From
New York to mombasa to toumboucto
Maria dizon lahuffman, RPCV Mali 1991-1993
The African traveling bug bit me during my junior year at New York University. I did not want to spend another hot, humid summer working in New York. A friend from NYU had volunteered during the previous summer for Operation Crossroads Africa, Inc. and had traveled to Zimbabwe. After she recounted to me her adventures, I walked to the Operation Crossroads Africa office on Fifth Avenue and picked up an application.
I felt like I was in Out of Africa. I spent four weeks that summer in temperate,
southern Kenya working at a rural school district from where we had a view of
Mount Kilimanjaro on a clear day. I
spent the last two weeks climbing Mount Kenya, taking the rail from Nairobi to
Mombasa, touring the national parks, photographing the wild life, and swimming
and snorkeling at the beaches on the coast.
I told myself that if I can do this for six weeks, I could definitely do
this for two years. Little did I know
that Peace Corps would be a lot more different.
First and foremost, Mali is a landlocked country, the
northern two-thirds of which is part of the Sahara desert. During our first hot, dry season (March to
June) in country, some Peace Corps trainees measured the temperature. It was 114 degrees Fahrenheit under the
shade. In the Segou region where Peace
Corps assigned me, the landscape was barren and flat. The soil was reddish brown, hard, cracked, and dusty. The air was hot and dry. I saw the occasional baobab tree in the
distance, and a neem tree or eucalyptus tree here and there. During the rainy season from June to
September, the rice and millet fields provided the greenery. Unfortunately, the rainy season was becoming
shorter every year. I wondered if Segou
would look like Toumboucto in a few decades.
The only wild life that I saw were hippopotami
submerged in the Niger river with their nostrils visible above the water,
small, brightly-colored birds flitting in and out of the millet fields,
blue-yellow geckos that did push ups on top of mud walls, and the small,
scorpion that fell from the ceiling of my mud house onto my mattress and stung
me (one of my worse moments in country, leading me to question my purpose in
being there). I did see lots of
domesticated animals though. Skinny is
an adjective to describe most of them: skinny cows with floppy humps on their
backs, goats, donkeys, dogs, guinea fowl and chickens running around, pecking
at whatever was on the ground. I was
reluctant to eat the village chicken when I realized that most of them gathered
around the opening from the latrine where the dirty water flowed out. The only non-skinny animals I saw were sheep
being fattened to celebrate the end of Ramadan.
The Niger River is the large body of water that runs
through Mali from west to east, passing the capital city of Bamako, and the
regional capitals of Kayes, Segou, Mopti, Toumboucto, and Gao. After the rainy season, the river’s water
level would be high enough for boats to sail on. During the dry season, the water level became so low, one can
practically walk across the river to the villages on the other side. According to our Peace Corps training, we
were not to swim in any body of water, lest we get Shistosomiasis,
resulting from a small worm that burrows into the sole of your feet. Yet, I frequently saw Malians going down to
the river to drink, bathe, wash their clothes, their children, their cooking
pots, and their cows.
Peace Corps assigned me to the town of Dioro, on the
Niger River, sixty kilometers north of Segou, as a SED volunteer, (Small
Enterprise Development). At the time of
my site visit, I realized that I was not going to be re-creating the Out of
Africa experience and to accept Mali in all its desert harshness and
starkness. After six months in town, I
decided that Dioro was too big and too “cosmopolitan” for me, so I moved to a
rural village, Dougounikoro (literally translated as “little old village), ten
kilometers from town. I wanted a
complete Peace Corps experience, totally different from New York and Kenya.
Dougounikoro is a Bambara and Muslim village. I took the name of Mariam Coulibaly,
Coulibaly being the name of the village chief, and lived among his family. The village chief had two wives, several
sons, and numerous grandchildren. I
took photographs of all of them and made sure to develop two sets of prints to
give away. The village chief’s first
and oldest wife, Ba-Jeneba (mother Jeneba), became my “mother” who looked after
me. She was also the village mid-wife.
Of all the Malians I came to know, she was the one
who made a lasting impression and continues to stay in my heart. When she became ill and I didn’t see her one
morning, I went looking for her in her mud house in which I had never entered
before. In the village, everything was
done outdoors: eating, bathing, sleeping, cooking, washing, socializing,
etc. Only when the cold weather, the
dust storms and rains came, did everyone go indoors. I bought Ba-Jeneba medicines (breaking my personal Peace Corps
rule of never giving anybody medicine) from the town pharmacy and told her to
take them with her morning, noon, and evening meals. I boiled a pot of water with eucalyptus leaves, citron and sugar
for her to drink. One time, when I
returned from a visit to Bamako, I brought back a kilo of popping corn from the
central market and showed Ba-Jeneba how to make popcorn with oil and a cooking
pot. She later came to my door holding
an ear of corn from the fields and asked if she could use that to make
popcorn. I told her, unfortunately
not. Finally, one Saturday morning, I
gave Ba-Jeneba a ride to the market on the back of my green mobylette (moped). She was all dressed up in her nicest pagne
outfit and smelling of Nivea skin cream.
On Saturdays, the market came to Dioro. Going to market is a big deal, the big
social event of the week where everyone dressed up, met people they haven’t
seen in a while, brought their products to be sold, and sometimes bought items
when they had money. I would meet
Ba-Jeneba at the market and buy enough fried fish and mangoes for her to give
to the family. I reasoned that the
vitamins A and C from the mangoes and the protein from the fried fish would
supplement the family’s diet of rice, peanut sauce, onion sauce, and a sauce
some Malian volunteers called the “slimy green sauce”, made of okra and baobab
leaves eaten with toh (millet that was pounded and boiled into something
resembling pea-green Play-Doh).
Although I came to love my village and the town of
Dioro, I wanted to see more of Mali.
When I accumulated vacation time, I went to visit at their sites other
volunteers who had became friends during training. This gave me the opportunity to see other parts of Mali:
Manantali in the west of Mali near the Senegal border, Koulikoro near Bamako,
Sikasso in the south of Mali near the Ivory Coast border, a boat ride up the
Niger River from Segou to Mopti during the rainy season, Djenne to see the big
mosque which is also the largest mud structure in the world, and, of course,
Toumboucto (or Timbuktu).
In Toumboucto, I paid the police at the station “un
mille francs” (one thousand francs CFA) for them to stamp my passport with the
“Toumboucto” stamp to prove that I had been there. Toumboucto was slowly disappearing under the Sahara desert, as
the desert encroached farther south.
Everywhere was sand, even in the fresh bread that was baked in the
conical mud ovens. In the past, one
could take the boat directly to Toumboucto.
At present, there is an additional one-hour drive north from the river
to the city itself.
I used all forms of transportation to get around
Mali: Peace Corps-issued motorcycle, moped and bicycle, bachee, bush taxi, bus,
truck, train, plane, piroque, boat, and camel.
I paid to ride a camel outside of Toumboucto and learned that camels
have a pungent smell to them. In
retrospect, now that I’m older and have acquired a sense of mortality, I
realized that some of my modes of transportation were pretty dangerous. Two surgeries on my right knee can attest to
that. I just wanted to see as much of
Mali as possible.
It was ten years ago this spring that I completed my
Peace Corps service in Mali. I have
completed my journey and the traveling bug doesn’t have the same bite. I am back in New York and the world seems
more unstable and dangerous…or maybe it’s just my sense of mortality. Yet, whenever New York becomes unbearable
and overwhelming, I reassure myself that Africa is just a plane ride away.