Monstrous Moustiquaire

Wednesday morning, I got the call to complete an emergency mission for the “Voices for a Malaria Free Future” project. They needed someone to document the creation of a mosquito-net. Not just any mosquito net; a mosquito net big enough to cover the lobby of the UN building in New York City.

With my new, shiny blue camera, I was chosen to take pictures and videos of this monster “moustiquaire,” and show the chaos involved in shipping this mass of fabric to the states.

A slew of African heads of state are heading to NYC for an ALMA meeting, “African Leaders' Malaria Alliance” (www.alma2015.org) and in the American spirit -- where bigger means better -- the Big Apple hosts thought it would be a great plug for malaria awareness to have this gigantic net greet their guests. They wanted it shipped “at whatever cost” by Monday evening, to have it in place for the conference kickoff on Tuesday.

Thankfully, our “United Against Malaria” campaign was getting such a mosquito net made for one of Mali’s most notable monuments, “le Tour d’Afrique.” Sitting at five stories tall in the middle of the capital city, when covered with “un moustiquaire” the Tour d'Afrique will give the United Against Malaria campaign some serious visibility, and ideally influence Malians to get their own net, albeit smaller, to sleep under.

The official draping of the notable statue will occur in a few months, and in the meantime there’s another structure everyone’s talking about. To celebrate Mali's "Cinquantenaire"/50th anniversary on September 22, Monsieur le Président Touré purchased a 5 million dollar monument of a girl and a boy to be placed on the Niger river.

A $5 mil. project like this would be considered nothing in a high-income country. In the developing country of Mali, however, $5 mil. ain't chump change. Such a huge percentage of Mali's purse could be used in so many more productive ways -- strengthening the health system, education system, infrastructure.

You could come back with the counter-argument that: oh well, at least the money’s going back into the Mali economy, which could then trickle down to these other sectors.

But no, M. Touré did not have the monument locally constructed. He bought it from China.

Instead of making a fuss about the already decided, ludicrous purchase of a statue that will contribute nothing to decreasing poverty, hunger, or disease in Mali, we at “Voices for a Malaria-Free Future” are just going to put a giant net over the much bigger, and more respected, monument. We’re sending a message to the Malians that even though their president made the decision to put the country's money into a chunk of Chinese handiwork with his name on it, we can make the decision to aim the country's attention away from it. We’ll be combating the president’s example of using Malian funds for self-commemoration with a better message to lead by example. If the Tour d’Afrique is going to sleep under a mosquito net, so can you!

It is this same Tour d’Afrique’s mosquito net that our project so kindly decided to loan to the United States, and whose production I was assigned to document.

On my way to the tailor’s, I started imagining the room where the monstrous moustiquaire was being assembled. The twenty, thirty people working together under high ceilings, trying to keep in order what could be the design for King-Kong’s insecticide-treated bednet.

I was led through the “Grand Marché,” Bamako’s famous market, up a narrow staircase, and into a poorly lit room with a twin bed-sized pile of white netting on the ground. Sitting in the room, next to the sole dangling lightbulb, was a young man with a sewing machine: the tailor. The only tailor that had worked on this already-sewn, ready-to-go mosquito net.

It was an impressive feat for one person to squint through, and both he and the project were thrilled at the agreed-upon price of $300. I got a great video interview of his excitement in sending his work to the United States, all taken while he was lounging on top of the giant mass of netted cloth.

Monsieur le Tailleur

He walked me through the production process, starting from measuring the light fabric using his arm’s length. He mimed cutting with his rusted scissors. He showed me how to start up his lone, antique sewing machine.

Mass heap of mosquito net in the background

We wrapped up our interview when two of his buddies walked in to wrap up the net for shipping to NYC. They used a much larger needle to thread together four pieces of tarp that would ensure that the delicate netting did not get ripped. The tarp would allow something like rolling the net down the stairs to take place without worries.

All packed up and ready to fly

So that’s what they did. After stuffing the net into this homemade tarp contraption, they let her rip down the outdoor staircase. Eyes on my digital camera, I almost got blasted with the falling heap, and instead let it knock down a moto to my right.

Avalanche.

They jacked the tarped mass onto a cart, rolled it through the Grand Marché, and stopped traffic at each intersection for this all-important mosquito net that would travel over an ocean to an internationally-recognized building in NYC, and back again to top Mali’s most acclaimed monument.

When finally in the car, I looked through my video footage. This life-saving material looked so cheap, like tutu netting you could get at Marshall’s for ten cents a yard. Why wouldn’t those guys in New York just use such arts and crafts netting and get a local a tailor to make their show prop? Our shipping company told us it would take this $300 net a jaw-dropping $5,400 to ship there, and another $5,400 to ship back. The investment seemed almost as ludicrous as Monsieur Touré’s.

The car ride back to our "Voices" offices was tight and uncomfortable, all of the seats folded to make room for the net of honor. When we arrived, we all ran up the stairs to get everyone down to the car to see probably the biggest mosquito net ever made.

We walked in and were met by somber faces. Those flippant New Yorkers decided not to get the net shipped after all. Apparently, "at any cost" had a ceiling.

While this may disappoint our lone tailor, it was a wise decision not to burn over $10,000 that could be used to buy moustiquaires for 2,000 households, saving much more than 2,000 lives.

Now if only we could get Touré to retract his $5 million being exported to China. Who knows how many lives that could save -- something much more worthwhile to commemorate his presidency, and Mali's 50th anniversary.

Sambé Sambé!

Hooray, the fast has ended! The “Carême,” or Ramadan, has finally come to a close. After 28 days, the full moon reared its beautiful head on Thursday, September 9th, at the wee hour of 3AM to signify the Islamic new year and the reintroduction of day-time eating. Praise Allah!

Work is cancelled the day of the fête/festival in Mali because God knows, and your boss knows, you’ve got to get eatin’. On top of that, the day after the festival is also a work holiday. After all the meat ingestion, you need a day devoted to your bed -- and the toilet.

For la grande fête/festival/feast Aid el-Fitr, I was invited chez-Madame Touré, the secretary for our Keneya Ciwara office. She offered to fix me, her "fille Americaine"/American daughter, some fish on the day which is typically spent eating beef cooked in every which way.

"La vache"/the cow is slaughtered the morning of the festival, one cow per large family or neighborhood, and every single part is distributed out for consumption. When I told Madame Touré’s son Draman I was a vegetarian and don't eat beef, he said, “mais Liza, tu peut manger le coeur ou le pancreas, n’est pas?”/“but Leezuh, you can eat the heart or the pancreas, can’t you?” Non merci.

14-year old Draman, with the "etoile"/star he got shaved into his hair for the festival

I was still able to enjoy the artistry and tradition behind the slaughter and the subsequent cow part distribution. I had given my camera to Draman for that morning’s kill. He was able to capture these awesome, and super graphic, shots:

My personal favorite picture: the Malian flashlight

a.k.a. a lamp without a lampshade

Not for the faint-hearted, but can still be for the vegetarian if you're into gore:

...and voila! Ready for some cookin.

Now ever since Ramadan started, all of my friends and acquaintances have been talking about the outfits they were getting made for the big fast-breaking day, Aid el-Fitr. What kind of quality material, what style and cut, which tailor they had chosen for the important outfit, which embroiderer they would use for the details, where they bought the shoes to match...men and women alike got into this much detail on the outfits on a regular basis.

I had the boubou Fatime and her family had dyed and tailored for me, so I was ready for action in the formless mass of tinted cloth. I hopped in a taxi and headed toward Madame Touré’s.

When I walked into her house, I didn’t see all the women’s boubous and men’s basins that I expected. Instead, I saw women sweating in their tank tops, house skirts, and foullards (head wraps), and men in their wife beaters and jean shorts. I was absolutely over-dressed.

Regal Tubab Elizabeth

Please notice the girl getting her hair done in background. Definitely didn't need a boubou for that.

Apparently, the boubous and basins are reserved for after the beef-eating when you take a walk around the neighborhood to “see and be seen.” Because eating takes all day, boubous aren’t necessary until sundown. And no wonder, I was already sweating from the short walk from the taxi to inside Madame Touré’s house complex.

As soon as my Malian mother, Madame Touré, saw the first drop of transpiration, she offered me something a little more comfortable -- a pajama top. All day eating in your PJ’s...this was my kind of festival!

The bent-over cooking position...fanning the wood fire beneath the pot

While I had gotten there at 11, the food wasn’t ready until about 2PM. The women cooked in a bent over stance over their large pots on an open fire for the entirety of the mid-morning, and I along with the guys just sat around drinking tea. Every so often, a group of young kids would come by in their finest outfits, girls with their braids bedazzled and small purses in tow to yell “sambé sambé!”/“bonne fête!”. They would then give their blessings for the new year: may Allah bless you, your children, your parents, your brothers, your sisters...and so on. After they chanted this series in unison, they kind of hung around waiting for their “petits cadeaux”/“small gifts.” Some households gave out small plastic toys, hats, candies, or like our household, small money. Our 100 or 200 pieces of fCFA, the equivalent to quarters, went straight into the colorful bags of these festival house-hoppers.

Kid Krewe

The first round of eating finally commenced, and we all sat on our stools and low chairs to eat with our hands. With the meat, we were served the traditional “riz gras”(finally a French word you recognize!)/“fat rice,” which is made with tomato sauce, meat, and veggies...the equivalent of Louisiana jambalaya. I was right at home.

Eating some "riz gras" with that right hand

Immediately after we finished eating, Madame picked up and got to cooking again for round 2: “les brochettes de boeuf”/“beef cabobs.” Once she had gotten things rolling, she rushed to get washed and dolled up in her boubou for the adults' turn at home visits. This round 2 of door-to-door housecalls meant serious money exchange, 5000-10000 note fCFA, not the chump change handed out to the kids. Madame Touré had to make sure she was dressed to receive the big bills.

It was around this time that I started receiving the mass text messages of well-wishing and blessings:

"Dieu nous donne la longévité, la santé, la prospérité et le

bonheur."

“God give us longevity, good health, prosperity, and

happiness.”

“Bonne fete de Ramadan à vous, à votre famille, à tout vos

proche et collaborateur, que Dieu nous accorde sa grace à

travers nos prières et sacrifices. Amen.”

“Happy feast of Ramadan to you, your family, all your loved

ones and employees, may God grant us his grace through our

prayers and sacrifices. Amen.”

“Que Dieu te donne un bonheur croissant, une paix durable,

un calme divin, une santé inoxydable, et une foi pertinente.

Tels sont mes voeux pour l’Aid el- Fitr.”

“May God give you increasing happiness, a lasting peace, a

divine calm, stainless health, and a relevant faith. These are

my wishes for the Aid el-Fitr.”

The beeping of the texts were sounding the alarm to head out. Madame Touré was dressed to the nines, ready to go to her parent’s house and give some big bills to her mother. I had had enough beef exposure for the new year, and the fat rice had lived true to its moniker in my belly. It was the cook's turn to shine, and the eater's time to head home and take a post-feast nap.

La Famille Touré

When I arrived back at the house, I de-bouboued, and laid on my bed with my computer to read some news. On this amazing day spent celebrating the culture behind the Islamic religion, all over the international news were threats from extremist Christians to burn 200 Qurans, protests to the mosque being built near Ground Zero, and the exploitation of the return threats to kill Iraqi soldiers coming from the extremist Muslims.

Nothing was found saying “sambé sambé” to the millions of moderate, peaceful Muslims around the globe celebrating the end to their holy month of sacrifice to God.

So in response, I’d like to leave everyone with another one of the texts I received, from my Muslim colleague Tandina:

“En ce jour beni de Ramadan, je formule les voeux, que le

tout puissant pardonne nos peches, exauce nos prieres, et

nous donne la force de nous tolerer et de nous accepter les

uns les autres, malgre nos differences. Amen.”

"On this blessed day of Ramadan, I make the wish that the Almighty

forgive our sins, hear our prayers, and give us the strength to tolerate

and accept each other despite our differences. Amen."

And if you have any interest in donating to the imam's cause in New York City in an effort to improve Muslim-West relations, please visit: http://www.cordobainitiative.org/?q=content/donate. Sambé sambé!

How to "Treat" Homesickness

It’s true. The rumors are true. No need to hide it: I ordered a five pound bag of candy. I had five sugary delicious pounds of Haribo raspberry gummies shipped all the way here to West Africa.

A few weeks ago, my camera broke. I was prohibited from documenting any of my fun adventures in Mali to share with friends and family, and knew a replacement camera would take at least a month to arrive. Around this same time, my cousin Rebecca was getting married; my mom’s entire side of the family was going to be at her big fat Lebanese wedding without me. Also during this time, my cousin Katie, for whom I was recently the maid of honor at her wedding, gave birth to her first child Avery Lee. My dad’s entire side of the family was going to cheer her on, and all I could do was send her lame Facebook messages of encouragement. I had reached the zenith of my homesickness.

My brother Ben, who could sense my sadness, sent me a link to cheer me up: the “Back to School” berry sale at amazon.com.

He knows how addicted I am to crappy gummi candies. During my college volleyball days when we were required to write down everything we ate as the nutrition component to our training, I wrote down “orange slices” almost every week. I did not mean the healthy fruit version. I was regularly eating the sugar-coated stick-to-your-teeth candies you can find at the Circle K for 2/$1 -- my faithful study companions.

When I visited the link Ben forwarded, Amazon sweetly sang to me that for the knocked down price of only $12 (from the much higher price of $14.77), plus an additional 15% off (a whopping $1.80 cents added reduction!), you could get five pounds of the gummi berry of your choice. Fake sugar renditions of real fruit? My specialty!

Being at a weak point in my sub-Saharan life, I pressed “add to cart” and didn’t look back. I also added a berry-blue Panasonic Luminix camera; wish I could’ve gotten the berry discount on that purchase.

Now that the candy’s arrived, and I’m back in high spirits armed with a camera, what the hell am I going to do with five pounds of Haribo raspberries?!

My demise:

I packed a few ziploc bags chock full of the black and red sugary delights to bring to the office. On my way in this morning, I remembered that all my colleagues are still fasting. With my lack of self control, it struck me that I could very well put down this first pound of ziplocked raspberries all by myself. I had to get rid of them.

Walking to find a taxi, I was bombarded by kids asking “madame” for money. Fresh out of change and Tums, the raspberries were the perfect solution. The kids and moms were so enthusiastic, “bonbons madame, bonbons!” that I just grabbed a huge handful and gave it to one of the more responsible looking individuals for distribution and hightailed it out of that “rat king” (just learned this slang American phrase, you should look it up at your own risk).

Seeing that “les bonbons” were a big hit, and still needing to get them out of my possession, I offered a few to the taxi driver. He wasn’t interested, so I swung the plastic ziploc in front of the man in the passenger’s seat (having multiple clients in the taxi is normal practice). I asked him, “est-ce que tu veux du bon-bons?”/”do you want some candy?” and he moved his arm in what I thought was an effort to get some of these delectable treats.

But he wasn’t going for the bag -- he was just lifting up his arm to show me his hand. Only 3 fingers were showing, the rest of his hand was ace bandaged up. "Je suis diabetique"/"I’m diabetic," and had lost the last two of his fingers because of it. Diabetes is no joke here in Bamako, where both treatment and diet change are too expensive for most.

Candyman Liz committed a candy faux-pas, and was faced head on with what could be her candy-induced future.

Needless to say, I’m rethinking my previously planned ingestion of the next four pounds of these Haribo raspberries. Let's hope I don't get homesick again in the next two months. If I do, other sicknesses surely await me.

Franglais

It’s crunch time at the Project Keneya Ciwara II office. We've dedicated the entirety of last week to our annual consortium meeting, the local participating consortium being made up of us at JHU/CCP, plus Care Mali, Groupe Pivot, and IntraHealth. There’s been all kinds of stress trying to figure out, in a room of 20+ representatives from all of these different organizations, how far we’ve come in year two of our project, and how far we can go in year three. We’ve been following up with our “plan d’action de l’année deux”/plan of action for year two and are drafting the same thing for “l’année trois.”

With all of the stress of the decision making, number crunching, and activity creating, there's also confusion. All kinds of snicker-inducing language confusion occurs on both sides of the language barrier -- mostly due to the fact that my francophone/french-speaking colleagues must write their project work plans, budgets, and final reports in English.

Each organization within the consortium brings their list of activities and budgets already written in their version of "English," and together we spend the majority of our time deciding which activities we think we can complete, which activities take priority, and how to harmonize all of these activities together. The harmonization process is done by having each organization present its ideas and documents via computer connected to a giant projector.

The projector makes French to English mistakes all too visible for these detail-focused public health programmers.

The easiest way to slip up has been with acronyms. In the international development field, there are a’plenty. We partner with “les ONGs” for “la distribution de SRO” en francais, whereas in English it’s the NGOs with which we're partnering to distribute the ORS (non-governmental organizations that distribute oral-rehydration salts for diarrhea). We hand out condoms to prevent les ISTs et le VIH/SIDA en francais, but in English we’re preventing STIs and HIV/AIDS. With our women’s groups, we want to promote le PF et les CPNs, but translated, that’s FP for family planning and PNC for prenatal consultations.

Even a Boggle expert like myself, who happens to be super-skilled at letter rearrangement, gets turned around with all of these mixed up and sometimes palindromic acronym translations.

Other problems occur with vocabulary, large and small. One debate over “investissements on” versus “investissements to” lasted for a whole 10 minutes, despite my efforts to explain from the beginning that it was “inVESTMENTS in.” Another heated discussion was in deciding whether to say they would print “brochures” or “roadmaps” (?) as visual aids for the community health workers, which are referred to as “relais.” These “relais” were then continuously called “relays” in the reports. Apparently that’s how these community health workers have been described in the reports for the last two years, so who am I to come in and say, “hey, relays are for runners, not healers!”?

The relai-relay predicament is what in French is referred to as a set of "faux-amis"/"false" or "fake-friends" which means that while they sound the same, these words actually have completely different meanings in their respective languages.

Another example would be the verb “forme” which means to teach or train rather than to actually form something. Together, a “formation de relais” translated to “formation of relays” is all wrong and something that I decided to fight to change. I mean come on, we’re doing public health work over here, not putting on a track meet!

After I fought tooth and nail to change the phrase to “training of community health workers,” the group continued with the sentence, “...with will be supervised by the ASACO health workers.” Thankfully, someone else stepped in. Our chief of party interjected, “WHICH, WHICH will be...” He spelled it out for the person manning the projector, then said, “Faites attentions! Si tu ajoutes un ‘t’ avant le ‘c,’ tu va écrire une sorcière americaine!”/“Be careful! If you add a ‘t’ in front of the ‘c,’ you’ll spell out the American whitch!" and then he went in for a high five. While I may have fought an English vocabulary battle, I wasn’t going to get into spelling, not with our big chief of party at least.

By the end of the week, everyone was exhausted from staring at the projector, especially while fasting for Ramadan. We were ready to just put these action plans into action...at which point I was given the stage.

Before closing out our meeting, I wanted to introduce the idea of a newsletter to the consortium, being that we had everyone pivotal to the project together for the first time since I’d been at the office.

The chief of party gave me the go-ahead, so I stood up and gave what I thought was a pretty nice twist of words to poetically get my point across: "Cette semaine, on a discuté comment améliorer notre collecte de données. Cependant, c’est aussi important d’améliorer notre collecte d’histoires, pour suivre nos progrès avec PKCII."/"This week, we’ve discussed how to better our data collection. However, it’s also important to better our story collection to keep track of our progress with Project Keneya Ciwara II." I was trying to use a little wordplay to get the point across that we need to start documenting our successes in the field to send to the states, and therefore keep our donors happy.

Feeling really proud of myself, I handed out our first finished newsletter and asked if there were any questions.

No one raised a hand.

The chief of party stood up and said, "Nous savons tous que notre collègue Americaine est nouvelle avec le francais. Permettez-moi de traduire son ‘franglais.’"/'We all know that our American colleague is new to French. Please allow me to translate her ‘franglais.’"

The chief of party, who I had saved from a public spelling lesson on “witch,” had given my delivery of French the title “franglais,” a mix of "francais/anglais" -- what you anglophones may call "Frenglish." He gave me the stage then threw the first tomato!

Just like that, I was no longer a tubabou. The only white girl sitting in the room turned bright red when all of these Malian public health head honchos started cracking up. I was about ready to give him a real lesson on another word that ended in -itch, even if he was the chief of party.

Fortunately for both of us, after he described my newsletter idea in “proper” francais, the crowd seemed open and encouraging to the newsletter idea. While my face stopped flushing and I returned to my complacent tubabou status, I am now keenly aware that our chief of party, although very knowledgable and generous, can be another kind of faux-ami.