Short introduction to Mali and Ségou

   
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Ségou is the fourth largest city in Mali. Ségou is completely flat with not even the slightest undulation of terrain detectable to the eye. In essence, you see as far as the curve of the earth lets you. There is the potential for a great sunset every day... well just the potential. Half of the year, the air is so dusty that almost an hour before the sun even reaches the horizon it has already disappeared in haze. Normally, particles in the air and a clear line of sight to the horizon would make for great sunsets. Only here, the dust is so extreme, it just blocks out the sun entirely. When they happen though, they are great!
For technically being in a desert environment, Ségou really is in the desert and yet not in the desert when comparing to other places in Mali farther north.
The only fauna you can find in Ségou is a handful of lizards, rats, toads, scorpions, flies, mosquitoes, spiders, ants, termites, amoebas, schistose-carrying snails, hookworm, and a large assortment of desert birds.
When it isn't rainy season in Ségou, it does not precipitate at all, not a drop of anything that would even liberally be considered falling moisture. Thus, from October until the beginning of June, Ségou gradually becomes dryer and dryer and dryer until the point that you start getting fully fledged 'dust' storms when the wind blows. The wind can get especially bad at night; so bad in fact, that after sleeping outside, you can wake up with a full layer of dust covering you from head to toe. You might suggest: why wouldn’t you sleep inside? Well, it is too hot! The relentless sun turns cement brick houses into an easy bake oven so you have to sleep outside.
This dry season is accompanied by a hot season from late February to June. You can experience there temperatures you had only read about in books or seen as breaking a century old record on the weather channel for Phoenix, Arizona... Highs here during the hot season can reach up to about 52 degrees Celsius – that's 125.6 degrees Fahrenheit!
The heat is the one thing that should really concerned you before going there. You think you would be able to deal with everything else but you should also be afraid of how you might react to the heat. During the days you can easily drink five to six liters of water. At night, it is not uncommon to get up and take a shower, or two, or three and still have a terrible night’s sleep. The human body is amazing and can adjust to just about anything…supposedly!
Only, Malians wear jackets when it is 70 degrees outside – still wearing wool hats when it is in the upper 80s.
What was described so far are just natural environmental factors. We haven't even gotten into the differences regarding wealth or lack thereof.
Mali ranks 168th out of 179 on the United Nation's Development Index and 107nd out of 108 on the Human Poverty Index. That means Mali is one of the poorest country in the world and almost the last one for having the worst poverty out of developing or under-developed countries. Think about that for a moment and what that means. How many other countries out there would you consider as being “poor?” Quite a few … How many of you had even heard of Mali let alone could have found it on a map? Maybe you’ve heard of it and would have been able to place it in West Africa, but probably didn't know anything about it – How many of you knew that the famed city of Timbuktu was located here?
So Mali is poor, extremely poor! What does that mean exactly? How is it that they are rated so low on the UN's Development Index? If you take a look at the numbers from the UN DI and HPI on Wikipedia as well as a few from the CIA’s Factbook you will soon realize that:
Mali’s GDP per capita is only $998 – less than $1,000 a year. If you do the math, that comes out to $2.73 a day. Adjusted for the wealthy, 72% of Malians earn less than $1 a day.
The average life expectancy is only 49 years old. If you were an average Malian (which you couldn't possibly be just from the fact that you are educated and can read this text), you would have a 37.3 % chance of not surviving past the age of 40.
The infant mortality rate is 11% before they’re one year old and 24% die by the age of five – ONE IN FOUR. To compensate for the high death rate, Malian women on average have over 7 children – that is the second highest fertility rate in the world. This creates a slew of problems we are not going to get into here.
70% of Mali's economy is based on agriculture but 65% of the land is classified as desert or semi-desert leaving only 3.76% as arable land – less than 4% can be farmed. This confines much of the economic activity to the limited area irrigated by the Niger River. For that economy, 81% are illiterate (over 15 years old and unable to read and write) leaving them economically handicapped in the society. This is not helped with Mali’s Gross Enrollment Ratio being only 35% - this means only 35% of people who should be in school are actually in school (including primary, secondary, and tertiary).
The government is so low on resources that over 78% of the national budget comes from foreign aid and grants. This has left Mali incredibly indebted to foreign governments – Mali currently spends more money on interest payments than it does on health and education combined.
That is just a very brief synopsis of the statistics, but any way you look at it, Mali is poor and quite a world apart from our cozy life.