/month for a full time, 5-day-a-week maid (we spent more than that on groceries for the week). The guards get less. Even less than that for the gardener. In the states I was resigned to the fact that as a teacher we were at the bottom of the earnings totem pole, but here we’re freakin’ Richie Rich! It’s a little uncomfortable and hard for us to wrap our heads around. But man do I love coming home to a stack of ironed boxer shorts and socks.

Chapter 6: Waking up in Bamako

Posted on August 12, 2012 by 2seetheglobe

The front of “Maison du Coq,” our abode.

On our first morning in Bamako our driver was coming to pick us up at 9 sharp, so we awoke a couple of hours early to get a good look at everything in the light. I mean who knows, there could be a leper colony next door, or cat-sized spiders crawling on the ceiling. Thankfully the bright sunlight revealed no lepers or spiders, just our rooster and cats.

View of our garden and our hoarse rooster, who is still skeptical of our motives.

From the roof deck, that watery orange road alongside our house just glowed like a painting by Thomas Kinkade, painter of light. A boy walked along the road, and his white robe was blowing so perfectly in the breeze that I thought this wasn’t real. Behind him were several girls in green and yellow and orange robes who balanced various things on their head. It all made for a scene out of a foreign film, and boy do I hope I continue to appreciate simple things like this as time goes on.

Today was a whirlwind. After our driver took us on the 5 minute drive to school, Caroline, our school director, met us at the gates and introduced us to all of the guards and drivers–who already knew our names. Greetings are extremely important here. So it goes something like this:

Person 1: Bonjour!

Person 2: Bonjour!

Person 1: Ça va?

Person 2: Ça va?

Person 1: Ça va bien?

Person 2: Ça va bien.

Person 1: (insert more things in French or Bambara like, “May you be blessed” and :Hope you have good health” etc. and go on for up to 5 minutes)

Some school architecture.

Caroline took us through the school where we met the staff (who also already knew our names). Apparently we are rock stars because, unlike the other 5 new hires, we are the only ones who didn’t back out of our contract and showed up. In other words, we were the crazy/committed ones.

The school looks great…a real surprise at the end of a very nondescript, bumpy orange clay road. It’s two stories in some parts and has great details like curved towers, intricate stonework, voluminous indoor spaces, courtyards with gardens, a perfect combination of indoor/outdoor connections, and a location right on the Niger River (pronounced knee-zheer).

Looking at the Niger River from the school terrace, except I do not have a martini at the moment.

There is a large second floor terrace off of the library with sweeping views of the river, and we understand that they hold cocktail parties here for parents. Liquor and education, the perfect pair.

Jamey’s classroom is the size of two science labs. It has everything he needs and more—plenty of those lab table thingys, a private safety shower in case students spill chemicals all over themselves, LCD projector, white boards, storage, cool equipment like a distiller, a fume hood, you name it. It opens into a sassy little courtyard full of plants.

My 4^th/5^th combo classroom is just down the hall and is also the largest classroom I’ve ever taught in…again one could do a long tumbling pass right down the center. There are windows on 3 sides–one wall is lined with windows looking out onto a terrace, another has a view of the Niger River, and another set look into a planted courtyard. There is an LCD projector, tables (vs. individual desks) for the kids, and tons of furniture to choose from since the school has downsized teachers and students by half since the coup last March…100 kids vs. 200 in pre-K to 12. I have the biggest group of everyone, nine 4th graders and 9 5th graders. It’s so darned big that I’m racking my brain on the interior design and space planning. I could park a car in there and it wouldn’t interfere with anything. Since the school closed unexpectedly in April with the coup, everything was left exactly like it was on April 2nd–stuff still in the student desks, math problems on the board, and a big bar of Godiva chocolate in the teacher’s bottom desk drawer (is it sad that even having been in there for 4 months without AC and with plenty of African critters roaming around, that chocolate bar still looked good to me?). There was also a skinny turd-like thing on the floor, so I don’t know if that’s some exotic lizard excrement or what.

It’s really just like an American school was lifted up from the US and dropped down in Bamako. Everything we are used to having, they have–well, except for standardized testing mania, stressed-out teachers, and a government that continues making policies that harm teachers and students.

Later Caroline took us on a drive to a couple of supermarches (grocery stores) which were surprisingly like stores in the states and fairly well stocked. They do have odd combinations of items sometimes, like flat screen TVs for sale immediately adjacent to the Pringles (of which they had 12 varieties). Of course most of the products include only French names and descriptions so it’s an adventure deciding if we are buying shampoo, juice, or all-purpose floor cleaner (“lemony fresh” can apply to a lot of products, we have discovered). Paying is fun too since 500 CFAs (their unit of currency, pronounced see-fuhs) equals 1 dollar. So our total for our shopping trip (43,000 cfa) sounded like we had bought a nice car.

After shopping Caroline took us to her house in a fancier part of town (just up the block from the former president’s daughter’s home–the one who was chased out in the coup) and it was twice as spacious as ours. She has beautiful art collected from her travels and work around the world (she has worked at international schools in Rome, Zambia, Vietnam, and Bangledesh, and has travelled really everywhere else—including a 7 month overland journey through Africa in the late 80s). She’s having a BBQ Sunday night here for our little faculty of 20, so we look forward to meeting our colleagues.

Our sunset canoe cruise on the Niger River.

In the following days we had some memorable experiences. Caroline took us and a couple of other teachers on a boat ride on the Niger River, in a traditional Malian canoe (this one with a motor, I might add, which most do not have). It was so quiet out on the water, like a different world. Found out that the man-eating hippos are nowhere near Bamako. Also found out that we do not want to touch this river water. At all.

Jamey and I also went alone to a clinic to get our second round of vaccinations. You just show up–no appointments necessary. Dr. Toureg was super nice, spoke English, and had a giganto fish tank in his office. The shots didn’t hurt a bit, but as before the price sure did. At least this time our new school insurance covers the cost.

And finally Caroline took us to the US Ambassador’s house for drinks and later dinner at a restaurant down the way. We were joined by a coupe of US Embassy nurses and another teacher who works at our school’s satellite location, a gold mine waaaay out in the middle of nowhere. She’s from Alaska so she’s used to being far away from civilization. The Ambassador was fascinating and oh so interesting. She’s casual and funny and she plays the flute too. Who could ask for more.

Our canoe had me, Jamey, the media specialist Jenny from South Africa, Caroline our director from Australia, Anka the secondary math teacher from Holland, and Sushma an administrative asst. & psychology teacher from India. Love em all!

Chapter 3: Escape from Planet of the Tests!

Posted on March 11, 2012 by 2seetheglobe

Since my previous posts have explained our reasons for going to Mali, West Africa to teach, it’s time to introduce our new school: American International School of Bamako.

AISB front entry of the new campus overlooking the Niger River

Here is the official description from our school handbook: The American International School of Bamako (AISB) is an independent, coeducational, private day school which offers a full U.S. educational program from pre-kindergarten (age 3) through grade 12. The School was established in 1977 to serve the needs of American and international community students seeking an English-Language education. The school year is divided into two semesters.

My students will be from North America, Europe, and Africa, primarily the children of either embassy workers or NGOs like Save the Children. They will all speak English, though there will be some who require ELL services.

A brand spanking new campus opened in April 2011. The new campus includes spacious classrooms for all primary grades, a secondary campus with student lounge areas, athletic facilities, science labs, two computer labs and a wirelessly connected campus, library and performing and visual

Malian Prime Minister at AISB’s opening

arts facilities, all on five hectares all overlooking the Niger River. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was quite the big deal, attended by Malian Prime Minister Madame Cisse, as well as the Malian Minister of Education and the U.S. Ambassador from the American Embassy.

At AISB there are about 200 students in K-12. The faculty includes a full-time school director, Caroline Jacoby (originally from Australia), secondary principal Randy Neen, 25 full-time and 2 part-time teachers, including 17 U.S. citizens and 10 teachers of other various nationalities. All professional staff members have university degrees or teacher certificates and more than half the faculty hold Master’s degrees.

AISB students wearing the school’s African pattern

The school schedule is nearly identical to the schedule in Palm Beach County. The AISB school year is approximately 176 days and comprised of 2 semesters divided into 2 quarters each. School runs from late August until early June. Three long holidays occur during the year, one in October, one in December and one in April. The school day begins at 7:30 a.m. and ends at 2:20 p.m.

Besides he 3-week winter holiday and 2-week spring holiday, there are a few school holidays that we don’t have in Florida, including Sept. 21-22 (Mali Independence Day), October 20-29 (fall break), January 24 (Muslim Holy Day), January 31 (Muslim Hold Day), May 1 (International Workers’ Day), and May 24-25 (Africa Day Holiday).

I knew this school was the place for us when I read the school’s mission statement and belief’s statement. For the first time in years I won’t be part of a school system where the goal is to get kids to pass the big state test at the end of the year! I will be able to actually teach with the needs of the kids in mind. Unlike Florida, my pay won’t be based on student test scores, I won’t be forced to spend days/weeks/months preparing kids for a single test, and I’ll even have some sense of autonomy in my classroom. Teachers with autonomy? What a concept.

AISB Mission Statement

The American International School of Bamako is committed to providing a challenging, enriching, English-language American-based educational program which encompasses holistic student development in a nurturing, student-centered, multi-cultural environment.

AISB Beliefs Statement

– We are a community of learners in which education is a cooperative endeavor involving students, parents, staff and teachers.
– We believe in encouraging resourcefulness, creativity and self-expression.
– We will give our students the tools necessary to become life-long learners.
– We believe each person is a unique individual with dignity and worth.
– We believe in providing a supportive and safe learning environment.
– We believe our students should develop an awareness of and a respect for different cultures, locally and globally.

AISB main lobby

I did the hot pink highlighting above because that’s a huge statement, something most U.S. schools can’t say anymore. I can actually focus on giving kids a holistic education steeped in creativity, and depth, and with a global perspective. I wouldn’t be able to do that in the U.S. (or at least not openly).

And while the school is based upon the American Educational System, it has unique “international qualities” due to its setting in the Republic of Mali, in French-speaking Africa, and due to the diverse international backgrounds of the school population. Modifications to the basic American program complement the school’s international setting and population–such as French Language instruction and the inclusion of Malian culture, history and geography in the curriculum. How cool is that?

Chapter 2: Hello, Mali

Posted on February 25, 2012 by 2seetheglobe

If you read my previous post, you know the backstory about our obsession with being abroad (and yes that’s “abroad” not “a broad”). So here’s how we went from dreaming to doing.

January 2011: While presenting at a conference in Orlando, noticed another presenter’s bio said “lived and taught abroad for 17 years.” Interrupted her lunch to get the scoop. Told us that she and her husband (with kids in tow) taught at international schools in 7 different countries, including Kenya. American style schools, tax-free salary, housing and everything else provided, and no high-stakes testing. What?! Told us to Google “International Schools Services,” (ISS) the organization they went through to do this.

February 2011: Paid fees to join ISS. Both of us were approved after filling out 3 zillion application papers. Even though it was the tail end of the recruiting period for the 2011-2012 school year, began emailing international schools across the globe. Lots of jobs in the Middle East, but discovered their laws weren’t exactly supportive of couples like us (e.g. Saudi Arabia: same-sex sexual activity punishable by death, prison, fines, and/or whipping).

March 2011: Skype interviews with international school in Kenya! Looked promising until our research revealed 14 year prison sentences for gay people. Didn’t work out after all, we breathed sigh of relief. Made big chart of scary countries to avoid.

Niger River, Mali

April 2011: Decided to get serious–if we were really moving abroad we needed to unload our worldly possessions. Put our house up for sale in the worst real estate market ever. Sold full price within a month to former editor of Architectural Digest magazine (as a guest house, mind you). Sold decades worth of our “stuff” at an estate sale. Learned you can actually survive without 10 boxes of Xmas decorations, massive collections of Fiesta ware/turtle figurines/1950s furniture/metal lunch boxes/etc, and 37 kinds of cookware. Sad to see others buy our stuff just to add to their stuff, but happy to take their cash! Even scanned scrapbooks/photo albums to make digital versions, and chucked the physical versions. Our load is lightened and we’re ready to rumble.

June 2011: Moved to a 700 sf furnished apartment in happening part of town, walking distance to everything. Came with our clothes and art. With weekends free of lawn care, Home Depot trip$, and home maintenance torture we concentrate on snagging international teaching gigs. With dwindling opportunities for the 2011-2012 school year, decided to focus on 2012-2013 possibilities. That recruiting season would start in the fall.

September – December 2011: Planned to attend a recruiting fair but in meantime emailed dozens of international schools we were interested in, all located in countries where we wouldn’t be flogged, fined, or hanged because we were a male couple of 25 years. Many amazing possibilities (exotic locales with warm climates a plus, of course). Had Skype interviews with international schools in China, India, South Africa, Korea, western Africa (Mali). Nothing solid yet.

American Embassy, Mali

January 2012: Received another email from Head of School at the American International School of Bamako (AISB), in Bamako, Mali saying they were still interested. Had another Skype interview at 5 AM our time (thank goodness the video wasn’t working), said they’d let us know in a day. The next day we got an email that started with this:

Dear Jeff and Jamey,
It was a pleasure talking with you both yesterday. We feel that you would both be excellent additions to the AISB faculty and community and as such I would like to offer you positions at AISB for the 2012 -2013 school year. The contracts will be for two years. Jamey would be teaching MS/HS science which would encompass; Grade 8 science, Grade 9 conceptual physics, Grade 10 Chemistry, Grade 11 Biology and AP Biology (probably) or possibly AP Environmental Science. Jeff would be an elementary classroom teacher teaching grade 4.

A two-year contract that includes housing, medical, moving expenses, and even an R&R trip to Paris!

Before we accepted we consulted with a director we befriended during our international search, a super helpful person who knew a lot about most of the international schools. A colleague of this director sent this statement about AISB:

I have worked with the Directors and several Boards at the American International School of Bamako during the past three years (in governance workshops and in their last head searching). It is a great little school — the community is small and friendly, as is the staff; teachers and administration are professional; the new school director, Carolyn (who is Australian) is excellent; parents consist of many expatriates from many different countries (mainly from North American, Europe, and Africa), working mostly in development and diplomatic organizations; Malians are very friendly, outgoing, with a strong visual and performing arts culture. Bamako, Mali is also hot all of the time, dusty winds part of the year, poor people and undeveloped infrastructure. To me, positive attitudes at the school and among Malians, all of which are in abundance, more than compensates. I’d go there in a heartbeat.

Excellent director, nice people, AND a strong visual and performing arts culture?! It’s like Glee Africa!

The Great Mosque of Djenne, Mali

Then we checked with the travel website Lonely Planet. Here’s what they said:

If you only visit one country in West Africa, make it Mali. This is a country as rich in historical significance as it is blessed by an extraordinary array of sights, not to mention being home to many of West Africa’s major cultural groups.

Mali’s natural wonders range from the deserts of the north to the fertile greenery of the south, with the Niger River weaving a path through the heart of the country. The lucrative trade routes of the Sahara once made the region the world’s richest, and the Niger, one of the grand old rivers of Africa, still provides Mali’s lifeblood. To journey along it (preferably on a slow boat) is one great journey.

Not far from the riverbank, the extraordinary Falaise de Bandiagara rises from the plains. It shelters one of West Africa’s most intriguing peoples, the Dogon, whose villages and complex cultural rituals still cling to the rocky cliffs. A visit here is utterly unforgettable.

Some of Africa’s greatest empires also rose from the Niger’s hinterland and bequeathed to Mali some of its most dramatic attractions: the legendary city of Timbuktu – whose name has never lost its remote allure – and the gloriously improbable mosque at Djenné are merely two among many. Even in places where the landscape seems too barren to support life, you find Mali’s famous elephants sharing the Sahelian soil with Tuareg and Fulani nomads.

There’s almost as much to hear in Mali as there is to see, with a musical soundtrack provided by some of Africa’s most celebrated stars. Whether you dive in to Bamako’s wonderful live music scene or time your arrival to coincide with the country’s two world-famous music festivals, Mali’s diverse rhythms will soon have you on your feet.

SOLD! We signed the contracts and began to plan our exit strategy.