Smoking The Polls

Many Malians sat with an ear to the radio for hours on Tuesday night, listening intently as the results came in for insight into the future of the outside world. Malians know a little something about what goes on outside their borders, they wanted to see if that sagging symbol of optimism, suffering from schisms between North and South, city and country, common and educated, could mend its fences and begin a new era of prosperity. Even as they are unsure of what the result might mean, the ever-optimistic bunch of Malians are simply happy that the elections were free, fair and peaceful, that the results are accepted by both sides without the need for violent revolution or civil war. Nobody knows quite yet whether the incumbent president Laurent Gbangbo will remain in power in Abidjan, or if the Northern challenger Alassane Outtara will take over. Of course there is no discounting the possibility that ex-president Henri Konan Bedie benefits from a late surge in the polls.

I am referring, of course, to the recent election in Cote D’Ivoire, wherein it is estimated that a heartening  80% of the eligible public voted, and many were able to do so without receiving a foot-to-skull massage from good ol’ boys who respectfully disagree on the finer points of graduated taxation. Hurray, says Mali. A regional economic keystone and important trading partner (in good ways and bad) has turned off civil war lane is taking the onramp onto the Democracy Highway.

If your Boehner persists for more than four hours, consult a physician

Of course, there was another election, a referendum on how to run the USA, where one group thinks it should be finely tuned this way and that way so that it hums perfectly, and the other group thinks it runs just fine, you hardly notice the clattering once you get up to 60 or 70. Where group A has been trying to make some progress, and group B has been blocking them with petulant muppetry and procedural buffoonery, and then has the gall to run on the platform of change. And then they win. They say the worst part about democracy is that you get what you deserve. Untrue. The worst part, my friends in America – or as I like to call it, Canada’s Lycra bicycle shorts - is sitting in a foreign country, trying to explain shit like this to perfectly reasonable people asking honest and well-meaning questions.

“What do you mean they don’t want taxes? So they don’t like Medicare?”.

“No, they insist on keeping Medicare”

“What about the other programs? Pensions – what do they call it, social security – libraries”

“Can’t get rid of them, either. Old people vote.”

“So they’ll cut military spending?”

“Nope. Going steady at $ 2 billion a day”

“I don’t get it”

“Now you get it.”

So more than anything else, I feel inconvenienced by these election results. It’s difficult enough to communicate in our different dialects of French, theirs tinged with Bambara and mine tinged with the dumbfounded guffaws of being that asshole that speaks grade-school French.

Malians somewhat understand that something like a Tea Party can exist, it’s the fact that it exists in America that’s the oddity. After all, you have universities and plasma TVs and enough measles vaccine for all the children. Why are people so vitriolic about their government? Most adults in Mali still remember the dictatorial single party state and its overthrow, now that was tyranny. For real. The story of the overthrow is one of the more inspiring tales of successful public dissent – In 1991, increasingly vocal student movements in opposition to the government led to the arrest of the President (technically a coup, but a cuddly puppy version of a coup, the kind that asks politely and doesn’t shoot or maim anybody). Instead of the military or some modern-day Strongman stepping into the vacuum, they created a committee, primarily civilian, to decide the fate of Mali. Like the first, happy part of the French Revolution, before all the guillotines came into vogue. 

The committee chose, rather than kleptocracy or dictatorship, a true multiparty government, which drafted a constitution that was approved by referendum in 1992. The current president, Amadou Toumani Toure is very much the populist leader, and was one of those involved in the political reconfiguration of Mali in 1991-92. Not unlike Tea Partiers, he thinks there are better priorities for his country to pursue than scientific research, which is why many of the labs here are in utter disrepair, which makes it difficult to train a new cadre of scientists and doctors. However, unlike Tea Partiers, he governs a country that has to deal with African river blindness. The entire Malian government has to run the country for year on roughly half the money spent on the 2010 campaigns.  So I can accept, as a vaccine researcher, that it’s more cost-effective to spend nickels and dimes on vaccines that already exist rather than millions to develop vaccines for the future.

Dey Terk Err Jerbs!

Immigration is another one of those issues that a happy tea-time chat illuminates nicely. Believe it or not, more people emigrate from Mali than immigrate here, perhaps if they made a sandy Lady Liberty more people would come. Nevertheless, it is developing countries, not wealthy western ones, that deal with the majority of the tribulations of immigrant floods. Ask the Dominican Republic about Haitiian immigrants, Albanians about Kosovar refugees or look into the situation in any country that borders Sudan, particularly along the South or West. It’s not the American economy that suffers from immigration, in fact one or two recent studies have shown that immigrants actually help. But refugees crossing the Zimbabwean border, for instance, are a nightmare for the cash-strapped hosts. The danger of a country like Cote D’Ivoire slipping back into civil war, apart from the obvious “war kills shit” issue, is that war produces refugees and refugees  add entirely too much weight onto the backs of countries that are already heavily burdened. “This means less trade, which in turn means everybody loses”, expectorates a self-righteous N. Gregory Mankiw, adding “I write books, you know. People listen to me.”

There’s a man that comes by the house every few days on one flimsy pretext or another. He’s training to be a lawyer in Mali, and doesn’t much like his prospects here.  Every time he comes over, he walks right into the house and we have a conversation, since in Mali, anything less would be uncivilized. We may start by discussing family, but he always steers the conversation towards me finding him a job in
Canada, and I always respond with the obvious trifecta. First, I’m not a lawyer, and I’ve never immigrated to Canada. I don’t know how immigration works. Second, I can’t even get myself a job. What chances do I have with you, whom I can hardly vouch for? Third, I’m of the opinion that you’d be of more use here. Mali needs educated Malians. Patriotism, ra ra ra, etc.

We drove to clinic this morning with Kara, the indispensible GAIA director in Mali. He’s a trained MD, and while apparently he sometimes sees patients, he spends much of his time meeting with ministers, deputies and other doctors, and running our organization. He mentioned that anyone certified as a doctor in Mali is automatically allowed into Canada, as part of the new special partnership. Canada’s newfangled approach to bilateral aid is essentially to stop slutting around with every country that asks calls its name, instead to focus on maybe a dozen countries and really put out. Mali is one of the countries selected for a deeper relationship, and it means that Canada can poach precious doctors at will and bring them back to Canada where, because the recertification program is so totally fucked, they drive taxis and sell lottery tickets.

Very good, now cough again.

 It’s a development strategy that makes me blush with nationalistic pride. So as Kara mentioned this, I tensed myself up to give him the same responses I had given the would-be lawyer. Kara does the work of a half-dozen people, and I couldn’t imagine how he could be replaced here. Especially since the government’s funds are slanted towards short-term fixes, and it’s absurdly expensive to train a doctor here, or anywhere. Kara turned and said “That’s terrible. Je suis malcontent. To develop a country like Mali, you need educated people to stay here and serve their country. You can’t take doctors  away.”