Aiding Change in Mali (Part I)
Saturday, July 26th, 2008
Posted by Dario Meli
* This blog post is part of Invoke’s participation in the 2008 Vancouver Blogathon for Charity
My good friend kc and I went on a pretty nuts trip this past May. It was a whirlwind that started with Amanda and I spending a week on the beach in Mexico followed by London, Bamako, Casablanca, Paris, and Lyon with the main purpose of the trip to get our boots on the ground in Mali, make sure things were going well, and to see where we could further get things done.
To get to Bamako from Europe you need to take a late flight, arriving at 3am local time. Leaving is the same. Upon our arrival our driver Camara grabbed us and we made our way to the Listel’s Libya Hotel which was financed by Libyan dictator Momar Khadafi. Turns out he is very generous with his oil money to his neighbors. In fact, he is in the process of creating a massive district to centrally house all of Bamako’s government bodies.
After a short sleep we were up and at’em and heading out to meet with Plan Canada and Plan Mali representatives. First on the agenda was to visit a textiles factory. Mali only processes 1% of the cotton they harvest. Instead of exporting it all to be manufactured into usable textiles in Asia and then re-imported we are looking at opportunities to develop textiles in Mali as a vertical industry where the cotton is grown, processed, and manufactured locally thereby creating jobs and keeping the economy self sufficient.
Most of the equipment was from the 70’s and in need of replacement. As you can see these pics:
When I saw these guys rummaging through this junk i was curious. No joke, this is their parts department. Workers sort through these heaps hoping to find parts to repair the old machines. The company is looking for $20 million to refit the plant.
Later this day we were presented with an outline of what Plan was looking to do to expand the projects we’re working on and get us geared up for the next day’s trip 2.5 hours away to N’Gouraba Village. That is where the bulk of Lochmaddy’s work is done and I was extremely eager to get out there.
To be continued…
