Where would You be without Education? - A Journey into an African village

Let me take you onto a journey...

You fly into Africa... to Bamako, the capital of Mali. You leave the airport, board a rusty old Mercedes minibus which was dumped in Europe probably 15 years ago. The five hour journey takes you through red dust countryside and huts along the road. Whenever your vehicle stops woman who wait along the road in front of their huts out of handmade mud bricks, come quickly to your window trying to make a sell to generate some income. The journey continues sharing the road with even older trucks, people on rooftops, donkey-carts and Malians walking from village to village.

After hours witnessing some of Mali's rural life along one of its main roads between Bamako and Segou, you leave the (hardly) paved road and turn right into the Sahel, the semi-desert sister of the Sahara. There is no more maverick-dangerous traffic, no overloaded trucks or broken down cars; in fact there is no more motorised traffic at all. Farmers, too poor and uneducated to use advanced tools or fertilizers, are trying to make the best out of the meager land. Currently it is the "season of plenty" which means the soils have recently delivered harvests but how must it be to be here in the "hungry season" when there is no water and no food?

You arrive in the village Niamana. As soon as kids spot the vehicle (remember, no cars) they get very excited which quadruples when then see "tibbaboo". This is the friendly word in Bambara, the most widely spoken language in Mali, for white people. The kids scream loud due to excitement with an heart touching smile on their face. You arrive at Youchau's family's house. Niamana is inspiring, kind of sobering. Imagine you strip away the "matrix" of our busy life-style full of gadgets, information overload with TV and daily swamp of emails being always connected. No water coming from tap (there is a well) and no electricity (there is a solar panel powering a lamp at night) and no mobile phone reception (there is one landline). You feel like being transferred into a village 100 years ago, start feeling settled into an extremely poor yet friendly community.

The poverty bothers you and you start thinking how you could make a difference (next of being an attraction to the kids). A happy young kid comes up to you and when he smiles at you you feel happy and smile back. Amadou is a typical rural Malian kid. Although being 10 years old he looks much smaller due to not getting enough good food. You learn that he talks 5km each morning to get to school. There he squeezes himself into a small, old class-room together with 100 other kids. Most of the kids don't find a table and almost none of them has something to write. Many kids are hungry which makes learning even harder. You identify yourself with Amadou and ask yourself "could I have learned under these conditions?" You learn that 4 out of 5 people can not read or write. Teaching facilities are so basic, classrooms missing and overfilled that hundreds of the village's kids have no chance to go to school at all.

However, there is hope: Elders, teachers and families of the community see education as the key to provide their children with the chance of a better future. They free their kids from work in the fields or households, they try to safe money to be able to pay for the teachers' salary. You think of Amadou and the hundreds of kids without a chance to receive education. You imagine how the the next generation of this country could develop through education. You remember that, although school was not always fun for you, it allowed you to read your favorite books, to learn, to study, to vote, to get your jobs... Where would You be without Education?

Happy new year!
Elise, Youchaou and Juergen

PS: The Mali Initiative works to improve the education of children in Mali. Get involved. For more information see http://www.reachmaliproject.org.au/.
PPS: For more photos see http://www.flickr.com/jjnagler/tags/mali/show

Bonjour from Bamako - new photos

Bamako is super diverse and intense... We are working hard on the Mali Initiative...
New photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jjnagler/tags/mali/show/

Stay tuned...
Elise and Juergen

Welcome to Mali! How would it feel so save a life?

Here comes the first update out of Mali! We arrived safely a couple of days ago when our friend Youchaou picked us up from the airport. We had our first Africa experience in Nairobi when Kenyan Air told us that they we would have to fly without our luggage from Nairobi to Bamako because instead of luggage they'd carry fuel! After lengthy discussions we personally took care that the luggage comes on board with us.

Mali is a very interesting country! Despite having travelled to very poor places like India, Bolivia and some shantytowns in South Africa, I am still having a culture shock. We stay in a suburb of the capital Bamako and poverty is shocking. Roads are dust tracks, instead of flowers there is rubbish, houses have no colour and children have nothing to eat. But so little this people have in materialistic wealth, the more they have in smiles and kindness. Everyone is greeted in the street, family matters a great deal, meals are taken together and people help out each other.

Having a business background I felt quite frustrated and apathetic because I couldn't hardly see anything working (no wonder that so many people sit back and say nothing can be done). But then when I was sitting down with some street children it became clear that it is our responsibility to do at least what we can do. These street children are sent to beg in the streets, have had nothing to eat and no chance to receive any education. They are called "lost boys" out of a reason. But when they got fed yesterday at Youchaou's house I received the most heart touching smiles when I showed them digital pictures of them making funny postures!

This street children also receive some education from Youchaou's NGO we are supporting. This is such a chance for us to make a difference. We can safe lifes with every effort we make. This is not some fluffy fluffy pastime... imagine you have the chance to safe a life, will you pick up this call? We, a bunch of young people incl. Elise, Tomas, myself and more, are working to grow the NGO, raise funds and link directly to community development projects here in Mali on the ground. Results? Instantaneously!

Beware, this is not just making a quick donation... connecting to these kind people might change your life. There is also a lot to learn about humanity for us. Interested to join in? Email me!

For more photos see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jjnagler/tags/mali/show/
For more info visit: http://www.reachmaliproject.org.au/
Watch the original Mali video: http://www.business4good.org/2007/04/blog-post.htm