Kathleen Brehony recounts the story eloquently in her book Living a Connected Life, so I'll share her rendition with you:

Trainers teach baby elephants to stay by tying one of their legs to a short rope and attaching it to a stake in the ground.  At first the baby elephant pulls and pulls against his restraint, but to no avail.  No matter what he does, he can't get away.  When the elephant is grown, all a trainer needs to do is tie a small rope -- attached to nothing -- around the elephant's leg and he is now held to the spot, not by a stake but by his own beliefs.

As I traveled and met more and more people, and saw the conditions in which they lived, I couldn't get this metaphor out of my head.  It was a shared experience.  During one conversation, a colleague extemporaneously offered, "Africa seems like the continent of restricted dreams."  From an American, drenched from birth is the ideology of boundless dreams, that's a powerful observation.

Perhaps reporting such sentiment here is bit too raw; my intent is certainly not to indict an entire country or culture.  It's more a feeling than a set of statistics.  All I am trying to point out is that anyone intent on making a contribution to the country -- not just touring and taking photographs -- should contemplate this observation and make sure that their choice of contributions does not inadvertently perpetuate any sense of overwhelming limitation that may be festering just below the surface.

No CadeauBy way of simple example, let me take up the issue of child begging -- something any traveler in the region will encounter.  During the three weeks I traveled in Mali, I must have gotten a hundred requests for a "cadeau", which is the French word for "gift".  On the one hand, encountering a beggar's request knowing that you have so much and the request is so minuscule makes giving a cadeau seem trivial. 

But on the other hand, is it really? 

If you begin to explore the situation more deeply, you might ask yourself if you're not actually doing harm.  I did.  In light of the above observation, I couldn't escape the feeling that by fulfilling the request for a cadeau I was tying another small rope -- becoming an active participant in the limitation of dreams.

Incidentally, I found it no coincidence that the national word for hand out is a French term given the country's colonial heritage.  Yes, the country became independent (again) in 1960, but in the grand scheme of things, that's only 48 years -- less than a generation of liberty to rekindle a sense of boundlessness, a sense of true opportunity.

Like with most problems I observed on the trip, I have no specific answers.  Not yet anyway.  But, at least now I'm thinking about them.  Perhaps you are too.  As every recovery program points out, the first step in solving a problem is recognizing you have one.

The benefits of this profusion are fairly obvious: communication facilitates commerce and serves as a valuable lifeline in a desert environment.  And speaking or desert, the flat, open spaces are ideal for cell phone tower performance; we found connectivity in almost every location we visited on the trip.

That service is provided by either Orange or Malitel, but Orange is the overwhelming marketer in the country.  In fact, the Orange logo was more ubiquitous than any other advertised brand I saw throughout the country.  Orange makes Coke look like rank amateurs when it comes to marketing here!

One travel tip: most, if not all, Malians use pre-paid services.  "Top up" time cards, which look like little lottery tickets because of their scratch-off access codes, are for sale everywhere.  Instead of dealing with your phone service from abroad, cozy up to a guide or driver and offer to top up their card in exchange for usage.  USD$40 kept me in sufficient call time back to the US over a three week trip.

Yaya with Lunch

Capitan is tasty no matter how it's prepared.  And they've learned how to prepare it in a variety of ways: boiled, stewed, smoked, fried, dried and, in my case the favorite, grilled.  

The first place I encountered Capitan was at Le Santoro restaurant, a tourist-oriented restaurant and cultural center founded not accidentally by a former cultural minister of Mali.  Le Santoro is located off of Koulikoro Road in Bamako.

Bamako is the country's largest and most developed city.  There appears to be strong commerce in the capital city, albeit few I asked could explain what business it is that is taking place.  Our exposure to commerce is limited to tourist-focused establishments such as the Artisanat -- the city's bustling craft market -- and restaurants.

 For the culturally inclined, the National Museum of Mali is a must-see stop.  Here, one learns the basics of Malian history through artifacts.  Items on display range from earliest human implements from the region, all the way to modern examples of the country's impressive fabric artistry.  While the country grows cotton, it exports it to other countries (Europe and increasingly China) for the making of textiles.  Once loomed, however, Mali re-imports the finished goods to produce impressive dyed and printed fabrics.  These fabrics, many finished by hand with wax, are exceptionally beautiful and coveted for making clothing.

Antelope Headdresses, Bambara TribeThe Museum trip will also start to give you a sense of how very connected the Malian people are with the land and their environment.  During a tour of ancient artifacts, for example, our guide explained why you see so many gazelles and antelopes portrayed.  To this American, the answer seemed obvious: Duhh!  Becuase they ate 'em.  Not so, although he did admit they are quite tasty.  The real reason, he explains, is because God sent them to the people to teach farming!  (Um, excuse me.  Farming?  Take a moment to think about this idea before moving to the next paragraph...)

Gazelles and antelopes taught farming because, as they run, they churn up the dirt under their hooves, then poop in the depressions.  And, as everyone knows: poop + hoove marks  = trees.  Because there's seeds in the... well, you get it, I'm sure.  The broader point, however, is quite intriguing.  When was the last time you stopped to notice, much less analyze, how exactly the plants around you came to be?  Shouldn't you?  The early Malians perceived the grazing of an Antelope as an act of God.  No matter your spiritual path you're on, you must respect the intense connection that early Malian animism brought to these humans. 

We ended our day by returning to the Hotel L'Amitie, a modern hotel catering to foreign visitors.  By the plethora of outside signage on the building, it's clear this hotel has changed hands many times, most recently to Moumar Khadafi, who has rechristened it "Hotel Libya".  The Hotel experienced only one brown-out during our stay, making it a clear 5-star leader in the region!

One goal for me on this trip was to remain intentional -- to stay in the present and synthesize as much as possible -- about finding connections with others I encountered, no matter how different they may seem at first.  Take Majd, for example.  Majd was the taxi driver that took us to the airport.

The cab ride started out quiet and "normal", however a few minutes into the trip, he promptly apologized, seemingly for no reason, then turned on his radio.  After a brief bout of tuning, he ended up at station 94.30, which, at 11am every Friday, broadcasts the prayers of a Saudi Muhlah to whom Majd is devoted.  Played at a volume that drown out much other thought, this act of sonic intrusion might have generated some offense for the average tourist.  Instead of complaining, however, we chose to "tune in" right along with our driver and see what we might get out of it.

Not knowing Arabic precluded any specific understanding of the prayer.  That left only the cadence and timber of the Muhlah's voice upon which to reflect.  After listening to the prayer, I was impressed by the results.  The delivery was hypnotic and, despite its volume, I found myself focused and clear after the experience.  In fact, I felt awake, yet relaxed enough to remove any dread of the long plane ride ahead of us.  Once the radio went off, I thanked Majd for turning it on.

Should you find yourself in Paris at 11am some Friday, take a moment to find 94.30 on a radio and a place to sit, close your eyes and enjoy.  Better yet, run out to the street and flag a cab.  Who knows, if you're in the flow, perhaps Majd himself will pick you up and share his special prayer with you!

Not this time!  This trip, the sky was gray, as was the city and its people.  Everyone seemed all business,, zipping from point A to point B in their black (or gray) clothing.  With the exception of the French tri-colour every once in a while, I don't recall seeing any color on this visit.  I wonder if there's a deeper message in these visuals.  Hmmm.

Although Paris disappointed is ambiance, I must report that I did have a number of positive experiences during my brief visit.  Food, for example, was Très Magnifique!  Since I was off to sub-saharan Africa  the next day, I made sure tosample as much of what Parisian restaurants had to offer.  While I won't plug any particular restaurants, sufficed to say I could eat my way through this city going door-to-door.

First, let's talk about the practical aspects of being dirt poor. By the way, I'd define dirt poor as being so poor that you value as a precious resource the dirt under your (invariably bare) feet. Mali, depending on whose stats you use, is either the third or fourth poorest country in the world. (According to the UN, Mali is a poster-child for "LDCs" -- Least Developed Countries.) What does being at the bottom of the economic scale look like in practical terms? Well, for starters, it doesn't look like anything after about 6pm. That's because you have no electricity to power light bulbs. One of the reasons people in Mali suffer from such poor education is because they must work for basic survival during the day and can't read at night. For a person who reads voraciously, and almost exclusively after 9pm, this was a shocking concept to contemplate.

No electricity also means no refrigeration. Few if any Malians can go to the market on Saturday and stock up on a week's worth of meals. Rather, they must go to the market every day for their food; without refrigeration, yesterday's tomato is rotten by tomorrow. Malians -- more specifically, Malian women -- spend the bulk of their day on the process of food collection and preparation, starting first with getting the daily water supply at a communal well, moving on to firewood or charcoal collection, then on to the market for the day's sustenance. After food prep, basic hygiene, and some rudimentary farming or craft work, it's dark again.

Dirt poor also means that "dirt" is an active part of your life. For example, the preponderance of Malian homes and buildings are built of mud bricks. They are crafted during the rainy season and left to dry in the sun. When complete, they are stacked, much like legos, and mortared together with more mud. It also means that you are scratching your own food out of the soil. Most Malians measure wealth in the size of their garden and/or the size of their goat, cattle or camel herd.

I won't even go on to the details of health care. Let me just share one little fact to serve as a microcosm for the big picture: Mali has only one endocrinologist and one eye surgeon for the entire country -- a country with over 13 million citizens. Yes, you read that right. While we have some health care issues in America, it is certainly an eye opener to understand how lucky we are to even have problems in our system to deal with. Mali's problem is that there's no system to have problems with!

I think you get the point on the practical implications of poverty in the region. It's dire. So, let's move on to the emotional implications.

It's easy to develop a guilt complex as a Western tourist if you insist on seeing Mali through Western eyes. There's simply no debating the fact that we have an embarrassment of riches. A little queasy feeling starts in your belly about your last impulse Target run when you see an entire village of people without shoes. That said, the more I observed, the more I began to understand that it's not all about the money. The reality is most of the people we encountered on our trip weren't bitter or despondent. Rather they were thankful for having something and hopeful for a brighter future. While they had a clear understanding of the benefits of "modernization", they were equally reluctant to achieve those benefits at the expense of their culture, independence, family structures or pride. What else to make of the emotional stress of poverty I've yet to crystallize, so I will leave further observations for later posts.

Anyway, now that I'm back, I'll start off by posting some selected pictures in the Photo Galleries.  That should get things rolling!