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 24: Sheep in the Penthouse/Mutton on the Plate

Posted on October 22, 2013 by 2seetheglobe

On the way home from school last week I saw a ram—a really huge one with those giant twisty horns like you see on Satan in foreign horror films. That’s a fairly normal sight here in Bamako (sheep, not Satan) where these goat-looking sheep probably outnumber people.

But what made this sighting unique is that Mr. Sheep wasn’t in one of the normal locations,

photo: mali anta on flickr

e.g. lounging roadside a few inches from speeding traffic, crossing a busy road in a herd during rush hour, draped over the lap of a guy riding a moto down the street, or strapped to the top of a sitroma—the local vans used as a public bus.

photo: bamada.net

Nope, this ovine guy was peeping out of a SECOND story window, in someone’s home. He had a rather relaxed look on his face, like he had just finished taking a long soak in the tub while sipping a glass of merlot. He certainly behaved as if he had always lived on the second floor, and spent his afternoons with bearded chin on the sash, watching the world go by.

Well, first of all I didn’t know that sheep did stairs. We could barely get our dogs to go up a few stairs and they didn’t even have hooves. Made me really wonder. Had he slipped into the house and tappity-tapped unnoticed right upstairs? Or did this homeowner suddenly think one day, “Why should living in the city keep me from having sheep? They can simply live in the guest bedroom upstairs!”

Whatever the case, it was only amusing for a moment, as I knew this ram’s penthouse

photo: mali anta on flickr

arrangement was short-term. Sadly, in just a few days he would be the featured entrée for a dinner on the Muslim holiday of Tabaski.

Also known as Eid al-Adha, this holiday celebrates Ibrahim/Abraham’s willingness to follow God’s orders to slit the throat of his young son (this warm and fuzzy tale is also recounted in the Bible and makes me understand why I always had nightmares after religion class). This bedroom sheep would join an estimated 100 million other animals (cows, camels, goats, and sheep) worldwide also meeting their maker as Tabaski dinner

Banks offer Tabaski loans so you can buy a sheep too. photo: Linda Padolini

on October 15^th. Because, according to many religions, nothing honors your supreme ruler more than slicing the jugular vein of a farm animal in his honor. I mean seriously, wouldn’t a deity be just as happy with, say, a big plate of carrots? We have lots of those here, and most folks don’t get emotionally attached to root vegetables.

At least this lucky sheep on the second floor lived the life of luxury beforehand. I’d like to think that at night he slept on a king-sized bed with a Tempur-Pedic mattress, snuggled in 1200 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, listening to Adele and reading Star Magazine on his iPad (though I haven’t quite figured out how hooves would work with a swipe screen). I mean, you might as well go out on top, right?

I’ve always had a soft spot for animals, and I mean that in a “Free Willy” sort of way where I would totally free a captive orca from SeaWorld using a pick-up truck. I’ve protested with PeTA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) outside of the circus, the greyhound racetrack, and a cosmetics industry meeting (my sign at this last one said, “L’Oreal: Blinding Bunnies for Beauty!). I really, really dislike any activity that harms animals, like hunting, bullfighting, or when the Roadrunner drops an anvil on Wile E. Coyote from the cliff above.

I protested annually at our local greyhound torture track in West Palm Beach, FL (race track).

It’s the reason I was a vegetarian before coming to Mali. It started when I discovered that veal production mirrors the plot of a horror movie: yank a baby from its mom right after birth, confine it in a crate the size of a big beach towel so it can’t exercise and stays “tender,” feed it iron-poor gruel to keep it anemic so the flesh is pale, and kill it after 23 weeks so some fat human can gulp down its meat. Didn’t something like that happen in Saw IV?

Me with Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the Humane Society of the United States. I was 2010 Humane Society teacher of the Year.

Don’t get me wrong–I savor the taste of a crisp slice of bacon. And a hamburger on the grill dripping with pepper jack cheese is nirvana for me. But in the U.S. it was always easy for me to satisfy these cravings and not think about a slaughterhouse worker cracking the skull of Bessie the Cow or gutting Babe the pig. Why? Two words: mock meat.

It’s everywhere in America—fake burgers, hotdogs, crab cakes, chicken—all made from things without a face, like soy, wheat gluten, and pea protein (http://www.fakemeats.com/default.asp). In the U.S. I could still eat like a caveman without spearing the wooly mammoth and hacking off its meaty loins. For years I traced my open hand to draw cute turkeys, only to gobble down Tom Turkey at Thanksgiving dinner a few days later. Thank goodness Tofurkey allowed me to have a guilt-free holiday honoring the English prudes who were total bitches to the American Indians.

But now I’m in Mali, a developing country where the ethics of food have less to do with animal cruelty and more to do with how to feed the five million people that are starving...about a third of the population. Every day nearly 40 Malian children die from malnutrition–and I’m going to worry about whether or not my eggs come from free-range chickens? I’m pretty sure a hungry kid doesn’t debate the merits of Tofurkey vs. Tom Turkey.

I really wish the whole humane-treatment-of-animals issue here involved only food-related

photo: http://lemonademoon.wordpress.com

matters. Unfortunately I don’t think life for any animal in Mali is so great. Take dogs, for example. There are a few dogs here, but I guarantee that they aren’t being pushed around in baby strollers or getting therapeutic canine massages or sleeping in $75/night doggy spas where their vacationing owners can watch them on a live web cam. Here dogs run loose in fields scrounging for scraps in ditches, or get picked up by one leg by the neighborhood kids.

Our next door neighbor here—let’s call him Michael Vick—has a German shepherd guard dog. One Sunday morning I heard it barking continuously so like any concerned neighbor I went to the roof deck to spy, er, I mean investigate by secretly peering down into his yard. There I saw whatever is the opposite of the Dog Whisperer—maybe the Dog Screamer–some guy lunging repeatedly at the animal with a stick that he also used to bang a metal pan just inches from the dog’s ears, all while the owner held the dog in place with a piece of rope around the neck. Ah, the special bond between man and dog.

I also grimace when I see a skinny horse pulling a wooden cart overloaded with rocks right

Chickens know what Bamako looks like upside-down. Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos /superbebito/854382475/lightbox/

down a traffic-filled road. Or when a kid is beating the side of a sad-looking donkey to make it go faster. Or when a guy on a bike is laden with tiny, rusty, wire cages stuffed with live chickens, and he unloads them by tossing them to the ground. Or when longhorn cattle walk along the busiest road in town, crossing in front of speeding cars and motos that seem to miss them by mere centimeters.

Now I’m no Pollyanna. I know that animal cruelty happens in the good ol’ U.S. of A. too, and probably on a much larger scale (factory farm tour anyone?). It just doesn’t seem as horrific because I know there are animal rights organizations doing their best to stop awful things from happening. Nearly every week I receive an action alert from PeTA or the Humane Society asking me to email someone, and I do. Last week I emailed the University of Wisconsin/Madison, asking them to stop experimenting on cats (http://www.peta.org/features/uw-madison-cruelty.aspx). The email included this lovely description:

“According to records obtained by PETA, one cat was subjected to invasive surgeries on

photo: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

her ears, skull, and brain. In the first operation, a stainless steel post was screwed to her skull so that her head could be immobilized during experiments. In the next surgery they cut into her head and skull and then applied a toxic substance to her inner ears in order to deafen her.”

Seriously though, what had to happen to that researcher as a child to make him okay with drilling into the skulls of live cats? Was he thinking, “I’m sure Fluffy won’t even notice this” as his Black & Decker cordless drill began to grind skull bone? Who knows, maybe he goes home and sits on his couch made of kitten fur and baby bald eagle feathers. I just hope his lamp made out of panda cub bones falls on him some day.

While farm animals aren’t exactly coddled here, at least Malians aren’t drilling kitten skulls or filming crush videos (in which women crush tiny animals with their stiletto heels—no lie—that’s really a thing). I can understand why a country with a 28% literacy rate wouldn’t grasp the notion of humane animal husbandry. What I can’t grasp is why a country like the U.S., with a 99% literacy rate, needs an animal rights organization to remind a university that it’s not cool to pour poison into the opened skulls of live cats.

Mr. School Sheep #1 (the closest I came to naming he-who-would-be-dinner)

At school we had two “pet” sheep this year, munching grass in the distance while kids played on the swings. One had the biggest bluest eyes, and the other the loudest bleating I’ve ever heard. I didn’t let on to the kids that these were Tabaski sheep. Little did they know, one would be sacrificed right on the playground by a special Muslim man who is sanctioned to do this sort of thing (“Keep your classroom curtains closed between 8:30 and 9:00 AM!” our director reminded me). I was pleased to discover that this butcher guy had a hard time getting past the school guards as he brought an array of shiny, sharp knives in all shapes and sizes.

Our school sheep visit the cafeteria.

Supposedly the process is a quick thing done in a dignified manner and that’s what I’ll keep telling myself. Anyhow, this sheep would be served at the school’s Tabaski feast, and the second sheep would be raffled to a staff member (custodian, driver, gardener). This is a big deal as the sheep this year were frighteningly expensive, and continued to get more expensive as the big day drew closer. Since every family is expected to buy one, and the average worker’s monthly salary is $125, it becomes a hardship when you shell out $150 or $200 for a single sheep. So winning a sheep is a good thing. Even my cell phone service, Orange, sent a text saying that if I added minutes I would be in a lottery for a free sheep.

The following Monday I glanced out my window, and it was a little sad to see the Niger River without the school sheep prancing along in the foreground. I thought it was best not to mention anything to my students so as not to upset them. That morning I had them do a writing exercise about point of view. They took on the role of various people/objects/animals and wrote a paragraph on the same topic, a rainy day at school. I purposely did not include the sheep, as I didn’t want to call attention to their absence. I mean, what they don’t know can’t hurt them, right?

I did include the school tortoise though. Here’s what the student who was assigned the tortoise’s point of view read aloud:

Rainy days are the best at school. I have the whole field to myself because those loud kids

School tortoise; slow but enduring

are inside. The only thing I have to worry about is sheep poop all over the ground. I have to crawl through it! I’m so glad it’s almost Tabaski and somebody will be eating those sheep and I won’t have to deal with that poop anymore.

And the class exploded with laughter and revelry while I pretended our school sheep had really escaped and were frolicking in a field of lavender in the south of France.

Chapter 21: Star Spangled Banter: How Grits, a Bidet, and a Tea Wench Helped Me Understand America & the World

Posted on April 24, 2013 by 2seetheglobe

Last year, just a few weeks before we left our old stomping grounds in Florida to begin a new life in Mali, we decided to pay a final visit to the West Palm Beach GreenMarket (yep, all one word, capital M…very fancy).

Fancy GreenMarket in West Palm Beach, Florida (Photo from Palm Beach Post)

Unlike the outdoor markets we now frequent here in West Africa, the fancy GreenMarket is a tad different. It has no sheep heads, no ladies carrying gigantic baskets of bras or yams on their head, and requires about a week’s salary if you want to buy a slice of carrot cake. Seriously, for what I spent on a cup of Bob’s Fresh Squeezed Lemonade at the GreenMarket, I could buy a donkey cart full of lemons at our outdoor market in Bamako. And that would include the donkey.

photo from tealeafreview.com

But overpriced, hand-squeezed citrus beverages aside, we did enjoy strolling around the Greenmarket every week, gazing at the scenery, meeting friends, and taking out loans to buy slices of carrot cake. On this particular farewell visit we popped into a booth selling loose leaf tea, mostly because they had free samples of iced tea and we were thirsty. As we looked among the many exotic tea flavors (mango-mint-papaya, or black pepper-Listerine-garlic-hairspray, etc.) the fifty-something proprietor lady drifted over and began the hard sell. You know, the old “If you buy 4 packs you get the fifth for half price and that’s the best price you’ll ever pay for tea of this quality that’s handpicked by toddlers with each leaf individually hand-knotted blah blah blah” kind of stuff.

But this time we had a good excuse not to spend $47 on a bag of dried leaves that makes about 5 cups of mediocre tea. We explained that we were moving to Africa in a couple of weeks and couldn’t fit one more thing in our luggage—not even one, single, solitary, hand-knotted tealeaf.

“Africa? Why would you move there?” the tea wench blurted out.

“We have jobs teaching at an international school,” I answered.

“Ahhhh, so you’re doing it for the money. It figures,” she said.

“What am I going to do with all of my millions?” said no teacher ever.

I paused in stunned silence, only coming to my senses after gulping another shot of free iced tea. The money? Did she really just equate teaching with money? Because everyone knows that Donald Trump and Bill Gates made their gazillions by teaching, right? Because when I planned my future goals I said to myself, “Self, you’re going to make your first million by 30 in the highly lucrative and cut-throat world of elementary school teaching.” Because every teacher is so flush with cash that we use it to stuff our mattresses or store it in secret bank accounts in the Cayman Islands—right next to Mitt Romney’s vault.

“Um, I will say money wasn’t a huge factor in our decision,” I replied, biting my lip. “We are going for the adventure and because we love learning about other cultures.”

“Well, I’m sorry but I love A-MARE-EE-CUH,” she responded. She heavily accented each syllable in “America” for added effect.

Huh? Was this tea hag now implying that we were unpatriotic because we were moving abroad? For pete’s sake I was nearly born on the 4^th of July and I once owned Old Glory-themed boxer shorts. I was so flabbergasted I actually couldn’t think of a witty retort (I really, really hate when that happens). So I just walked away–with a last cup of free iced tea, mind you. We rich folks still like our free samples.

Of course 20 minutes later as we ate supper nearby, I thought of dozens of great comebacks. And was I ever ready to return and give her piece of my mind. But Jamey, wisely, prevented me from doing so because I’m pretty sure tea leaves would have been flying.

It’s “offical.” Tea Party members lack 3rd grade spelling skills.

We decided it would be a waste of time though, because more than likely she was (ironically) a Tea Party freak who loves America/guns/telling people how superior her religion is, and hates anybody not possessing her pale skin, her heterosexuality, and the English language. Plus she had really bad hair and a cloying aroma of drugstore perfume that had irritated my nasal passages.

This got me to thinking, though. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s never left the U.S., and that her idea of a cultural experience is a trip to Disney’s EPCOT Center where she can have breakfast in Norway, lunch in China, and supper in Mexico–all in the same day. She probably couldn’t point out Mali on a map, or Africa for that matter. Wouldn’t even want to. I mean how can someone understand the world

Dining under the stars, well, I mean the plaster ceiling and twinkle lights, at EPCOT’s Mexican restaurant. (photo : attractionsmagazine.com

we live in when the only non-American she’s probably ever met is the cashier at the Chinese take-out place where she gorges on crab Rangoon?

I’m lucky that from an early age, I learned the world didn’t end at our city limits. My parents bravely took my siblings and I on driving trips across the country where I learned about people I’d never encountered before (cowboys, American Indians, southerners, surfers), food I’d never before eaten (grits, trout, oranges right off the tree), and things I’d never experienced in the Midwest (rodeos, chameleons, mountains). I also learned what

My family on our trip to the western U.S., stopping roadside for an ice cold Shasta orange soda in the cooler.

those quarter machines in the men’s bathroom were for, but that’s a different story.

I am sincerely grateful that my folks cautioned us not to demean things just because they were different from what we were used to. That’s an important lesson to learn if you are a Midwestern kid whose idea of exotic food is a Chef Boyardee homemade pizza with canned mushrooms and Velveeta cheese.

Kiss my grits.

On a family trip to Florida I distinctly remember putting a heaping teaspoon of grits in my mouth for the first time at some roadside diner, and feeling like I was eating the stuff at the bottom of my goldfish aquarium. As I was about to say something to that effect, my dad said, “Keep it to yourself. Grits are a famous southern dish and you can’t hurt their feelings by saying you don’t like them.” So I ate goldfish poo-flavored mush and learned to be respectful. On the bright side, I do like grits today, especially when a half pound of cheese and butter are melted in with them.

When I was 16 they even allowed me to travel 3500 miles to live as an exchange student in faraway Peru. Imagine, a naïve teenager plucked from the cornfields of Illinois and plopped down into a country with stunning beaches, abject poverty, thousands of years of history, and a language I didn’t speak.

My 16-year-old self, hiking in the Andes for several days, wishing I had my Clairol Herbal Essence shampoo.

I’ll admit that for a while I saw (and judged) everything through my sensible Midwestern lens. Don’t businessmen in suits know better than to pee in the street? Would it kill anyone to put a few ice cubes in the Coca Cola? What is that stupid extra toilet in the bathroom without a seat? Why do they have guinea pigs in the food section at the market instead of the pet section?

Sitting on the 1000-year ruins of Saksaywaman near Cusco, Peru, wondering if there is a McDonalds nearby.

“One of these things, is not like the other….” Me and my Peruvian host family.

But as the weeks passed I found that when I actually appreciated and valued the differences in the Peruvian way of life–instead of mocking or questioning them–I was a much happier teen. I also learned not to be too swift to judge. Each morning in the shower I remember thinking how totally stupid it was that Peruvians didn’t use shower curtains. I would shower, water would pour onto the floor, the cockroaches would do the backstroke, and afterwards the maid would come in and put newspaper all over the floor to soak it up (as she gave me a semi-dirty look). A month or two later I mentioned this to the other seven American exchange students living in the same town. “Can you believe it hasn’t dawned on Peruvians to use a freaking shower curtain?” I said. They looked at me like I was insane, and promptly told me that they all had shower curtains in their Peruvian homes. Okay, okay, so you don’t judge an entire nation on the peculiar habits of one family….I get it, I get it.

Finally made it to Machu Picchu, happy to have checked off “hiking” from my bucket list so I won’t ever have to do it again.

My experience also improved as I practiced and practiced my Spanish until I dreamed in it. Life became a little more meaningful, the world a little more interesting, and I no longer had to mime holding myself and grimacing to get directions to the bathroom. For the first time I started to think globally rather than midwesternly (probably not a word, but you get the point), and I was digging it big time.

Now to be truthful, I wouldn’t say I fully integrated into Peruvian culture. I still went out and bought ice cube trays because I couldn’t stomach warm Coke, though the warmish Pisco Sours were never a problem for me. And if I had to relieve my bladder I still bypassed the curb to use an actual enclosed bathroom. Bringing that particular curbside custom back to Illinois would have resulted in a hefty fine anyway.

I left Peru and returned to the States, starting my senior year in high school just two days later. While I’m sure I looked very international and jet-settish on the outside, I was a discombobulated, cultural mess on the inside. I mean, just a few weeks earlier I had hiked three days on an ancient Incan Trail to Machu Picchu, at one point traversing a landslide by inching across a rope. Now I was hanging out at McDonalds and watching HBO.

Me looking surprisingly chipper despite having altitude sickness, high in the Andes.

Not to say one of those experiences is better than the other–I mean a 15^th century Incan village nestled on a mountaintop above the clouds is impressive, but I seriously craved McDonalds fries the ENTIRE time I was in South America. It was just that my mind had been opened so wide to the challenges and joys of another world and then magically I was back in my comfort zone, nestled in my percale sheets (I had not yet discovered the wonders of 1200 thread count, Egyptian cotton sheets).

The Great Pyramid of Cheops, The Sphynx, an unruly camel, and sunburned me in Cairo, Egypt.

But while culture shock had set in, culture obsession had too. Peruvian culture had merely whet my appetite. I spent a lot of time staring at a world map taped to my wall, trying to figure out how I could experience all those other countries. This time I set my sights on Europe and before my senior year in college I had arranged for a summer internship in Nuremberg, Germany followed by a few months of backpacking through a dozen countries on two continents. It was another life-changing experience where I discovered things like:

transvestite cabarets exist
the Great Pyramid of Cheops in Cairo is stunning but inside smells like urine
cute gypsy kids aren’t shaking your hand but picking your pocket
Trying to look Italian in Venice by wearing a gondelier shirt.
London punks spit on you if you take their picture
My first exposure to live punks and my first experience being spat upon by punks.
a gondola ride in Venice costs the same as a night in a fancy hotel, and the gondoliers didn’t seem to be doing too much singing
the beaches in Nice are full of pebbles and exposed breasts
drinking dark German beer is like eating a Thanksgiving meal
one shouldn’t climb all the way to the top of the Acropolis in Athens if one has diarrhea

The beaches of Nice, full of pebbles and breasts galore.

And I haven’t ignored my own country either. I’ve experienced 41 U.S. states, and let me just say that some places in America can feel as exotic/bizarre/challenging as foreign lands. For example, Flat Lick, Kentucky, nestled in a dry county, chock-full of evangelical churches and dollar stores, and whose claim to fame is that Colonel Sanders built the first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant here). I was a tad outside of my comfort zone to say the least.

But really, when it comes down to it, I strive to exist outside of my comfort zone, whether it’s mingling with Elvis fans at Graceland, or with a Buddhist monk in a cave in the jungles of Thailand, or with evangelical teachers at a Cracker Barrel restaurant just off the interstate, or with Kuna Indians on an island just off the coast of Panama. For me it’s an adrenaline rush as well as a way to broaden my horizons. I saw this quote the other day by a poet/painter/musician named Ching Hai that perfectly summed up my philosophy:

“This world is a school, the best university. One suffers too much in hell, and one is too happy in heaven. Only in this world we have happiness, anger, sadness, and joy, which make us reflect, learn and discipline ourselves everyday. The more we are disciplined, the stronger we will become.”

I’m proud to come from a nation where even horses are patriotic.

And this is where Mrs. Tea Bag and, sadly, quite a few Americans fail. They use Fox News, rather than the world, as their teacher. Their viewpoint is so limited, constrained, and xenophobic that they equate moving abroad with defecting. I’ll admit, I’m not a flag-waving-Yankee-Doodle kind of guy who sings Lee Greenwood’s “I’m Proud to Be an American” in the shower every morning (with a shower curtain, of course). And I’ve never felt the need to profess that my country is better than another. Jingoism isn’t my cup of tea.

I remember walking down the street in Lima, Peru marveling at how every home flew a flag on Peru’s independence day—until I was told that it was required by law to do so or you’d be fined. Fast forward to a couple of years ago when the Florida legislature passed a law requiring an American flag in every public school classroom, or else you’d be drawn and quartered (well, maybe not quartered). Forced patriotism is so, well, unpatriotic.

But I do appreciate many things about the U.S., such as our amazing arts culture, our incredibly diverse population, and Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” (which, thankfully, we can still watch in Africa). I really am glad I was born in the USA, particularly in the wholesome Midwest where I learned to be wholesome. On the other hand, there are many things about the U.S. I don’t appreciate so much right now, like a public education system hijacked by profiteers, people insisting that our country operate under the rules of their particular religion, and American Idol (please somebody, put that show out of its misery). Oh, and Walmart sucks too.

When Jamey and I gave up our old life in America for the sub-Saharan landscapes of Mali, it wasn’t because we hated America. Our life in the States wasn’t horrible at all, but even worse….it was routine! The Jersey Shore kids had their GTL schedule (Gym, Tan, Laundry) but we had our WGDFAIFOT schedule (Work, Gym, Dinner, Fall-Asleep-In-Front-Of-Television). I kept thinking of that darn Teddy Roosevelt quote and fearing the gray twilight approaching:

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

Always give the right-of-way to animals with built in weapons. (photo: Nathan Kennedy)

A gray twilight! What could be worse! We strove to be daring and not let old Teddy down. So, to the consternation of some of our friends, we purposely looked for international schools in developing countries—third world countries—because, well, we like that vibe. We get excited about chaotic streets full of donkeys and cars and long horned cattle and motos and sheep and people hawking jumbo packs of toilet paper. It makes our day to see a dude balancing a dozen trays of eggs, a sheet of plate glass, and a live guinea hen on his bicycle. We actually get a thrill trying to talk the police out of a “fine” for some false offense they pulled us over for. Last week when we were pulled over for our “dark window tinting” we spoke to them in Bambara and they called us their brothers (although we still had to give them some dough, it was amicable).

We understand that this kind of environment disturbs/scares/repels many people, just as

These are not really chipmunks. (sorry to ruin the Disney magic)

trips to Disneyworld or fancy shopping malls disturb/scare/repel us. As we were pondering our final choices for schools, one of our best friends said to me point blank, “I’m fine with you going to any place except Mali.” While not exactly a vote of confidence, we realized that if our first choice actually frightened people, it was probably just the place for us. Fortunately our parents, while nervous, are nothing but supportive of their wayward sons carrying on in Africa.

Shopping in Bamako….

The advantage to living life while possessing an enormous worldview is that you understand and appreciate the differences in people. Some of us like living in developing countries with dusty roads and questionable infrastructure, while some of us opt for swanky, glittering cities where the electricity actually

….or shopping in Paris? What’s your pleasure?

stays on throughout the day. Some of us return like clockwork to our favorite vacay spots year after year, while some of us wouldn’t think of revisiting a place until we have seen the rest of the world first. Some of us live for theme parks, casinos, or Carnival Cruises, while some of us, um, don’t. So I don’t expect everyone to love (or even understand) our decision to relocate to a place that featured a coup and counter-coup in the couple of months before our arrival. We have our reasons, and that’s really all that should matter.

Ol’ Teddy would be happy to hear that our life in West Africa is anything but routine now, down to the air we breathe…some days there’s a spicy smell in the wind,

Some U.S. schools don’t have swings because they are deemed too dangerous. Our school has a zip line.

other days it smells like fresh produce, and other times it smells like acrid burning plastic. And every day at school is an adventure, thank goodness. It’s actually routine to have a prime minister or a foreign ambassador attend the school play or attend parent-teacher conferences. Last month U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s second-in-command (with his posse and bodyguards) popped into my classroom to say hello.

One of our school tortoises assists Robin in teaching the finer points of gothic fiction.

One of the school tortoises found its way into the English classroom the other day. The Dutch parents are throwing a Queen’s Day party at school on Saturday with prizes for the best orange outfit. The teachers had Thanksgiving dinner at the U.S. Ambassador’s house. We don’t have to teach to a test, so we can integrate the arts and do service learning projects and have recess and teach social studies without feeling guilty and not get stomach aches just thinking about teaching. At school festivals they rig up a zipline from our school water tower to the ground, and even kindergartners partake in it. And there’s a French bakery in our lobby. Hell, I can’t top that last one so I’ll just stop.

Best of all, since our new life began abroad, I’ve yet to run into someone even one-tenth as offensive as that small-minded, large-mouthed wench pushing overpriced tea and insulting strangers with her warped version of patriotism. I won’t ever, ever, ever live someplace where that kind of behavior is acceptable, much less applauded. Not for all of the citrus-peppermint-licorice-boysenberry tea in China.

Meeting the chief of a nearby village, as he chills in a hammock.

Just another routine day in Mali, meeting the village chief as he chills in a hammock.

Chapter 20: Feelin’ Hot, Hot, Dead

Posted on March 17, 2013 by 2seetheglobe

Spring has sprung, all 110 degrees of it.

As a boy growing up in Illinois, March meant Spring was just around the corner. I was always alert for tiny hints, like the sprouting of a crocus from the half-frozen soil, the sighting of a robin fluttering in a dogwood tree, or the sweet sounds of a mother screaming, “Get the hell outta this house with those muddy shoes!”

Now that it’s March in Mali, I’m training myself to be aware of the coming of “hot/dry season” through subtle signs, like the gentle tug of your inner eyelid as it adheres to your dry cornea, the forming of scabs in your nose as you inhale oven-like air, or the distinct sounds of a student vomiting from heat exhaustion during recess (a sound I was serenaded with in my classroom just last Friday).

Jamey and I survived the wet season (June-Oct) like it was nobody’s business. Roads that resembled the mighty Mississippi? We could have pulled a water skier behind us the way

The river/road in front of our house during rainy season.

we barreled down the middle of these rushing rapids in our Toyota something-or-other (we’ve had that vehicle for 7 months and I still can’t remember what it’s called, but I think it’s silver—or maybe grey?). During this season a monsoon wind blows from the southwest, bringing with it dark, ominous clouds and severe rainstorms with some wicked lightning and thunder. Obviously coming from South Florida, we are accustomed to this type of meteorological event, though I must admit that during the storms here in Bamako there are no old people driving at a snail’s pace with their hazard lights blinking.

The cool/dry season (Nov – Feb) was a dream. This is when the northeasterly Alize wind, the French name for trade wind, blows relatively cool air upon Bamako. Our windows stayed open to let in the refreshing breeze–and maybe a burning plastic smell if the neighbors decided to burn an old suitcase, which they did–and you could actually wear a long-sleeved shirt without passing out.

As we gloated about successfully making it through each season, our colleagues never failed to remind us about what was coming. “Oh, you just wait until March when the hot/dry season starts….bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha,” they quipped, about four hundred times or so.

Soft focus photography? Nope, just a lot of orange dust. Photo: http://polifaso.wordpress.com

Seriously, I’m actually glad it’s March so they can’t use that line anymore. But then again, the hot/dry season has its downsides. To quote Britannica.com, beginning this month “the harmattan, a dry, hot wind that blows from the east out of the Sahara, sweeps the soil into dusty whirlwinds and is accompanied by daytime temperatures of about 104 to 113 °F (40 to 45 °C).” Anyone for a noontime run?

This is our first experience with a dry climate. And when I say dry, I mean a chunk of the sun fell next to you and sucked every milliliter of liquid from your pores—no sweat, tears, snot, saliva. I sometimes wonder if I still have blood flowing. If it wasn’t for moisturizers I

The Sahara Desert, or my forehead in hot season?

would look like the father of the chameleons that crawl all over the place here. Fittingly, the best protection against dry skin is shea butter, or karite as they call it here, which is made from ground-up nuts that grow here. It’s not greasy or smelly, and it makes your skin soft as a baby’s bottom—the perfect remedy for lizard skin.

It was also this month when we first noticed that the master bedroom AC unit (known by the exotic sounding name “climatiseur” in French) didn’t make the room quite as cool as it had previously. We reasoned that the hotter temperatures outside made the AC a tad less effective, but then we woke up a bit sweaty one morning when it was actually cool outside and decided to have it checked.

Now the great part about our housing here is that the school handles all maintenance issues, so we simply put in a work order and someone visits the house the same day and when we get home everything is magically repaired. Except for this time. That evening we didn’t notice a bit of difference, even though our facilities guy said it was. And then in the wee hours of the morning the AC imitated the possessed Linda Blair in The Exorcist, letting out a sort of “You’re going to burn in hell” scream (I think it was in French, or Latin maybe) and grinding to a halt.

So we dragged ourselves to bedroom #2, which features only a twin bed with room for one. That meant dragging in the twin mattress from bedroom #3 so one of us (and that would be me) could sleep on the floor. We clicked on the small AC unit in that room and tried to return to REM sleep. An hour later at 3:00 AM, when normal people are dreaming or snoring, we were still wide-awake in a warm, stuffy room. Obviously the demon from the master bedroom climatiseur had possessed this unit as well.

So we dragged both twin mattresses to bedroom #3, poured a line of holy water across the threshold to keep out the broken AC demon, and cranked the AC unit to its lowest setting as we crossed our fingers. By 4:00 AM I was nearing frostbite stage, so I assumed all was well with this climatiseur and wrapped another blanket around me.

Oh you just try and look all pretty after scorching us all day, Mr. Sun.

The next day we filled out another work order, this time for both AC units, and explained the problem to one of our maintenance guys. The trouble is, it’s a little uncomfortable to bellyache over AC temperatures to a guy who not only doesn’t have air conditioning in his own home, but doesn’t even have electricity. I felt like a pampered Palm Beacher complaining that my caviar was too salty or that my Lamborghini looked spotty because someone didn’t dry it after it rained.

Living a good portion of my life a stone’s throw from Palm Beach—one of the wealthiest enclaves on the planet–I’ve had plenty of exposure to pampered rich folks who feel that

the world resolves around them. To earn extra cash I worked a few weekends at a Palm Beach garden shoppe (you have to spell shop like that if you’re catering to the wealthy). One of my tasks was filling palatial mansions with flowers and plants to welcome the homeowners who were about to jet in for the weekend from their estate in Fancy Pants, Connecticut or their penthouse apartment in NYC. We would bring in thousands of dollars of orchids, roses, apple blossoms (or whatever other flowers were not naturally blooming at this time of year) and place them throughout the house.

Once I had to position 30 potted Phalaenopsis orchids around a giant, sunken, white marble bathtub without leaving a single fleck of bark or a spore of moss on any surface or “the wife would go nuts.” I’m telling you, I had all kinds of ideas what I could leave in that bathtub that would really make her go nuts.

Another time, as we were filling a mansion with two vans full of flora, the owners arrived without warning, their private jet having landed an hour early. We were always told that, in the event the homeowners were present, never ever to address them. The husband passed us in the foyer (pronounced “foy-ay” of course) and my friend Mike—against all rules– bid him a good afternoon. Without a word or even a glance in our direction, he went into the master bedroom and slammed the door.

Fill my house with flowers, now!
photo: afloral.com

But we were in a dilemma…we had not yet adorned the gymnasium-sized master bathroom with Norwegian pussy willow or Icelandic edelweiss or whatever ridiculous endangered plant they had requested. And the only way to access the bathroom was to go through the bedroom where Cashy McCashpants was watching TV–which, BTW, rose from a slit at the end of the bed, with just the touch of a button.

The choices were like an old episode of Dynasty: leave the bathroom unembellished and suffer the wrath of the beautiful but cruel socialite, or interrupt the serious mogul/tycoon who was tired after a long day of closing factories and putting hundreds of people out of work. We opted for option two, being slightly less afraid of the husband, but still got a hateful “Don’t interrupt me again” as we left the room.

Jamey poolside, the only viable outdoor option during hot/dry season that doesn’t lead to heatstroke.

This is what I think about when we approach our humble maintenance staff with requests like “Our AC doesn’t seem as cold as usual.” I don’t want to be the evil Dynasty character, even though our modest salary nearly puts us in the wealthy realm compared to what the average Malian earns. I don’t need pampering when our security guard pedals his bike an hour to get here each day, then remains outside in the heat for 12 long hours while inside we watch Downtown Abbey and whine that the AC is not chilly enough. I’m not that guy!

So we were careful to explain the “problem” to the maintenance guys, trying our best to make it sound like a very, very minor inconvenience that we barely noticed. And to be

This is what a 106 degree day looks like…deceptively pleasant.

clear, the maintenance guys always take our “complaints” seriously and are gracious about getting the repairs made…Malians would never think to roll their eyes or call us wimps. Again they spent a portion of the day at our home tinkering with the AC units, changing parts, testing, and so on. Well, you probably guessed that nothing had changed by that evening. Despite their assurance that all ACs were working fine, the climatiseur produced air that was neither hot or cold, just kind of like someone’s breath blowing down on us.

We let this go for a week, hoping that our purchase of a swamp cooler would improve our interior climate. This contraption, a sort of tall fan on a stand with a water reservoir at the

Our cat Zil Zil shuns the sun.

base, puts moisture in the air. Moisture is not a word you hear much during the hot/dry season, unless it’s someone saying, “Look, the sun has desiccated this cat, removing all of the moisture from its body.” So we welcomed this invention into our home, as Jamey assured me that adding moisture to the air would also make it seem cooler (some scientific principle, I think).

Two things, though. (1) When we turn it on, it sounds like an army helicopter full of special ops is hovering inside the room, so TV viewing or conversation is out of the question. And (2) the moisture feature is so effective that if we leave it on for too long, it feels like we are back in Florida in mid-August when the humidity makes it feel like you are walking through a swimming pool.

During the hot/dry season the sun makes for both excellent photos and excellent heatstrokes.

I finally mentioned our dilemma to Caroline, our school director, who promptly called in the facilities guy and someone to interpret and had me explain the whole ordeal. The end result was that—in one day–they completely replaced two of the AC units. The one in the master bedroom works so well we are considering opening an ice skating rink in the bedroom on weekends to make a little extra dough. The unit in the living room, not so much—human-breathy air at best. We will eventually get up the nerve to report this as well.

Here the orange dust waits patiently before entering our home.

Fortunately we have not been visited (yet) by the whirlwinds of powdery, orange soil that leave the air hazy and put everything into soft focus. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still dusty. If it wasn’t for all of the daily dusting and floor mopping we do (and I mean “we” as in our maid Fati) everything inside the house would appear to be made of orange soil. And that’s after leaving the windows and doors closed all day.

Clothes and shoe dye, otherwise known as orange dirt roads

We’ve decided that any clothing or footwear we buy in the future will be in shades of burnt sienna only, since that’s the color everything turns eventually anyway. Sadly even our 1200 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets are taking on an orange glow. I’d like to think it’s because they gather dust when they are hung out to dry, but I fear we are transferring orange soil each night from our skin. Soon we will be the color of John Boehner. Wow, come to think of it, if he was nude

Has John Boehner rolled in the dirt in front of our house?

he would totally disappear into the scenery here.

We really only have to endure the H/D season for 2 more months, and then school’s out for the summer. And honestly, what does it matter what the temperature is when we go from our air conditioned house to our air conditioned Toyota something-or-other to our air conditioned school. It’s not like I’m tarring roofs or laying asphalt roads…I teach in a classroom with two large AC units and five ceiling fans. Poor me.

And frankly, hot weather is not such a big deal here. Unlike the States, there are no weathermen harping on and on about record-breaking heat and showing lists of way you can survive the heat….because it’s always damn hot here this time of year!

People still go about their business working in the fields, selling stuff on the roadside, and living in homes without AC. This time of year Malians often sleep on their roofs in little tents made of mosquito netting. We still get our daily exercise in, doing a run every evening (we even ran to the store to buy olive oil to save a car trip), though we finish a bottle of water during the actual run and don’t produce sweat. And in your daily comings and goings, the weather forces you to slow down and chill out, and that’s a skill we need to learn, stat!

On our three-minute drive to school last week, after our night-of-the-broken-AC, I said, “I’m exhausted. This is going to be a looong day.” Just as I finished saying this we passed two guys sleeping on a blanket on the side of the dirt road, next to their semi-trailer truck, clouds of orange dust drifting over them as each vehicle passed. “But I think we’ll survive,” I added as I cranked the AC down another notch and clutched my tin of caviar.

Chapter 19: In the Sweet Buy and Buy

Posted on February 23, 2013 by 2seetheglobe

Generally speaking, I was one of those odd kids who looked forward to going to school every day. I loved almost everything about elementary school, especially that old school smell in the halls–a curious mix of floor wax, cooking meat, semi-gloss institutional green paint, mimeograph ink, Windsong (by Prince Matchabelli For Women), old building, and sharpened pencils.

Greece was literally made of dough back then.

I also liked writing the first word on a fresh sheet of notebook paper, getting nauseous on the merry-go-round at recess while we boys chanted “All the girls get off and push, All the girls get off and push!” (I believed in women’s equality even as a 5-year-old), drinking ice cold chocolate milk in a carton through a paper straw that slowly sealed up with each sip, making salt and flour dough relief maps of foreign countries, and peeking into the teacher’s lounge to see them having a chuckle at our expense while they took a loooong drag off of a Benson & Hedges.

dizzy, in a good way

In junior high, where supposedly most kids suffer their most humiliating years, school got even better for me. I was accepted into a new program called PIE (who can argue with a pastry-themed acronym) which stood for Project to Individualize Education. It was so

Me (left) with schoolmates Charlie and Matt, spending the afternoon in an upholstery shop making pillows (I've appreciated a good damask ever since)

Me (left) with schoolmates Charlie and Matt, spending the afternoon in an upholstery shop making pillows (I’ve been crazy about damask ever since)

far out of the box at the time that I can’t imagine how the folks in my somewhat conservative Midwestern town ever approved it. It was sort of the first version of “differentiated instruction,” which today is the latest buzz phrase in education. Our assignments catered to our interests and abilities, involved hands-on projects, took us out of the school building to learn in the community or at a campground, and made the teachers more of a “guide on the side” rather than the “sage on the stage” like they were in the traditional classrooms in the school. We PIE kids were a cool mix—lots of educators’ kids, some hippyish kids, artsy kids, out-of-the-box kids, and a few entertaining wackadoodles.

High school was better yet as I found my niche as a theatre/glee club geek with a circle of friends I still stay in touch with today. We explored haunted houses, went on scavenger hunts, snuck into the drive-in in the car trunk, and spontaneously broke out into 4-part harmony at the pizza place.

Our high school glee club, with the much sexier name “Swing Choir” (I’m 2nd from the bottom)

But there was a part of school that I absolutely dreaded—even more than needing to use the doorless toilet stall in the high school boy’s bathroom (which, just to be clear, I never used). And that was being involved in fundraisers. Especially stupid fundraisers that required me to trudge door-to-door selling crap. Every year I had to sell candy bars labeled “World’s Finest Chocolate” and I certainly didn’t think they were the finest because they were the exact size and shape of a turd.

And of course there were those awful magazine subscriptions sales, which would inevitably lead to one of my potential customers saying, “I’ll order as long as ya got Playboy.hahaha!” Another time I was forced to sell “gourmet” candy canes with flavors like cotton candy and hot buttered popcorn because we all know how gourmet carnival fare is. Selling things, especially crappy, unhealthy things that nobody needs, is not a pleasant task. I’m certain Chick fil-A employees would agree.

I went through an annoying and somewhat uncomfortable ritual every time I started one of these fundraisers. First I’d hit the easy targets—immediate family, then extended family, then neighbors. They look at you with that dammit-I-feel-obligated-to-buy look and you really do want to tell them that they don’t have to buy anything. But then you remember you can’t let down your school and their effort to fund new playground equipment/a field trip to Six Flags theme park/polyester choir robes/a mini bar in the teacher’s lounge/etc. and you wait for them to open their wallet.

Next I’d swallow my pride, lace up my Earth shoes, and head out to do those awful door-to-door sales. Going to the homes of strangers is creepy and uncomfortable for any reason, let alone trying to sell them crap. I would inevitably encounter angry, anti-public school people railing about all of the school taxes they are forced to pay, or super-duper large folks coming to the door in all states of undress, or old people with all their old people smells drifting out of the house as the door swung open.

Footwear perfect for door-to-door sales

Granted I had plenty of new experiences in these forced travels. Once when I was in 5^th grade I went to the guy’s dorms of our local college and sold many, many chocolate bars in rooms filled with clouds of what I thought at the time was heavily perfumed incense. One of the college dudes said something like, “Whatcha sellin’ little man? Go on, shoot.” Aside from firing a weapon I had not heard that word used to describe anything else, but I quickly incorporated it into my vocabulary back at Webster Elementary School (TEACHER: Jeff, we need to discuss the grade on your last science test. ME: Go on, shoot.). Surely that made me even more popular.

Another time I was selling the gourmet candy canes in the middle of winter, just after two or three feet of snow fell. As I tried to hike up someone’s icy front stairs I took a tumble and my box shot from my gloved hands. One hundred gourmet canes flew through the air like tiny candy missiles, landing in a deep snow bank, leaving only tiny pencil-sized holes in the surface. Let the Arctic treasure hunt begin.

Where did those canes go….

Eventually I would end up either eating my entire stock of wares (hello, acne), or begging my parents to buy me out (hello, no-allowance-for the next-year). It made me feel weird to make other people feel weird about buying something they really, really didn’t want. It also helped me realize that I was certainly not cut out to have any career requiring me to hawk anything. Avon or Amway just wasn’t in the cards.

Which brings me to Bamako, a city chock-full of people selling everything, everywhere, all the time. I’m not sure there is a square foot of dirt along any road here that isn’t occupied by a vendor selling things from dawn to dawn. They stand behind piles of rusty-colored

Wanna buy a sheep without leaving your car?

dried fish (I hold my breath when I pass these piles), mounds of what looks like bundled weeds (sheep food I think), little tables of soda bottles filled with gas, large Styrofoam panels holding sunglasses (though I rarely see a Malian wearing sunglasses, despite how freaking sunny it is), racks holding bike tires wrapped in gleaming gold cellophane (never had rubber looked so sexy), or mounds of produce—including the most orange cartoon-looking carrots you’ve ever seen.

strong necks, really orange carrots (photo: http://everythingspossible .wordpress.com/)

Or the vendors walk right down the middle of the street carrying their wares, selling to people stuck in traffic. It’s amazing how much shopping one can do from a car here. You can buy soccer balls, plastic inflatable Santas, laminated maps of Africa, Malian flags (and right now, French flags too—for chasing off the bad guys), cell phone accessories, fist-sized plastic sachets of water or juice that you bite the corner off of and sip (it’s best if visitors abstain from this practice, unless you fancy a case of dysentery), those really orange carrots, electric mosquito zappers that look like a tennis racket, phone cards, Chinese folding fans like those that Geisha girls hold, and gigantic toilet paper multi packs. And that was at just one intersection.

$10 phone card available at a zillion locations near you!

Bamako is the only place I’ve been where there’s more to buy in the grocery store parking lot than in the grocery store itself. The last time we exited Supermarche La Fourmi (which translates as The Ant Supermarket, and has a logo of a shopper with a woman’s body and ant’s head pushing a cart) we encountered the following in the parking lot:

the fake Polo shirt vendor
5 or 25 phone card salesmen
a tiny guy with a huge box of green apples
the basket maker guy
a lady with twin girls who wanted a little cash (apparently it’s good luck to tip the mother of multiples)
the bootleg CD/DVD seller
several produce vendor ladies (one with extremely mannish hands who may or may not be a lady at all).

And all of this happens in a parking lot that is exactly 7 cars wide and one car long, and that requires you to back out into two lanes of heavy traffic. This is why my shopping trips are always preceded with a wine or gin tasting (don’t worry, I’m not the driver).

It’s not quite Macys, but then again you just pull over to get what you want.

All of this selling-mania got me to thinking about my aversion to selling stuff. Do these Malian vendors actually enjoy what they do, or just put up with it because they have a family to feed? Do they wake up in the morning and look forward to going to work, even if it means dodging cars in the middle of a dusty road or sitting in the blazing sun behind a pile of smelly dried fish? Can selling an inflatable Santa or a plastic pouch of water bring inner satisfaction?

Sunglasses that apparently nobody buys.

When they see me are they thinking, “Cuh-ching! Here comes Mr. Moneybags with his fancy Nike sneakers. He can afford anything!” (It’s worth noting than even though my 2-year-old Nikes are from a discount place in Florida, they still cost more than our maid makes in three weeks, and we pay her at the top of the scale.)

Maybe they dread it too. Maybe they can see that look of anxiety and embarrassment on my face when I utter a quick, “No, merci” and fumble for the car door handle (which of course takes me ten times longer than usual to open). Because in all honesty I do feel guilty. After all, things have not been easy since the coup almost a year ago. Ex-pats left in droves and tourists have stopped coming. The pool of buyers is a shallow one.

A lot of times I just cave and buy something I don’t want, (never gourmet candy canes though—I do have my pride). I bought apples from the tiny guy carrying that massive box in

Roadside lumber

the grocery store lot, even though they were more expensive than the apples at the fruit stand literally right outside our home’s front gate. And at home I discovered they were sort of mealy and without that crunch I like.

Another guy sometimes comes door-to-door selling Malian crafts—woodcarvings, masks, jewelry and the like. He walks a long way and is always sweaty and smelly, but as kind as ever, never pushy and always smiling. But on one visit where I was determined not to buy anything since I didn’t NEED anything, he mentioned he was trying to sell enough to get the tuition for his kids to go to school. So I quickly picked out several carvings that we really didn’t need but that would enable me to sleep that night. I knew his story was real, but was he sharing it in a marketing sort of way (like Sally Struthers on late night TV showing us impoverished African children so we would donate to a charity)?

roadside rotisserie chicken in a stand named after the local bullion cubes…mmmm

We spent the winter break in a rented beach house in Senegal. It was a dream—a fancy house with an oceanfront pool, gazebo, and our own beach area—elevated and separated from the rest of the beach. But it was reasonably priced–our share of the cost was barely $300 for the whole week.

But to the locals all around us and on the beach, we were the wealthy Westerners with money to burn–an odd spot to be in when you are a teacher used to being at the bottom of the salary scale in the U.S. As we sunbathed on our private stretch of beach, reading from our iPads and Kindle Fires and sipping G&Ts, the vendors would peek their heads through the ornate balustrade that separated us from them.

They would nicely ask us in French if we wanted to buy whatever they had in their basket

carvings aplenty, boobies included

(scarves, carvings, paintings, tote bags, snacks) and then give us that gentle but pleading stare. Again we would try the polite “No, merci” comeback and continue reading. But if I glanced at them for even two seconds it was like my heart was ripped from my chest. Visions of their crumbling hut and their hungry kids and their hours of peddling stuff in the sun washed over me. Then visions of me as a teen traipsing through a snow-covered neighborhood, trying in vain to sell the last of my World’s Finest Chocolate. Selling just sucks, whether or not I’m the seller or the sellee!

fresh chicken by the road…what’s the big deal about refrigeration anyway? (photo: news.bbc.co.uk)

Actually, when I think about it, the vendors here are not really hard sell at all. They don’t follow you around, begging you to buy–like I’ve experienced in other countries including my own. For example, my last experience in a U.S. furniture store went something like this:

Clerk: Welcome! What are you looking for today?

Me: Nothing in particular, just browsing.

Clerk: Well people don’t come in furniture stores to just browse. Surely you are looking for something in particular.

Me: Nope. Just looking.

Clerk: (following us through store, then noticing my hand brush across the arm of a leather sofa) That’s a GREAT couch, right? Lots of interest in this model. Very modern. Are you thinking about a new couch? This one pulls out to a queen bed. Did you need a sleeper sofa? Traditional or contemporary?

Me: Leave me alone or I’ll use a Sharpie to draw your caricature on this GREAT leather sofa.

Clerk: Actually this sofa is completely resistant to stains. Do you have children? This one is

hope those darn brakes work (photo: ingur.com)

perfect for families, stain-proof really. It has a matching loveseat and sofa too. Cash or credit?

I haven’t had a single Malian act like that yet. And besides, they literally sell sofas on the side of the road here so you can shop from your car without vendor involvement. But honestly they aren’t hucksters here, just industrious and quite productive—I mean c’mon, they sell the weeds they cut in ditches!

The people here work hard, really hard. Even though they aren’t making a whole lot of money, it’s about a thousand degrees outside, and their job doesn’t come with health insurance or vacations, they don’t complain. Not even the guys welding metal in the full sun, in an open sided hut about 8 inches from the edge of a dusty, busy road. Or the guys cutting metal rods with a hacksaw, again in the full sun next to the road. Or the ladies carrying large tubs of bright orange carrots or mounds of sticks on their heads with their babies tied to their backs.

dried fish…no extra charge for the odor! (photo: cuboimages.it)

But here’s the crazy thing. When you don’t buy from these folks, they still smile and wish you well. No dirty looks. No condescending remarks. These guilty feelings I have around them are really my problem, and I probably need to realize that my decision to buy/not buy is not that important to them in the grand scheme of things. And when it makes sense and the mood is right, I’ll buy stuff from them. Just not gourmet candy canes. Ever.

Chapter 18: That’s MALI. With an M. And no AW.

Posted on January 24, 2013 by 2seetheglobe

Malawi, not Mali

Me (with a Toureg) in Mali, not Bali or Malawi

Bali, not Mali

A year ago we signed a contract to teach in Mali, an African country that nobody had heard of before. People assumed we said Bali, even though it’s not a country and nowhere near Africa. But it does rhyme.

Or they thought we were heading to Malawi. It was also an obscure African nation, well, until Madonna adopted David Banda and Chifundo there and it was featured on E Entertainment News and in scholarly magazines like People, Us, and Star (whose current cover screams “It’s Demi! Cougar Goes Wild in Mexico: THE SEX WAS VERY LOUD”).

Then people would ask US, “What’s Mali close to?” And we would mention neighboring countries such as Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, and Mauritania. And they would do that nod-without-actually-understanding-what was just-said thing.

Then two months passed and Mali’s 20 years of democracy disappeared overnight when a group of junior soldiers staged a coup d’état in Bamako. We were certain that Mali would be splashed all over the headlines, but apparently the U.S. media saves that kind of coverage for celebrity adoptions.

Not a single call came from concerned friends or family members because the bloodless coup wasn’t mentioned in the U.S. press. Unless you count those single sentence news blips they bury a few pages in, where I found the coup mentioned right under a blip about David Beckham’s dad having his phone hacked, and right above a blip about Gene Simmons of KISS calling Rihanna ‘fake karaoke’ in a bizarre rant. Now that’s news!

It was probably better, we decided, that Mali’s troubles weren’t front page–or even back page–news in the U.S. We didn’t want our loved ones thinking we were going to be teaching in a war zone. Sure, things in Bamako were sketchy for a short while, with sanctions and a clumsy sort-of counter coup. But except for a couple of tense days at the start, the streets were calm and it was business as usual. The school where we planned to teach continued to operate, though in a “virtual school” format since many of the students and their families left Mali a couple of months earlier than usual. But it would reopen in August and we planned to be there.

But this distraction in Bamako had caused all hell to break loose far in the north of Mali, where Tuareg rebels and then Islamist militants easily overtook small desert towns (Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal) that the Malian military had abandoned. Though horrible for the Malians in the desert, this was not affecting life 1000 miles to the south in Bamako.

The Islamist militants imposed a strict form of sharia law in these desert towns. Despite the fact that Mali is a culture rich in the arts—and has been for thousands of years—the rebels outlawed dancing, musical instruments, listening to music, and even performances by griots, the African singers and storytellers (and repositories of oral history) whose tradition dates to the 13^th century.

A griot at work!

They outlawed watching sports on TV. Women couldn’t wear perfume, go for a stroll with friends, or chat in groups. Those women who didn’t cover their bodies and faces were imprisoned or raped.

So what did the rebels actually allow under this extreme version of the moral code and religious law of Islam? Let’s see, it’s okay to recruit and arm 12 year-olds to fight with them. It’s cool to destroy ancient shrines, tombs, and mosques. And you can read the Quran.

And still, Mali wasn’t in the news.

But that all changed when Islamist rebels in the remote town of Aguelhok stoned a couple for having a relationship outside of marriage. And started public floggings for cigarette smoking or drinking alcohol. And when they cut off the right hands and left feet of five men in Gao accused of robbing a bus, with one of these amputations occurring in the town square.

This kind of horror sells papers and attracts viewers. When a news anchor says, “What we are about to show you is disturbing and not appropriate for young children,” viewership spikes like the Richter scale during an earthquake. They come up with alliterative headlines, like “Mali Madness” and “Massacre in Mali. So pictures and video of the Mali amputees and their bloody stumps were everywhere, and suddenly everyone we knew associated Mali with limb-cutting and death by gravel.

I thought it was curious that the media was suddenly interested in the sharia law in these remote desert towns when other entire countries have operated under this system for decades. For goodness sakes, Saudi Arabia operates under sharia law–no constitution at all and the only Arab country that’s never had national elections. It’s the only country in the whole world where women are banned from driving. And the death penalty can be imposed for “homosexual activity” (Having an Oscar party? Singing show tunes? Making parfaits?).

Saudi women go crazy and show their hand skin.

Malaysia, which supposedly operates under a more moderate version of sharia law, sentenced a Muslim woman to a caning for drinking a beer, and could have imposed a three-year prison term. A Muslim male and female who are not married but in a secluded area together can be jailed. In 2003, a Malaysian court ruled that, under sharia law, a man may divorce his wife via text messaging as long as the message is clear and unequivocal. I think all of these situations would make for must-read news stories, or at least a good Lifetime movie: “Scars Across My Buttocks: The Suriawati Sayid Story, a gripping teledrama of a Malaysian housewife viciously caned for sipping a white Zin while she listened to Kenny G.”

But it was the bloody stuff, of course, from the remote Malian north that caught the attention of the U.S. media and eventually of our friends and family. “I guess you heard about the stoning and the lopped off limbs in Mali?” they would ask us in a caring, yet I-told-you-so tone.

“Oh, you mean those isolated incidents out in the middle of the Sahara, 1000 miles from where we will be living?” we would answer.

“And they lashed a guy for smoking,” they would add.

“I often feel like lashing people who smoke, especially when I’m eating,” I would reply.

Meanwhile during the same month the Islamists did those things, the following incidents happened within a 50-mile radius of our West Palm Beach home:

two sisters were killed with high-powered semi-automatic rifles in a home invasion; a few weeks later the 17-year-old son of one of the women was arrested for another murder
prosecutors released 1000 pages of evidence in the case of a man accused of killing the 6- and 10-year-old children of his girlfriend, stuffing their bodies in suitcases, and dropping them in a local canal; the wife was found dead in a landfill the previous year
a man broke into a woman’s home and raped her while her child slept nearby
a 6-year-old girl brought two loaded guns in a backpack to her elementary school; they were put there by accident by her uncle, a convicted felon
a deputy was put on leave after firing shots at a stolen truck coming toward him
a 26-year old man destroyed a psychic’s shop and used his own blood to write FEAR GOD on the window
a two-story condo was set ablaze by an arsonist
a 19-year old man randomly shot into a crowd of people
a judge sentenced three alleged members of the Latino street gang Sur 13’s local chapter to a total of 150 years in prison for attempted murder, armed robbery, and racketeering
a 21-year-old man received 9 consecutive life sentences for participating in a violent robbery of a Dunkin’ Donuts in which another man shot several people
a man received a 30 year prison sentence for the beating and stabbing death of his 29-year-old girlfriend
a man who killed a major league pitcher out for a jog during spring training was released 10 years early from prison
a 33-year-old woman was found not guilty by reason of insanity after bludgeoning to death her 80-year-old grandmother and shooting her aunt’s boyfriend
a 22-year-old man was arrested for shooting at transvestite prostitutes
a 16-year-old boy who brought a gun to a street fight was charged with shooting a 12-year-old girl who was among the onlookers

That same month statistics were released showing Florida ranked 4^th from the bottom on the U.S. Peace Index, based on homicides, violent crime, incarcerations, and small arms.

Ahh, nothing like the safety and comfort of home.

To be honest, we weren’t going to Mali to escape the violence in the U.S. as much as we were trying to escape the slow death of our careers! Teaching in the U.S. was about as enjoyable as passing a kidney stone, and at least with the kidney stone the pain eventually passes. Teaching became more and more agonizing with each passing month. It was like some bad movie about a deranged scientist in a secret lab somewhere, constantly inventing ways to make teaching and learning more miserable:

Setting: outside of Moody Creek, Idaho; castle-like structure with the lights aglow in a laboratory in the basement filled with bubbling beakers of multicolored liquids.

A crazy-haired woman, with a face that uncannily resembles Michelle Rhee, wears a stained lab coat. Her assistant, with a face eerily similar to Florida governor Rick Scott peers over her shoulder.

Mad scientist: I DID it! One drop of my new potion in their Starbucks reusable cup and lawmakers will immediately pass a law requiring all the little brats in America to take a single test on one day!

Assistant with Hump Shoulder: But that’s not deranged. Kids always take tests.

Mad Scientist: But wait Humphrey, there’s more. This won’t be just any test….it will ruin lives! Kids will get stomachaches and vomit just thinking about it! Teachers will lose their jobs if their kids don’t score high enough! Schools will be shuttered if the test results don’t meet some ambiguous mark!

Assistant: But there’s plenty of money in the education budgets. Schools will be able to get any resources they need for test prep.

Mad Scientist: Do you take me for a fool? I invented a potion to make lawmakers keen on the idea of charter schools—you know, for-profit enterprises that suck the money out of public school budgets? And don’t worry, by the time states pay companies for providing and grading the tests, there won’t be much left in any budget. Mwahhhha ha ha ha!

(End of scene)

I don’t think our loved ones fully understand our complete and utter dissatisfaction with teaching under these dreadful conditions. And yes I realize there are worse job situations—maybe pumping poo out of porta-potties, cleaning slaughterhouses, or working as Donald Trump’s hair stylist. But we had invested a whole lotta time and a whole lotta money in our teaching careers and all we were getting in return was a shrinking paycheck and expanding ulcers.

Personally, I got into teaching to amaze and inspire my students, to knock their socks off about learning, to help them become passionate and thoughtful and empathetic and creative. I have and will continue to invest unlimited time in that pursuit—but not under those conditions listed above. It’s degrading and insulting to me as a professional. In my last position in the States, as a resource teacher for our district office, half of my annual evaluation was based on the high stakes test scores of students at all of our district’s elementary schools….and I worked with exactly two of those schools. Geez, that damn mad scientist has a new potion!

Our novel turns into live action.

Honestly, we prefer to teach at an international school–free of this high stakes test madness–even if it’s in a country with a shaky government, rebel skirmishes 1000 miles away, and herds of longhorn cattle blocking the main road in town. I can perfectly justify the negatives here in Mali with the negatives we endured teaching back home. As a matter of fact, let me do so in a chart (I am a teacher after all):

Mali		USA
open sewers	are not as stinky as	opening our paycheck last year to see a 3% salary decrease (after 5 years without a raise)
having to remove red dust from everything	is not as bad as	having to remove art, music, recess, social studies, and field trips from the school in favor of tested subjects
closing the windows when someone is burning tires or plastic bottles	is preferable to	closing schools when the test scores are too low
draining any standing water so as not to attract malaria-carrying mosquitoes	is not as horrible as	draining the creativity, motivation, and fun out of education with constant test prep
giving loose change to the poor that surround us outside of stores and restaurants	is better than	giving public money to charter schools that do no better (and mostly worse) educating kids than public schools
unreasonable bands of rebels 1000 miles from us	is less hostile than	unreasonable lawmakers and administrators who continue to allow high-stakes testing to continue

Yep we’re in MALI, the place with the conflict in the north, the sharia-law-imposing Islamist rebels, and a ragtag government that’s struggling to keep up. But we are still shopping at the bottle shop warehouse for beer, tonic, and Coke, but definitely not gin because it is that lowly Gordon’s stuff. We still hit our ATM, the one that always works but gives you an amount different than what you selected on the screen. We still frequent our newly expanded minimart that carries things you can’t find anywhere else in town, such as plastic sandwich bags, Clairol Herbal Essence Shampoo, canned tuna in water, and duck-flavored canned cat food. And we still enjoy visits to our friendly neighborhood pharmacy to buy more malaria prevention meds prescribed by Dr. Me-Myself-and-I, no pesky prescriptions necessary. This is a great place to live and to thrive.

Our school sits on the Niger River, which is also just down the road from our house.

Rest assured, we’re fine–really. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but I do know that for now, at the end of the day, we come home smiling and feeling like we did one hell of a job inspiring our students.

So the next time the TV is sensationalizing Mali’s conflict, showing a bloody stump or a pickup truck full of smelly-looking rebels, picture the two of us reclining on a chaise on our roof deck, me with a glass of white Zin, and the mellow sounds of Kenny G coming from the iPod. Ain’t Mali grand?

Chapter 17: Is This Blog About: (a) Peri-urban Slums, (b) Malaria, (c) Multiple-Choice Questions, or (d) All of the Above?

Posted on December 9, 2012 by 2seetheglobe

Don’t worry about those toxic fumes kids, just smile for the camera please.

No doubt about it, field trips make teachers as gleeful as the students. I mean c’mon, what educator doesn’t enjoy a break from the routine, a glimpse of the world outside of those classroom walls, an occasion for the “real world” to be the teacher, an opportunity to get to know a different side of your students, and a perfect chance to “lose” a student you don’t particularly care for (“Seriously Principal Jones, I really have no idea how Timmy got locked inside that ancient Egyptian sarcophagus in the museum.”)

Field trips give us a peek inside the real world.

So it’s just utterly depressing that field trips in the U.S. are becoming as rare as a third grader without a cell phone. There was a time when field trips were a normal part of the curriculum, as routine as those bad baby showers in the school library where I always chipped in to buy “ones-ies” for some teacher I hadn’t said two words to in three years (and I still don’t know what “ones-ies” are).

Smoking in school and triangular sideburns have fallen out of fashion.

But now field trips have mostly gone the way of the dodo bird and recess and smoking in the teacher’s lounge…even though field trips can be an important part of the curriculum.

Now granted field trips didn’t always appear on the surface to be related to the curriculum, but scout’s honor they were. Growing up in rural Illinois, I recall yearly trips in junior high to the Six Flags amusement park in St. Louis, Missouri where we would ingest as much fat and sugar as possible before riding an upside-down roller coaster and discovering just how the body’s digestive system does/doesn’t work.

Junior High trip to Six Flags, where the back of the bus was the place to be.

Or how one could use an umbrella and a wad of gum to rescue coins from the fountain and finance another trip to the sno-cone cart. Or how certain chemicals in Mountain Dew can remove the vomit smell from your clothes. Or how certain forces, maybe evil ones, can allow your spit to travel in many directions on spinning rides. These valuable life lessons have stayed with me for years.

I can remember going on plenty of non-vomiting field trips too. We once visited New Salem State Historic Site near Springfield, IL, a reconstruction of the village where Abe Lincoln spent his early adulthood.

Boiling a classmate on our New Salem field trip

Me (right) and several others boil a classmate on our New Salem field trip.

I can still remember asking the guide what they sold at the general store back in Abe’s day. She said, simply, “A lot of liquor.” And our two teachers tried to secretly give each other the thumbs-up sign except we all saw them. So history for me has always had positive, liquor-related connotations. Now excuse me while I go study Samuel Adams six to twelve more times.

There were plenty of other field trips too. In high school we went to the movie theatre to see the rerelease of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet—you know the one where we see Romeo’s butt and Juliet’s boobies for a millisecond each? Of course back at school those were the only milliseconds of this 138-minute film we could recall in vivid detail.

In elementary school we visited the potato chip factory where we all decided we would work one day since we figured the workers ate as many free chips as they wanted. We also went to art museums where I remember our 4^th grade selves sprawling on the ground to look up the dress of a realistic sculpture of a woman and getting a quick anatomy lesson.

Oregon Industries slides.
Photo: Original Collection: Visual Instruction Department Lantern Slides

I also remember a fantastic college field trip to Toronto where we came up with redesign plans for the urban waterfront to make it more pedestrian friendly, toured the city to see cutting-edge urban design work, and watched Canadian Border guards use a drug-sniffing dog to find pot in one of my classmate’s guitar case. Good times.

Drug sniffing dog finds what it's looking for in our classmate's luggage. And it's not dog biscuits.

Drug sniffing dog finds what it’s looking for in our classmate’s guitar case. And it’s not sheet music.

But these days, school is all about that damn high-stakes test in the spring. If a school activity doesn’t involve a multiple-choice question or a fact that can be memorized and regurgitated, it’s not seen as valuable. Never mind that not a shred of evidence supports this drill-and-kill nightmare approach to “instruction.” And never mind that it numbs kids’ brains and makes them hate school. It’s enough to drive a teacher to drink. Or at least take a field trip that supports that habit.My old school district back in Florida actually had an official “blackout period” in the months preceding the state test–no field trips, no guest speakers, no sending teachers out of the school for professional development. What WAS allowed was having kids sit bored in their classrooms answering multiple-choice questions to prepare for the state test that’s comprised of multiple-choice questions. On that note, I’ve got a question for people who believe that approach makes sense:

1. Why are multiple choice tests stupid?

a. They lead kids to believe that there is just one “right” answer to every question.

b. Kids can answer correctly without actually thinking or problem solving or even reading the question.

c. They give kids no way to apply the knowledge they have learned.

d. They purposely include “distracter” answers that are wrong or confusing, like “none of the above” or “all of the above.”

e. All of the above.

Point me in the direction of the free samples!

But seriously, what moron doesn’t understand the benefits of a field trip? Would you rather read a worksheet about chocolate production, or pay a visit to the Snickers factory? Analyze a report on the effects of alcohol on your short-term memory, or participate in some experiments at the Absolut headquarters? Memorize the process of human reproduction or….oh well, I think you get the picture.

Now that I’ve escaped that madness by leaving the country, I have a new appreciation for the power of field trips, especially as they relate to service learning. This is one educational trend that doesn’t suck at all. Basically service learning means that you involve students in a community service project that also incorporates one or more academic areas. They learn academic skills, help their community, and hopefully understand that they can make a difference in this world by stepping away from the PlayStation.

So with the wind back in my sails in a brand new non-test-obsessed school, I’ve partnered my class with a U.S.-based, non-profit organization here in Bamako called Mali Health whose mission is to “empower impoverished urban communities in Mali to transform maternal and child health sustainably.” As far as mission statements go, that’s a biggie because the situation here in Mali is just darn scary. For starters:

life expectancy in Mali averages 49 years
93% of Malians live in poor, urban communities (AKA slums)
Mali is one of the 15 poorest countries in the world
1 in 5 children dies before age 5
1 in 3 children are underweight
1 out of 22 women die from maternal complications

A month or so ago Mali Health did a short presentation at our school that really piqued my students’ interest. They were especially interested in the fact that the communities Mali Health serve have no sewage systems, plumbing, or electricity. And as usual they dwelled on bathroom-related questions, such as:

So the people poop in holes? (affirmative)
Does it smell? (affirmative)
Does it ever leak out? (yes, and contaminating nearby wells)
Who cleans out the holes when they get full? (someone is lowered in, and he shovels it out)
Do they use toilet paper? (varies)
Do they have flat screen TVs in their latrines? (OK, I just made that one up, but I’m sure they were thinking this)
A latrine under construction in Sikoro. Photo: ©Sikoro Teriw – http://www.sikoro-mali.org

Working with their energetic young director we decided that my students would create graphic novels (the fancy name for comic books) that teach about malaria prevention—but in an entertaining way that would engage kids.

Malaria is a big problem in sub Saharan Africa, especially this year. Most of the teachers and students at my school have fancy mosquito nets over their beds, have plenty of mosquito spray in a variety of scents and consistencies (I prefer Off Smooth & Dry Powder Formula), and take weekly preventative malaria medication. If we do get malaria it is easily treatable with a 3-day course of pills that cost $7 at the pharmacy (no prescriptions required for meds here). For most of us malaria is nothing more than flu-like symptoms that go away quickly with the meds.

But the folks in these impoverished communities don’t have these luxuries, though I doubt many Americans consider a can of Off Bug Spray a luxury. A doctor visit and malaria meds would cost a Malian about $10 total—or about 10% of a skilled worker’s average salary here. Quite a few organizations do donate mosquito nets.

Our mosquito net in its upright position; at night it encloses us in a netty cube.

But tightly woven nets keep out mosquitoes AND breezes—not exactly a plus in an oven-like climate—so they are used as fishing nets or room dividers or bridal veils (which totally sounds like an episode of Project Runway or Design Star).

On top of everything else, because malaria is common and can go away on its own, folks here don’t consider it a big deal, even though it can actually kill them if left untreated.

So the plan is for my kids to create these books to help create awareness about this illness, and Mali Health will distribute them to local school children. Since these local kids either speak Bambara (their first language) or French (taught in schools here) my students will first write their text in English, then translate it into French. Thankfully our AISB French teachers will assist. My French language skills, while improving, are still in the Tonto-sounding phase (“Me happy big feast tonight Ke-mo Sah-bee.”)

The great part is that while my students are creating something that can potentially save lives, they are practicing their reading, writing, science, and French skills in a real world way that doesn’t require a single photocopied worksheet or multiple-choice question. I tried this approach once back in the States, where four years ago I had my students create PSAs to encourage people to spay and neuter their pets. Long story short, the Humane Society of the United States put them on DVDs and sent them to shelters nationwide, and the Humane Society still has a link to them on their website (see link at bottom of that page). Here are two of the PSAs:

To get the ball rolling we decided a field trip to the Mali Health office would be in order so that my students could receive background information on malaria transmission and prevention from the experts. So the director put together a full morning of activities and a week ago we headed to Sikoro, a peri-urban slum on the outskirts of Bamako with 80,000 residents (peri-urban, a word I just learned too, means this was once a rural area that has become urbanized). Over 90% of Mali’s population lives in poor urban communities like Sikoro.

Looking down on Bamako (literally, not figuratively).

Aside from the obvious fact that this is a slum, I have to say that the locale is fabulous! The community begins at the bottom of a very large hill and climbs right up the side, all the way to the top. So like the hillside shanty towns in Rio de Janiero, Brazil with gorgeous viewsover the city, Sikoro gives you amazing views over Bamako.

But the roads in there, wow. Our two school vans struggled to navigate the steep dirt paths, full of giant craters and gullies, strewn with trash, and filled with people going every which way.

Zak and Jade present our class donation to Devon, director of Mali Health.

The Mali Health office, a simple structure with rooms open to the outside, was our first stop. There we presented Devon, the director, with a donation of funds our class raised running two booths at our school Halloween carnival. Devon and Matt gave a short but kind of scary presentation on malaria that will forever make me keep the mosquito net canopy tight over the bed while I live in West Africa, or maybe anywhere in the world except for Antarctica.

Matt at Mali Health gives us the scoop on mosquitoes.

Next we walked/hiked up and up and up rambling roads to Bandiagara Coura Elementary School, one of the local schools in Sikoro and one of the potential audiences for our malaria prevention graphic novel. Again, a fantastic locale on a hilltop that, in an alternative universe, would be the perfect setting for a luxury hotel or my sprawling mansion (hey, a teacher can dream, can’t he?).

Daredevil goat.

But instead here sat the school, several unpainted, concrete block rectangles comprised of three or so side-by-side classrooms. There were no doors. Above each doorway someone had quickly hand-painted the grade level. The classrooms were no more than 12 by 12 feet with dirt floors and a single window opening without glass or a screen. There was no electricity, hence no lights. Thirty kids sat scrunched together at little wooden desk/bench combos meant for about half that many. A piece of plywood painted black was nailed to the front wall and covered with chalked on French sentences.

When U.S. teachers complain about crowded classrooms, I’ll whip out this photo.

No books, pencils, or floor.

My tongue-tied students.

Q&A with the school’s director.

The crazy thing is that this is a PRIVATE school that has better conditions than the public schools (which kids have to pay to attend too, just not as much). To attend this private school these kids pay anywhere from $5.00 to $18.00/month. It doesn’t sound like much, but remember a skilled worker here makes a whopping average of $100/month. So having a few kids in school could wipe out a big chunk of your salary.

I prop myself up against a tree after hiking the steep roads.

My students mix in. Well, kind of.

It was the first time I saw my students speechless. Really, they couldn’t even think of one question to ask the kids in the classroom. My vision was that this part of the visit was going to be a dynamic, back-and-forth conversation between my kids and the Bandiagara Coura kids, discovering that even though they were from vastly different worlds they were all just kids when it came down to it. Nuh-uh. Now it looked like the rich kids ogling the poor kids, and vice versa.

The bakery in our school lobby.

I suppose I understand their reticence though. After all, we had just left our expansive 18-month-old school overlooking the Niger River, with LCD projectors and classroom sets of MacBook computers and a bakery shop in our lobby and our classroom with 6 ceiling fans and sliding windows on three sides and a floor plan that is so huge for the 18 of us that I have room for an acting area, a library area, round tables for student seating, a teacher zone, a walk in closet, a computer area. And where I recently put in a work order because I didn’t think the AC was quite cool enough. Now, in 15 minutes, we were in the real world–at least as far as Mali is concerned—and the contrast was massive.

For the most part my students come from privileged backgrounds. They travel internationally at least a few times a year. They have maids, gardeners, and drivers. Their parents have great jobs in embassies, big mining companies, or international aid organizations. They mostly are kept far away from places like Sikoro, so I can understand why they were a little tongue-tied as they stared at 30 kids crammed into a room that would fit twice into our own school’s hedge maze garden (yep, we have a hedge maze at school).

The Malaria Games; like the Hunger Games without the killing.

After some awkward silence my students and the Bandiagara Coura students headed to a nearby dirt play field where the Mali Health staff taught a capture the flag style game. Except this one involved students playing either humans, mosquitoes, or the malaria virus, and the goal was to capture the mosquito eggs (small plastic balls, thank goodness). Together the students kicked up quite the dust storm, but from what I could see (and taste) through the brown fog they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Photo: Matt Schinske

Then it was time for another hike, this time back down the hill along more rambling dirt roads. I have to say that up there at the top it didn’t seem so slummy. The small plaster houses with tin roofs were mostly spaced apart on the hillside, kind of reminding me of some rural areas in Greece. You could see for miles over the chaos of Bamako while standing in peace and quiet.

But, as we made our way down and the community grew denser, it felt more like a slum. Since there are no sewage systems, dirty water of some sort trickled down the wrinkles in the dirt road. It did not have a pleasant odor. It pooled here and there into puddles where I am sure Ms. Mosquito and her ten trillion closest friends have a hopping shindig every night, from dusk to dawn. The smell was somewhat intense too, gag-inducing actually, and we all pulled our shirts up over our noses for the better part of tour hike.

Before long we arrived at Sourakabougou Clinic, a tiny public health center for the residents. After a quick talk with the very young head doctor ($250/month salary BTW), we broke up in groups of three to tour the facility, which like the school is a concrete block structure with tiny, un-airconditioned rooms. One fit only four, old metal twin beds placed side by side which held malaria patients, each with an IV drip in their arm. Another, about half the size of that one, held two metal tables with stirrups—the birthing room. It was a sobering experience for my students who, if they need medical care, usually travel to Paris or the States to very fancy schmancy clinics.

Back in our own classroom the kids were so beat they collapsed into our comfy beanbag chairs (not sure I saw many of those at the Bandiagara Coura school) and I postponed the math test we were going to take. We had walked a lot that day in some pretty intense sun on some pretty crazy paths, and gave our senses quite a workout too (especially our sense of smell).

The kids were exhausted, but they were buzzing (haha) with ideas for our graphic novel about malaria and how they wanted to help the school and the kids in that community. There was talk of a school supply drive and hosting their students at our school for a day. One boy even remarked that today he realized “how lucky he really was.” Another said, “Even though they don’t have very much, they didn’t seem sad at all.”

So to summarize, my students were enlightened about malaria, poverty, community service, and life because

a. they were forced to memorize this information from a textbook at school.

b. they read a passage about this information on a worksheet, then answered five multiple-choice questions.

c. they read this information on Wikipedia.

d. they went on a four-hour field trip.

Our last stop before returning to school…lunch at the Parc National du Bamako.

Chapter 16: These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Posted on November 18, 2012 by 2seetheglobe

I don’t particularly fawn over raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. And if I’m ever finding myself in a situation where I notice “snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes” I’m probably getting frostbite and my toes will eventually blacken and fall off.

But like Maria/Julie Andrews I actually do have a few favorite things, none of

The African hills are alive with the sound of music.

which are Austrian-based at this time (though I’m not adverse to “crisp apple strudels”).

Nope, my favorite things all come courtesy of Mali. Which is good, I suppose, because I do live in Mali now. It would really blow to have lots of favorite things that were Malian and live in, say, a small town in Arkansas—though that would probably blow no matter what. I am extremely thankful that my Malian list of favorite things continues to grow and is much, much longer than my list of “Things That Drive Me Insane,” a list that was always growing when I lived in the States, particularly after a drive on I-95.

Speaking of thankful, I’ve noticed a lot of folks doing a daily “What I’m Thankful For” post on Facebook during the month of November. I thought about jumping on that bandwagon, expressing my gratitude for all my favorite things in Mali. But while I personally enjoy reading these “thankful” posts, there are others who, hmmm how do I say this politely, would rather gargle with bleach than read these. From the criticisms I’ve read, the critics don’t seem to complain about the concept of people being thankful (which I’m thankful for), but rather what they perceive to be the generic/sappy/not-so-creative nature of the posts. I must admit, it is interesting when someone shakes things up a bit, as with these “thankful posts” I saw online from someone named Therese Long of Pearson Education, someone I wish lived next door to me:

1. I’m thankful we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way…invite everyone in my neighborhood to my house, have an enormous feast, then kill them and take their land.

“Contrary to popular mythology the Pilgrims were no friends to the local Indians. They were engaged in a ruthless war of extermination against their hosts, even as they falsely posed as friends. Just days before the alleged Thanksgiving love-fest, a company of Pilgrims led by Myles Standish actively sought to chop off the head of a local chief. ” -from The Hidden History of Massachusetts

2. I’m thankful for watching football, making pumpkin pie, and saying the magic phrase that sends my aunt storming out of the dining room to sit in her car.

3. I’m thankful for 38 years of marriage to myself. I have always been by my side and understand me when no one else did.

4. I’m thankful you can delete status updates after 10 minutes of no likes.

5. I’m thankful Facebook is now the second place I have found comfort in talking to a wall.

6. I’m thankful that everyone who likes me is awesome and brilliant, and everyone who doesn’t, is a selfish jerk. Very weird phenomenon!

7. I’m thankful I don’t live in a bubble wrap factory, as I just don’t have that much self-control.

So to avoid any chance of my thankful posts being deemed “generic” (which for me would be the greatest insult EVER), my thankful things list will become my list of favorite things. AND I’ll bury this list deep in my blog where it will be safe from the scrutiny of the general public. Well, other than the 2726 views my Mali blog has racked up so far (!) from people in 52 countries (!!) including Madagascar, Qatar, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (!!!). Which is thrilling and scary at the same time.

My Favorite Things: Mali Edition

One chocolate croissant, s’il vous plait. And make it fast…I’m late for social studies!

1. The American International School of Bamako lobby which includes a school store and…a bakery! I used to think my school in Florida was pretty cool because it had a soda machine, but a bakery in the lobby?! I’m pretty sure I dreamed this one time (“I was wandering through this school made of gingerbread and frosting, with a French bakery in the lobby and a swimming pool filled with gin and tonic and floaties in the shape of lime wedges, and all of the students were Oompa-Loompas.”).

To top it all off, it’s a French style bakery and the pastries and bread are warm when the bakery guy brings them in the morning. Chocolate or almond pastries are tied for my favorite. Oh, and apple. And the plain is good too. We have a standing order for 5 loaves of French bread (just 60 cents each) every Tuesday and Friday. And no we aren’t big, fat

We always get enough just in case unexpected guests pop in.

pigs…they are skinny loaves and you never know when company might show up unexpectedly. The loaves are crispy on the outside and moist on the inside, and they taste good with anything, like peanut butter and jelly, butter, or gin. Well, gin goes with anything you know.

2. Malian drivers – I have yet to see one get ticked off or shoot the bird or scream profanities. Even if you pull out in front them. Or hit them. Honestly, we saw a car slam into a moto and knock it clean across the road. The moto driver got up and dusted himself off while the car driver checked to see if he was alright. Then they shook hands and took off.

Out of one lane, many.

To put this all into context, there are basically few/no rules of the road here. If you need to get into traffic you just kind of pull your car into the flow of traffic and the person careening head-on toward you will slow and flash their lights and let you in. On the roads here you can also drive in just about any direction, in just about any lane, or between the lanes, or in the shoulder. Everyone just kind of accepts the traffic chaos and deals with it–without emotion or feeling like they rule the road. Plus they drive sloooooowly. How I miss those giant SUVs that used to zoom up behind my little car in Florida, driving 75 MPH about 2” from my rear bumper, the driver all red-faced and mouthing unclean words because I wasn’t going faster. Good times.

3. The Kora – a traditional Malian instrument I love so much I became one for Halloween. It has 21 strings and sounds like a cross between a harp, banjo, and guitar, and maybe a zither too. And it’s made from a darn gourd! Then there’s the way you hold it….

4. Beverage choices circa 1957: If you want soda, it’s regular Coke made with actual sugar (not corn syrup), sipped icy cold from the famously-shaped glass bottle. No diet stuff, no added fake cherry or lime flavoring, no caffeine-free. Just Coca Cola like Beaver Cleaver drank it. Actually we drink more water than anything else since (1) filtered water is free at school and (2) if you don’t drink a lot of water here you’ll faint.

5. Flag and Castel Beer – For rehydration purposes, of course.

6. K’an Bεn, Our School Cat – No sad, caged hamsters at AISB. Nope, we have a school cat that roams the open-air interior spaces of our school and just loves to be caressed by the kids. He has a weird, endearing meow that sounds like a cross between a cat and Ethel Merman singing.

7. Gingembre – Other than gin, this is my preferred bottled beverage in Mali, a carbonated, sweet, ginger juice drink that has a peppery aftertaste that makes you cough a bit. But in a good way.

8. Amadou & Mariam – Malian musical duo–married and blind–who create “Afro-blues” music that mixes traditional Malian sound with rock guitars, Syrian violins, Cuban trumpets, Egyptian ney (flutey-type thing), Indian tablas (drums), and percussion from the Dogon (an ethnic group from central Mali). They sing in French and Bambara, have opened for U2, and the kids in my class know the words to most of their songs. I move my lips like I do, mostly so I can appear to be cosmopolitan.

9. The Sounds Outside of Our Window – Wacky bird calls that I swear are from the “Voices of the Deep Jungle” sound effects CD, the chanty-sounding Muslim call to prayer far off in the distance, the rattle of vehicles as they bounce over our bumpy road losing parts, neighbors greeting each other in Bambara (which sounds kind of like arguing sometimes, unless maybe they are arguing),

angry sheep being herded to the slaughterhou….I mean to the daisy-filled meadow to frolic and play, the clip clop of a horse or donkey pulling a cart full of lime green weeds/ watermelons/garbage/kids/toaster ovens…

10. Speaking French & Bambara – It’s a slow process and sometimes curse-out-loud frustrating, but we are slowly learning to speak two more languages. The school guards and custodians are informally teaching us Bambara each day (I have a massive cheat sheet), Jamey takes a French class at our school once a week, and I’m still plugging (and cursing) away with my online Rosetta Stone French course.

We’ve been here just 3 months and we can already use our newly acquired language skills to ask for gas at the full service station, order at a restaurant AND tell them I’m allergic to garlic, purchase a variety of bakery goods (I practice this one almost daily), read the text messages from our local cell phone provider (last month one message told me I could win a sheep in one of their contests), give instructions to our mechanic, guards, maid, and/or gardener, and tell the neighbor kids to get the hell off our lawn (just kidding—the 24 hour guards and the 8’ wall around our property seems to take care of trespassers).

So…..when the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I’m feeling sad, I simply remember my favorite things, and drink G&Ts like mad.

These are a few of my favorite things too…smart, creative students who keep me on my toes!

Chapter 15: Cause Every Little Thing is Ghana Be Alright

Posted on October 29, 2012 by 2seetheglobe

Ahhh, Fall Break in Bamako. The frost is on the pumpkin and the leaves are a symphony of autumnal colors. Okay, not really. It’s 90 degrees and sunny and any pumpkins around here are diced and added into a mutton stew.

It hardly seemed like we deserve a weeklong break already but in our Life 2.0, this is how we roll. We decided to join our friends/colleagues Thomas and Cindy and their two kids Kailou (13, and Jamey teaches him) and Jade (10, and I teach her) on a sojourn to Ghana, a quick little two-hour flight on Air Mali—which, I might add, served a full meal. Take that cheapskate airlines in the U.S.!

Boarding on the tarmac…still like this better than sweaty, claustrophobic jetways.

We landed in Accra, Ghana’s capital and a sprawling city that seemed to never end. The main part of the city looked much more modern than Bamako as I noticed traffic lights, a Woolworths, and (drumroll)……the Accra Mall! Well of course we asked our taxi driver to stop there since our shopping options in Bamako are limited to roadside stands selling goat heads or gas, and whatever the Lebanese grocery store owners buy from the Chinese wholesalers.

While technically the Accra Mall is a mall (food court, stores in rows, a massive new SUV parked inside that all the men were looking at, traffic clogged parking lot) the two anchors

Pseudo-mall, Accra, Ghana

were Walmart-style stores that smelled like new plastic and were filled with lots of Chinese imports made of plastic. The rest of the stores, lining two short wings of the mall, didn’t have anything we were interested in–not a pair of Gap khakis or an Aunty Anne’s pretzel place in sight. So we headed out in two rickety taxis toward our first beachfront hotel. Along the way we made a stop at a restaurant for some traditional Ghanaian food. I had Red-Red, which is another take on beans and rice and probably wasn’t a good choice for the long, bumpy ride ahead.

It was an interesting ride. We were tucked into two un-air-conditioned taxis. Francis, driver of the taxi I was in, had the radio turned up full volume to a talk-radio station spoken in Twi, a local language that to me sounds like people arguing. And he kept calling people on his cell phone as he weaved in and out of heavy traffic. Lots of tail-gating too. And did I mention there were no seatbelts?

We drove for an hour or so and it quickly became apparent that this is a super-dooper Christian country. There were roadside churches every couple of feet with names like “He is Coming Apostolic Church of Our Lord and Most Gracious Savior” and “Jesus and His Apostles Continuation Church of the Most Holy Redeemer of Jordan” and so forth. Lots of religious billboards too, advertising things like “7 days of Fasting and Celebration” which

The Savior finally got his PhD.

made me wonder just how much starving people could really party down. And the cars had adhesive letters attached to the rear windows saying things like “I am covered in the blood of Jesus” which we saw twice and actually both drivers appeared dry. We also saw “Dr. Jesus” which of course made me wonder how the Savior fairly gets a PhD since he would obviously be able to snap his fingers and a dissertation would just appear.

But most religiously striking of all were the names of the gazillion little booth-type stores lining the roads for almost every inch of roadway. No matter what they sold or what service they performed, they always worked a Jesus-y type of feel in there somehow. For example, there was “God is King Razor Wire Company” that featured a skull and crossbones logo. Also: My Hands are Blessed Sewing Shop, Bride of Christ Aluminum Works, Jesus is Lord Agro-Chemical, God Did It All Fashion Centre, Blood of Jesus Electricals, and I Shall Not Die Motors. If the road didn’t turn into a series of canyons I probably could have recorded more of these names, but the taxi was bobbing up and down like a buoy so I mostly kept my eyes closed.

An hour later finally arrived in pitch blackness at Big Milly’s Backyard in Kokrobite Beach, where we would spend our first two nights.

Relax, oh tourists. But not with drugs.

It’s a walled compound that backs up to a working beach, and includes a big outdoor bar, an elevated restaurant overlooking the crashing waves, and then a series of individual structures containing one or two rooms. Our place had a quaint front porch where we could sit and relax, but the room itself was tiny—really just room enough for the full-sized bed and a chair. There was a little AC unit that didn’t work well the first night but did the

Big Milly’s bar, front and center.

second night. The bathroom was a closet-sized alcove with a toilet and showerhead (no sink) and no door—just a see-through gauze curtain that was not an effective sound stopper, if you know what I mean. I should probably say that the room cost all of $25 and Big Milly’s caters to backpackers, so we knew not to expect Jacuzzi tubs and 1000 thread count sheets (they were tye-dyed here, by the way).

The next day was marvelously sunny and we were excited to hit the beach after being in landlocked Mali for the last two and a half months. I read a little notice on the back of the door that said the beach was safe to walk

…or you’ll be stabbed!

and the villagers were friendly “as long as you brought nothing with you.” Then it said, “For more details ask the receptionist.” So I headed to the reception building and asked the young Ghanaian man about the beach. Here’s how it went down:

Me: Can I bring my camera to the beach?

Ghanaian: No (said without looking up)

Me: Will it get stolen?

G: Yes. (still not looking up and speaking in a monotone voice)

Me: Really…

G: They will mug you. (said matter-of-factly)

Me: With weapons?

G: Knives. So is your room okay?

Jamey braves the beach.

So my parade was rained on a bit since I hadn’t factored in a knifing during this vacation. We did frolic in the water, without anything but ourselves and our bathing suits, and not one stabbing occurred. It’s a working beach so there was always something to see-the wooden boats coming ashore with nets full of fish and lobster and ladies carrying baskets of stuff on their head, like baggies of water to drink or a heaping basket of bras in a variety of delightful colors and patterns, such as camouflage.

We did have a fantastic dinner at the open-air restaurant overlooking the crime-ridden beach—a heap of fresh lobster that really just melted in your mouth. It made us forget all about the potential bodily harm that could happen just a few meters away.

Sit down, you’re rockin’ the boat..

All-in-all Big Milly’s had a weird vibe to it, as budget, backpacker-type places often do. There were two English dudes motorcycling across Africa who worked on their bikes right in front of our little house the whole time we were there. There was a serious-looking dreadlocked blonde gal lounging around who may or may not have “worked” there. There were locals playing what looked like speed checkers (not sure that’s a real

Quick pic of me and a boat, then back to the safety of Big Milly’s.

game) around the bar. There were signs saying “Smoking Area – No Marijuana – Cigarettes Only). When I was chatting with the receptionist when changing money, she told me she didn’t like Obama because he “legalized homosexuality.” And when Cindy and Thomas turned in some dirty clothes to be laundered, they came back still dirty, but folded. We were ready for the next hotel.

Off to Green Turtle Lodge

On Day 3 we had arranged for our very own vehicle to take us on the looong journey to the Green Turtle Lodge in Akwinaa Beach (with a couple of sightseeing trips in between), far to the west about 6 hours or more.

Here we are, still in the “this is going to be so much fun to ride in” phase.

We were riding in a tro tro, the Ghanaian term for any public transport bigger than a regular taxi, and it’s usually a cargo van. Ours pulled in an hour late at 9 AM sporting a brilliant orange-red paint job over it’s rickety, rusting frame–what my students back home would have called a “hooptie” or what we might call a vehicle that we would prefer to take a picture of rather than ride in. While Ghana is an English speaking country, the driver didn’t speak it very well, nor did the two guys accompanying him whose roles we didn’t understand. But he assured us he knew where he was going, and off we went. In the exact opposite direction of where we should have been going.

Thirty minutes later we determined we were heading due east rather than west, and the driver swore we were going to Lake Volta in eastern Ghana, even though we had shown him on the map that we wanted to go to the Green Turtle Lodge in far western Ghana. The three guys (whom I’ll call Clueless Driver, Bitchy Co-pilot, and Pee-Guy) were perturbed but turned the tro tro around and back we headed to where we began, now a full two hours behind schedule. The tro tro was un-air conditioned and the windows rattled and the seats were tattered and not very cushiony and the traffic fumes filled the whole inside with a diesel-ish smelling odor. I was trying to imagine a worse form of transportation–maybe a razor blade-covered surfboard? A bike made out of poison ivy and King Cobras? A canoe made of human waste? Our tro tro was still worse.

Cape Coast palace, where tens of thousands of kidnapped Africans were held before being shipped off to a life of slavery.

After a couple of hours we reached Cape Coast, a somewhat picturesque seaside town that features the Cape Coast Palace, a 200-some year old structure that the Obamas visited a couple of years ago. It was originally the place where tens of thousands kidnapped Africans were brought, processed (e.g. branded), and sent through the “Door of No Return” to be herded onto ships for a grueling overseas journey to slavery–if they even survived the voyage. We walked deep underneath the structure where I immediately stumbled into a small water-filled trench, originally where human waste would have flowed. I tried to imagine what was going through the minds of these prisoners as hundreds of them were crowded into these dark, underground dungeons with not a breath of fresh air and no idea of what their future held. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

On the road again, we noticed Bitchy Co-pilot getting more and more irritated, turning around occasionally to say (I think) “This is very far!” or maybe, “I want to stab you” or whatever. We kept restating the directions and the destination, naming the towns we would pass through and exactly how many kilometers between each. Clueless Driver kept pulling over and asking random people on the road if they knew where Green Turtle Lodge was—even though we were hours away and it was a tiny remote hotel off the beaten track. Every time we stopped Pee Guy would hop out and urinate a few feet from the tro tro, with his back to us but still…eew. Seriously, I can appreciate cultural differences and all, but peeing 2 feet from a van full of strangers is just tacky unless you travel back through time to medieval days. It was probably even tacky then.

Roadside scenery

Now this particular routine continued for the next EIGHT hours, with Clueless, Bitchy, and Pee getting madder and madder. The roads turned bumpier, then it got dark and the tro tro windows were so filthy that it was like driving through pea soup fog (there was no wiper fluid, naturally). Just when it seemed that things couldn’t get worse, we went through a village with 5 foot wide mud roads that was having a giant street celebration complete with throngs of people and smoky air and a brass band (I’m totally serious…a brass band in remote Ghana) and they were all reaching into the windows and screaming and chanting. I thought C, B, and P were going to lose it right there and plow through the crowd at full speed.

After they asked yet another random guy on the road about the lodge, we were directed down another pitch black, muddy, rutted road that eventually turned into a single path with thick jungle on both sides. And was it ever pitch black. Tar black. Ink black. The muddy path was full of deep gashes and sharp ridges, and that old tro tro creaked and swayed and hit bottom over and over. Between the angry crew and the Little House on the Prairie style road my stress barometer was reaching a new high. When Bitchy blurted out something about how stupid this all was, I finally engaged him:

Me (in a near scream): WHAT DO YOU WANT US TO DO?!? WE DON’T KNOW WHERE WE ARE. YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE WE ARE. QUIT TALKING!!

Bitchy (screamy tone): Poot da mooney on top, poot da mooney on top!

Me: Poot da what?!?

Bitchy: Poot da mooney on top, poot da mooney on top!

Me: What does that even mean?

Bitchy: Poot da mooney on top, poot da mooney on top!

Me: I don’t know what you are saying. Turn around.

Bitchy: Poot da mooney on top, poot da mooney on top!

At this point Pee-Guy grabbed my hand and shook it saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” As in, ignore the freak in the front. Thankfully a sign for the Green Turtle lodge appeared in the headlightss and we were there–after being in that ratty tro tro from 9 AM to 7 PM. We decided to give the crabby, clueless trio an extra $50 (which apparently is what “put the money on top” means) but of course Bitchy demanded another $10, to which we just said “GO AWAY” and dismissed him with a flick of the hand, just like in the movies.

Finally at the Green Turtle

Empty beach for miles and miles…

Once our tro tro disappeared into the darkness (thank God), we were led by a tall, be-robed man to our beachfront house at the end of the Green Turtle property. We literally walked along the beach to get there. It was dark but the moon was bright and made the coconut palm fronds sparkle in the ocean breeze. The sound of those waves crashing practically drowned out our conversations. The beach house was brilliant—a long, covered front porch along the whole front façade, 2 giant bedrooms at each end with big windows facing the beach (no glass, just a screen) and a steady ocean breeze blowing in,

Our beach home away from home

all solar powered lights and fans, pebbly mosaic floors, and a big bathroom with a shower surrounded by a rock wall. I was thinking that this might have been worth the last ten hours of torture. Well, at least until I saw the composting toilet, which looks like a toilet until you open the lid and peer down into the dark hole where all of the stuff just drops onto dirt. That part wasn’t especially pleasant, especially after a couple of days.

Made me wanna drink more…

All of us shared the beach house, formerly the home of the British couple (and their two kids) who ran the place. Apparently from the scuttlebutt we heard at the bar, this couple had put the place up for sale for 300,000 Euros and flown the coop a year ago to return to Britain. They still own the place but left a manager in charge along with a Ghanaian staff of 20 or so folks. It was evident that without the owners there to attend to the details, well, the details just weren’t attended to. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a magical place—miles of beach without a hotel, house, or person in sight (a few dogs and goats and an occasional sea turtle though), individual cabins/huts made of local materials and powered only by solar energy, the best bar ever featuring a surfboard with the Savior painted on it saying “Jesus Loves Cocktails,” gazebos on the beach where you could eat your meals,

Interpretive dance or a muscle spasm, can’t remember which I was doing.

oceanside hammocks, etc. But as we had to remember with the last place, this was far off the beaten path and budget priced–our house for 6 people was a whopping $50/night. I’ve paid more than that for a bottle of gin.

When we awoke the next morning it was raining, and that would normally bum me out. But it just felt so perfect! We just sat on the porch and chatted, watching the rain hit the slate blue ocean. We ran in the

even looks good in the rain…

rain to have breakfast in the bar–French toast with grilled plantains. The rain eventually stopped and we walked a mile down the beach to a seaside shantytown village called Akwidaa where their shacks were no more than 10 feet from the ocean, and where a crowd of local kids (some of them butt naked, and not just the little kids) gathered to watch these crazy Americans. Obviously not too many tourists made it to this faraway place and I kind of liked that. Of course just when I thought I was at the edge of the world in a place untouched by time we passed a stand selling Coke and Twix bars. And then one of the kids started rapping some Jay Z song.

Me with the village people

Three kids followed us all the way back to Green Turtle, offering to climb a palm and get us some coconuts. We finally said okay, up the palm they went, and minutes later we were sipping fresh coconut milk and eating fresh coconut meat. We gave them a couple of dollars and they left. Kailou, Jade, and I hit the beach again to build a sand castle. Then it soon became clear that our coconut providers had returned to the village and spread

Our coconut hunters

the word that the rich Americans were doling out big bucks! Come one, come all! Lots of kids came, surrounding us and our castle. One five-year-old even had a machete (thankfully for coconut chopping rather than tourist chopping). They kept asking for money and I found the best way to say no was just to sing show tunes loudly. I got through the better part of the Grease songbook before they gave up and walked away. “Those suh-uh-mer n-i-i-i-i-i-i-ghts…tell me more, tell me mo-oh-ore.” I love you Olivia Newton John. Seriously, this could be a great tactic for the army to use to deter enemies.

Sand castles and show tunes.

That night we had a delicious meal of grilled fish, chicken, and lobster in our own little gazebo smack dab on the beach. We had a lantern illuminating our table, and the only other light was the almost full moon. No more machete kids, just waves crashing on the beach. After eating we walked along the shore looking for sea turtles laying eggs, and it’s amazing how old shoes, food containers, and various other things that belong in a trash bin actually look like turtles from a distance. We just pretended they were.

The village people head back after enduring hours of show tunes.

Toward Kumasi

The next morning we had arranged for a better mode of transportation to take us on what we thought was a 4-hour drive north to Kumasi, the heart of the Ashanti culture in Ghana. The Ashanti are legendary warriors who kept the invading British at bay longer than any other group in Ghana. They are also known for their beautiful crafts and their Kente cloth, and are still “ruled” by a king who wears the coolest-looking outfits ever that they believe repel bullets, even though they are made of cloth and feathers and such.

Obviously a crippled donkey would be a better mode of transport than that awful tro tro we endured. Our ride this time was an upgraded van of the last decade without visible rust and still possessing an original paint job with a slight sheen. The driver (whom I’ll call Hoarse Guy) and his partner (Door Opener) seemed nice enough though barely spoke and/or understood English. The bumpy path that seemed to be such a nightmare two nights prior wasn’t as bad during the day in a vehicle with shocks. We were soon zipping down a highway and even with the windows open it was pleasant enough. I could handle four hours of this.

Except it was eight hours. And seven hours of that was on a deteriorating blacktop road that was pockmarked with potholes 8 or 10 inches deep. Hoarse Guy, who spoke with a gaspy, airy voice that was probably difficult to understand in any language, was also thinking he was Speed Racer. He would roar 70 MPH down this awful road, swerving to avoid potholes, driving on the wrong side of the road into approaching traffic, driving onto the rocky unpaved shoulder, well, you get the general idea. The only thing that could be worse is if some weird moth-like creature landed on my foot while we were riding along, bit me, and drew blood. Okay, that happened too! As Hoarse Guy started passing a giant truck on a hill, I had enough. I shouted from my back seat that he needed to slow down and drive more carefully or I was getting out and not paying him a dime. He whisper-talked something and waved his hand, and after that he was less of a danger, but still swerving all over the road.

The best parts were when we followed a giganto truck spewing diesel fumes, and the smoke filled our van, mixing with the dust that was flying through the air too (I had to wipe off my iPad every 30 minutes or so to remove the dusty film). I asked him to turn on the AC so we rolled up the windows and sat in a blistering hot tomb for 30 minutes until we decided the AC didn’t work so well. Hello diesel and dust and various other smells that wafted in (plastic burning, campfire smoke, animal poo, and flowers for a just brief second. I have been on a public bus in the wilds of Peru, in a crazy taxi in crazy Cairo, Egypt, and in a pickup truck on a steep and rocky mountain road in northern Thailand, but this particular trip definitely topped the list of the worst rides ever. I was relieved that at least the two person crew wasn’t belligerent like the last bunch, with hoarse guy remaining silent (or at least inaudible) and Door Opener guy just opening the door for us whenever we stopped.

Our lunch pit stop, where the food smelled like manure and wet cows.

Oh yeah, the pit stop! How could I forget? We asked if he could stop at a restaurant around lunchtime and Hoarse Guy was quite perplexed. He would say that we were approaching a town with restaurants and then we we got to an area that looked sort of like a town we would say, “So is this the town?” And he would whisper-talk, “No, we passed it already.” Then we would repeat our request to eat at a restaurant. This went on for some time. Finally we saw a sign for “The Royal Hotel and Restaurant” and made him pull over. This open air restaurant had a TV blaring with a Chinese kung fu movie. The hostess said they only had rice and foo foo with either fish or goat. I was sitting this one out as it all had garlic in it (my deadly allergy) and my stomach was tied in knots from the ride. When the food came it smelled like farm odors, maybe sweaty and/or butchered livestock and manure. Mmmm mmmm good.

We finally arrived in the town of Kumasi at rush hour, though we didn’t know where our hotel was located. After some pointless driving around which we certainly were not in the mood for, I noticed a large hotel that could be a landmark. Thomas found it on the map, was quickly able to see where we were, and guided Hoarse Guy to our place, the Kumasi Catering Guesthouse.

In Kumasi

Our guesthouse unit, nestled in a garden.

I liked this place the second we pulled in. It was a walled, leafy complex with little bungalows nestled into shady gardens. The room was comfortable with sweet views into garden areas and……it had a TV, cold AC, and free wifi! As much as I bitch about technology ruining my life, these bits of technology made me very happy at this moment. We sprawled on the bed letting the cold air fill the room while we read through a weeks’ worth of Facebook postings and drank icy Cokes. The Internet was fast as lightning, a luxury we don’t have in Bamako, so we downloaded things like crazy, AND watched YouTube clips without any any buffering. Ah, the simple things in life can be so satisfying. That evening we walked to Vic Baboos restaurant where they had American, Chinese, or Indian food. I opted for sweet and sour chicken and a really large Ghanaian beer that took the edge off quickly.

Making foo foo…mashed up casava (and fingers if the pounder isn’t careful)

The next day we headed out in two taxis to the Ashanti King’s palace, a quick five minute drive. But somehow our taxis became separated and Thomas, Jamey, and I were dropped off in a spot where the others were not waiting. Without phones we had no choice but to wait around, and after 20 minutes we found the others who had been dropped off at another entrance. The palace was a colonial style house that was the former residence of the king—he now had a sassy modern home just behind that looked like a house you would see in a basic gated community in the U.S. But the old place was cool—lots of history and life-sized wax figures here and there that would freak us out every time we walked in a room.

Eyes are the window to our soul, and this dude’s soul is wacked out!

Next we headed off in two taxis to the Cultural Center to visit the Jubilee museum and have lunch. Another 5 minute ride, but my taxi with Cindy and Kailou arrived and the others didn’t. Surely they were just caught in traffic and would be pulling up any second. An hour later, just as we were going to call the American Embassy and report a kidnapping, they pulled up. Turns out their driver took them to Jubilee military park on the outskirts of town where they encountered a big parade and lots of traffic.

We blew off the museum in the interest of time and had lunch, then walked to find the famous “Okomfo Anokye sword,” a sword that has supposedly been in the ground for 300 years that many have tried to pull out (including, supposedly, Mohammad Ali).

C’mon, pull out the sword and ruin a centuries old kingdom. Or just drink some schnapps.

If you do pull it out the entire Ashanti kingdom is supposed to collapse, so I’m guessing they aren’t rooting for anyone to be successful. It was bizarrely located in a hutlike structure on the grounds of a hospital. In order to get there we had to pass through the hospital mortuary area and guys pushing carts with metal domes over them and bodies underneath. We paid our $1.50 to get in the hut and sure enough, inside there was a little wall surrounding a small pit in which a sword handle protruded, and empty bottles of schnapps laying around it. Not sure what the Ashanti-schnapps connection is, but we also read that you can get an audience with the current Ashanti king if you bring along a bottle of schnapps. At least we now he has fresh pepperminty breath.

Our final stop was to be a hat museum, a private collection of some 2000 hats from around the world. This time our two taxis stayed together and arrived together…success at last! And the hat museum had closed a year earlier. So it was back to the guesthouse for more TV, Internet, cool AC, and icy cold Coke (I wasn’t complaining). We again had dinner at Vic Baboos (though we did hike around looking for other restaurants) and this time a group of young Americans was clustered at the door. We struck up a conversation and found out they were Peace Corps volunteers in Ghana. They asked us where we were from, and we told them we lived in Mali. “You live in MALI? Wow…..” one replied.

You know when you impress Peace Corps people, the ones who actually live in huts in villages in the middle of nowhere and walk miles to get water from a well, you have earned some street credibility. We told them things in Bamako were fine but I could see they thought we were sooo brave for living in a post-coup nation with Islamist terrorists roaming the northern half of the country. I wanted to tell them how I had to dodge machine gun fire on the way to work every day, and use Kung Fu to keep the terrorists at bay, but I’m not sure I looked so Indiana Jones-ish in my matchy-matchy Original Penguin outfit. They also advised us to take a bus back to Accra rather than a tro tro since the 6 hour ride was REALLY bumpy. Just the outlook we wanted to hear.

The next morning I awoke early and decided to check the bus schedule for the next (and final) day of our trip. As often happens when Googling, I found a blog about traveling in Ghana and how one could fly between Kumasi and Accra. FLY! In just 45 minutes! I checked the website and not only was there availability, but the cost was only 40 bucks a ticket! I ran like the wind to Thomas and Cindy’s room with the news, and even thought they were still in bed they were excited at the prospect of missing out on a 6 hour bumpy bus ride in lieu of a zippy little flight. We decided to leave that afternoon rather than stay in Kumasi another night, so we bought our tickets online and found a beachfront hotel for our final night in Ghana.

Back to Accra

Restaurant at the new hotel, open air and stocked with alcohol.

The flight to Accra was a dream–fast, efficient, and safe, and we were even able to read our iPads and Kindles the entire time, even when taking off and landing. A couple of taxis were waiting to take us to the Alfia African Lodge, a quaint compound of 22 units on the beach. This being the big city, the price was 4 times what we paid for a night at our other budget hotels, but the beach was fun although littered with trash that I just pretended was big seashells. Dinner was to die for, another open air restaurant with ocean views, and super tasty, creative fare. I had mango curry chicken with a dessert of coconut lemon syrup cake (when all 4 words of a dessert make me salivate I know it’s gonna be tasty), washed down with almost a liter of milk stout, a really dark stout made in Accra that almost tastes like beef.

Hotel decor.

Back in our hotel room, which had a view of the ocean if you craned your neck far to the left, we drifted off to sleep with a smile on our face. Then we awoke at 1 AM sweating because the AC had stopped and it felt like we were locked in a metal shipping container in the middle of the Sahara. We tried to turn on the fan, but nothing. And the windows didn’t open. I attempted to call the front desk, but the phone didn’t work. Goodness, had the zombie apocalypse just happened while I was dreaming for the past two hours?

I dressed and started out for the reception area, and found the security guard who informed me that the front desk was closed and would open at 6 AM, and they could help me then. No, no, no I said. We need a new room now, not in 3 hours. “No poss-ee-bull,” he said. I asked him to call the owner. He chuckled. He said he would find help and left, but after 40 minutes I saw him slowly wandering around the compound again, not even thinking about us.

Accra beach with its big, big seashells

I started in again and didn’t let up and he eventually sent me to security guard number 2 who I think was a clone of the first guy, or maybe just the first guy playing another role to confuse me. “Go to sleep for 3 hours he told me, then we fix,” he offered. No, no, no I said again. “I’m going,” he said to me. “Going where?” I asked. I’m going,” he repeated. Was he blowing me off? After a lot of back and forth I figured out that he was trying to say “I’m going to be right back. By now it was 3 AM and we were sitting sweaty in a tomb of a room since going outside meant risking malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

At 3:30 AM he returned with a somewhat disheveled looking guy with grey dreadlocks who I guess was the owner, and he was very kind and apologetic. He said he had another room for us and to leave everything in this room for now. The new room was smack on the beach with the best views and had the chilliest AC ever, arctic really. We slept soundly for what was left of the rest of the night.

View from room #2

The next morning, our last in Ghana, we decided to splash in the ocean one last time amidst even more “seashells” that arrived overnight. We had another tasty meal in the restaurant and headed to the Accra airport. I now sit at the departure gate ready for the 2 hour flight back to Bamako, and school in just 15 hours. Bumpy roads, carnivorous moths, machete-wielding toddlers and all, it was a Fall Break to remember.

Tae Kwan Do on the beach.

Chapter 14: Baa Baa Dead Sheep, Have You Any Wool?

Posted on October 14, 2012 by 2seetheglobe

Malians will soon celebrate Tabaski, the most important religious celebration of the year. Known as Eid al-Adha in the rest of the Muslim world, this is the “Festival of the Sacrifice” that commemorates Abraham’s willingness to kill his son for God, another charming, pro-family parable that Christians and Jews also include in their holy books.

Dad, how about you just ground me for a week?

Even as a kid I found this one to be a hard sell…it’s not okay for cult leader Jim Jones to tell his followers to drink poison Kool-Aid as a sign of obedience, but it’s okay for God to tell a father to kill his kid as a sign of obedience? I was pretty sure I couldn’t be friends with, much less worship, anyone who encouraged me to stab or poison someone.

Now listen, it’s not a secret that I am no fan of organized religion. I don’t even like to talk about religion. Never have. Even when I was part of one for many years, I considered it a private thing that was nobody’s business but my own. Which is why it creeps me out when people hawk their religious beliefs like Ron Popeil on late night TV trying to sell his GHL-9 Hair-in-a-Can-Spray (“Forget those ratty-looking wigs and toupees! Get a full head of luxurious hair in just seconds with a single touch of a spray nozzle!”). News flash! I really don’t want to know why your religion and your particular savior is better than another (“Forget those ratty-looking Buddhists and Muslims! Get eternal salvation in just seconds with a tax-deductible donation to our Christian church!”)

Back in my Florida I was pretty savvy at identifying the religion hawkers as they slinked through my neighborhood looking for convert$. Two wholesome-looking boys with white, short-sleeved shirts? Mormons with their holy undies and their spirit baby-making god on the Planet Kolub. A group of four people in frumpy clothes, mostly minorities, with a child in tow?

Source: AP

Jehovah’s Witnesses about to convince you not to celebrate your birthday. Cute-ish 20-somethings with fashionable jeans and hair styles? Non-denominational Christians from the hip megachurch with the rock band and Jumbotron screens and their “Seriously dude, Jesus is so awesome!” lingo. Icky, icky, icky.

When I was a sophomore, flyers suddenly appeared all over school inviting everyone to a Halloween event at the fairgrounds outside of town. Free food/admission/bus, loads of scares…what teen could pass that up? And my did it ever turn out to be scary—in ways I never expected! First there was a long walk through the inky black woods where the sponsors had created scenes of gruesome horror: disemboweled bodies still writhing in pain, devilish-looking monsters feasting on children, ax-wielding freaks jumping out to scare us out of our wits.

Can I get an “amen?”

Afterwards we were herded into an exhibition hall where even scarier things awaited…a Baptist church group preaching to us for nearly an hour telling us that if we weren’t “saved” our lives would be very much like that horror walk we just went on. They goaded us to come to the stage and “accept-Jesus-Christ-as-your-Lord-and-Savior” or regret it for the rest of our lives (writhing, disemboweled bodies or Jesus Christ…it’s up to you!). I was only 15, but even then I knew these religious shysters had pulled a fast one. A really creepy, inappropriate, disrespectful, and probably illegal fast one I might add.

This religious boasting thing really is uniquely American and almost always involves Christians. I’ve not seen this odd behavior in any of the 40-some countries I’ve visited. You don’t see religious bumper stickers in Thailand (“Buddha is the reason for the season”) or Morocco (“Allah is my co-pilot”). In India I doubt they say, “Vishnu Bless You!” when you sneeze. I’ve never read a Facebook post that says, “Ganesha is great!” or heard a Japanese person say, “If they just allowed the Book of Tao is schools these days we wouldn’t have all of these problems.” In my experiences, the rest of the world (excluding

crazy fundamentalists who are just, well, crazy) just doesn’t seem to find it proper to boast about religion.

Which brings me back to Mali. While Mali is a Muslim country, it is a very moderate Muslim country that actually considers itself a secular nation (and again, of course I’m not including the wacko Islamic extremists causing havoc 1000 miles to the north of here, imposing Sharia law and stoning people).

Roadside mosque outside of Siby, Mali.

I’ve been around dozens of Malians every day for three months and not once—not even one single time—has any of them told me Allah was awesome or that the Qur’an had the answer to all of my problems or that I’d better get myself down on that prayer rug and face Mecca…or else! It’s a beautiful and classy thing to see a people so secure in their beliefs that they don’t need to act like a freakin’ carnival busker to advertise their faith.

Even more endearing, the Malians are the absolute least judgmental folks I’ve ever encountered. They don’t criticize other religions, hold you to a standard set by their tenants of faith, or pass judgment on your life. I’m not an authority on this, but I’m thinking that a married, male couple sleeping in the same bedroom here in Bamako is something Islam doesn’t look kindly upon. But again, not once has a Malian given us a condescending Church-Lady stare or treated us like we were “inherently disordered” (as the Pope describes gay people—as he wears his bejeweled gown). As a matter of fact, it’s just the opposite. Malians have been gracious like grandma at Christmas time, always generous beyond what’s expected, authentically kind, and extremely genuine.

Now Tabaski is the most important holiday in Mali, a country that is 90 percent Muslim, and it involves all kinds of actions and preparations. People ask for forgiveness from those they have faulted over the year. They have family dinners. They pray. They give to the poor. For those of us with household help, it’s customary to give your maid an extra month’s salary. Fathers give money to their families to buy new clothes, jewelry, shoes, and to get their hair done.

baaaaad to the bone

Fathers who can afford it must buy one sheep (or several if they have more than one wife) that they will offer as a sacrifice on October 26^th, the day of Tabaski this year. On Tabaski one-third of the their sheep’s meat is eaten by the family, another third is given to relatives and friends, and the final third is given to the poor and less fortunate.

Sheep are everywhere this time of year, and of course the prices go up as Tabaski gets closer. Malians often save their money all year long to buy a sheep that they will clean up and keep inside their house in the days preceding the holiday. This year sheep prices range from $150 and up,

roadside sheep market

with some large rams going for five or six times that price (and this in a country where the average worker’s salary is $1500 a year). Just down the road the family that owns the mini-mart (which makes Mr. Drucker’s General Store on Green Acres look like a palace) have the most beautiful, brilliant white ram tied up right outside their door. I can only imagine how many bottles of orange Fanta they had to sell to buy that nearly cow-sized creature.

Since this religious holiday is celebrated throughout the Muslim world, it results in the annual slaughter of 100 million animals in just two days (is it just me, or is it peculiar that 100 million animals are killed to commemorate a father’s willingness to kill his son?). Sheep are the go-to slaughter animal in Mali, but other countries sacrifice cows, goats, lambs, and camels.

school sheep, for now; dinner, later

Even the two sheep that were keeping our grass low at school weren’t immune from all of this. On Friday morning I was showing a PowerPoint about earthquakes in my classroom when our director rushed in, glanced at the windows, quickly pulled one of the curtains closed, and dashed out. Was she worried that the light from the window was obscuring the screen? Making sure all of the curtains were evenly arranged? Nope. Later she told me that the ceremonial slaughter of one of the school sheep happened in the playfield just outside our classroom window, and she wanted to make sure the kids couldn’t see. Supposedly it’s done in a quick and humane manner, but I’m thinking a PowerPoint about seismic waves is probably better for kids to watch than a sheep’s neck bleeding into a hole in the ground. Just my opinion.

Friday evening we went to our director’s home to attend the school’s Tabaski party, being held early since we are on fall break next week when the real Tabaski happens. The main course at dinner was, you guessed it, Mr. School Sheep Who Was Killed Right Outside Our Window.

Our director with school custodian Lassi, winner of the sheep raffle at our Tabaski party

The second school sheep was there too, but alive and tied to the fence. He was raffled off to a Muslim staffer. A young custodian won, and in my head he is going to raise this sheep as a beloved pet that he dresses in cute clothes and hats. I have to say it was rather odd watching everyone tear into their roasted mutton as the mutton’s former friend was nervously watching from a few feet away.

It’s customary to dress up in traditional garb for this type of event, so Jamey and I donned the new boubous we had

Jamey and I sproting our traditional boubous in a non-traditional polyester fabric.

purchased at a market in Siby a few weeks ago. This pants and tunic combo can be quite comfortable if it is made from a natural fiber. However, we opted for cheap boubous made of polyester that seemed to trap body heat like a terrarium, especially with our current weather conditions. Mali basically has three seasons: hot (March – June), rainy (July – October) and “cold” (November – February when daytime temps only reach into the 80s…brrr!). But oddly, October includes a brief “mini-hot season” so currently the temperature reaches into the upper 90s with high humidity, creating terrarium-like conditions under our boubous that are perfect for growing orchids, ferns, and fungal diseases. However, the Malians so appreciated the fact that we were wearing these traditional items of clothing (which are traditionally not polyester), giving us lots of “tres jolie!” and “c’est bon!” type of comments (very beautiful, it’s good) that almost made us forget the sweat streaming down our back. Fashion before comfort I always say.

teachers and student dressed for Tabaski celebrating

Despite knowing that the food had been frolicking in our schoolyard a few hours earlier, it was an enjoyable Tabaski party. The Malian band was superb and we all

traditional Malian music kept the mood festive

ended up dancing under the stars for quite some time. If polyester could actually absorb liquid my boubou would have been dripping wet after this physical activity, but it maintained its crisp, unnatural form throughout the night. And while I don’t share the Malian religious beliefs, I’m happy to be part of their Tabaski celebration. I’m just mirroring their approach to life, treating people respectfully despite their religious or moral beliefs. Just don’t make me eat the school pet.