Overseas Briefing - 1/21/10

BAMAKO — As driven Middlebury students, we spend a significant portion of our time thinking about the future. What are we going to write that paper on?  Are you going to get that stellar internship next summer?

And, of course, the ever looming question — what are you going to do after graduation?  Imagine if all those thoughts just disappeared, vanished and no longer kept you up at night.  Difficult to fathom, right?

You have now imagined yourself in Mali, West Africa (or for that matter, any number of African nations), a country where living in the moment is more important that anything in the future.

Sounds ideal, right?

Well, individually and at that moment, yes; however, it can have major consequences when it comes to economic development and stability in the long term.  In its essence, development changes the present in order to better the future or the unknown.

For many Malians, the idea of sacrificing what little they have today for something that they might have in the future sounds ridiculous.  It becomes increasingly problematic when you think about money. Yes, it is true that they have less money in general, but that does not make up for the fact that many Malians, especially youths in Bamako, the capital, “mangent beaucoup d'argent” (spend — translated literally, “eat” — a lot of money) on unnecessary things like Western clothes, “bling” and weaves.

I may be making judgments about the social necessity of these items, but when they come at the cost of healthcare and food security, there should be no contest.

Healthcare is most affected by the lack of capital.  In Mali, where no real form of health insurance exists, the sick and injured pay for their treatment before receiving it.  Even the 300 cfa ($0.60) cost to see a doctor at the public clinic is too much for many families, and that doesn’t include whatever medicine is needed and other procedures that might need to be performed.  Without saving, many people avoid care during the initial stages and end up waiting until their care is much more expensive to be treated.

This lack of forethought can also be seen at the end of the harvest season.  The director of the United States Agency for International Development told our program that Mali is a country that can feed itself and potentially other countries in the area; however, it imports a lot of food from other countries.  While the fertile land is self-sustaining, most farmers end up buying millet or imported Chinese rice at inflated prices later in the season because they sold most of their crops at the harvest.

Changing this mentality means changing the uncertainty of the future: an impossibility.  The only way to teach is through example, not through a foreigner preaching about the benefits of saving for the future.  Like most change, it can only come from inside and as frustrating as that is, the best we can do is to encourage people to take a chance and save for the future. Cultural change is not easy, nor is it necessarily the answer. However, when it comes to protecting future generations, I’d say it’s necessary.