Mali's got talent

This week, to my absolute joy, I have had an interesting cultural event to attend in the evenings here in Kayes. This year is the 50th anniversary of Mali's independence from colonial France. To celebrate, the Ministry of Culture in Kayes invited local schools to compete in a themed talent competition. There are 14 schools total participating. In the mornings, it is the 1st cycle (elementary school), and then in the evenings it is 2nd and 3rd cycle (middle and high school). The middle school that I have developed a relationship with competed on the first night, and I enjoyed it so much that I invited my fellow Kayes PVC, Luis, the next night.

There were several categories being judged, including:
Lecture (a student takes a page written in French and does their best to read it correctly)
Solo singing
A group song
Solo "imitation d'artiste" (lip-synching- Malians love to lip-synch!)
Group imitation d'artiste
Short theater piece
Choreographed dance

I have now seen 4 schools do each of these 7 performances.

Mali is interesting, because even as they are encouraging creativity in children, they stifle it. For example, all of the songs were the same across the board (each solo lip synching performance was the same song, each choreographed dance was to the same song, etc.) Maybe it made it easier for the judges to compare "apples to apples," but could you imagine a school talent competition in America where every student sang the same exact song?

One area that I saw a lot of creativity was the theater piece. There was a mandatory theme of "immigration." The first one I saw was by far the best. I had just been talking to the doctor at my CSCOM, Oumar Magassa, about the fact that a high percentage of Malians living in Kayes have family members living in Europe, and are receiving support from them. Oumar and I talked about how that creates a culture of  focus and dependence on foreign money, and an expectation that someone who is successful enough to move abroad will move abroad and send money back. The message of this particular theater piece was the imperative of Malians to improve Mali themselves, without relying on external resources and help. The kids acted out that is the responsibility of Malians to work hard and to stay in Mali to develop it with their talents and money. This absolutely blew my mind.

When I ride through Kayes, I cannot go more than a minute without a child yelling at me in terrible French, "White person, give me (x amount) of money!!!!!" They expect that of course the white foreigner will give them money- its what we do! (Which is why I now listen to music on my Ipod to tune all of that out). The scene for this attitude and behavior has historically been set by all sorts of foreign governments, NGOs, missionaries and individuals who come to Africa with handouts, requiring nothing of the local population. As Peace Corps volunteers, we believe that people have the power to help themselves when equipped with knowledge and skills, and we focus on projects that empower the local population to create change that continues after we are gone. I do not know  a single Peace Corps volunteer who has not been driven to the brink of insanity at some point in their service by a Malian demanding that the volunteer give them the money/item they want with no reason or effort on their part, or demanding that the volunteer do for them something they could do for themselves. For these students to assert that they don't want to continue to rely on France and other foreign countries is a giant step forward in the right direction. Right attitude precipitates right action.

France's colonization still looms large in the Malian national psyche. It leads to all sorts of interesting ironies, such as students speaking proudly and almost militantly about independence from France... in French. Another theater piece took place in two different settings: Mali and France. For many Malians, the world is divided just like that- half of the world they know is Mali, and the other half is France. Many don't know much about the African countries not bordering Mali, and many don't know that America is not right next to France. In their minds, the world is a dichotomy between poor, black Mali and rich, white France. It's as simple as that. There was one particularly uncomfortable moment for me the first night when I was the only white face in the 200 person crowd: the students were cheering about their victory from their colonial oppressors... and everyone there probably assumed that I was French. I was really glad I'm not French at that particular moment in time. Americans have their own historical (and present)  issues to feel guilty about, but the colonization of West Africa is guilt that we don't have to carry.

I took some videos of the different acts, but the quality isn't very good, because the show was outside, at night with poor lighting. Even so, you can see why I enjoyed this event.