Window Shopping with Tums

Le Carême, or Ramadan, is in full swing. Mosques blast their wakeup calls to prayer at 4AM, coworkers are nodding off in meetings from not eating or drinking during work hours, and traffic around Bamako at the end of the day is worse than ever. Everyone is leaving the office at the same critical hour of 3PM in order to 1) prepare the feast for breaking the fast at sundown; 2) pray at the mosque at 4PM; 3) take a nap before sundown to sleep away the now exponentially increased hunger.

The traffic creates mounting chaos during what is supposed to be a peaceful month of prayer. Cars are at a complete standstill before the two bridges to cross the Niger, “le Pont Ancien” and “le Pont Nouveau,” the Old Bridge and the New Bridge (not very creative names). It is in this river “limbo” that the increased traffic has caused an increase in window shopping.

The “Orange” Mobile Phone guys are at the car windows on the regular, selling phone credit in increments of 500 fCFA ($1). I’ve already mentioned these young men -- decked out in their neon vests and displaying these phone credit cards in plastic covers like they’re prized collectors’ baseball cards.

Phone "credit" cards

What I haven’t previously mentioned are the rest of the “street” workers.

The street workers may be walking through the traffic selling some type of food. There are not a lot of options in terms of snacks in Bamako, so you’re basically guaranteed the narrow choice of a sack of peanuts, a pack of dried dates, apples, bananas, or a bag of animal-cracker-esque orbs that will make you thirsty just eyeing them. They look and taste like a drier form of those puffy, circular soup crackers you add to clam chowder, and should therefore only be bought in desperate times of hunger.

Dried dates and apples for sale

Even though everyone’s fasting, a few cars or taxis may buy the snacks to save in the dashboard (in the event that they’re still stuck in traffic at that crucial moment when the sun goes down and the fast is over). If they decide not to buy snacks, though, there are other options.

Need a grater? No problem. What about a sweat towel after all that tough labor in the kitchen? Also available.

World Cup footballs, sweat towels, sweat tissues, magazines, kitchen food graters, lighters, French Scrabble (I’m surprised I haven’t bought this yet), wallets, umbrellas, belts...and wind-up toys. Lots and lots and lots of plastic wind-up toys.

Leather products brought right to you...

The less expensive the tool or gadget being sold, the younger the salesperson. They have kids as young as 6-7 years old walking up to your window, even in the rain, trying to sell you something you don’t need. And if it’s not a useless gadget they’re clasping, it’s a tin bucket for handouts.

You don't even need to reach out the window to retrieve the goods!

As a rule, I usually don’t give money to begging kids. While I may purchase something kids of the same age are selling, I've learned from experience in India that if you hand out change to street children, you’re giving them a reason to continue to beg. Giving them positive results from begging helps to turn it into a full-time, long-term lifestyle. In Mali, the same situation is perpetuated if you decide to give your extra coins to kids, whose parents probably sent them out with their family begging tin bucket.

It’s hard to look these kids in the eye and say no, especially when approached by twins for some extra money. My fellow Malians tell me that giving to twins will bring me great luck. My favorite street-twins work on the corner by the Grand Marché/Big Market and sport worn out, matching, tee-tiny Orlando Magic jerseys.

Instead of flat-out saying “non” to these hard-working coin collectors, I try to find something else to give them. It could be the snacks I may have purchased at the last street corner from another kid...or it could be Tums.

For the trip to Siby, I poured a ton of the antacid into a ziploc bag as a "juste au case où"/"just in case." I had a ton minus two left after the trip, and have been handing them out like free condoms on Bourbon at Mardi Gras. The chalky chewables apparently double as calcium supplement AND a “bon bon”/candy. Good for your bones and your tastebuds.

Besides a street treat, they’ve also proven to be a great placebo for young New Orleanian girls. At our “Girls First” summer camp in NOLA, every counselor is given a first aid kit with a disproportionate amount of the space dedicated to Tums. Kid has a tummy ache? Tums, obviously. Kid has a headache? Tums’ll work for that too. How about kid feeling homesick and crying to use your cell phone to call mommy? No need to make that phone call with my precious minutes, kid, you’ll feel better after this magical Tums.

I don’t blame kids all around the world for liking the powdery discs. I can remember going through a phase back in high school where my 16 year old impressionable mind was learning about the effects of osteoperosis. I immediately sought out preventative measures, and my calcium supplement of choice became the fruity Tums.

I was popping these things like Tic-Tacs, and you could always count on finding a half-eaten bottle of them in the side compartment of my old, brown, hand-me-down 1984 Mercedes Turbodiesel. Little did I know then that seven years later I’d find myself in a yellow Turbodiesel taxi, across the world, handing out the same Tums flavors to Malian twins in an effort to increase my luck with traffic.

Coming to Mali, Going to Siby

My friend Cailey organized a trip to Siby, Mali, this past Sunday. The picturesque spot, located 30 km outside of Bamako, is known for its green hiking trails, rock-climbing friendly cliffs, and rainwater waterfalls. The trip would be just what I needed after two months of office work, sitting in front of a computer all day on (what Malians call) my "grosse-fesse"/"fat ass."

View of a waterfall from afar, in Siby

Arch we climbed, on right

A large white van/mini bus picked up all six of us American folk at the “Pasteur Clinique” in the heart of Bamako. There were three work pairs, each pair only knew Cailey so we spent the ride to Siby getting to know each other. Each of us went around answering the hot question, “how did you end up in Mali?” and the even more exciting follow-up, “what will you do next?”

There were Cailey and Martha. Cailey left a desk job in the states working on a Climate Change Initiative for the Bill Clinton Foundation to volunteer with Project Muso, a community health strengthening program in one of Bamako’s “ghettos,” Yirimadjo. After devoting a year of her life to this slum-like community, she’s moving to sunny San Francisco in a month to try to find work with the immigrant population in So-Cal. Martha recently graduated college and landed in Bamako two days ago. She will be taking over Cailey’s spot with Project Muso in a week, and after her year of dedication to the same “ghetto” community is hoping to be accepted into the Peace Corps.

Cailey, the champ of the day for organizing our trip

Bremen and Martha

Then there were Mike and Erin. Mike is a young guy who decided to ditch his short-lived Wall Street stint in NYC to use his business savvy with a microfinancing program in Bamako. He loves Excel worksheets and talking about his accomplishments with them, and post-Mali is looking to work with the non-profit “One Acre Fund,” which helps East African farmers grow their own way out of hunger. Erin is an ex-Peace Corps volunteer who was previously working with Somalian refugees being reestablished in Nashville, TN, because of its close proximity to Tyson Chicken (who exploits vulnerable populations for cheap labor). She recently got the job of program manager with Mike’s same microfinancing group, and after only two months of delegation, meetings, and sitting at her laptop, misses her hands-on experiences in the Peace Corps and is wondering why she doesn’t just go home to the U.S., live on a farm, and teach.

Wall Street Mike and future farmer Erin

Finally, there’s Bremen and me. Bremen is a journalist who was hired by BusinessWeek in NYC right out of college. With the decrease in journalism fueled by the transition to more internet-based writing, Bremen (being one of the younger folk) got cut. He picked up a new and exciting profession that fit well with his running lifestyle -- organizing marathons across the United States -- and after revisiting journalism in Russia for two years, applied on a whim for a job with “Voices for a Malaria Free Future” through Johns Hopkins University in Mali. He’ll be keeping his job with JHU when this project ends in May, and will probably be happy to return to the states and their unlimited supply of peanut M&M's. And as for me, I just came to Mali to try to become a fourth wife in this polygamous/polygynous country. Thankfully divorce is quite common here, so after Mali I’m making plans to travel to polyandrous Tibet. Polyandry, ladies, is the practice of taking multiple husbands...another reason to “Free Tibet.”

Bremen on a solo mission

En route to Siby, we had gotten through discussing all the unique paths we’d taken to get to Mali and where they would lead us afterwards. By the time we had walked up to the gorgeous red cliffs of Siby, we had moved on to favorite hang out spots in Bamako. From tubab dance clubs to wine nights on Malian roofs, it was interesting hearing about the very different lives of other ex-patriots in our same nook of West Africa. We each had the same desire to make Malian friends and fully immerse in their culture, while also wanting to meet every American in our locale to go through the run-down of what we'd been practicing: asking how the person is here in Mali and how that same person is going to leave this crazy country.

Power in numbers, picked up some stragglers

We had finished climbing on top of a giant natural arch when our group decided it was too hot to continue trekking, and that we should head to the waterfall for a swim. At this point, we get back into our white mini bus and off-road it to what is supposed to be a rain-water waterfall in Sub-Saharan Africa. We had sweat out a ton on our hike and had inevitably gotten hungry, so the “favorite spot” conversation had drifted to “favorite food spot.” After listing the best restaurants to get Mali's famous peanut sauce, everyone agreed that Broadway Street Cafe was the best place for some American flavor in Bamako.

Views of the under-arch

Climbing on top of the arch

We started to get closer to the waterfall, continuing on a bumpy road through the brush, scraping the bottom of our van at every large rock or dirt pile. I was starting to feel a bit woozy from off-roading in a top heavy vehicle with suspect suspension mixed with my tubab dehydration. The food conversation was continuing, these people could not get over Broadway Street Cafe. They were now exchanging details on what each liked best about the Cafe’s burger. From that burger, other burgers were brought up in discussion, and meat preparation, and more meat admiration, and my wooziness turned right into full out vegetarian nausea. Thank God I had packed a plastic bag of first aid supplies for the trip: Tums (the cure-all), Ibuprofen, and Immodium. You never know what Mali’s gonna do to your body throughout the course of a day.

Cows blocking our road in protest of the Broadway St. Café burgers

Twenty minutes later, in enough time for the meat discussion to die down and my body to soak up the pain blocker combo of Tums and Ibuprofen, we walked up to the gorgeous waterfall.

Erin and Mike

There I am feeling better! Look, Ma...no hands!

Thought Bremen's abs could give you a "to-scale"

The place was packed with Europeans, Americans, and even a few Malians who usually do not know how to swim. It was oddly quiet, and most people were just lying around on the surrounding rocks in the shade. It felt like an opium den where everyone’s too high to interact or react to the surroundings, but our crew was on a different high -- finally able to hit the water after a day on the bumpy road, in the heat, journeying through the cliffs and each other’s "petites histoires."

TOO relaxed?

Dirty Laundry

My house-sitting stint is coming to a close. After five weeks of sharing my boss Claudia’s home with her live-in nanny Mélanie, Claudia and her family will be returning late tonight.

In other words: it’s clean-up time.

Mélanie has taken on the role of the "hunter" in our cleaning relationship, hunting down any spills, stains, dirt, or trails of ants and pulverizing them. My role, in contrast, has been that of the "gatherer."

My job duties include gathering up the vast CD collection I discovered in Claudia’s room. I’ve spent many free hours burning the mix of West African albums onto my computer, and have left the likes of “Mamou Sidibé” and “Ali Farka Touré” hanging out on the coffee table together. That just will not do.

The family’s collection of games must also be gathered and put in its correct corner of the house. Once Claudia’s two sons Abraham and Andrew get back, the gaming will recommence, but me and Mélanie can no longer keep our Jenga pieces splayed on the kitchen table (usually the evidence of the previous night’s slaughter of Liz McGehee). No, the table must now be properly set for real family life.

Finally, and most importantly, I must gather all of our clean laundry that has been strategically draped over every inch of free space on the chairs, couch, TV, book shelves, even fans. Everywhere you look, you can see a pair of my multi-colored undies from the 'ole faithful Fruit-of-the-Loom multipacks (my Tulane volleyball team still gives me crap about these).

The reason we have all of our "sous-vêtements"/"under-clothing" hanging around is because we are at the heart of the rainy season. Without a dryer, and with the rain preventing us from hanging up our clothes outside, we lay our clothes around the house.

Recently, my colleague and former roommate Bremen had his computer charger stolen during his vacation in Morocco. We have been sharing my Mac charger this past week, and he prefers working over here at Claudia's house rather than make the trek to my Keneya Ciwara office on the other side of town.

Working from home has been great -- wearing pajamas and having the option of sitting outside by the pool -- but there is the problem of our clothes-drying. Bremen has had the displeasure of running into our damp clothes around the house. He has been ever-surrounded by my drying, clean laundry.

And in return, I have been bombarded by his dirty.

Ever since I’ve been here in Bamako, Bremen has struggled with the woman who cleans his house, Caddy. Despite his rigorous nightly studies, Bremen does not have a full grasp on the French language, so there’s a language barrier with Caddy. On top of that, however, there’s the body language barrier: Caddy is unbelievably unpleasant, and shows it with every inch of her being.

I had the opportunity to experience her "mauvaise disposition"/"bad disposition" when I lived at Bremen’s my first month here. Even without the language barrier in my case, she will not greet you, she does not try to uphold conversation, and she never smiles. She seems aggravated at any and everyone’s presence, but most of all Bremen’s.

Now besides his lack of knowledge of the French language, the only problem I can think of when it comes to Bremen is an over-addiction to peanut M&Ms. Bremen cannot find this candy in Bamako, which sometimes makes him sad, and when he's sad he plays the same songs over and over again on the piano. Really not much too much to complain about there.

"Bremen: l'Agrèable"

who likes taking photographs of nature and feeding turtles

Bremen is the nicest person you could work for; he's a hard-working BYU grad that collects postcards with inspirational quotes. Bremen is also the cleanest person you could tidy house for; he really only eats salads in addition to his peanut M&Ms (when he can find them). He thus leaves little to no dish clean-up, and makes bathroom clean-up a cinch when he washes off in the pool after his hour to two hour runs.

So why hate the guy?

Because he’s too clean.

Bremen actually cleans up after himself...can you imagine that? Caddy can’t. She was astonished when he cut her days to 3 instead of 6, and refused to accept the proposition for her to come at 9AM instead of 7AM, which would give him time to cook breakfast and clean up after himself before she came. She’s been able to keep herself preoccupied despite the little work Bremen leaves her with; one day he came home to a whole rack of freshly cleaned and polished shoes.

Bremen is SO clean, in fact, that he recently decided he doesn’t need a maid at all. He was finally answering to the voice inside of his head that said, “you’re still in your twenty-somethings, what are you doing with a maid?!”

But there’s this tricky flip side here in Mali. The more people you have working at your house, the more people you give jobs to, and the more you’re able to share your tubab wealth to the local population. It wasn’t an easy decision to let Caddy go, and Bremen was hoping to keep it on the down low. Not to mention all of his Malian colleagues would think he was crazy for wanting to do is own house chores.

He broke the news to Caddy, but cher Caddy wasn’t having it. Bremen gave her two weeks’ pay as a parting give, and yet little miss Caddy was still P.O.-ed. She called up Bremen’s co-worker Kankou, saying she was only given two weeks rather than a month’s notice; she phoned Bremen’s co-worker Lassana, citing all of the duties she's performed correctly, including meticulous shoe washing; she whipped out her very vague contract put together on a whim by her previous patron and pointed out to all of the other employees in Bremen's small neighborhood that there was no end date. Her unpleasantness had reached a new level.

"Caddy: la Désagréable"

our wicked foil who can still wicked clean some sheets

That’s where I get dragged into the whole shebang. As previously mentioned, Bremen has been over at the house using my Mac charger, and both of our offices know that we’ve been working together the past week. I get a phone call from Lassana, the office’s head of finances, who says he needs to talk to Bremen about his predicament. When I tell him I’m going to pass the phone to Bremen, he says, "Non, non, Liza; Bremen n’est pas encore francophone. Est-ce que tu peut traduire?"/"No, no, Lee-zuh; Bremen is not yet a French-speaker. Can you translate?"

So translate I did: Caddy wanted to file a complaint against Bremen with the Bureau of Labor. There we all were, right smack in the middle of squeaky clean Bremen’s dirty laundry.

Despite all efforts to keep it civil, and quiet, now everyone was talking about Bremen and Caddy’s tiff. "Avez-vous entendu? Bremen veux se laver son propre maison!"/"Have ya’ll heard? Bremen wants to clean his own house!"

With the threat of a government sanction because of a poorly-written contract he had no part in creating, our good guy Bremen is seeking out other options. He's biting the bullet and will try to keep Caddy on in some capacity. Perhaps if Caddy actually sticks to the later hour of 9AM, avoiding direct contact so that she doesn't bring down his day with her negativity, Bremen can probably live with having his shoes cleaned regularly.

And as for the comments around the office -- well, I’m sure Bremen would much prefer his colleagues being exposed to a house full of damp boxers than the reality of his house's dramatic, and personal, employee conflicts.

Marcel's Malian Pizza How-to

While my boss Claudia has been away on vacation, she gave me the "difficult" task of house-sitting her sweet crib. In addition, she asked if I’d like to continue to have their cook come by the house and whip something up a few days a week. Marcel prepares meals for them 6-7 days a week for a mere $50/month; for him to come even half of those days it’d only cost me half the price. Back home I could easily spend that $25 on one crazy sushi night with the girls!

Marcel dans la cuisine/Marcel in the kitchen

For such a great price, and what I convinced myself could technically be considered a culinary "cultural" experience, I gave her a definitive "hell yes." I would love Marcel to come on over and get cookin’. Not to mention I had already burned now 3 attempts at dinner = 2 pots of beans + 1 pot of jambalaya mix I’d brought from home.

My new chef has been coming in on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. When he arrives at around 7:30AM, we decide what he’ll make that day, what he needs to buy at the market, and how much I need to give him to buy “ces provisions.” Having him do the food purchasing saves me some cash; he gets the African price, whereas "toute seule"/by myself I'm almost always charged the “tubab” price, faring at about double.

Monsieur Marcel has thrown together all sorts of Malian dishes: "sauce feuilles"/leaf sauce, made with either spinach or potato leaves; “les allocos”/plaintains either deep-fried (deeply-awesome) or grilled; “aubergines”/eggplant and “gombo”/okra fixed every which way; “le poisson capitaine,” the most popular fish around Bamako; or one of my favorites, a sort of mélange of all of the above which he calls “sauce feuilles du bissap avec arrachides et le petit poisson sur le riz,” a sauce of hibiscus leaves and peanuts with "small" fish over rice.

Sauce feuilles in the making on the outdoor stove

My investment in Marcel has not only paid off in grocery shopping and food preparation, but also in juices. The first month of my trip, before he entered my life, I had spent the majority of my “liquid” assets on liquids. I just couldn’t get enough of the fresh juices around town: banana juice, mango juice, guava juice, bissap (hibiscus juice), and my favorite, “jus de pain de singe”/monkey’s bread juice/baobab juice. All of the drinking calories saved from leaving beer and liquor behind in Louisiana had simply found a new home in juice cals, which are now created by Monsieur Marcel.

So I’ve been eating AND drinking well, in full out Malian style (although without the meat that Malians love so). But to top it off, when I’m feeling a little more American, or needing a break from rice life, Marcel makes one killer vegetarian pizza.

I was looking for any excuse to give my new angel Marcel, who has saved me from myself in the kitchen, some extra cash in appreciation. It was this very home-made pizza that inspired me to ask him for a proper cooking lesson in exchange for some extra dough, which I found would be in cash and pizza form.

Pizza had become a staple in my pre-Mali life. My old roommate, Jen Linder, and I had gotten into the routine of Sunday pizza back in NOLA. We would flip between getting the greasiest pizza we could find, Pizza Hut(until we discovered Domino’s new recipe), and trying to feel better about our pizza choices by ordering the “World’s Healthiest Pizza," with its acclaimed probiotic crust. But what if we could make our own pizza back on Sundays in the dirty? Then we could put the money saved BACK into more beer purchases!

Sunday was the big lesson. Marcel and I started by adding the flour in a bowl for the dough. And then we stopped.

The flour was moving, ever so slightly. “Tu vois, Liza? (always pronounced Lee-zuh) C’est vermin.” Small bugs had gotten into the flour to reproduce, and now the tiny worm-like offspring were preventing us from continuing with our lesson.

At least, for a little while. Marcel was used to this kind of thing. He whipped out a sieve, and a few minutes of sifting later we were back at it.

When the dough was finished, we let it rise for a period of time while we made the homemade tomato sauce. We blended tomatoes together with a bell pepper and garlic, added the secret ingredient, and placed the mix onto the stove. Secret ingredient of the sauce? Maggi, bien sûr!

While the sauce was simmering, I had to ask: where did this West African native learn to make such a good pizza? Marcel replied that in his home country Burkina Fasso, he had worked as a domestic cook for one particular development worker. She was moving to Germany for a new job, and asked him to come with her to continue cooking for her. Six years later he moved home to Burkina to take care of his mother after his father had passed away. When he came home, he brought with him a mastery of German cuisine and -- you guessed it -- some serious pizza skillz.

We rolled out the pizza dough and I then asked him what the markings on his face were from. He has three on each side of his face outside of his eyes, and one larger one sweeping from his nose, under his eye to his lip. He explained that the cuts are given to young men of his ethnic tribe when they’re babies. One certain tribe has only the eye slashes, another has the nose to lip slashes by themselves, and others perform the three slashes on both sides with a full lip to lip over the nose slash.

His special sect of the Tuareg ethnicity did the two sets of three eye slashes with one side of nose to lip. To my surprise, he didn’t seem hurt or pained when he talked about it; he was too young to remember the event. Their practice is not unlike our own tradition with infant males, except over here its the foreheadskin that gets cut.

Three tribal markings next to his left eye

Three markings next to his right eye + nose to mouth slash

Marcel started pouring the now finished sauce onto the rolled dough, and I noticed his left hand placed on his lower back. It stayed there while he patiently placed each vegetable, lengthwise, in a spiral inward. He kept his hand placed there while he sprinkled cheese, and it didn't move when he walked to put the pizza in the oven. Thirty minutes later, his hand reassumed its position on the lower back when he retrieved the now finished pizza.

La position du main gauche/The left hand's position

Mélanie, the 22-year old live-in nanny that has been my temporary roommate, has this same cooking stance. However, it’s not unique to Claudia’s household, or to Mali for that matter. It’s a West African thing. West Africans don’t mess around with that left hand, especially not in the kitchen. With no T.P., the left hand is used for the bathroom only and nothing else. I was learning pizza and kitchen grace.

C'est la main droit qui fait tout le travail/It's the right hand that does all the work

While the pizza was cooling down, Marcel had placed the excess pizza dough rolled up into the oven to catch some of the left-over heat, "C'est pour mon pain habituel, je n'aime pas le gaspiller"/"It's for my usual bread, I don't like wasting the dough." We waited together a few more minutes, and I asked him what his wife's favorite dish was that he made. He started laughing, "C'est ma femme qui prépare à la maison, je n'ai pas de temps de preparer chez-nous!"/"It's my wife that cooks at the house, I don't have time to cook for us!" My inner feminist flared up a little bit, but he explained himself further, "Je prépare à six maisons, je n'arrives à la maison avant 21h00"/"I cook at six different houses, I don't get home til 9PM" and he left at 5AM to get started buying groceries for all the tubabous. And on top of that, I wasn't the first person to ask for a weekend pizza lesson.

He then proudly whipped out a picture of his wife, who was a whole foot taller than him. His femme had snatched a good man right there, even if his height allowed for an easy catch.

By the time I was ready to eat our home-made pizza, Marcel's bread was finished -- both of them products of our ultra-probiotic flour. Turns out you don't need to spend extra money ordering World’s Healthiest Pizza. You can have a much richer experience making one for cheaper, all with your own special breed of Malian's (not so micro-)organism flour!

Bon appetit!