Sylvia's Journal

Roadside advertisements here are of a kind that I don’t think you’d see in the US anymore. I think they may have been common in the 60s and 70s, but advertisers probably wouldn’t get away with them nowadays, at least not in the US or Europe. But here all is up for grabs. Advertising that alcohol consumption makes you smart and successful (la bière de la réussite), or that sugar is good for you. One billboard for a line of sugary sodas shows a young boy kid picking up the front end of a small truck with one hand while holding the sugary drink in his other; or there is the one billboard that encourages people to ‘find the lion inside you’ advertising a line of candy. Of course now, because of Ramadan, many billboards wish people a blessed Ramadan showing happy beautiful people drinking or eating specific products, including one of a family eating in front of a Shell station (Shell wishes you…). And women empowerment is not forgotten either: Maggi reminding people that every woman who uses Maggi in her cooking is a Star.

This morning during my morning jog on the treadmill I listened to an NPRs Hidden Brain podcast (This Is Your Brain On Ads) about how ads to which one was exposed at an early age hold sway over anything that the intelligent grown up now knows is nonsense or plain wrong, like nutritious breakfast that consist for 80% of sugar. But those were advertised to the innocent and credulous young mind, with the help of cartoon characters. The message got engraved somewhere deep in our brain and trumps everything we know to be true.

Large electronic billboards are also starting to emerge. They are quite common in the big cities in Asia and I had seen them in Kenya (not always working properly), but last night I saw the best one ever. It is permanently displayed on the main drag near my hotel. It says (most visible at night) in English, in large white on black letters:

• Mouse not found
• Keyboard not found
• Fatal error
• System suspended

It is a frightening message if you don’t know what these words mean.

But the best thing I saw today was the man with a plastic bag that has the picture and name of our previous president on it. He is still on people’s screen. The plastic bag is also, unfortunately, made with chemicals that don’t dissolve in a hundred years, so his picture will be around a bit until the bag starts to fray as it flaps in the wind from trees or fences, along with the millions of black plastic bags that dot the landscape. This way even our honorable last president will eventually contribute to clogged drains. The Rwandan president did well to ban plastic bags (you are told upon landing in Kigali to leave all plastic bags on the plane). But here it looks like such political will is not on the horizon yet, especially if the current president gets his way and stays on beyond his mandate. Malians are protesting many other things the current administration is not doing, and maybe plastic bags are not quite up there with things like the economy, security and transparency.