Bamako space show.

• Author: Baker, Robert
• Position: Mali - Essay

Bamako, Mali, was in 1968 a poor, socialist dictatorship, largely in the Sahel region of West Africa. After my tour of duty in Kampala, Uganda, a telegram came from the Personnel Division in the U.S. Information Agency, assigning me next to the U.S. Embassy in Madagascar. I felt that was too much out of the African mainstream. I was very young. I sent Washington a telegram asking for a more challenging assignment.

I never before that or afterward received such prompt response from Personnel. The morning after my telegram was sent, USIA sent a telegram to congratulate me for wanting a more challenging assignment. I was sent to Bamako as the Information Officer, the guy who handles press relations. Mali was ideologically aligned with the Communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union, and received lots of aid from Communist countries. Local media followed the communist propaganda line. They daily pictured the U.S. as a wholly racist, imperialist, greedy capitalist country. I was a failure as the Press Officer in Bamako as none of our Embassy press releases were ever used in Mali's radio or press.

However, I had noticed that Malians were very interested in space exploration, which was reported in the press and radio, with special attention to Soviet achievements. At the time, Moscow was way ahead of the U.S. in space. I cabled to the U.S. Information Agency in Washington to ask for a free standing U.S. space exploration exhibit. Then I sent a cable to NASA to ask if they had 16 mm films in French (the elite language of Mali) about the solar system, stars, U.S. space exploration, etc. Washington sent us a good exhibit of free standing cardboard-mounted pictures about space. NASA sent us two hours of excellent short 16-mm films in French about astronomy, the stars, the solar system and the U.S. space program.

My boss, the Public Affairs Officer, sent a request to the Foreign Affairs Ministry to ask if we could hold the exhibit at various schools as an educational...