Of wars and rumors of wars

In case you’ve missed it, a violent rebellion has been gathering force over the last couple of months in the north of Mali. Since mid-January, Malian government posts in several northern towns have been attacked, with the attacks claimed by the Mouvement National pour la Liberation de l’Azawad or MNLA, a recently emerged Tuareg separatist group. “Azawad” is a Tamasheq-language term for the Tuareg homeland, which according to the map below right, taken from Wikipedia’s MNLA entry, encompasses the northern half of Mali, but which by most definitions also includes swathes of western Niger and southern Algeria. (A Google search for the MNLA finds, in addition to the homepages of several state nursery and landscape associations, one site possibly linked to the Tuareg movement in question, but when I try to load this page I always get a “network error.” I wonder if Malian ISPs have been instructed to block it.)

The security problems in northern Mali have prompted a lot of discussion in Bamako and  on internet discussion sites. Many southerners, including journalists, are wont to dismiss the attackers as “armed bandits” and terrorists rather than rebels. They may have a point: the Sahara Desert has long been a refuge for shady transnational networks engaged in criminal enterprise, including occasional kidnappings but mostly smuggling; Al Qaeda’s regional affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or AQIM, has also been active in the region for several years now. In the zone that the MNLA is claiming as its territory, the lines between criminal activity, terrorism and rebellion have never been clear. While an MNLA spokesman has disavowed any connection between his group and AQIM, one account by a survivor of the January 18 attack on Aguel Hoc (printed in one of Mali’s more reliable newspapers) claims the attackers were Islamists who during their occupation of the town wore “Afghan-style” clothes, gave speeches advocating sharia law and encouraged civilian men to grow their beards long.

The true motives of the assailants is just one of many uncertainties. How many of them are there? What links do they have to Tuareg fighters repatriated last year from Libya? How many casualties have they taken, and caused, in their confrontations with government forces? If their attacks go unchecked, will national elections scheduled for April still be able to take place? In the absence of any real reporting from the afflicted region, nobody can answer these questions definitively. Photos are now circulating on social media of dead bodies, allegedly Malian soldiers executed by rebels. Are they genuine? How many soldiers have died? No one is saying, which frustrates a lot of people here in Bamako. So great were the tensions that unruly protests erupted here and in several southern cities last week, spearheaded by the wives and sons of army personnel demanding to know what’s really been happening in the north. The Malian government has not been especially forthcoming in this regard. (For a thorough English-language synopsis of local media coverage of these protests, see Alex Thurston’s Sahel Blog.)

Sur la colline du pouvoir : Koulouba, Mali’s presidential palace (far background)

Bamako residents’ responses to the situation in northern Mali reveal much about the state of Mali’s democracy. For one thing, some Malians apparently don’t cherish the institutions of that democracy, and instead long for an extra-constitutional solution to the ongoing problem. One Bamako paper has published a call for President Touré to surrender power to an undefined “Committee for the Defense of the Republic” that will rule the country until security can be restored and elections held. Judging from the responses posted online to this call, it seems many would support such action. [If, for any reason, Touré were to resign before his term ends in June, Mali's constitution calls for him to be succeeded by the President of the National Assembly, not some ad-hoc group.]

The current crisis also reveals a readiness by some southerners to scapegoat northerners, especially light-skinned Tuareg and Arabs, for the rebels’ actions. During recent protests in Kati, just outside Bamako, businesses and homes belonging to Tuareg residents were set ablaze by angry mobs. Shortly thereafter, President Touré called on citizens to make a distinction between rebel fighters and loyal civilians.

It is not my place to comment on Malian government policy or on Mali’s security affairs. Indeed, as a Fulbright scholar whose stay in Mali is entirely funded by the U.S. government, I would be unwise to do so. What interests me here, as an anthropologist, is the rash of rumors concerning events in the north, and the local interpretations of the causes underlying these events, whether relayed in the Bamako press, on the web or by word of mouth. One thing you can guarantee in the absence of authoritative, verifiable information is that rumors will thrive.

One widespread rumor is that the president doesn’t want to give up power when his final term expires four months from now, and has manufactured the crisis to postpone elections and remain in office. (On a continent where so few heads of state have ever voluntarily stepped down, one can hardly blame Malians for their skepticism of their leader’s intentions. But let’s recall that Touré also was the first Malian president to do so, after initially holding office in 1991-1992.) Another rumor is that the pair of Frenchmen kidnapped from their hotel in northern Mali last November were in fact military advisers to the MNLA, sent by the French government to support the rebellion against the Malian government. The French are also accused of fomenting a coup plot over the last week. (The French are a perpetual bête noire in popular Malian imaginings of both local events and geopolitics; many here believe France to be aiding the rebels, and point to the fact that MNLA advocates have appeared on French television broadcasts.) Closer to home, I heard someone say that the clinic torched in Kati last week had been used to treat Tuareg rebel casualties. (Never mind that Bamako is 1000 km from the fighting, and is also among the last places any Tuareg rebel would try to seek refuge.)

Of course I don’t believe any of these rumors, and neither should you. But the fact that rational people accept and repeat them underscores the key role the media play in shaping Malian political culture. Mali has a vibrant independent press, but not one with the resources necessary to cover a conflict in a remote area. And with the international media not yet showing much interest in Mali’s northern crisis, we’ve all been left in the dark. The effects on this country’s young democracy have been anything but salutary.

[Postscript: Adam Nossiter, the New York Times' West Africa correspondent, filed a story from Bamako about the northern rebellion that highlights the post-Gaddafi arms connection. Perhaps next some serious journalists can actually get to the afflicted area and find out what's really going on! Additionally, for an informed "long view" of Tuareg uprisings in northern Mali, see a recent piece by blogger Andy Morgan.]

Too many women in this town?

My colleague, anthropologist Yaya Bamba, with male focus group participants

A key part of my current Bamako research is discussions with groups of 8 to 10 city residents, in which my research assistants and I ask questions pertaining to family and marriage. We organize each of these focus groups to be relatively homogeneous in certain respects (namely gender, marital status, and level of education), then balance this homogeneity through inter-group variation. For every discussion with unmarried, less-educated young women, for instance, we’ll have another with unmarried, less-educated young men, another with unmarried, more-educated young women, another with married, less-educated women, etc. We meet each group on their “turf” so to speak, ask each group the same questions, and the discussions last from 90 minutes to two hours. Focus groups aren’t very useful for learning about individuals’ experiences or beliefs — people don’t share many personal details in them — but they’re great for identifying normative views and showing how these views vary (or don’t) across demographics.

One question we ask is, “Do you think there are as many women as men in Bamako? Why or why not?” The responses generated are surprisingly uniform: young or old, male or female, non-literate or university-trained, Bamakois are very likely to say that more women than men live in their city. The issue here is not whether women outnumber men, but by how much. Some say the ratio is 60/40 in favor of women, others say 70/30, some even suggest 80/20 or 90/10.

My colleagues Djénéba Dembélé and Yaya Bamba with focus group participants

Whatever the ratio, the existence of a surplus female population is among the most commonsense, taken-for-granted ideas in Bamako, and in Mali as a whole. It’s just something that everyone knows. Many of our focus group participants point to anecdotal evidence from their daily lives: “Look at the passengers on the SOTRAMAs [minibuses] every day,” one woman said, “they’re mostly women.” Other participants refer to social scientific data, citing surveys or statistics they’ve heard of to back up the notion of female overpopulation and the corresponding notion that there aren’t enough men to go round.

There’s just one problem: it’s not true. Yes, as in most countries, the sex ratio in Mali (according to the country’s most recent Demographic and Health Survey) skews slightly toward females, who make up 50.5% of the nation’s population. But the ratio skews in the opposite direction for Bamako, where 50.2% of residents are males. Due to the large number of males who become rural-to-urban migrants, urban sex ratios in Africa tend to favor men, if only by a little, and Bamako is no exception.

The fact that females have a slight edge in national census figures must have something to do with the widespread perception of an excess of females in Bamako. But this is more than a simple misapprehension of available data. There’s a reason people here need to see too many women when they look around. And that reason is polygamy.

[Anthropological sidebar: Technically, I'm talking about polygyny, the form of polygamy where one male marries two or more females. But since the alternative form, polyandry, is basically unknown in Africa, I follow the example of my Malian hosts in using the blanket term "polygamy" to describe this practice.]

West Africa is home to the highest polygamy rates in the world. Roughly 40% of married women in Mali are in polygamous unions (this figure is 24% for Bamako); rates are even higher in neighboring Burkina Faso and Guinea. Such levels of polygamy are not found outside West Africa, even in other majority-Muslim countries. The polygamy rate in Mauritania, Mali’s predominantly Arab neighbor to the northwest, is about 12%, while in Yemen and Pakistan it’s only 7%. (I haven’t yet come across polygamy statistics for Saudi Arabia or several other countries of the Muslim world; the latest Demographic and Health Surveys for Egypt and Indonesia, incidentally, don’t even mention polygamy. But rates in these countries are likely to be closer to those in Pakistan or Yemen than those in Mali or Niger.) As the chart I’ve put together below indicates, Islam is not the only relevant factor here; being in a West African society correlates much more strongly with polygamous marriage than being in a Muslim society does.

"% Polygamous" denotes rate of married women in polygamous unions (source: Demographic & Health Surveys, www.measuredhs.com)

[A note on the chart: Countries in the left cluster, all of them West African, have polygamy rates of 35% or more; those in the middle cluster, in West and Central Africa, have rates of 10-30%; those in the right cluster, in North Africa and Asia, are between 5 and 10%.]

One might therefore conclude that polygamy is popular in Mali, and indeed it is. Yet our focus group data also reveal that people here see polygamy as a problematic institution, the cause of considerable domestic strife and intra-family conflicts. The Bamanan-language term for “rivalry,” fadenya, literally means “father-child-ness,” expressing the competition that prevails among children of the same father but different mothers; by contrast badenya, “mother-child-ness,” the condition of being full siblings, denotes solidarity. When we ask focus group participants to name the disadvantages of polygamy, men and women alike rattle off several: jealousy among co-wives, rivalry among half-siblings, problems between a polygamous husband and his wives, squabbles over inheritance, high economic costs… the list goes on and on.

When we ask what the advantages of polygamy are, people are slower to respond. They are most likely to say that without polygamy, many women would never find a husband — since “everyone knows” that women far outnumber men in this part of the world. Polygamy, in this view, is an institutional adaptation to Mali’s supposed female overpopulation problem.

A husband for every bride? Bamako wedding ceremony, July 2010.

Furu ye wajibi ye, goes a Bamanan saying: Marriage is an obligation. While it holds for both sexes, the obligation is much stronger and begins much sooner for women. Young Bamakoises want to get married by age 25, after which point they’re seen as having passed their “sell-by” date. They worry that if they don’t find a husband by their mid-20s, they never will. (Bamako’s males, on the other hand, can wait until their 30s or even 40s, and indeed the average age at first marriage is about 9 years older for males than females here.)

The fact that essentially all men and women in Mali do marry — demographic surveys show no significant numbers of “old maids” or “confirmed bachelors” in the Malian population — does nothing to diminish many young women’s fears of being unable to marry. The myth of female overpopulation makes young women all the more anxious to find a husband, and all the more willing to settle for a polygamous one, while it also provides husbands a useful, even humanitarian justification for marrying multiple wives.

This is one of those myths that members of certain groups need to believe, and hence continue to believe in the absence of valid evidence. They simply fabricate evidence to fit the myth. (An example from my own society might be the myth of Barack Obama’s Kenyan birth, which no rational argument can persuade “birthers” to abandon.) Polygamy has been a part of Mali’s social fabric for so long, I don’t think most Malians can imagine their society without it — even those who would never consider polygamy themselves. As troublesome as polygamous unions may be, it’s easier for Malians to rationalize them through the myth of female overpopulation than to do away with them. And for this reason, I don’t expect to disabuse anyone here of this myth anytime soon.

[Postscript: Despite appearances, the wedding ceremony photo above does NOT show a wedding between one groom and two brides. I took it at a civil ceremony in July 2010, at the height of Mali's pre-Ramadan wedding rush, where several couples were getting married simultaneously. The bride at right has no relationship with the groom in the middle!]

Bamako, 1997 to 2012: What’s changed?

Niaréla, Jan. 2012

Fifteen years ago this month, I came to Bamako for the very first time. In those days I was a fresh-faced Peace Corps trainee, more eager to get out to my rural post than to experience the city. On the bus from the airport, I remember being saddened by the sight of open sewers and corrugated metal roofs.

When I returned to Bamako several months later, I saw it with new eyes. Rather than comparing it to the American cities I knew, I compared it to the rural Malian communities I knew, where corrugated metal roofs are a sign of prosperity (they last longer than thatch), and sewers of any kind simply don’t exist, so seasonal rains cause flooding and erosion. At least Bamako had sewers, not to mention electricity — even if neither worked properly much of the time. And the city boasted other amenities, such as restaurants and spaces for leisure, that I came to appreciate more over time.

Northeast Bamako from Point G, Jan. 2012

Since my Peace Corps service ended in 2000 I’ve returned to Bamako every couple of years, and have been struck by the city’s transformation. I’ve come to see Bamako as a kind of urbanization laboratory. In some ways life for Bamakois today seems better than before; in other ways it’s more difficult. Here I’ll use the occasion of this 15-year anniversary to reflect on several changes the city of Bamako has seen since the close of the 20th century.

Demographic growth: By any measure, Bamako’s population has been expanding at breakneck speed. According to the City Mayors Foundation, Bamako’s annual growth rate is 4.45%, which makes it the sixth-fastest-growing city in the world, and the fastest on the African continent. The city’s population attained the one million mark only in 1998, and by 2010 it had exceeded two million.

Kalaban-Coro Heremakono, in southwest Bamako, Nov. 2011

The city’s expansion is also spatial — largely horizontal rather than vertical. The ACI 2000 neighborhood, allotted twelve years ago on the former site of a military air base just west of downtown, now houses many of Bamako’s government offices and embassies.  And whole new neighborhoods are springing up on the edge of town, in places like Kalaban-Coro Heremakono, Boulkassoumbougou and Doumanzana, where five or six years ago you could only find mango groves and scrub brush. Today they’re home to thousands of cinder-block homes, most of them unfinished but nonetheless occupied.

Approaching the King Fahd Bridge, Dec. 2011

Traffic jams: As the city grows, and as increasing numbers of its residents can afford cars and motorcycles, more and more people occupy Bamako’s road-ways. In the 1990s, heavy traffic was rare in Bamako, and there were just two or three areas downtown where the sheer volume of vehicles caused delays. Now embouteillages are nearly constant from the Route de Koulikoro to Niaréla to the Grand Marché to Lafiabougou. The two main bridges across the Niger River are major choke points seven days a week. “Nowhere near as bad as the ‘go-slows’ in Lagos,” Nigerians might say, but really, this is hardly something to boast about.

Mobile telephony: In 1997 there was no cellular service anywhere in Mali. By 2000, a few wealthy Bamakois had cell phones. Now, 91% of Bamako households own at least one cell phone, according to the ELIM survey published by the Malian government last year. It would be difficult to overstate the impact of this technology on urban social life. In the old days, if you wanted to meet people, you often had to go to their home or office and hope they’d be in. Land-line phones were expensive and unreliable. Now, with your cell phone, you can coordinate with almost anyone, at almost any time, via voice or SMS (that’s “text messages” to you ignorant Yanks).

Kushitigi: Sidewalk diaper stand, Badalabougou, Jan. 2012

An emerging consumer class: Wherever you look, there’s evidence of the growing number of Bamakois who have risen to middle-class status. They drive more, watch more TV (and more channels: Bamako has four broadcast channels now, compared to two in 2000). They spend an increasing amount on leisure, as demonstrated by the host of extravagant New Years soirées advertised on TV, for which tickets cost from 25,000 to 50,000 CFA francs (US$50-$100!). And they buy consumer goods they never used to buy. One example is disposable diapers: until recently, these were hugely expensive and purchased exclusively in fancy supermarkets by expat parents. Nowadays, cheap diapers are sold by market women and street hawkers to a local clientele. Then you’ve got new forms of conspicuous consumption: throughout Africa, for instance, a German firm is marketing an energy drink known as “Bizz’up” made from hibiscus flowers. This name, familiar to those who’ve been to West Africa, is ripped off from bissap, a hibiscus drink that’s locally made. Why would Malians want to drink an expensive imported version of something produced cheaply right here at home? Because they can. (But I still think it’s both silly and deeply wrong.)

Development: The most recent ELIM survey is full of interesting figures, most of them encouraging, about social and economic development in Mali and in Bamako. If you believe these government figures, in 2010, for instance, 98% of Bamako households had access to potable water, and 70% had electricity (this latter figure had nearly doubled since 2001). Three-quarters of children in Bamako attended primary school, up from 58% in 2001. Moreover, the proportion of Bamakois living in poverty had dropped from 17.6% in 2001 to 9.6% in 2010, while the proportion of those living in extreme poverty was cut in half, from 6% to 3% over the same period. Has Bamako achieved that elusive goal, pro-poor economic growth?

Maybe. But this report also provides several discouraging signs. Many of the gains of the first decade of the 21st century were concentrated in the first five years, with stagnation or even regression from 2006 to 2010 in areas like poverty reduction (see chart below). Bamako saw no improvement in access to electricity, for example, after 2006; more disturbingly, the school enrollment figure actually dropped 10% from 2006 to 2010. Which brings us to what’s probably the most significant negative change of the last fifteen years.

From progress to stagnation: extreme poverty figures from latest ELIM survey

The political mood: In the late 1990s, Mali was brimming with optimism. The country had recently emerged from decades of military dictatorship and had managed a transition to democratic rule that was hailed as a model for Africa. One sensed that Malians saw brighter days ahead, that while their country was extremely poor, at last it was headed in the right direction. I don’t get this sense here so much these days. Despite all the gains described above, I’m more likely to hear Malians voice frustration and disgust with inept public administration, rampant corruption, and a lack of leadership from their government.

University students queue for their stipend payments, Oct. 2011

Probably the most troubling area is the state of Malian public education. Remember that 10% drop in Bamako’s primary school enrollments from 2006 to 2010? Public schools have been so plagued by strikes and shut-downs that some families don’t see the point of sending their children to school anymore. This problem exists at all levels of the education apparatus, right up to the Universities of Bamako, where I’m supposed to be teaching. The whole university system has been closed since last July, pending organizational restructuring, and there’s been no word on when it will reopen. Thanks to Bamako’s increasing population — which owes as much to high fertility as to rural-to-urban migration — the strain on the city’s public schools is growing worse every year. Many Bamakois will tell you their political leaders simply aren’t interested in improving public education, since they all send their children to private schools.

At the core of the matter, of course, is politics: lots of Malians think the country’s politicians are sacrificing future generations for their own selfish interests. Americans may be cynical about their government, but at least U.S. public schools are open for business, and we trust the police to do their jobs. A growing number of Bamakois have lost faith in their government’s ability to do anything, from keeping the schools open to keeping criminals off the street. Some have begun dispensing mob justice to suspected thieves instead of turning them over to the police. And nothing’s likely to improve before elections are held in April.

What’s the upshot? Two words: fundamentally ambiguous. We may be encouraged by the progress made, but we should also be worried about the shortfalls. While Bamakois can take pride in their collective achievements of the last 15 years, pressing problems — many of them linked to explosive demographic growth — threaten those achievements and have already reversed some of the improvements of the early 2000s. Mali’s status as a role model of democratic transition mustn’t blind us to simmering discontent with the country’s democratic process, which more and more Malians associate with gridlock and anarchy.

What will the next 15 years bring? All I can say at this point is that most Malians aren’t expecting that the road ahead will become much smoother for them. At least for the next few years, the signs suggest the road will get rockier and steeper. And they will continue to toil onward, in spite of everything.

Salvaging the future: l’art récupérateur

For the holidays: Crèche scene by Burkina Faso-based artist Hervé Ouedraogo

For English speakers, the French verb “récupérer” is one of those false friends: it doesn’t exactly mean “to recuperate,” though many of their meanings overlap. A better translation would be “to recover,” as in to get something back that was lost; “to salvage” comes pretty close too.

Visitors to almost any West African crafts market nowadays are likely to find, alongside the wooden masks, leather goods and indigo cloth, ingenious objects made essentially from junk — aluminum cans, old auto parts, wires from broken radios, et cetera. The French term for this category of objects is “l’art récupérateur.” Most often, these works are miniature versions of some of the same machines from which their components were salvaged: automobiles, motorcycles, and bicycles are among the most common on display.

Miniature auto made from hairspray cans

Mountain bike - note details like brake cables, bottle cage, etc. (click on photo for a larger version)

You might be tempted to think of these objects as toys rather than art, and in fact they come out of a long tradition among African children of making playthings out of junk (e.g. here or here). The difference here, however, is that these objects are made by grown-ups, and they don’t function especially well as toys. (They break quite easily, as my son Zachary will tell you.) And the people who make them are calling themselves “artistes récupérateurs“.

These days I’m seeing more and more salvage-art objects representing not machines, but animals or people. A whole category now exists of figures made with spark plug torsos (see the crèche above, and the angel below).

Angel, by Bamako récupérateur Zoumana Kanté

What is it about salvage art that appeals to Westerners like me? Personally, I find it more germane to the lives of most Africans in the 21st century, especially those who live in cities like Bamako, where things like soda cans and spark plugs are much more common and relevant than mudcloth or carved funeral masks.

Pepsi papillon

I also like the fact that these objects are literally salvaged from scrapyards and garbage heaps — not for this practice’s “green” effects, which are surely negligible, but for the way it embodies a creative response to privation. In Africa the credo “reduce, reuse, recycle” is motivated by economic necessity rather than ecological concern. In Bamako we don’t separate our recyclables from our garbage: others do that for us, taking the bottles, cans and cardboard right out of our trash can for resale or reuse.

For this reason, I believe, l’art récupérateur also carries a political message. (Here I’m inspired by the writings of anthropologists like James Ferguson and Charles Piot.) When a miniature car is made by someone who cannot afford to drive a car, or a miniature airplane by someone who cannot buy a plane ticket, these works of salvage art serve as reminders of the tremendous inequality that prevails at the global level. They represent a claim to inclusion in the modern world by those who lack the means to live out their material aspirations. Here’s what this art says to me: They want the same future we want, but at least for the time being, they can only salvage it out of junk.

How to organize a public event in Mali

Stupid of me. I should’ve known better than to arrive on time.

I’d been told the event would begin at 3 p.m., and it was just a few minutes past the hour when I got to the venue, the size of a respectable U.S. high school gymnasium, but which was still mostly empty. Soon after, one of the organizers showed me his copy of the schedule, and I saw that nothing was actually meant to begin until 4:00.

In the hour I spent watching preparations unfold, I realized that public functions like this are dictated by cultural patterns, and I thought about the unspoken rules by which such events play out. If you’ve ever watched more than 20 minutes of a Malian TV news broadcast, you know that these events include a predictable set of elements. So for this blog post I’ve decided not even to write about the event itself. Perhaps you can guess what kind of happening it was. The substance is more or less irrelevant here; it’s the format I’m interested in.

Here, then, are the 10 things you’ll need to organize a successful public event in Mali.

1. Les cartes d’honneur. Printed on fine cardstock, the carte d’honneur is like an invitation, although you don’t always have to have one to attend. It outlines the “who, what, when and where” of your event, and sometimes mentions the sponsors. Remember to indicate a starting time one hour ahead of when you expect things will actually begin.

2. La sonorisation. If you’re going to be heard, you’ll need a sound system big enough to drown out background noises and raucous crowds. You can use it for music (see item 3 below) and speeches (see item 7 below). A microphone, PA and loudspeakers can be rented for the occasion.

3. Les musiciens. For many of these events, especially those outside Bamako, “traditional” musicians are hired to provide some ostensibly local flavor. In Bamako, it may be a small ensemble backing griot singers, a pop group, or some other category. For the event I attended, it was a military band wearing khaki uniforms and brown berets.

4. Les médias. If you can’t have your event broadcast to a wider public, it may as well not have happened. Your goal should be to get featured on the ORTM evening news. Make sure to get plenty of shots featuring local color and culture, as well as any dignitaries present (see item 6 below).

5. Les hôtesses. Hire some attractive young women and provide them with matching outfits. For the classiest functions, you should get wax-print cloth printed up to commemorate your event, and have your hostesses wear outfits made from the commemorative cloth. If that’s too pricey, get some t-shirts made for them — silk-screened if you can afford it, stenciled otherwise. The hostesses’ job is to look nice while showing people where they’re supposed to sit. Mostly they do a lot of pointing.

6. Les dignitaires. Malian society is based on what political scientists call “patron-client systems,” wherein powerful individuals bestow favors on those less powerful and receive their loyalty in return. The importance of the dignitary at your event signals the importance of your organization. If the President of the Republic cannot attend, at least try to get a cabinet minister, local prefect or mayor. And no matter how late your VIP is, your event will not begin until he or she arrives. (Luckily ours, the minister of youth and sports, was only 20 minutes late!)

7. Les chaises résérvées. You can’t have VIPs without VIP seating! Only people with cartes d’honneur get reserved seats. Dignitaries must be seated front and center, preferably in padded armchairs. If yours is an outdoor event, dignitaries must be in the shade. People seated in the VIP area can also expect the hostesses to serve them free soft drinks. Let everyone else sit on benches or stand.

8. Les discours. Speeches may or may not be made by the dignitaries, but will definitely be made to them. These speeches will start off addressing them by title (“Monsieur le ministre, monsieur le maire, honorables invités…“). This serves to remind them how important they are, and to remind your viewers how important you are for hosting them.

9. Les tubabuw. In a place like Mali, one of the best ways to show your event matters is to have some token white people (tubabuw) in attendance. Ideally they will be important white people (e.g. diplomats, visiting foreign dignitaries, or NGO officials). Realistically, however, any random white folks will do. Make sure they appear prominently in the crowd shots recorded by your videographer, so that viewers will notice them and realize how important you are. When filming a stage, a podium or an audience, ORTM cameramen are trained to zoom in on white faces. In a pinch, Chinese may serve as a substitute for white people. (Try to spot at least two token tubabuw in the photo for item 7, above right.)

10. Les policiers anti-emeutes. Where public events are concerned, nothing says classy quite like having riot police on hand. Don’t ask me why, but an event without the threat of audience members being clubbed or tear-gassed lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. The presence of cops or paramilitaries with night sticks, helmets, shields and shin pads — however unnecessary it may be — indicates that the organizers have political clout and aren’t afraid to use it.

(One of the first events I ever attended in Mali back in 1997 was a village  ceremony featuring musicians, a dusty clearing for dancing, and a large crowd of spectators. I recall one adult who kept the crowd of mostly pre-teen spectators in line; he stripped a thin branch from a tree and used it periodically to beat the kids back from the dancing area. Since then, I’ve noticed public events here often feature someone whose job is to keep rowdy kids from getting out of hand–even when there are no rowdy kids present. And you can’t go to a big concert or sporting event in Bamako without getting at least a whiff of tear gas at some point.)

Now you know the key ingredients for making your very own Malian function a huge success. Remember, use this knowledge for good, never for evil.

Motor city

I associate auto shows (based, at least, on their television advertisements) with huge convention centers, American-style marketing excess, and blonde models — all of which are rather hard to find in Bamako. So I never would have predicted that I’d attend my first auto show here, of all places, in the Malian capital. And yet that’s precisely what happened. It is also, as it turns out, Bamako’s first auto show.

The event is pretty modest — fewer than ten displays by auto retailers, plus a few peripheral displays by banks (marketing auto loans), an insurance company (marketing auto policies), and a soft-drink bottler (marketing, um, soft drinks). There is even a kids’ fun area featuring a moon bounce and some kind of mini-golf putting green. Everything is housed in the courtyard of the Bamako International Conference Center, formerly known as the Palais des Congrès.

After getting past the games area, I head straight to the Volkswagen display tent, since I know one of the guys there, our daughters being classmates in school. Volkswagen of course makes the SUV known as the Touareg, which happens to be named after a group of  nomads who inhabit northern Mali. I ask the VW rep if Touaregs are big sellers among the Touareg; he avows that they are. He also shows me the Phaeton, an entirely hand-made luxury sedan that boasts a leather interior and on-board mini-fridge. It sells here for something like 60 million CFA francs, well over US$100,000. And the Phaeton has available kevlar panels and ballistic glass. VW is hoping to sell some to the Malian government for driving its VIPs around.

The VW Phaeton

I am ambivalent about seeing such an expensive car in Bamako. On the one hand, who am I to say Malians shouldn’t drive Phaetons? But the fact that it costs 157 times Mali’s  annual per capita income gives me pause. (By comparison, an automobile costing 157 times the U.S. annual per capita income would sell for $7.2 million.) Perhaps I should hail the Phaeton’s arrival in Bamako as another positive development of globalization, a sign that Mali is growing economically and finding its place in the world. Yet the benefits of growth have been concentrated in the hands of a few, while most Malians have seen their living conditions stagnate over the last 15 years.

The Bamako auto-moto show only has a few motorcycles on display, all of them Yamahas. Just a decade ago, Yamaha had a near-total monopoly on motorbikes in Mali. If you wanted something on two wheels bigger than a moped, you pretty much had to get a Yamaha. They still sell their Japanese-made motorbikes, like this Crypton model, which sells locally for about 1 million CFA francs including tax (approx. US$2000).

The Yamaha Crypton. I must say, the spokesmodels at this auto expo aren't what I expected....

Nowadays, however, Malians aren’t buying very many Yamahas; they prefer a motorcycle officially known as the Cub, but called the “Jakarta” in local parlance. Even if it isn’t quite as sturdy as a Yamaha, it costs about 60 percent less than Yamaha’s cheapest model. This motorcycle’s manufacturer, Guangzhou Tian Ma Group Tian Ma Motorcycle Co., Ltd. (say that ten times fast!), is not represented at the Bamako auto/moto show. But why would they come? Without any advertising, their product has achieved complete market dominance. Since about 2002, Bamako’s streets have been flooded with “Jakartas.” I am not sure how to explain the local success of this bike, which is on a scale one doesn’t see in other West African countries. How can it cost so much less than other bikes? Some Bamakois have told me the Malian government exempted Jakartas from import duties, but I have yet to confirm this. For whatever reason, Jakartas now make up about 90 percent of all motorcycles on the road here.

A typical Bamako parking lot. Can you spot the non-Jakartas in this picture?

For whatever it’s worth, the Yamaha Crypton is also being copied by Chinese manufacturers, which is only fair, since Yamaha’s “cub”-type motorcycles were based on earlier Honda models. Perhaps turnabout is fair play, but the Chinese go so far as to put the name “Yamaha” on these bikes. Is Yamaha aware of this fact?

If you’re looking for a symbol of globalization in Mali, forget the Volkswagen Phaeton. Go with the humble Tian Ma Cub, which has altered Bamako’s social landscape. Precisely how it has done so will be the subject of another post….

Tabaski saga on four legs

A few weeks ago, a population of hirsute strangers began gradually infiltrating Bamako. Where only a few thousand of them used to live here, their ranks soon swelled to hundreds of thousands. Newcomers to the city, they could be seen moving in unruly bands down residential streets. They loitered on street corners downtown. Much to the annoyance of local drivers, they had no idea how to cross busy streets. They squatted in public spaces, making uncouth noises.

I am talking about a particular type of rural-to-urban migrant, known locally as saga. I am talking about sheep.

Badalabougou livestock market, the day before the holiday

In the Islamic calendar, the feast known in Arabic as eid al-adha is the biggest holy day of the year. In much of West Africa, this day is known as Tabaski. In the Bamanan language, it is called seli-ba, or “the big holiday.” In 2011, most Muslims observed it on Sunday, November 6th. And the most visible feature of Tabaski is the sheep to be slaughtered and eaten on the holiday. Which explains why in French-speaking African nations like Mali, the holiday is sometimes referred to as la fête du mouton (“the feast of the sheep”)

Tabaski sheep taking over a neighborhood basketball court

Muslims who can afford to do so are enjoined to sacrifice one of their best animals on Tabaski. Each head of household is supposed to perform this religious duty. In some parts of the world, the preferred sacrificial beast is a cow or a goat. In Mali, it is saga — sheep. And the fact that millions of Malian families need one by the same date every year has consequences.

Mali is full of livestock. Despite the country’s arid climate, it is a net exporter of cattle and sheep. Malian sheep in particular are often sold in neighboring countries during the run-up to Tabaski; I’ve even heard that in years past they were exported to Libya by air. In rural Mali, Muslim families keep their own animals and usually set one aside for the annual Tabaski sacrifice. In cities like Bamako, however, few households keep sheep. Which means that before the holiday arrives, Bamako’s need for these animals must be met by rural suppliers.

Getting chauffered around town

With so much demand concentrated in a short period, prices inevitably go up — at least double by some accounts. Bamakois rightly complain about the rising cost of living in their city, but the cost of holiday sheep has exceeded all expectations. An animal that might have cost the equivalent of US$40 a decade ago now costs over $100; you can’t get even a small sheep before Tabaski for under $75. That’s a lot of money in a poor country like Mali. The Malian press carries consistent reports of price-gouging by livestock vendors. Many potential buyers have been simply priced out of the saga market this year. Some Bamakois wait until the eve of Tabaski, hoping to get a bargain from vendors with too many animals left unsold. Inevitably, politics comes into play, with some contending the state should do more to control prices and prevent so many sheep from being sold abroad when they are in high demand at home.

Hours before Tabaski 2011, a ram awaits its fate outside its owner's home

Islam doesn’t force families to impoverish themselves out of respect for this holiday tradition. Only families with means are required to sacrifice a sheep or other animal. But in Bamako, the sacrifice of a saga carries considerable cultural value. It combines the tasty protein infusion of the Thanksgiving turkey with the scriptural authority of the Passover matzo. Which means that even many families that cannot afford a sheep will scrimp and beg and borrow to get one.

In the last two weeks, three different men I know have approached me for financial assistance in obtaining their families’ Tabaski sheep. When I pointed out to one father in his 50s that the requirement doesn’t apply to those of limited means, he responded that his family will be shamed in the eyes of their neighbors if they can’t sacrifice a saga on Tabaski. So the ritual has also become a question of social status — keeping up with the Diallos, you might say.

In the last few days before the holiday, roaming flocks of sheep were joined in Bamako’s streets by ambulant vendors selling knives, machetes and even hatchets for families to use in butchering their animals.  As far as I could tell, the sheep were unaware of these wares’ sinister purpose. To further bring home the message of impending bloodshed, knife grinders were at work all over the city.

Even free-range animals have to use the crosswalk

As I write these words, the evening following the mass slaughter, the smell of roast mutton pervades the city. Families are supposed to set aside a portion of their mutton for the poor, so at least some of the benefits of the more fortunate will trickle down to Bamako’s poorer residents. Muslims in other countries are allowed to substitute a cash donation to charity for the holiday animal sacrifice, but this option doesn’t appear to be popular in Mali. Everyone wants a saga. In view of Mali’s rapid rate of urbanization, increasing desertification and climate change, I wonder whether this holiday tradition will prove ecologically and economically sustainable in the years to come.

As for my family, mindful of the effect that our slaughtering an animal would likely have on my children’s delicate First-World sensibilities, my wife and I opted to forego the sacrifice. For dinner this Tabaski, we had spaghetti and meatballs instead. And it was most excellent.