Milestones

I’ve survived precisely two years in Mali. I feel like I need to throw a little party for myself. But the day will be nothing more than church, laundry, animation typing, naptime, running, street food, and then bed. But I am incredibly excited to start at Oxfam tomorrow.

It is well with my soul. I am serving. I am learning. The food is fresh and without processing and packaging. I get to work with my hands. I am close to God and my beliefs are daily challenged. It is easier to become apathetic in the states I feel. Here everything and everyone is in your face. And now with certain perks like a computer, an ipod which I can actually keep charged on fairly reliable electricity, a fridge and a nice house in Gao where I am able to easily hang out with friends or other expats. I have a social scene, I have access to air conditioning!

And I am well-adjusted to my celebrity status. While out running a little kid started running along with me. I couldn’t help but smile. So I go Ir ma koy! Let's go! and started sprinting. He was pretty fast and laughing, so I let him enjoy himself then slowed back down to my jog. Joy.

Slavery?

I've spoken a lot about slavery and captives which exist in Malian society up to present day lately; mostly due to an article my brother sent me and therefore I was curious to hear what Malians think. A friend of mine is a Peuhl (Fulani) and therefore noble. There is work that noble Peuhls, to this day, simply refuse to do. He tried to explain it is a poor choice to call the class system of Mali an enforced slavery because 1) There is work certain ethnicity do and certain others don’t. It is a way of organizing society. The Bozos fish, the Peulhs herd, the Bamana farm, North Africans/Arabs are businessmen, the Songhoy cultivate rice and the Bellas are blacksmiths or are bound to noble (mostly Tamacheq) families. And 2) captives (in the sense their ancestors were taken as spoils of former tribal wars) are proud of their position in society. Particularly when you think of the alternative. If they were to leave their master—which they are free to do—they would not be fed, clothed, or housed. So really, he finds the "free" Bella squatters in their tent-huts in Gao sadder than captives. I'd agree--no latrines, no enclosures for animals, and a way of life that makes the koyraboro ("village people" or what the Songhoy call themselves) look down upon them. He does agree that it is a mindset which lingers and grandsons of captives still identify themselves as such—even this Peuhl says he has friends who say they are not as high status-wise as he is. Therefore that is why you see the marginalization of Bella. But it is they who keep themselves down, so says a friend of mine in Ansongo. Yet I still cringe when I hear hospital staff yell "Hey, you dirty Bella, come over here!" They tell me it is all in good fun. In Bamana society there is no noble-slave class distinction anymore because the slaves once overthrew the king in Segou. It was a captive who became friends with a son of the king and then other nobles and royal family members took notice and forbid the captive to play any longer with royals. So he left and amassed horses and troops and staged a coup. Bitter much? But it has relegated “slave” to only a joke in Bamana society. Whereas in the north it is true with certain people like captives and Bella you can’t really talk openly about it. It is certainly true the article my brother sent me was trying to play into Westerners comprehension of slavery—it’s not forced labor and the selling of persons as commodities like we had in America. It is a product of poverty and how society has been aligned. You would stay with a master too if life was better even as a captive.