Now that it is hot season, I sleep outside except when it is raining. I never sleep very well because there’s noise throughout the night – my host playing loud Malian music until midnight and chatting with his friends outside, donkeys braying at every hour, and the odd rooster who doesn’t seem to know it’s nighttime. But it’s better than being inside where it’s so hot you never stop sweating. I wake up with the sun and the roosters. The other day a rooster was standing on the wall that separates my area of the property from my host family’s. This rooster was crowing so loud that I threw a shoe at it. That quieted him down for about 30 seconds.
When I wake up, most of the family has already been up for a while. The women wake up especially early so they can cook breakfast and lunch for the school children. First they pull water from the well, finish pounding the millet, then cook the ceri or millet porridge we eat for breakfast. I put on a pot of water to boil for coffee using my gas camping stove, whereas the women do all their cooking using firewood that they collect daily in the bush surrounding our house. When the ceri’s ready, I go over to the kitchen area and greet the old women of the house, Babo and Nyakuruni, two co-wives of a man who passed away, my host’s father. Every morning they give me a long string of blessings in Bambara. My Malian name is Sali:
Babo: Good morning.
Sali: Good morning.
Babo: Did you have a peaceful night?
Sali: Peace only.
Babo: How is your family?
Sali: Peace only.
Babo: How is your host?
Sali: No problems.
Babo: How are his wives?
Sali: No problems.
Babo: How are his children?
Sali: No problems.
(Note that my host’s wife and children are generally standing a few feet away while this questioning is going on.)
Babo: May God grant you a peaceful day.
Sali: Amen.
Babo: May God give you strength.
Sali: Amen.
Babo: May God protect you from evil things.
Sali: Amen.
Babo: May God give you breasts. (Meaning may you have many children.)
Sali: (reluctantly) Amen.
Babo: May God make peace between you and your husband. (Meaning future husband.)
Sali: (reluctantly) Amen.
Babo: May God make your work develop.
Sali: (enthusiastically) Amen.
Babo: May God make your studies develop.
Sali: (enthusiastically) Amen.
When this is done, I take my piping-hot bowl full of millet porridge back to my house, let it cool, and add peanut butter for a little protein and flavor. Malians eat their ceri plain or with sour milk. Sometimes, Malians will eat breakfast after they have already watered their garden or done some work in the field. Their breakfast is accompanied by strong, sugary green tea that they brew three times.
The morning is a time I like to have to myself, sitting in my separate area of the compound eating my porridge and listening to the BBC. Of course, it’s not that separate and I often have little visitors wander in (my host’s kids), as well as any Malians who have a message to give me about work (to which I begrudgingly grumble a response ), or who just want to say good morning. Then I take my ‘bucket bath’ (each time I bathe I pull water from the well and scoop it over me – no plumbing in Koyan!).
My days are extremely varied. Sometimes I have no definite work to do and I spend my time washing clothes, cleaning my house, reading books, writing letters, and playing with my host’s kids. Washing clothes is pretty tiring since it involves pulling lots of water from the well and scrubbing the clothes on a washboard. Sometimes it’s so hot I can’t do anything but sleep or read.
At least once a week, I attend a meeting. The school management committee meets almost every Tuesday, all the women of Koyan meet up once a month (they base their meetings on the lunar month), the students’ mothers association meets about once a month, and there are other meetings that come up.
My means of transportation is the bicycle. Many of the men in Koyan have mopeds and people don’t understand why I don’t have one or ride other people’s. It is a Peace Corps rule for the sake of safety. Sometimes it is very frustrating and I just wish I could hop on a moped and get somewhere quickly, but I really like the solidarity it creates between me and the less wealthy villagers that I use the same mode of transportation as them. As I ride my bike through Koyan, all the kids in the village run out onto the street or just wave at me and yell “Sali, Saliii, SALLLIII!” until I respond. You’d think they’d get tired of this but they just don’t. They’re still in awe of the one white person in the village.
To be continued.
Brotherly love
With so much family in one household, you've always got plenty of playmates.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Update from Koyan's School
Thank you so much to all who have donated to the desk project! We have already raised about 25% of the project funds! Aw ni ce, aw ni baara!
Here is what is going on at the school recently: Sadly, there is a national teacher’s strike. This means that the one teacher provided by the government is not working, although fortunately the two community-paid teachers are working. On Sunday I am starting a program with the sixth grade girls on “Life Skills” which is a curriculum developed by Peace Corps to empower girls. The lessons cover goal-setting, the importance of education, birth-control, and HIV/AIDS. I am really excited about this since I have come to realize what a big problem girls’ self-esteem is here, as well as early pregnancy.
The other night I was sitting chatting with my host family under the moonlight as usual when my host’s second wife, Mama, brought up a subject she returns to constantly: how her husband is no good since he wanders around at night meeting up with his girlfriends instead of staying at home with the family. According to Koyan custom, women cannot leave the house at night (because their husbands are afraid they will have boyfriends) but men can. However, my host is especially bad and is away from home a lot, often spending the night at a friend (perhaps girlfriend)’s house. Mama directly asked me to tell Fablen (my host) to stop going out at night. I told her that it wasn’t my place to get involved in that. I told her that what she should do is start some small business, like selling fried dough at the market, to make her own money. If she is not dependent on Fablen for money, I feel like that would give her more power in their relationship. I also told her to work hard at studying Bambara. Of course, I felt very powerless since in general this is not something I know that much about (marital problems!), but I do feel like there would be less women in Mama’s situation if more girls were educated and able to support themselves financially, which is something I can try to help with.
Here is what is going on at the school recently: Sadly, there is a national teacher’s strike. This means that the one teacher provided by the government is not working, although fortunately the two community-paid teachers are working. On Sunday I am starting a program with the sixth grade girls on “Life Skills” which is a curriculum developed by Peace Corps to empower girls. The lessons cover goal-setting, the importance of education, birth-control, and HIV/AIDS. I am really excited about this since I have come to realize what a big problem girls’ self-esteem is here, as well as early pregnancy.
The other night I was sitting chatting with my host family under the moonlight as usual when my host’s second wife, Mama, brought up a subject she returns to constantly: how her husband is no good since he wanders around at night meeting up with his girlfriends instead of staying at home with the family. According to Koyan custom, women cannot leave the house at night (because their husbands are afraid they will have boyfriends) but men can. However, my host is especially bad and is away from home a lot, often spending the night at a friend (perhaps girlfriend)’s house. Mama directly asked me to tell Fablen (my host) to stop going out at night. I told her that it wasn’t my place to get involved in that. I told her that what she should do is start some small business, like selling fried dough at the market, to make her own money. If she is not dependent on Fablen for money, I feel like that would give her more power in their relationship. I also told her to work hard at studying Bambara. Of course, I felt very powerless since in general this is not something I know that much about (marital problems!), but I do feel like there would be less women in Mama’s situation if more girls were educated and able to support themselves financially, which is something I can try to help with.
Desk Project
The desk project I wrote about in my last post has gone online – any amount you could give would be a great help! Here is the website:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfmshell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=688-330
A summary of the project is below. If you decide to donate, please email me your mailing address so I can have a student in Koyan write you a thank you letter.
My village is very motivated to get new desks for the elementary school! The school was started 6 years ago by community members so that the village’s children would no longer have to walk one hour to the nearest school. The elementary school is growing every year and currently has grades two, four, and six, with 70 female students and 110 male students. With the project funds, the villagers will buy 45 new student desks (each desk seats 3-4 students), 3 new teacher’s desks, 3 new teacher’s chairs, and will repair 25 old student desks.
As a community contribution, the villagers will be transporting the desks from a town 47km away from our village via donkey-cart as well as providing $300 of their own money for the project, making the total value of the community contribution 25% of the total project cost. The village now needs to raise $4,234 to complete the project. You can donate online at the website listed above. Your donation is tax-deductable. However much you feel comfortable donating will be appreciated! The cost of one desk is approximately $90. Even if you are not in the position to donate to this project, but could pass on the word to someone you think would be able to donate, that would be a huge help! The people of Koyan thank you for your help! Aw ni ce! Aw ni baara!
Please don’t hesitate to email me with questions. I can also give you updates as the project progresses.
I also started a Facebook group for this project, which has photographs of the school and students: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=115242305173596#!/group.php?gid=115242305173596&v=info
Thank you!!!
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfmshell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=688-330
A summary of the project is below. If you decide to donate, please email me your mailing address so I can have a student in Koyan write you a thank you letter.
My village is very motivated to get new desks for the elementary school! The school was started 6 years ago by community members so that the village’s children would no longer have to walk one hour to the nearest school. The elementary school is growing every year and currently has grades two, four, and six, with 70 female students and 110 male students. With the project funds, the villagers will buy 45 new student desks (each desk seats 3-4 students), 3 new teacher’s desks, 3 new teacher’s chairs, and will repair 25 old student desks.
As a community contribution, the villagers will be transporting the desks from a town 47km away from our village via donkey-cart as well as providing $300 of their own money for the project, making the total value of the community contribution 25% of the total project cost. The village now needs to raise $4,234 to complete the project. You can donate online at the website listed above. Your donation is tax-deductable. However much you feel comfortable donating will be appreciated! The cost of one desk is approximately $90. Even if you are not in the position to donate to this project, but could pass on the word to someone you think would be able to donate, that would be a huge help! The people of Koyan thank you for your help! Aw ni ce! Aw ni baara!
Please don’t hesitate to email me with questions. I can also give you updates as the project progresses.
I also started a Facebook group for this project, which has photographs of the school and students: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=115242305173596#!/group.php?gid=115242305173596&v=info
Thank you!!!
Friday, April 2, 2010
Koyan's school, my parents' visit to Mali
Dear friends and family,
Here are some new photos of Koyan:
http://picasaweb.google.com/laurenmbiggs/SiratigiJaraMilletWhacking?feat=directlink
I ni faama! This is Bambara for it’s been a long time! When you see someone you haven’t seen in a while in Mali, you always greet them with this and they may periodically repeat it throughout your conversation. It seems somewhere in between a declaration of happiness that you are finally coming to see them and a reproach for not having come to see them sooner. Well, I haven’t written in quite a while so I am the one who should be reproached! My parents came to Mali at the beginning of February and after that we went to Spain together for two weeks. When I returned from Spain, it was (and continues to be) extremely hot here and difficult to motivate myself to do anything (highs normally around 108 with no fan or AC!). Also, readjusting after Spain was difficult, a bit like coming to Mali for the first time except this time without the excitement and newness of everything. I do feel like my honeymoon with Mali is over and I am getting down to the drudgery of daily life. I still love it, but it’s work!
I realize I have not yet written very much about my work here or specifically the school in my village, which I’m sure many of you are interested to learn about. Part of this is because I haven’t done very much formal work yet and because my work has not really been with the school. But anyways, I’ll tell you something about the school in my village, especially since I am starting to work on a project with the school that I’ll need your help with in the near future!
Sitting in on a class in Koyan’s school, it immediately becomes apparent that the school’s greatest need is teacher training. It is an elementary school and should contain grades one through six, but this year only has grades two, four and six – next year it will have grades one, three, and five. The school is only five years old; this is the first year it has a sixth grade. Up until last year it was a community school, meaning that the community hired the teachers, determined the curriculum, and provided part of the teachers’ salaries, although the government also provided part. Last year the school’s management committee, a group I work with and know well, decided to apply to the government to make the school part of the government system. However, it has not yet fully transitioned to being a government school: this year it has one teacher, who is also the school’s director, who was sent by the government and two teachers who were hired by the community. Although in some ways there are substantial differences between the government and community teachers, for the most part they are all very poor teachers. The government teachers have had more training, it seems, and yet they put less effort into teaching. The reasons they are not very motivated teachers seem to be: they are paid automatically by the government whether or not they actually do their job; there is no supervision (when they are not paid it is because the government is having financial issues, which is often the case and results in frequent teacher strikes), they are often sent by the government to work in communities they do not have any connections to and are moved every couple of years, and many teachers actually wanted to pursue other careers but could not find a job in their field of choice. For example, the English teacher at the middle school nearby (in Dombila) wanted to be a lawyer and the biology teacher at the same school wanted to do scientific research. So now Koyan has one government teacher, who has lots of good ideas, especially about girls’ education (she is a helpful if somewhat controlling member of the Student Mothers Group that I started), but is unmotivated and probably is only actually present in the classroom for 50% of class time (she often leaves Koyan early to go to the big town of Kati for the weekend, where she is from and where her husband and child live, and even when she is in Koyan she spends a lot of time resting in her house instead of teaching – partially because she is obese and has health issues). In addition, Koyan has two community teachers, who spend more time in the classroom but have no better teaching methods than reading out French texts to students and asking the students to repeat the text even though they are completely clueless as to its content. The school is (theoretically) conducted entirely in French – this is the old style; government elementary schools are now supposed to have switched to a new system in which students start learning in their local language (in Koyan that would be Bambara) and during elementary school gradually transfer to French, which is the sole language used in middle and high school. However, the students understand extraordinarily little French (Bonjour!, Comment ca va?, Suivez! is about it) so of course the teachers end up reverting to Bambara to give directions and explain enough of the lesson for the students to grasp at the skimpiest threads of meaning.
Unfortunately, as a Peace Corps Mali education volunteer, I was not trained in teacher training and I don’t feel that I personally have the skills to conduct a training workshop. I would love to find an NGO or other partner to improve the skills of the teachers in my village, but I don’t know about any NGOs that do this. In addition, this is not something that the people in my village have identified as one of their needs. One of the difficulties of being a Peace Corps volunteer is coming to terms with the philosophy that even though you as a volunteer think you know better, and perhaps you do, you have to go with the wishes of the community. You are there to work for them and not to develop the community as you see fit (that would reek of colonialism or religious missions, two foreign influences I can’t help but compare myself to as a volunteer here). In addition to its seeming wrong, if you start a project the people of the village are not motivated to work on, the project is probably going to be unsuccessful. The two top education needs that the people of my village identified are a new school building and new desks. As you can see, these are both material things – obtaining them would certainly be good for the community, but it would not help nearly so much (in my opinion) as if the teachers or other community members were to undergo a training or organize an event that would provide them with new skills. My hope, though, is that the mere fact of organizing these projects (obtaining desks and a new school building) will help them develop their organizational and fundraising skills, which will probably be more valuable to the community in the long run than the desks themselves. Many of the desks the school has now are falling apart and they simply don’t have enough for all the students – some students have to sit on the floor, which is pretty awful. The school building is made of mud with a tin roof. Although admittedly cement buildings (which is what the community wants for the new school they want to build) are better since they are cleaner and last longer, there is something wonderful about the fact that the current building was 100% financed and constructed voluntarily by community members. Very interestingly, I learned recently that 300,000 francs (approx. $667) of the funding to build the school was donated by the women of the community, while only 100,000 francs (approx. $222) was donated by the men. Part of this is because there are more women than men in the community (most men have two wives), but I think part of it is also because the women of the village are better at saving money: many are members of groups that give a standard amount of money to a ‘bank’ every week (that is, a small metal case held by one of the women); this is something only done by the women. Many men in the community have motorcycles or bicycles; no women in the community do. I couldn’t figure out if this was cultural (it is not acceptable for a woman to ride a motorcycle or a bike) or because the women didn’t have enough money. I’m starting to see that it’s not that they don’t have enough money, but that they choose to spend their money on other things or save it. And I’m sure part of it is also cultural.
As I was saying . . . The community is very motivated to build a new, cement school even though I’m not sure how much that would really contribute to the quality of learning. It would contribute somewhat and would make the community feel proud, but it seems like it wouldn’t help as much as finding better teachers or training the teachers that do exist. A big disadvantage for Koyan in the area of education is that very few of the adults in the community have been to school at all and those that have been probably didn’t pass the sixth grade. This means that most people can’t read or write and they’re generally unfamiliar with how a school functions and how to tell whether or not their children are actually learning. They’ve realized that an education is important and that many people who get an education go on to get better jobs. In fact, many of the siblings of the adults in Koyan are living in Bamako, working as a bureaucrat, a police officer, or for an NGO. It is good that these people have gone on to have successful careers in Bamako, but unfortunate that they’re no longer in Koyan to help the community develop.
As to the desks: I have decided to take on this project! I kept hearing this demand from people over and over again and I realized that I should really help them get these desks. I thought it would be a nice, small, easy project to start with (as opposed to constructing a whole school building!), but it turns out these desks are actually quite expensive (about $90 per desk –they each fit three to four students) and the overall project is going to have a pretty high cost (about $5,400). Peace Corps has two methods that volunteers can use to fund their projects – the first is called Small Project Assistance and for this method the volunteer fills out a funding demand form including a budget, project objectives, success indicators, etc. and you pretty much automatically receive the funding. The community must contribute at least 33% of the funding for the project, which can come from in-kind contributions – especially things like food, labor, and transport. Peace Corps Washington distributes a certain amount of money for each sector (education, environment, health, business development, etc.) to its various posts (Mali being one) and this money is distributed to volunteers’ projects through the Small Project Assistance program. The second is called Peace Corps Project Partnership; for this method, the volunteer writes up a similar budget and description of the project and the Peace Corps puts this information up online. Then, donors from the U.S. donate money to the project online. With this method, the community only has to contribute a minimum of 25% of the project’s total cost. That the volunteer will get funding for their project from the States is not guaranteed and may take a very long time – it depends on the volunteer’s ability to fundraise.
So I explained these two methods of getting funding to my school management committee, which is managing the desk project, and they said they wanted to go with the second method, even though it’s not guaranteed, because raising 33% of the total cost would be nearly impossible for them on this project, but f25% is much more feasible. What this means is that once I’ve gathered all the information for the project, I’m going to need to start fundraising online so let me know if you have any brilliant fundraising ideas or know any group that’d be willing to help out! I don’t have all the information yet that I need to write the budget and put the project up online, but I’ll keep you updated.
I am using the first method of fundraising to obtain the funds for a soap-making training that will be held in a nearby village in May that I’m really excited about. A woman is going to come from Bamako to teach the women of my village and two other nearby villages how to make soap and start a soap-making business. I think this could be a really great means to empower the women: they can both start a successful income-generating activity and come together as a group of female community leaders. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I think very highly of the women in my village and am more passionate about working with them than with the men! The women are such hard workers and their work doesn’t seem to get hampered by the political squabbles that go on among the men (I have especially been experiencing this among the members of the school management committee).
I have to briefly describe what happened when my parents came to my village, which was quite remarkable. We found a driver to take us out to Koyan (so that my parents did not have to brave being squished into a sweaty van for two hours and then bike-riding 7 kilometers!). On the way from Bamako, my host, Nfabile Jara, kept on calling me and asking me where I was and how soon I’d be there. I thought it must just be because he was excited to see my parents, but now I realize it must have been because he was trying to coordinate this welcome for them. After driving on a paved road for about an hour and a half, we turn off and enter the bush. It is already starting to get dry and the landscape is made up of red dirt, streaked with boulders and small trees. The road is bumpy and convoluted. At one point we drive down into an empty riverbed, where my parents and I get out so that the car is lighter and doesn’t scrape the ground. Eventually we start to enter Koyan and we hear loud hand-clapping and hundreds of children’s voices. We start to see them lining the road and make out that the high-pitched voices are chanting “Mama, papa.” Then we see the looks of joy and excitement in the faces of the children and also the adults who are there. My mom starts to cry. It is truly the warmest welcome you can get anywhere in the world. We pull into the empty space next to the school that the kids use as a soccer field. Our car is mobbed by children and adults wanting to take our hands and greet us and we are barely able to get out. When we emerge from the mob, we find that the school teachers (who are some of my best friends in Koyan) have set up a table with a table cloth and their best chairs for us to sit in. We all sit and the adults make the children quiet down. The teachers give a short speech welcoming us, which I translate for my parents and then we tell them how happy we are to be there and how wonderful this welcome is. The two xylophone players the village has brought for us start playing and the women start dancing. I start dancing with the women and my parents join in too. They are thrilled that we are dancing. All the kids crowd around and watch. Eventually we went back to my house, where my work partner, Zan Jara, gave a speech to my parents (that I translated) in which he said on behalf of the village how happy they are to have me there, what a good volunteer I am, and that they don’t want me to ever leave. My favorite part was when Zan said “We’ve never seen a woman like Sali before.” (Sali being my Malian name.) My parents only spent one night there, which the Malians found much too short. They made my mom promise to come back before I leave Mali and stay for 12 days. They loved both my parents, but they especially loved my mom. They kept on saying how healthy, happy, and energetic she is. They gave my parents Malian names: for my mom, Nyeba Coulibaly, and for my dad, Brahma Jara (that being the name of my host’s father, who passed away). One of the woman in my host family gave birth to a baby girl on that day and they named it after my mom, Nina. Apparently Nina is actually a name in Mali although I’ve never met a Malian named Nina. Now when I talk to someone about this baby they always refer to it as ‘your mom.’ As in, ‘Sali, your mom cries a lot!’
Well, I hope you all are going to come visit me now!
Best,
Lauren
Here are some new photos of Koyan:
http://picasaweb.google.com/laurenmbiggs/SiratigiJaraMilletWhacking?feat=directlink
I ni faama! This is Bambara for it’s been a long time! When you see someone you haven’t seen in a while in Mali, you always greet them with this and they may periodically repeat it throughout your conversation. It seems somewhere in between a declaration of happiness that you are finally coming to see them and a reproach for not having come to see them sooner. Well, I haven’t written in quite a while so I am the one who should be reproached! My parents came to Mali at the beginning of February and after that we went to Spain together for two weeks. When I returned from Spain, it was (and continues to be) extremely hot here and difficult to motivate myself to do anything (highs normally around 108 with no fan or AC!). Also, readjusting after Spain was difficult, a bit like coming to Mali for the first time except this time without the excitement and newness of everything. I do feel like my honeymoon with Mali is over and I am getting down to the drudgery of daily life. I still love it, but it’s work!
I realize I have not yet written very much about my work here or specifically the school in my village, which I’m sure many of you are interested to learn about. Part of this is because I haven’t done very much formal work yet and because my work has not really been with the school. But anyways, I’ll tell you something about the school in my village, especially since I am starting to work on a project with the school that I’ll need your help with in the near future!
Sitting in on a class in Koyan’s school, it immediately becomes apparent that the school’s greatest need is teacher training. It is an elementary school and should contain grades one through six, but this year only has grades two, four and six – next year it will have grades one, three, and five. The school is only five years old; this is the first year it has a sixth grade. Up until last year it was a community school, meaning that the community hired the teachers, determined the curriculum, and provided part of the teachers’ salaries, although the government also provided part. Last year the school’s management committee, a group I work with and know well, decided to apply to the government to make the school part of the government system. However, it has not yet fully transitioned to being a government school: this year it has one teacher, who is also the school’s director, who was sent by the government and two teachers who were hired by the community. Although in some ways there are substantial differences between the government and community teachers, for the most part they are all very poor teachers. The government teachers have had more training, it seems, and yet they put less effort into teaching. The reasons they are not very motivated teachers seem to be: they are paid automatically by the government whether or not they actually do their job; there is no supervision (when they are not paid it is because the government is having financial issues, which is often the case and results in frequent teacher strikes), they are often sent by the government to work in communities they do not have any connections to and are moved every couple of years, and many teachers actually wanted to pursue other careers but could not find a job in their field of choice. For example, the English teacher at the middle school nearby (in Dombila) wanted to be a lawyer and the biology teacher at the same school wanted to do scientific research. So now Koyan has one government teacher, who has lots of good ideas, especially about girls’ education (she is a helpful if somewhat controlling member of the Student Mothers Group that I started), but is unmotivated and probably is only actually present in the classroom for 50% of class time (she often leaves Koyan early to go to the big town of Kati for the weekend, where she is from and where her husband and child live, and even when she is in Koyan she spends a lot of time resting in her house instead of teaching – partially because she is obese and has health issues). In addition, Koyan has two community teachers, who spend more time in the classroom but have no better teaching methods than reading out French texts to students and asking the students to repeat the text even though they are completely clueless as to its content. The school is (theoretically) conducted entirely in French – this is the old style; government elementary schools are now supposed to have switched to a new system in which students start learning in their local language (in Koyan that would be Bambara) and during elementary school gradually transfer to French, which is the sole language used in middle and high school. However, the students understand extraordinarily little French (Bonjour!, Comment ca va?, Suivez! is about it) so of course the teachers end up reverting to Bambara to give directions and explain enough of the lesson for the students to grasp at the skimpiest threads of meaning.
Unfortunately, as a Peace Corps Mali education volunteer, I was not trained in teacher training and I don’t feel that I personally have the skills to conduct a training workshop. I would love to find an NGO or other partner to improve the skills of the teachers in my village, but I don’t know about any NGOs that do this. In addition, this is not something that the people in my village have identified as one of their needs. One of the difficulties of being a Peace Corps volunteer is coming to terms with the philosophy that even though you as a volunteer think you know better, and perhaps you do, you have to go with the wishes of the community. You are there to work for them and not to develop the community as you see fit (that would reek of colonialism or religious missions, two foreign influences I can’t help but compare myself to as a volunteer here). In addition to its seeming wrong, if you start a project the people of the village are not motivated to work on, the project is probably going to be unsuccessful. The two top education needs that the people of my village identified are a new school building and new desks. As you can see, these are both material things – obtaining them would certainly be good for the community, but it would not help nearly so much (in my opinion) as if the teachers or other community members were to undergo a training or organize an event that would provide them with new skills. My hope, though, is that the mere fact of organizing these projects (obtaining desks and a new school building) will help them develop their organizational and fundraising skills, which will probably be more valuable to the community in the long run than the desks themselves. Many of the desks the school has now are falling apart and they simply don’t have enough for all the students – some students have to sit on the floor, which is pretty awful. The school building is made of mud with a tin roof. Although admittedly cement buildings (which is what the community wants for the new school they want to build) are better since they are cleaner and last longer, there is something wonderful about the fact that the current building was 100% financed and constructed voluntarily by community members. Very interestingly, I learned recently that 300,000 francs (approx. $667) of the funding to build the school was donated by the women of the community, while only 100,000 francs (approx. $222) was donated by the men. Part of this is because there are more women than men in the community (most men have two wives), but I think part of it is also because the women of the village are better at saving money: many are members of groups that give a standard amount of money to a ‘bank’ every week (that is, a small metal case held by one of the women); this is something only done by the women. Many men in the community have motorcycles or bicycles; no women in the community do. I couldn’t figure out if this was cultural (it is not acceptable for a woman to ride a motorcycle or a bike) or because the women didn’t have enough money. I’m starting to see that it’s not that they don’t have enough money, but that they choose to spend their money on other things or save it. And I’m sure part of it is also cultural.
As I was saying . . . The community is very motivated to build a new, cement school even though I’m not sure how much that would really contribute to the quality of learning. It would contribute somewhat and would make the community feel proud, but it seems like it wouldn’t help as much as finding better teachers or training the teachers that do exist. A big disadvantage for Koyan in the area of education is that very few of the adults in the community have been to school at all and those that have been probably didn’t pass the sixth grade. This means that most people can’t read or write and they’re generally unfamiliar with how a school functions and how to tell whether or not their children are actually learning. They’ve realized that an education is important and that many people who get an education go on to get better jobs. In fact, many of the siblings of the adults in Koyan are living in Bamako, working as a bureaucrat, a police officer, or for an NGO. It is good that these people have gone on to have successful careers in Bamako, but unfortunate that they’re no longer in Koyan to help the community develop.
As to the desks: I have decided to take on this project! I kept hearing this demand from people over and over again and I realized that I should really help them get these desks. I thought it would be a nice, small, easy project to start with (as opposed to constructing a whole school building!), but it turns out these desks are actually quite expensive (about $90 per desk –they each fit three to four students) and the overall project is going to have a pretty high cost (about $5,400). Peace Corps has two methods that volunteers can use to fund their projects – the first is called Small Project Assistance and for this method the volunteer fills out a funding demand form including a budget, project objectives, success indicators, etc. and you pretty much automatically receive the funding. The community must contribute at least 33% of the funding for the project, which can come from in-kind contributions – especially things like food, labor, and transport. Peace Corps Washington distributes a certain amount of money for each sector (education, environment, health, business development, etc.) to its various posts (Mali being one) and this money is distributed to volunteers’ projects through the Small Project Assistance program. The second is called Peace Corps Project Partnership; for this method, the volunteer writes up a similar budget and description of the project and the Peace Corps puts this information up online. Then, donors from the U.S. donate money to the project online. With this method, the community only has to contribute a minimum of 25% of the project’s total cost. That the volunteer will get funding for their project from the States is not guaranteed and may take a very long time – it depends on the volunteer’s ability to fundraise.
So I explained these two methods of getting funding to my school management committee, which is managing the desk project, and they said they wanted to go with the second method, even though it’s not guaranteed, because raising 33% of the total cost would be nearly impossible for them on this project, but f25% is much more feasible. What this means is that once I’ve gathered all the information for the project, I’m going to need to start fundraising online so let me know if you have any brilliant fundraising ideas or know any group that’d be willing to help out! I don’t have all the information yet that I need to write the budget and put the project up online, but I’ll keep you updated.
I am using the first method of fundraising to obtain the funds for a soap-making training that will be held in a nearby village in May that I’m really excited about. A woman is going to come from Bamako to teach the women of my village and two other nearby villages how to make soap and start a soap-making business. I think this could be a really great means to empower the women: they can both start a successful income-generating activity and come together as a group of female community leaders. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I think very highly of the women in my village and am more passionate about working with them than with the men! The women are such hard workers and their work doesn’t seem to get hampered by the political squabbles that go on among the men (I have especially been experiencing this among the members of the school management committee).
I have to briefly describe what happened when my parents came to my village, which was quite remarkable. We found a driver to take us out to Koyan (so that my parents did not have to brave being squished into a sweaty van for two hours and then bike-riding 7 kilometers!). On the way from Bamako, my host, Nfabile Jara, kept on calling me and asking me where I was and how soon I’d be there. I thought it must just be because he was excited to see my parents, but now I realize it must have been because he was trying to coordinate this welcome for them. After driving on a paved road for about an hour and a half, we turn off and enter the bush. It is already starting to get dry and the landscape is made up of red dirt, streaked with boulders and small trees. The road is bumpy and convoluted. At one point we drive down into an empty riverbed, where my parents and I get out so that the car is lighter and doesn’t scrape the ground. Eventually we start to enter Koyan and we hear loud hand-clapping and hundreds of children’s voices. We start to see them lining the road and make out that the high-pitched voices are chanting “Mama, papa.” Then we see the looks of joy and excitement in the faces of the children and also the adults who are there. My mom starts to cry. It is truly the warmest welcome you can get anywhere in the world. We pull into the empty space next to the school that the kids use as a soccer field. Our car is mobbed by children and adults wanting to take our hands and greet us and we are barely able to get out. When we emerge from the mob, we find that the school teachers (who are some of my best friends in Koyan) have set up a table with a table cloth and their best chairs for us to sit in. We all sit and the adults make the children quiet down. The teachers give a short speech welcoming us, which I translate for my parents and then we tell them how happy we are to be there and how wonderful this welcome is. The two xylophone players the village has brought for us start playing and the women start dancing. I start dancing with the women and my parents join in too. They are thrilled that we are dancing. All the kids crowd around and watch. Eventually we went back to my house, where my work partner, Zan Jara, gave a speech to my parents (that I translated) in which he said on behalf of the village how happy they are to have me there, what a good volunteer I am, and that they don’t want me to ever leave. My favorite part was when Zan said “We’ve never seen a woman like Sali before.” (Sali being my Malian name.) My parents only spent one night there, which the Malians found much too short. They made my mom promise to come back before I leave Mali and stay for 12 days. They loved both my parents, but they especially loved my mom. They kept on saying how healthy, happy, and energetic she is. They gave my parents Malian names: for my mom, Nyeba Coulibaly, and for my dad, Brahma Jara (that being the name of my host’s father, who passed away). One of the woman in my host family gave birth to a baby girl on that day and they named it after my mom, Nina. Apparently Nina is actually a name in Mali although I’ve never met a Malian named Nina. Now when I talk to someone about this baby they always refer to it as ‘your mom.’ As in, ‘Sali, your mom cries a lot!’
Well, I hope you all are going to come visit me now!
Best,
Lauren
Church in Mali
Jan. 4, 2010
Dear friends and family,
Happy new year! I realized shortly after writing my last email about
funerals that it was quite a depressing and inappropriate topic for
the holiday season. I’m sorry about that. I’ll try to rectify it in my
email today. As anywhere, great joys and great sorrows co-exist here,
although my overall impression of Malians so far is that they are much
more ready to laugh than to cry. Humor, music, and dance play a huge
role in Malian society.
Here are some photos depicting the ngoni playing I witnessed as well
as other images of my life here, including a baby named Obama Jara:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2278967&id=121893&l=9d787784ba
Last Sunday I went for the first time to the church in Dombila, a town
about 5km away from Koyan and the capital of our commune. Although
most people in the community are Muslim, there is a significan
Christian population. The church is a small mud building with a tin
roof and benches made from mounds of mud covered with a thin layer of
cement. The table at the front of the church was covered with bright
African fabric depicting the face of Pope John Paul II with the words
Bamako, Mali, 1994. A small figurine of Jesus on the cross was nailed
to the back wall and on the side was a Madonna figurine. Before the
service began candles were lighted. Someone rang a bell outside the
church and about a hundred people streamed into the church, children
sitting up front on the left side, women behind them, and men filling
the right side of the church. A small stereo played Malian ballani
(xylophone) music while people sat down. There were almost no Malians
chatting, which is very unusual. When I attended the Muslim service
during the holiday of Eid everyone was chatting right up until the
praying began and even while the imam was speaking.
As I walked into the church I was quite shocked to find an elderly
European man standing outside the church greeting people in Bambara. I
was quite mystified and didn't know what language to greet him in but
fortunately he greeted me in French so I went with that. I learned
later that he is the priest of a church in a large town nearby (Kati)
and goes out to the little villages periodically, especially for
Christmas and Easter services. His skin looked awful, worn and
spotted, and his battered white t-shirt was full of holes - at first
I thought he was a Malian albino (albinism is very common here), but
later I realized he was just a European who had been living in Mali as
Malians do for a very long time. The church in Dombila has a local
priest, but on this day it was the European man who conducted the
service, all in Bambara. His age showed in his voice, which was raspy
and quiet, but amazingly enough he had a microphone and speaker system
so he could be understood. Before the service began he put on a black
robe adorned with the Malian chiwara or antelope motif (a design
traditionally used for headresses for masked dances). Unfortunately my
Bambara is not good enough to tell you what his sermon was about. We
sang hymns in Bambara with Western melodies. Some people took
communion, although many people did not.
The friend I went to the church with, Augustine Jara, did not take
communion and I later learned it was because of the fact that he has
two wives. I asked him why he, a Christian, had taken a second wife
and he said that it was because a relative of his had given her to
him. I pressed him on why he had accepted but he gave no further
explanation.
I found it oddly comforting to be witnessing a church service here -
the way I feel comfortable in a Malian classroom or a bank, structures
that I've grown up with in the States and whose customs and norms I
know.
After the service, Augustine and I went to the house of one of
Augustine's friends, a Christian woman named Safi Kone, an 18-year-old
married woman who lives in Bamako and is a fabric vendor, but whose
family is in Dombila and goes there periodically to visit. Her
outgoingness and self-confidence were markedly different from the
personalities of most women in our area, who tend to be passive and
quiet, and I assumed she was much older than 18. I think the
difference in her personality largely stems from the fact that she
lives in a big city and that her line of work is commerce. When I
arrived she was preparing lunch and I started helping her, which she
was happy to let me do. Normally when I try to help the women in my
area cook, they won't let me.
After lunch, about five of us sat inside a room and chatted. Someone
brought us a watermelon they had just harvested and we devoured it. A
man came in who seemed a little crazy, his eyes bulging and lips
curling up in a slight smirk as he spoke to me. I learned that he was
an ngoni player and asked him if I could see his instrument. He went
off and came back with a string instrument made of a guord, pieces of
scrap metal, and plastic strings. Little pieces of metal hanging off
the sides jingled as he plucked the strings. From the inside of the
instrument he brought out a piece of metal with a handle and hatch
marks that could be grated against with another small piece of metal
to create a rhythm. This small instrument got passed around among the
listeners and one man danced throughout the performance. The ngoni
player, Jean-Pierre Jara, squatted down very close to me and sang to
me. It was very intense and a little frightening but mostly wonderful.
He then moved on and sang to everyone in the group. After, we each
placed a small amount of money into an opening in his instrument.
I wish you all much happiness in the new year!
Best,
Lauren
Dear friends and family,
Happy new year! I realized shortly after writing my last email about
funerals that it was quite a depressing and inappropriate topic for
the holiday season. I’m sorry about that. I’ll try to rectify it in my
email today. As anywhere, great joys and great sorrows co-exist here,
although my overall impression of Malians so far is that they are much
more ready to laugh than to cry. Humor, music, and dance play a huge
role in Malian society.
Here are some photos depicting the ngoni playing I witnessed as well
as other images of my life here, including a baby named Obama Jara:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2278967&id=121893&l=9d787784ba
Last Sunday I went for the first time to the church in Dombila, a town
about 5km away from Koyan and the capital of our commune. Although
most people in the community are Muslim, there is a significan
Christian population. The church is a small mud building with a tin
roof and benches made from mounds of mud covered with a thin layer of
cement. The table at the front of the church was covered with bright
African fabric depicting the face of Pope John Paul II with the words
Bamako, Mali, 1994. A small figurine of Jesus on the cross was nailed
to the back wall and on the side was a Madonna figurine. Before the
service began candles were lighted. Someone rang a bell outside the
church and about a hundred people streamed into the church, children
sitting up front on the left side, women behind them, and men filling
the right side of the church. A small stereo played Malian ballani
(xylophone) music while people sat down. There were almost no Malians
chatting, which is very unusual. When I attended the Muslim service
during the holiday of Eid everyone was chatting right up until the
praying began and even while the imam was speaking.
As I walked into the church I was quite shocked to find an elderly
European man standing outside the church greeting people in Bambara. I
was quite mystified and didn't know what language to greet him in but
fortunately he greeted me in French so I went with that. I learned
later that he is the priest of a church in a large town nearby (Kati)
and goes out to the little villages periodically, especially for
Christmas and Easter services. His skin looked awful, worn and
spotted, and his battered white t-shirt was full of holes - at first
I thought he was a Malian albino (albinism is very common here), but
later I realized he was just a European who had been living in Mali as
Malians do for a very long time. The church in Dombila has a local
priest, but on this day it was the European man who conducted the
service, all in Bambara. His age showed in his voice, which was raspy
and quiet, but amazingly enough he had a microphone and speaker system
so he could be understood. Before the service began he put on a black
robe adorned with the Malian chiwara or antelope motif (a design
traditionally used for headresses for masked dances). Unfortunately my
Bambara is not good enough to tell you what his sermon was about. We
sang hymns in Bambara with Western melodies. Some people took
communion, although many people did not.
The friend I went to the church with, Augustine Jara, did not take
communion and I later learned it was because of the fact that he has
two wives. I asked him why he, a Christian, had taken a second wife
and he said that it was because a relative of his had given her to
him. I pressed him on why he had accepted but he gave no further
explanation.
I found it oddly comforting to be witnessing a church service here -
the way I feel comfortable in a Malian classroom or a bank, structures
that I've grown up with in the States and whose customs and norms I
know.
After the service, Augustine and I went to the house of one of
Augustine's friends, a Christian woman named Safi Kone, an 18-year-old
married woman who lives in Bamako and is a fabric vendor, but whose
family is in Dombila and goes there periodically to visit. Her
outgoingness and self-confidence were markedly different from the
personalities of most women in our area, who tend to be passive and
quiet, and I assumed she was much older than 18. I think the
difference in her personality largely stems from the fact that she
lives in a big city and that her line of work is commerce. When I
arrived she was preparing lunch and I started helping her, which she
was happy to let me do. Normally when I try to help the women in my
area cook, they won't let me.
After lunch, about five of us sat inside a room and chatted. Someone
brought us a watermelon they had just harvested and we devoured it. A
man came in who seemed a little crazy, his eyes bulging and lips
curling up in a slight smirk as he spoke to me. I learned that he was
an ngoni player and asked him if I could see his instrument. He went
off and came back with a string instrument made of a guord, pieces of
scrap metal, and plastic strings. Little pieces of metal hanging off
the sides jingled as he plucked the strings. From the inside of the
instrument he brought out a piece of metal with a handle and hatch
marks that could be grated against with another small piece of metal
to create a rhythm. This small instrument got passed around among the
listeners and one man danced throughout the performance. The ngoni
player, Jean-Pierre Jara, squatted down very close to me and sang to
me. It was very intense and a little frightening but mostly wonderful.
He then moved on and sang to everyone in the group. After, we each
placed a small amount of money into an opening in his instrument.
I wish you all much happiness in the new year!
Best,
Lauren
The day of funerals
Dec. 18, 2009
Dear friends and family,
I hope all is well and you are enjoying the holidays! I am at a
two-week 'in-service training' at the Peace Corps training camp
outside of Bamako after which I will go back to my village and
hopefully start my work in earnest. Some of the volunteers in my area
have organized a 4-day program where girls from the rural villages
will go to one of the larger cities to learn about professional
opportunities for women who complete school, so I'm really looking
forward to working on that. We are going to have an essay contest in
my village to determine which girls will go. Below is a description of
some things that have been going on in my village, Koyan.
Best,
Lauren
I was sitting one morning with my host family as they were sipping
ceri, the corn porridge they eat every morning, when my host Nfabilen
informed me that the young child of one of our neighbors had passed
away and that we would be going to the funeral that day, in fact that
minute. I rushed into my hut to try to find something respectable to
wear. The day was overcast and even cool. He and I walked together
down the cotton-bloom-lined path leading between our household,
Konibabugu (named for its founder and Nfabilen’s grandfather, Koniba),
and our neighbors’, Kefabugu (named for Koniba’s brother, Kefa). When
we arrived, a bunch of empty chairs were haphazardly placed around the
tree that shades most life there. The oldest man of the household was
sitting there and when Nfabilen went to sit down next to him, he
motioned for me to join. I decided, though, that this was a time to be
with the women.
I was brought into a dark, crowded room with a dirt floor, mud walls,
and a roof of thatch. A woman was sitting on a bed, crying
hysterically with her face in her hands. Another woman was seated next
to her, holding her hand and with her arm around the crying woman’s
shoulder. This was Ba, the woman whose baby had passed away. I was not
able to understand the cause of the child’s death, although the women
said he hadn’t been eating. When my eyes adjusted, I saw many of the
older women in my village. Over the course of the morning, many more
middle-aged women arrived. At first, some of the women were having a
vehement discussion I couldn’t understand but they eventually lapsed
into silence and the mother too stopped sobbing. We sat and sat for
hours, shifting our weight on the small wooden stools holding us up
and hearing the quiet benedictions of the women who entered the room.
Some women from my household had arrived and they eventually beckoned
for me to leave. As they left, each mumbled a long strain of
benedictions to the mother and I said the meager one I know, "May he
rest in peace."
Shortly after we arrived back at my house, my language tutor (the
local school's sixth grade teacher, Soungalo Jara) also arrived and we
started our Bambara lesson. As usual, various other family members and
children were coming and going, sitting around us, listening and
occassionally interjecting their comments. About halfway through, one
of the men said something I couldn't make out to Soungalo. Soungalo
then told me that they had just received some bad news: my host's
child in Bamako had died. I was completely dumbfounded: I had no idea
my host had another child in Bamako. As I asked questions, I learned
that my host had a second wife (the first, Sitan, had been living with
us in Koyan and I wrongfully assumed she was the only one) who had
been living with my host's brother, Ntossoma, in Bamako while her
child was undergoing operations at the hospital there. After this, we
continued our lesson. The strange thing was that my host went upon his
daily business as usual, going off to work in the garden, instead of
sitting with the other men of the village as had been done at the
funeral that morning. When I gave him the standard benediction, May he
rest in peace, he told me it was God's work and smiled at me. His
mother, Babo, and some of the older women of the village gathered in
Babo's house to sit. I went to sit with them and they asked me why I
wasn't talking. They started to joke with me, but I felt too sad to
joke. That night my host sat alone outside his house smoking
cigarettes and brewing tea under the stars.
Only later did I learn the cause of the child's death. My host's
brother, Ntossoma, works for the Peace Corps (he is the health
education program assistant) and speaks English. He came to visit
during the Muslim holiday of Eid and I asked him about the
circumstances of the death. He said that the child was born without an
anus and that after a number of operations, the child had finally
passed away at 11 months old. He also informed me that these kinds of
malformations can be caused by malnutrition in the mother and that the
child's mother, Ma, had gone to pre-natal counseling but had not acted
on the doctor's advice. He said that people here say when their
children pass away that it's God's work, but it is not God's work
since it is up to the people to listen to the doctor. The gap between
Ntossoma, who is educated, has a decent job, and lives a somewhat
Westernized life in Bamako (i.e. has only one wife and one child,
speaks both French and English) and his brother Nfabilen, who never
went to school, is a farmer, and lives in a rural village, is quite
remarkable.
Dear friends and family,
I hope all is well and you are enjoying the holidays! I am at a
two-week 'in-service training' at the Peace Corps training camp
outside of Bamako after which I will go back to my village and
hopefully start my work in earnest. Some of the volunteers in my area
have organized a 4-day program where girls from the rural villages
will go to one of the larger cities to learn about professional
opportunities for women who complete school, so I'm really looking
forward to working on that. We are going to have an essay contest in
my village to determine which girls will go. Below is a description of
some things that have been going on in my village, Koyan.
Best,
Lauren
I was sitting one morning with my host family as they were sipping
ceri, the corn porridge they eat every morning, when my host Nfabilen
informed me that the young child of one of our neighbors had passed
away and that we would be going to the funeral that day, in fact that
minute. I rushed into my hut to try to find something respectable to
wear. The day was overcast and even cool. He and I walked together
down the cotton-bloom-lined path leading between our household,
Konibabugu (named for its founder and Nfabilen’s grandfather, Koniba),
and our neighbors’, Kefabugu (named for Koniba’s brother, Kefa). When
we arrived, a bunch of empty chairs were haphazardly placed around the
tree that shades most life there. The oldest man of the household was
sitting there and when Nfabilen went to sit down next to him, he
motioned for me to join. I decided, though, that this was a time to be
with the women.
I was brought into a dark, crowded room with a dirt floor, mud walls,
and a roof of thatch. A woman was sitting on a bed, crying
hysterically with her face in her hands. Another woman was seated next
to her, holding her hand and with her arm around the crying woman’s
shoulder. This was Ba, the woman whose baby had passed away. I was not
able to understand the cause of the child’s death, although the women
said he hadn’t been eating. When my eyes adjusted, I saw many of the
older women in my village. Over the course of the morning, many more
middle-aged women arrived. At first, some of the women were having a
vehement discussion I couldn’t understand but they eventually lapsed
into silence and the mother too stopped sobbing. We sat and sat for
hours, shifting our weight on the small wooden stools holding us up
and hearing the quiet benedictions of the women who entered the room.
Some women from my household had arrived and they eventually beckoned
for me to leave. As they left, each mumbled a long strain of
benedictions to the mother and I said the meager one I know, "May he
rest in peace."
Shortly after we arrived back at my house, my language tutor (the
local school's sixth grade teacher, Soungalo Jara) also arrived and we
started our Bambara lesson. As usual, various other family members and
children were coming and going, sitting around us, listening and
occassionally interjecting their comments. About halfway through, one
of the men said something I couldn't make out to Soungalo. Soungalo
then told me that they had just received some bad news: my host's
child in Bamako had died. I was completely dumbfounded: I had no idea
my host had another child in Bamako. As I asked questions, I learned
that my host had a second wife (the first, Sitan, had been living with
us in Koyan and I wrongfully assumed she was the only one) who had
been living with my host's brother, Ntossoma, in Bamako while her
child was undergoing operations at the hospital there. After this, we
continued our lesson. The strange thing was that my host went upon his
daily business as usual, going off to work in the garden, instead of
sitting with the other men of the village as had been done at the
funeral that morning. When I gave him the standard benediction, May he
rest in peace, he told me it was God's work and smiled at me. His
mother, Babo, and some of the older women of the village gathered in
Babo's house to sit. I went to sit with them and they asked me why I
wasn't talking. They started to joke with me, but I felt too sad to
joke. That night my host sat alone outside his house smoking
cigarettes and brewing tea under the stars.
Only later did I learn the cause of the child's death. My host's
brother, Ntossoma, works for the Peace Corps (he is the health
education program assistant) and speaks English. He came to visit
during the Muslim holiday of Eid and I asked him about the
circumstances of the death. He said that the child was born without an
anus and that after a number of operations, the child had finally
passed away at 11 months old. He also informed me that these kinds of
malformations can be caused by malnutrition in the mother and that the
child's mother, Ma, had gone to pre-natal counseling but had not acted
on the doctor's advice. He said that people here say when their
children pass away that it's God's work, but it is not God's work
since it is up to the people to listen to the doctor. The gap between
Ntossoma, who is educated, has a decent job, and lives a somewhat
Westernized life in Bamako (i.e. has only one wife and one child,
speaks both French and English) and his brother Nfabilen, who never
went to school, is a farmer, and lives in a rural village, is quite
remarkable.
Fetes and more
Nov. 17, 2009
Dear friends and family,
I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve written! It is hard to find the
time and place here to read and write – in my village, Koyan, there is
no computer, no electricity, no internet – and even writing with pen
and paper is considered unusual, especially the kind of writing I want
to do – reflective, descriptive. Students copy texts from the board in
school and the men who run the school management committee and the
small bank in the village write to record payments, but they are not
comfortable enough with writing to use it as a tool in the way I do.
Now, however, I’m in Bamako, Mali’s capital, typing on the Peace Corps
office computers (which, thankfully, have English keyboards instead of
the French ones in the internet café in Kati, a town between my
village and Bamako that I can get to and back from within a day).
Unfortunately, this office has only three working computers and there
are often up to ten volunteers waiting to use them – so it’s hard to
type long emails. However, I’m going to be selfish for once . . .
Note: I posted some pictures of my current village and host family as
well as my homestay host family to Facebook and if you’d like to see
them but are not on Facebook you can access them here. Enjoy:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2270723&id=121893&l=30ac6ed2d4
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2268639&id=121893&l=c4933600fe
1. Fêtes
Right after I first arrived in my village, Koyan, three large
celebrations took place (and no, they weren’t just to celebrate my
arrival, although people were pretty excited about that and have said
that if my parents come to visit, they’ll hold a celebration for
them): first, Seli, the celebration of the end of Ramadan, next, the
Malian day of independence, and lastly a celebration of the
circumcision of many of the boys in the village. This string of
‘fêtes’ (the Bambara use certain choice French words in their
vocabulary) involved three in a row all-night dance-parties. On the
day of the fête, people tend to congregate in their age- and
gender-groups, sitting together and drinking tea all day - the men
much more so than the women, since they can afford to take a day off
from farming, but the women can’t exactly stop cooking, doing dishes,
washing clothes, and getting water. Instead of the normal dish of to
(which is something like corn or millet polenta) with leaf sauce, they
eat rice with leaf sauce, which is considered a specialty as, unlike
millet and corn, they do not farm it themselves and so have to
purchase it at the market. In addition to the groups of elderly men,
elderly women, middle-aged men, and middle-aged women, the boys or
girls of different age-groups will save up money to buy their tea and
sometimes food to cook for the fête. Groups of women often buy fabric
of one pattern to wear on that day, which they call ‘uniformu’ (I have
gotten an outfit made in the same fabric as the women in my household
to wear for an upcoming celebration, Tabaski – it’s going to be pretty
awesome). Whereas regularly it is only the early afternoon and
nighttime when people sit around and chat, on fêtes this is what is
done all day. The act of sitting and talking or not talking (although
talking is seen as preferable, and wit is valued) makes up a big part
of Malian life and is probably part of the reason community bonds are
so strong. This was very overwhelming for me as I had just arrived in
the village and everyone wanted to talk to me – in a language I had
only started studying a few months ago, however I did my best to be
patient and not let their teasing get to me. (Villager: Can you farm?
Me: I can learn to farm. Villager: No, you can’t farm. Me: I don’t
know if I can until I try it. Villager laughs as though they’ve never
heard anything so silly in their life. I have this conversation at
least once a day – also on the subjects of millet-pounding, cooking,
clothes-washing, and pulling water – these being things I can do much
better than farming and therefore I can go ahead and show them that I
can do it – to which they respond with shocked stares. They clearly
don’t have the idea we do that you can do almost anything you want to,
you just need a good teacher and some perseverance – unfortunately I
think this also informs their lack of blaming the teacher for the
students’ failure and instead blaming the students.)
The dance parties were held at a different person’s house each night,
under the large shea or mango tree that shades the center of many
households (houses are built in a somewhat circular pattern around the
open area under the tree, where much work, play, and rest goes on).
Three musicians set up their instruments here, two ballafo players and
one man playing something like a tambourine with little pieces of
scrap metal hanging off the edges, making a jingling noise. The
ballafo is like a large xylophone and has a bouncing, steel-drum-like
quality. The musicians were all men, probably in their late 20s. Each
song seemed to go on for however long they felt like, often ten
minutes or longer and there seemed to be a lot of improvisation. They
would take brief breaks, people bringing them tea (the Chinese green
tea brewed almost to bitterness with heaps of sugar caramelized in the
pot) and water, but mostly they played all night, the sweat dripping
from their tense bodies as they threw themselves into their
instruments, the ballafo players’ arms flying up and down too fast to
see. A sound system and speakers were powered by a car battery, as
well as a single fluorescent light hung from the tree.
At the beginning of the night, the early adolescents danced and the
groups of boys and girls dancing progressively got older until it was
the 20-year-olds who danced till dawn. At any moment, there was a
rough line of boys and a rough line of girls in the center of a circle
of on-lookers of all ages. Little kids wandered about, dancing
individually on the periphery of the circle and generally having a
fantastic time. Each person danced somewhat differently, but the men’s
dance consisted of lots of quick footwork, while the women were often
bent over in a position similar to the one they are in to beat shea
butter, as well as making a similar motion with their hands. The boys
and girls danced facing one another, but not touching or overtly
observing one another – yet the tension between them was obviously
high and periodically they would weave in between each other and
switch places.
On the day of the circumcision quite another kind of dancing went on.
The circumcision was of about ten 7-year-old boys in the village. On
the day of the circumcision, I was sitting around my household with
all the men (unfortunately it often seems I tend to sit with the men –
their hang-out is right in front of my house and they’re
better-educated and easier to talk to, and Malians encourage me to sit
with them) when Soungalo Jara, the sixth-grade teacher and one of the
few people in the village who speaks French, invited me to go over to
the household where the operation was taking place to see the boys. I
was quite afraid of what I was going to see – but fortunately I
arrived after the operation and all I saw was ten boys lying on the
ground wearing white robes. I was happy to learn that a doctor had
come to the village from a city to perform the operation. The boys
started school about a month late because of recovery time and
throughout this time wore only their white robes. After I returned to
sitting with the men, a group of women came into our household,
singing, dancing, and wearing men’s clothes, with streaks of mud
covering their cheeks and arms. They formed a rough circle around some
of the men, dancing and singing to them for money (they get small
change and later use it for tea and food for a celebration). They
grabbed my arm, pulling me in to come dance with them, and I did. I
danced in the center with one other woman (the dance movements of
these middle-aged women are different from those of the adolescents –
their dance involves stomping and slapping both hands together onto
the crotch) and she sang a song about me, which I didn’t fully
understand but knew it was about me since she kept saying ‘tubabu
muso’ or ‘white woman’. The circumcision, the women wearing men’s
clothes, the suggestive dance moves – it all made for some kind of
statement about gender and sexuality that was beyond my cultural grasp
and made me vaguely uncomfortable.
2. Madame Aissata Koné
Madame Aissata Koné is Koyan’s new school director. One day I arrived
at Koyan’s three-roomed mud-brick elementary school (this year they
have grades two, four, and six; last year it was grades one, three,
and five) only to see an obese woman dressed in a well-tailored Malian
complet (shirt, skirt, and head-wrap of the same fabric) sitting
outside alone under a mango tree. No one in Koyan has such
well-tailored clothes (most of their clothing has holes in it and is
often covered in dirt if they’ve come from the fields) or much fat on
their bodies (most people are getting enough food – although not
enough variety of foods – but the physical labor of their lives
prevents them from gaining weight). When I started talking to her (and
I can communicate with her fairly well, since she speaks French –
although she knows I’m learning Bambara and seems to prefer speaking
Bambara) I discovered she had just arrived on her friend’s moped from
Kati, a large town that is the capital of the ‘circle’ Koyan is
located in to serve as Koyan’s new school director. During the school
day, I sat inside one of the classrooms to observe the teacher and
students, while she remained outside sitting under the tree. However,
before the day was over she instructed the students to come to school
the next day with their cleaning tools – the girls with their brooms
and the boys with their dabas (a farming tool made of a rectangular
piece of metal inserted into a wooden club) to clean the school. The
next day, when the students arrived she had the boys use their dabas
to extract the weeds on the land outside the school and then had the
girls carefully sweep the outside of the school, watching over them
and threatening them with a switch if they didn’t do a good enough job
(this is used by almost all teachers in Mali). After this (which only
took about an hour), the students were dismissed for the day. Since
she arrived, Madame Koné hasn’t spent much time in Koyan. She has been
going back to Kati frequently – I imagine she finds it quite
uncomfortable in Koyan. She told me that in Kati she had a servant who
did all the chores for her, but in Koyan there is no one. One of the
main problems in the schools seems to be teachers from bigger towns
who get sent to rural villages but then have no connection to the
community and frequently leave to return to their home town. As of now
it is not a big problem for Koyan since there were already three
teachers when she arrived – but apparently the plan is for her to take
over the work of one of the teachers. Her arrival is the result of
Koyan’s school changing status from a community school, where the
community finds and directly pays the teachers, to a government
school, where the government assigns and pays the teachers. So far the
government has only sent one teacher, but I would assume that later
they will send more. As you can see, things don’t happen in the most
organized manner here . . . since Madame Koné arrived, the community
had to choose one teacher to let go in the middle of the school year
(the obvious thing would have been for her to arrive before the school
year began instead of a month into the school year . . . ). However,
the teacher chosen to be let go is still teaching and Madame Koné went
to Kati a week ago and hasn’t yet returned, so I don’t really know
what’s happening.
I did have an interesting conversation with her on one of the few
nights she stayed in Koyan (well, it wasn’t so much a conversation
with her as that I was listening to her talking to another woman). She
had just moved into one of the houses next to the school that the
community built to house the teachers, alongside one of the other
teachers, Soungalo Jara, and his two wives, Fanta and Nyeneba. It was
actually a ‘cold’ night (maybe around 70 degrees) and Soungalo was
resting in his house since he had a cold (people fall sick very
frequently here, especially with malaria), while the three women were
gathered around a fire outside: Madame Koné, Fanta, and Nyeneba. I
joined them and they chatted in Bambara about the prices they could
get for their sweet potatoes, the big cash crop in Koyan, then they
started chatting about Madame Koné’s husband and the fact that he was
the second person to offer to marry her. It seems that in Koyan and
most rural villages, a man will choose a woman to marry and then go to
her father to ask to marry her and negotiate the dowry – the woman
doesn’t have a great deal of say in who she marries, but in the bigger
towns the man may actually go to the woman and ask her to marry him.
Madame Koné said that she didn’t like the first wife of the first man
who asked to marry her so she turned him down. Her current husband is
a police officer.
It does sound cruel and unjust to not allow a woman much say in who
she marries and it probably is, yet it’s less so than it would be to
do such a thing in American society since in Malian society the
marital relationship is very different. It is more about a partnership
whose goal is to run a farm and a household than about emotional
support or love. What you really want in your partner is a good work
ethic more than anything else. Of course, you could argue that this
makes it even more important that the woman gets to choose her
husband. It’s a complicated and personal issue and I hope to learn
more about the matter in the future.
Well, I am headed back to Koyan now. I hope that gives you a bit of a
picture of things here.
Hoping you’re all well,
Lauren
Dear friends and family,
I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve written! It is hard to find the
time and place here to read and write – in my village, Koyan, there is
no computer, no electricity, no internet – and even writing with pen
and paper is considered unusual, especially the kind of writing I want
to do – reflective, descriptive. Students copy texts from the board in
school and the men who run the school management committee and the
small bank in the village write to record payments, but they are not
comfortable enough with writing to use it as a tool in the way I do.
Now, however, I’m in Bamako, Mali’s capital, typing on the Peace Corps
office computers (which, thankfully, have English keyboards instead of
the French ones in the internet café in Kati, a town between my
village and Bamako that I can get to and back from within a day).
Unfortunately, this office has only three working computers and there
are often up to ten volunteers waiting to use them – so it’s hard to
type long emails. However, I’m going to be selfish for once . . .
Note: I posted some pictures of my current village and host family as
well as my homestay host family to Facebook and if you’d like to see
them but are not on Facebook you can access them here. Enjoy:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2270723&id=121893&l=30ac6ed2d4
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2268639&id=121893&l=c4933600fe
1. Fêtes
Right after I first arrived in my village, Koyan, three large
celebrations took place (and no, they weren’t just to celebrate my
arrival, although people were pretty excited about that and have said
that if my parents come to visit, they’ll hold a celebration for
them): first, Seli, the celebration of the end of Ramadan, next, the
Malian day of independence, and lastly a celebration of the
circumcision of many of the boys in the village. This string of
‘fêtes’ (the Bambara use certain choice French words in their
vocabulary) involved three in a row all-night dance-parties. On the
day of the fête, people tend to congregate in their age- and
gender-groups, sitting together and drinking tea all day - the men
much more so than the women, since they can afford to take a day off
from farming, but the women can’t exactly stop cooking, doing dishes,
washing clothes, and getting water. Instead of the normal dish of to
(which is something like corn or millet polenta) with leaf sauce, they
eat rice with leaf sauce, which is considered a specialty as, unlike
millet and corn, they do not farm it themselves and so have to
purchase it at the market. In addition to the groups of elderly men,
elderly women, middle-aged men, and middle-aged women, the boys or
girls of different age-groups will save up money to buy their tea and
sometimes food to cook for the fête. Groups of women often buy fabric
of one pattern to wear on that day, which they call ‘uniformu’ (I have
gotten an outfit made in the same fabric as the women in my household
to wear for an upcoming celebration, Tabaski – it’s going to be pretty
awesome). Whereas regularly it is only the early afternoon and
nighttime when people sit around and chat, on fêtes this is what is
done all day. The act of sitting and talking or not talking (although
talking is seen as preferable, and wit is valued) makes up a big part
of Malian life and is probably part of the reason community bonds are
so strong. This was very overwhelming for me as I had just arrived in
the village and everyone wanted to talk to me – in a language I had
only started studying a few months ago, however I did my best to be
patient and not let their teasing get to me. (Villager: Can you farm?
Me: I can learn to farm. Villager: No, you can’t farm. Me: I don’t
know if I can until I try it. Villager laughs as though they’ve never
heard anything so silly in their life. I have this conversation at
least once a day – also on the subjects of millet-pounding, cooking,
clothes-washing, and pulling water – these being things I can do much
better than farming and therefore I can go ahead and show them that I
can do it – to which they respond with shocked stares. They clearly
don’t have the idea we do that you can do almost anything you want to,
you just need a good teacher and some perseverance – unfortunately I
think this also informs their lack of blaming the teacher for the
students’ failure and instead blaming the students.)
The dance parties were held at a different person’s house each night,
under the large shea or mango tree that shades the center of many
households (houses are built in a somewhat circular pattern around the
open area under the tree, where much work, play, and rest goes on).
Three musicians set up their instruments here, two ballafo players and
one man playing something like a tambourine with little pieces of
scrap metal hanging off the edges, making a jingling noise. The
ballafo is like a large xylophone and has a bouncing, steel-drum-like
quality. The musicians were all men, probably in their late 20s. Each
song seemed to go on for however long they felt like, often ten
minutes or longer and there seemed to be a lot of improvisation. They
would take brief breaks, people bringing them tea (the Chinese green
tea brewed almost to bitterness with heaps of sugar caramelized in the
pot) and water, but mostly they played all night, the sweat dripping
from their tense bodies as they threw themselves into their
instruments, the ballafo players’ arms flying up and down too fast to
see. A sound system and speakers were powered by a car battery, as
well as a single fluorescent light hung from the tree.
At the beginning of the night, the early adolescents danced and the
groups of boys and girls dancing progressively got older until it was
the 20-year-olds who danced till dawn. At any moment, there was a
rough line of boys and a rough line of girls in the center of a circle
of on-lookers of all ages. Little kids wandered about, dancing
individually on the periphery of the circle and generally having a
fantastic time. Each person danced somewhat differently, but the men’s
dance consisted of lots of quick footwork, while the women were often
bent over in a position similar to the one they are in to beat shea
butter, as well as making a similar motion with their hands. The boys
and girls danced facing one another, but not touching or overtly
observing one another – yet the tension between them was obviously
high and periodically they would weave in between each other and
switch places.
On the day of the circumcision quite another kind of dancing went on.
The circumcision was of about ten 7-year-old boys in the village. On
the day of the circumcision, I was sitting around my household with
all the men (unfortunately it often seems I tend to sit with the men –
their hang-out is right in front of my house and they’re
better-educated and easier to talk to, and Malians encourage me to sit
with them) when Soungalo Jara, the sixth-grade teacher and one of the
few people in the village who speaks French, invited me to go over to
the household where the operation was taking place to see the boys. I
was quite afraid of what I was going to see – but fortunately I
arrived after the operation and all I saw was ten boys lying on the
ground wearing white robes. I was happy to learn that a doctor had
come to the village from a city to perform the operation. The boys
started school about a month late because of recovery time and
throughout this time wore only their white robes. After I returned to
sitting with the men, a group of women came into our household,
singing, dancing, and wearing men’s clothes, with streaks of mud
covering their cheeks and arms. They formed a rough circle around some
of the men, dancing and singing to them for money (they get small
change and later use it for tea and food for a celebration). They
grabbed my arm, pulling me in to come dance with them, and I did. I
danced in the center with one other woman (the dance movements of
these middle-aged women are different from those of the adolescents –
their dance involves stomping and slapping both hands together onto
the crotch) and she sang a song about me, which I didn’t fully
understand but knew it was about me since she kept saying ‘tubabu
muso’ or ‘white woman’. The circumcision, the women wearing men’s
clothes, the suggestive dance moves – it all made for some kind of
statement about gender and sexuality that was beyond my cultural grasp
and made me vaguely uncomfortable.
2. Madame Aissata Koné
Madame Aissata Koné is Koyan’s new school director. One day I arrived
at Koyan’s three-roomed mud-brick elementary school (this year they
have grades two, four, and six; last year it was grades one, three,
and five) only to see an obese woman dressed in a well-tailored Malian
complet (shirt, skirt, and head-wrap of the same fabric) sitting
outside alone under a mango tree. No one in Koyan has such
well-tailored clothes (most of their clothing has holes in it and is
often covered in dirt if they’ve come from the fields) or much fat on
their bodies (most people are getting enough food – although not
enough variety of foods – but the physical labor of their lives
prevents them from gaining weight). When I started talking to her (and
I can communicate with her fairly well, since she speaks French –
although she knows I’m learning Bambara and seems to prefer speaking
Bambara) I discovered she had just arrived on her friend’s moped from
Kati, a large town that is the capital of the ‘circle’ Koyan is
located in to serve as Koyan’s new school director. During the school
day, I sat inside one of the classrooms to observe the teacher and
students, while she remained outside sitting under the tree. However,
before the day was over she instructed the students to come to school
the next day with their cleaning tools – the girls with their brooms
and the boys with their dabas (a farming tool made of a rectangular
piece of metal inserted into a wooden club) to clean the school. The
next day, when the students arrived she had the boys use their dabas
to extract the weeds on the land outside the school and then had the
girls carefully sweep the outside of the school, watching over them
and threatening them with a switch if they didn’t do a good enough job
(this is used by almost all teachers in Mali). After this (which only
took about an hour), the students were dismissed for the day. Since
she arrived, Madame Koné hasn’t spent much time in Koyan. She has been
going back to Kati frequently – I imagine she finds it quite
uncomfortable in Koyan. She told me that in Kati she had a servant who
did all the chores for her, but in Koyan there is no one. One of the
main problems in the schools seems to be teachers from bigger towns
who get sent to rural villages but then have no connection to the
community and frequently leave to return to their home town. As of now
it is not a big problem for Koyan since there were already three
teachers when she arrived – but apparently the plan is for her to take
over the work of one of the teachers. Her arrival is the result of
Koyan’s school changing status from a community school, where the
community finds and directly pays the teachers, to a government
school, where the government assigns and pays the teachers. So far the
government has only sent one teacher, but I would assume that later
they will send more. As you can see, things don’t happen in the most
organized manner here . . . since Madame Koné arrived, the community
had to choose one teacher to let go in the middle of the school year
(the obvious thing would have been for her to arrive before the school
year began instead of a month into the school year . . . ). However,
the teacher chosen to be let go is still teaching and Madame Koné went
to Kati a week ago and hasn’t yet returned, so I don’t really know
what’s happening.
I did have an interesting conversation with her on one of the few
nights she stayed in Koyan (well, it wasn’t so much a conversation
with her as that I was listening to her talking to another woman). She
had just moved into one of the houses next to the school that the
community built to house the teachers, alongside one of the other
teachers, Soungalo Jara, and his two wives, Fanta and Nyeneba. It was
actually a ‘cold’ night (maybe around 70 degrees) and Soungalo was
resting in his house since he had a cold (people fall sick very
frequently here, especially with malaria), while the three women were
gathered around a fire outside: Madame Koné, Fanta, and Nyeneba. I
joined them and they chatted in Bambara about the prices they could
get for their sweet potatoes, the big cash crop in Koyan, then they
started chatting about Madame Koné’s husband and the fact that he was
the second person to offer to marry her. It seems that in Koyan and
most rural villages, a man will choose a woman to marry and then go to
her father to ask to marry her and negotiate the dowry – the woman
doesn’t have a great deal of say in who she marries, but in the bigger
towns the man may actually go to the woman and ask her to marry him.
Madame Koné said that she didn’t like the first wife of the first man
who asked to marry her so she turned him down. Her current husband is
a police officer.
It does sound cruel and unjust to not allow a woman much say in who
she marries and it probably is, yet it’s less so than it would be to
do such a thing in American society since in Malian society the
marital relationship is very different. It is more about a partnership
whose goal is to run a farm and a household than about emotional
support or love. What you really want in your partner is a good work
ethic more than anything else. Of course, you could argue that this
makes it even more important that the woman gets to choose her
husband. It’s a complicated and personal issue and I hope to learn
more about the matter in the future.
Well, I am headed back to Koyan now. I hope that gives you a bit of a
picture of things here.
Hoping you’re all well,
Lauren
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