Quality Malian Products

Let me tell you some of the things in Mali that were better quality than the stuff we've got here.

The number one would have to be shea butter. I can't even think of it's Canadian equivalent. They made it in every village, from natural material, it's exclusively a Malian product, and it's the pride of the country. One guy put it on his bag to make it more flexible, durable and better-looking. Another guy put it on his skin to give him "skin like a little girl's" which is impressive, considering the heavy manual labour he was doing, and how rough and calloused the rest of us got. Somebody else put it on his beans so they would taste better. Basically, whatever you put it on becomes better in all it's relevant categories. I brought back some shea butter and soap to my family, but they don't use it much because it "Smells funny". My brother recently used some of the soap because "We ran out of soap".

Ehhhh, COME ON! They were interested in my cheapo 200 franc Mali soap, but they're repelled by this miracle stuff just because it smells a little different. I just washed my hands with the soap, and let me tell you, I feel clean right down to the bone. I feel like grime and germs are repelled from my hands. I feel like I'm on a whole new level of clean. I just took a shower, but the rest of my body feels like it's covered in muck in comparison to my hands. Maybe they're scared of feeling this intensely clean.

I feel like that cowskin bag that that guy put shea butter on. Not only am I clean, but it's made my skin more beautiful and simultaneously stronger and more durable. No joke, and I swear it's made of 100% legal substances. You can even get shea butter in Canada.

Another thing that was better were the fruit-flavour soft drinks. You could get these little bottles of cola or fruit soft drinks in Sirakorola. They were sold in the established shops that were open all week, that had electricity and refrigeration. You could get them in Bamako, too. They were a little on the expensive side for most subsistence Malians, and even caused the Canadians trouble. The Sirakorola Canadians managed to sink most of their money into soft drinks. I think they were mainly for people who wanted to show off their bling to their not-girlfriends.

Yeah, I know I haven't gone much into the Malians on the topic of relationships, romance, marriage, or anything like that, and to be honest, I'm probably not going to publically blog about it, so sorry to touch on it like that.

The cola wasn't as good as what we've got here. I mean, you could buy standard Coka Cola, which cost a bit more, but the Mali brand was worse. The Fanta knockoffs were better than the Fanta, though. You could get "Quench" or "Djino" or "Ya" brand drinks that were orange, pineapple, banana, or pear flavoured. I'm probably missing some of the flavours, but just trust me, they were goooood. A world apart from our "Fanta", "Crush" or "C-Plus" and after you'd walked for five kilometers under the African sun to get to Sirakorola, it tasted like heaven.

The other thing I'm thinking about right now that was surprisingly good, was the beer. It was strange, because the consumption of alcohol was so frowned on. The country was 90% Muslim, who were forbidden to drink, and there was a certain cultural stigma against it in general. You could buy it in Bamako fairly openly, but in the villages, a normal Malian should be discrete. My Animist village was known for it's more liberal take on alcohol, because the dominant religian didn't forbid it, but they still didn't drink, mainly because it was outside their price range.

If a Malian drank, it would be less for the effect, and more for the excitement of "being bad", I found. Even the Malians in our group who drank (not naming names) had never had enough to get drunk, because they couldn't afford to.

Also, there was only one brand. I'd think the absence of competition, and the fact that people were drinking for it's reputation moreso than it's effect or taste, would mean that the company wouldn't feel the need to make a quality product.

I won't lie, I don't even have much of a taste for beer. I mean, I generally enjoy it, but unless I'm drinking one brand back-to-back with another, I generally can't tell the difference. There are definitely some exceptions, but take any major 5% beer that you can be sure to find in any bar in Canada, and to me it will taste pretty much the same. This is probably the least manliest thing I've ever said on my blog, but I think people my age are too brand obsessed over beer.

But the Castel brand beer, brewed in Bamako, seemingly a knockoff of Budweiser (it was advertised as the Queen of Beers), was just really, really good. And it didn't have any kind of weird exotic taste, either. And I definitely wasn't the only one to notice.