The Edge of the Sahara.

• Author: Baker, Bob

My press releases from the U.S. Embassy in Bamako, Mali, on American aid programs were ignored by government order. I had the idea to combine health propaganda with the fact of U.S. help in the vaccination campaign against smallpox and measles. They often killed or blinded. As many Malians are illiterate, I wanted to use visuals, posters and pamphlets with pictures. I asked and U.S. I. A. headquarters sent me a still camera, developing equipment, manuals, dark room chemicals, etc. The Embassy built a tiny backyard shack as a darkroom. I learned how to take pictures and develop them. The developing liquid for prints became too hot in Mali's blazing heat. The Ambassador let me have an air conditioner for the shack. (He kept all the other air conditioners in our warehouse because he felt using them would be inconsiderate in such a poor country).

I rode the red dust, washboard roads all over Mali in 1967 with Dr. Imperato. He directed the innoculation campaign for AID and the Center for Disease Control. I got photos of mass inoculations in towns and villages across Mali. They included Malians in all walks of life: teachers, kids, moms and dads, even raggedy cattle herders, holding up their inoculation cards. For dramatic shots of our big Dodge four wheel drive trucks climbing hills, I jumped out of the truck and into the roadside bush. Later, the good doctor asked me if I had not been afraid of the black mamba snakes in the bush. Wish he had mentioned that earlier.

On the Sahara's edge, the local area political boss, the Commandant du Cercle, put us up one night in the official guest house. It had become ruinous in the decade since the French granted Mali independence. There were holes that used to be windows, no shower or tub, no running water. He assigned two beautiful Malian school teachers dressed in their finest robes with their hair shining from oil piled to dine with us at supper that night. Pat and I did not drink more than a glass of wine and just made awkward conversation with the two beauties. It did not occur to us they were a part of the official offering to distinguished guests. Our supper was chunks of beef heart so tough it took lots of hard chewing before you could finally gulp down a bit. The beef sauce and rice were delicious.

After the somewhat strained supper, we walked to our guest house and tossed a coin to see who got the bed and who got the cot. I won and got the cot. The double bed had a valley six inches deep in the...