Amazing Earth

I'm at the Bamako Peace Corps stage house right now, and I was sitting with another volunteer who had put on the Discovery Channel's "Planet Earth" desert episode. The Malian woman who cleans the stage house started to hover near the wide-screen plasma TV when she saw elephants. Then it switched to camels in the Gobi desert who were eating snow.

She says: Are those camels eating ICE???
Me: Yes they are.
She replied with an astonished, mouth wide-open, "huhhhhh...."

Then the camera zooms out to a wide angle view of the Earth.

"What is that?" she says.
"It's the earth- the whole thing," I reply.
Her face belies her confusion and I grab a necklace off the table with big, round beads to explain that this is the shape of the earth- the entire thing- round! She re-iterates it to me in Bamabara, and I know that she has seen a glimmer of the big picture.

Chameleons, snakes and the process of erosion follow onscreen, all to a chorus of, "Huhh?" and "ahhh" and other surprised noises. She is called away to work, and she leaves, saying in Bambara, "I have seen many things today!"


If only these types of educational shows were shown on national television here and translated in French and Bambara, it would produce an entirely different citizenry. Imagine a Mali where everyone knew the shape of the earth, the placement of continents and the science of natural processes just from watching tv. Instead, they have Brazilian soap operas dubbed in French and a never-ending supply of big, out-of-tune screaming traditional griot perfomances. Sure they have public-service announcements about malaria and AIDS, but what if entertainment could double as education here in Mali as it does successfully in so many places in the world?

This has been a question that I've been asking myself since I arrived here: How did I learn what I know?
How did I learn about nutrition? Why do I know about different systems of government? How did I learn how to interact with people who are different from me respectfully and gracefully?

In the United States, I grew up with such incredible access to information: my educated parents, decent public schooling, frequent visits to my local library, supplemental community classes, the newspaper, television (Bill Nye the Science Guy, anyone?) movies and the INTERNET.

Imagine if your parents never went to school, couldn't afford a television or radio, and there were no newspapers available, let alone the internet. What kind of understanding of the world would you have growing up? What if nothing changed with your generation?

I have come to believe that access to information is CRUCIAL to development, and to improving the standard of living of everyone on the planet. When people have no information, it is often difficult for them to make choices that are in their own self-interest. I am grateful beyond belief for the level of access to information I can expect daily simply because I am literate (and also computer literate!).

I believe that you don't need to make peoples' choices for them, but you do need to provide them with information concerning those choices. Without information, there is no real choice.