Photo-Shop

The international life requires a lot less paperwork, but there are a few essential details that need looking after. Passports, visas, yellow fever vaccines. All of these documents come with an expiration date and renewal process that needs to be kept on top of. Everyone in the family is not necessarily on the same schedule, which makes it all just a tiny bit more complicated.

Each country has slightly different visa procedures also, which require more or less attention. Happily, Mali gave us 5 year visas with our first application, leading to many worry-free years ahead. Both boys' passports are about to expire, however, so we took a trip to the embassy to start the renewal process. My passport needed renewal a few months ago, which gave me a preview of how things might go in Bamako. While Abidjan was impressive with it's routines and efficiency, Bamako is proving just plain simple. Friendly and welcoming.

The American embassy is no different than any where else. I sometimes imagine there is a universal designer who has taken initiative to stage all the embassies the same. Upon walking in, you are immediately transported to the nowhere time and space, the limbo of American Embassy that could exist on any continent, in any country, in any year. Same decor featuring giant photos or paintings by obscure artists of random American landmarks, same heavy doors that require two hands to push and maybe even a hip thrust. There are the same chairs, same wall coverings and even the same child's play area table and toys. The cashier windows are identical, numbering 1-5, sometimes up to 8, and you never visit them in order. First stop, down to the cashier at 1, then back up to window 5 for dropping off papers and finally over to window 3 for ......saying goodbye? She told us when to come back and assured us that Mohamed's passport would either be done in time for him to travel, or I could just pick it up myself and he could travel with his old one, which was still valid for a few more months.

Nice. Efficient. Kind of busy, but smooth flowing. The embassy in Abidjan was so much larger and always void of people. It's another point of curiosity. The size of the embassy versus the amount of business that goes on there. I can't really figure out what goes on behind all the tempered glass and particle board corners. But I have had the opportunity to take advantage of a few citizen services such as passport renewal and reporting a birth abroad.

Most of the time, getting things done at an embassy is as easy as making an online appointment and showing up on time. There is hardly a wait and things that take weeks or months in country, often take days or weeks abroad.  In fact, the hardest part of the whole process is getting the ID photo, which doesn't happen at the embassy at all. Instead, you must first find a photo shop able to supply the all important and ever regulated identity photo.

Photo shops like these abound in Abidjan, where they are overly fond of the 'photo identite.' I remember being tickled by a pricing poster, which offered "normal" or "US format." There is not the same culture of needing a photo for everything you'd like to do or join or even observe here in Bamako. Which, while pleasant, makes getting US formatted passport photos a little challenging.

The first obstacle is the photo itself. All the photo labs (in Africa, I am going out on a limb here and I am just going to make one broad, sweeping statement about every single photo printing lab on the continent) have fallen in love with photo-shop. For some reason, they find it easier to cut out the figure and paste it onto a white background rather than hang a white sheet and take the photo right in the first place. I remember well the photo for my gym membership in which the photo-artist placed a beautiful kimono over my tank-topped shoulders. And (possibly the same) artist who gave the infant Mbalia a new lip, improving her already perfect baby pucker.

Of course, that is all a no-go for official US passport photos. No cutting around the hair (au revoir  chop and crop hairdo with your geometric outlines and unnatural angles) no pasting onto a fake white background, no enhancing the eyes or brushing down the forehead shine. Point, shoot, and print. It's the only way.

Luckily, we have one white wall available to us and so I was able to grab a few photos with my phone first. I spent time comparing my shots with all of the examples on the US embassy website, where they also have a convenient photo cropper tool- so you can get the exact dimensions and perfectly position the head where it needs to go.

Printing is the big obstacle. The print shop I have gone to is located right in heart of Hippodrome, tucked back from the roadside of the busiest street in town. It is a small, yellow building with a faint eau d'urine that assaults the senses after walking in. It's filled with men and boys sitting on benches, a few holding old cameras, a few sitting in front of screens. Although one of the guys takes my USB and lifts the photos, I can't quite figure out what his real job is because behind the cashier desk there are two computers and two Asian men, one looking young enough to wonder whether boy might be more appropriate, who do all the fixing. They are pale with bad skin and I wonder if they ever get out into the sunshine. The seats seem molded to their bodies and the younger one has kicked his shoes off, a foot casually tucked up beneath his leg.

Their fingers fly across the keyboard as photos flash on the screen. They lighten, sharpen, crop, change closed eyes into open, bend corners and add frames all without even appearing to glance at the picture itself. They are lost in their music, each connected to headphones. I assumed the shop belongs to them, or a family member. It is a somewhat depressing, curious kind of existence.

The place is always busy. The guys are forever arranging photos of weddings or birthdays or other family occasions. I think for a moment of Enjoy Poverty, the documentary about a guy who wants the Congolese to benefit from their poverty by taking pictures of it (rather than the foreign journalists who swoop in, snap photos and then sell the misery for hundreds of dollars.) The photographers are clearly uncomfortable taking pictures of starving children near death and the big outlets refuse to buy them anyway. The documentary evoked ....a strong reaction. To say more would digress completely from the topic, leading down a wormhole of unknown dimensions. I was bothered by the film, and perhaps that was the point. But I can't quite jump on the Renzo Marten bandwagon just yet.

Back to the shop. Where they are doing a hefty and profitable business printing photos of happy occasions. I am mesmerized by the boy, who cuts out a pair of eyes from one photo and then flips through the series, to another picture where he pastes and arranges the eyes overtop closed lashes. I think it is the same person. Sometimes its not. I watch him move a lip up and then down until it is finally in position, momentarily creating a bizarre wedding day animation.

We wait for 20 minutes before I decide to put the pressure on. I stand near the desk, watching, wondering how much longer until my 2 photos appear. Just print. I inquire, I stand, I sigh. I look at the clock. I even talk to myself. Out loud. Finally I see Mohamed's face on the screen. I see the boy begin to trace around his figure and I speak to the clerk, telling him once again- no photo shopping. Just printing. Exactly as it is. I have been here before. Several times. You might think they'd know me by now. I gesture. I huff. I insist verbally and physically. Anything I can think of to get my point across. Just. Print.

It's closing in on 30 minutes and I want to leave. It would be so satisfying to gather my things and step out into the hot Malian day.  If there were any way to leave here and go somewhere else and still arrive to our appointment on time, I would.  The man at the counter tries to hurry the boy along, yelling at him to be quick. It's the first time I've heard this kind of exchange between them. It makes me wonder who is in charge after all.

The boy finally prints the photos and becomes sullen. He lets the desktop go quiet and turns to his phone. I catch a glimpse of a smooth faced Asian girl. Fantasy or friend, I can't be sure. I am not up on my Asian pop at all. I wonder why this boy is here and not in school. I wonder how these two came to be here in this photo dive tucked away in Bamako, Mali. And I imagine possibilities of what their life back home was like, if this represents the dream.

Eventually the photos are presented. I am not convinced they are American size and I forgot to bring the application page which would allow me to check. All I can remember is 2x2 which is no help in the metric system. They tell me it's 5x5 and I have to believe them. But it's apparent that I don't, not really. They want to trim the photos for me, but all I can imagine is the slow, methodical cuts that will make us later and later. I tell him no problem, I can cut them myself. Completely against protocol, I know. More white lady fit throwing.

We take our photos, as I vow never to come back. I've had one too many outbursts here. The clerk still thinks I am angry. Really, I'm just uncertain. I am frustrated that I didn't check the metric measurements and I hate how much time it's all taken. Surely there is another photo lab I can torment. Better yet, hopefully we have completed all the required paperwork for the next several years.

Oh but my guys are handsome. Growing. This will be Mohamed's last 5 year passport. He'll be 20 the next time he needs a new one. And then 30. The years pass just like that in my mind. For a minute I am stunned. I imagine the young Asian guy, fingers older, still flying across the keyboard rearranging memories into perfect moments that never existed.

Not-so-Social Profile

It's been hard to write lately. For awhile I have been wondering if the blog is done. Every so often I feel a resurgence, but it's getting longer and farther apart.

I've had the chance to drum at my first street wedding. I've begun an amazingly creative collaboration with several artists, and I've even started salsa again. My little cutie is growing up with wonderfully quirky mannerisms. My boys are growing into men and I am reveling in the twists and turns of my relationship with the older children, now young adults.

On the surface it all seems to be working out. Bamako, and Mali in general, is home to a plethora of artistic festivals- music, spoken word, dance, theatre, comedy. House painting festivals and marionette shows. Galleries and workshops. It's all here going on at an almost frantic pace. Yet somehow, everything seems in slow motion. 

I haven't quite been able to place my finger on the difference. When I remember Abidjan, I imagine sunny days and a light hearted feeling of walking and being free. I am well aware of the tendency of memories to skew themselves into a more nostalgic version of the reality that was. I recall with vivid awareness the amount of work I had to do there, extra tutoring sessions nearly every night, searching for taxis home after dark, longing for sleep and rest and the never ending sense of trying to catch up.
But it is persistent, this feeling that somehow Abidjan was lighter, easier, sunnier.

Mali is plenty hot, full of sunshine, definitely dry. Sometimes I have confused this feeling with the abundant dust in the air. I think today I might have uncovered a closer hint to what it really is.

A representative from the embassy visited the school to talk to some teachers. His message was anything but clear. Everything but complete. He talked about a profile. A profile that perhaps some of us fit- though he wasn't giving up details. He talked about a plan, a plan that had been in the works for awhile and was maybe reaching execution date, but there weren't any details. No expiration date. Just a bunch of speculation and little useful advice.

Because, while I have been doing a lot in Mali- painting up a storm, dancing with exuberance, drumming in such a consistent way that I finally see improvement, there's a lot that I am not doing. Because maybe this heaviness and pressure and unnamable thing can just be put down to security.

Security is the big uncertain in Bamako. And it is not the political uncertainty that has plagued other countries we lived in. It's not about protests against the government or even mutinies by the army. It is about all the uncontrollable variables that come from simply being a foreigner. Nothing I can change or fix or avoid. Just being me is enough to fit the profile.

It leaves me wondering all kinds of questions I haven't yet asked. Am I safer walking and going around with the kids- or does that just put them in danger? Are we better off as a group, should I surround myself with my Malian friends or should we just stay home all the time? How long can we stay locked in a house?

How safe is the house anyway? Speculation quickly turns to how trustworthy the guards are and I  quickly realize that's not even the question. No matter how friendly someone is, when faced with a choice between personal safety and safety of a practical stranger, there's no doubt how most humans will respond. If they even get the chance to respond.

In the face of arms, no one is strong enough. Not physically strong nor strong willed. No amount of nothing can stand up to an armed group. And so we wonder, shouldn't we be informing the guards to be extra vigilant? I contemplate what that means exactly, and I realize that the most vulnerable time is tea time.

When the guards are sitting outside the houses, chatting and having tea, most often the doors are open behind them. So, do we ask them to stay locked inside? This only works if the guards can't be bought- if a bunch of cash won't be effective in getting a door open. Everyone needs cash in Mali.

It only works if they don't open the peep hole or answer the door banging in the night. It only works if the thin metal holds. The most important lesson I've learned in Africa is that the durability of concrete is a fallacy. It's not as strong as I once might have thought. Not these concrete walls surrounding us, easily scaled, easily knocked out or knocked through.

The embassy guy didn't come to talk about our social profiles or our professional profiles. He couldn't even talk specifics. But he was pretty effective at scaring us all. Even those of us who have weathered many other African storms. There's a different kind of profile we all fit. It's nothing personal. It's nothing we can cover up or hide behind. He talked about unknowable, uncertain things with an air of resignation.

Because it's bound to happen- and if I don't fit the profile, then one of my colleagues does- so there's no real win, no real sense of relief. He seems to think even if it doesn't happen this time, it will happen. It's an effective way to get financing. There's no arguing with that.

Happy eve to spring vacation, for those of us who are staying. Bamako just got even smaller.

My quirky girl who loves to wear shoes on
her hands, just in case she needs to get down
on all fours and save the world like a robo-dog.

The truth about charcoal

Mali is actually full of adventures- and that's the excuse for not writing so much. I recall my first weeks in Abidjan were filled with blog posts about nothing, minutiae. I am equally amazed at the sights of Bamako but a little overwhelmed with work in a way that I wan't when first moving to Abidjan.

I am also caught up in the living. And figuring out. And feeling a little lost. Which makes words hard to come by sometimes. After a recent trip to the country to see traditional painted houses- a worthy blog post to follow perhaps- I returned home to the dusty, congested city feeling out of sorts and overly fatigued. The fatigue is not new and I am currently attributing it to some tropical mystery disease that I probably need to seek professional assistance on. (My propensity towards self diagnosis and treatment is well documented in this blog, so I will spare you the incredibly easy pharmacy transactions which allow me to try all sorts of remedies without actually consulting a professional. I've come to think of myself as a healer in my own right....to an extent.)

In any case, with observations from a friend, I began feeling my home needed a little spiritual cleansing. I haven't found a sage hook up yet- or begun my investigation into a Malian guide who might know exactly what to do- so I turned to general aromatherapy as a first step.

Mali, like much of West Africa, is filled with beautiful odors and a long tradition of using incense of one variety or another for all kinds of ailments and preventions. My wonderful neighbor gifted me this beautiful burning pot after we bought some ...? I don't even know what to call the incense that is sold here. It is surely natural from plants and barks and other organic matter but it has a sticky, smooshed together quality that I can't really describe. Hash is the closest I can come. I don't know how it is made. (I know, I really need to step up my game. I have forgone all curiosity and have moved into naive acceptance. It's what they do here, so me too.)

Much more than I imagined...a beautiful gift

It isn't the Senegalese thioraye that I prefer, but it does have a nice scent. My authentically Dutch neighbor presented me the pot and said, "Just mix a little sand and charcoal and you can burn that on top." Her view of everything is positive and simplistic. It's all so easy.

For her. For me, starting the charcoal was an hour long affair. I enlisted the help of my painting partner, Drissa, a Malian who I assumed had experience with the tea-making process. The tea ritual involves charcoal burned in a little metal cook stove that is generally swung back forth which allows air to fan the coals and get them burning. Driving through the city at tea time, you can see any number of tea swingers- young children, to older boys or men, involved in grand sweeping gestures with their metal pots. My new incense vase was definitely not swingable.

Drissa, ever a willing friend, went off to buy some charcoal and returned ready to whip this thing together. An hour later, we were still ripping bits of paper, trying to start a miniature campfire on my front porch. I employed all my long forgotten campfire skills to no avail. I laughed at his attempts and wondered aloud if he really knew how to make tea (something close to an insult here in Mali, surely.) I had images of marshmallows and long sticks foolishly filling my mind, a mismatched moment of culture clash.

Mbalia got in on the effort, using all her 3 1/2 year old strength to squeeze the trigger on the lighter and throw random bits of paper into the well. We blew, we fanned, we juggled the vase and rearranged the charcoal. I couldn't imagine having to invest this much time and effort for sensory relief, or even for a cup of tea (although, admittedly, that is a long, drawn out social affair - they've got a rhythm down that we didn't quite achieve.)

the blow-on-the-top method

Mbalia adding bits of paper and incense

Vigorous fanning

Drissa started commenting on the grades of charcoal- obviously this was the hard-to-light grade but, he assured me, once it got going it would burn for hours. Even all night.

Finally we declared success and dropped in some incense, our hard efforts rewarded by soothing smoke emanating from the top.  It was a far cry from the thuribles of Catholic mass, that I have fond sensory memories of, and it didn't last nearly as long as he'd predicted.

Charcoal- not burning. Incense- unscathed

Obviously I have miles to go in acquiring the African skill of a charcoal cook pot that women and most young children seem to master with ease. 10 years in and still not quite in.