To be a woman in Mali….
The daily routine of a woman in Mali is hard. It starts early, it ends late, and it’s grueling. I’ve had the chance to get a sense of my family’s daily life and routines in the past few weeks, and one thing that strikes me time and time again is that women hold up everything, even when the men say otherwise.
My host moms’ day starts before the sun has fully risen, when they are busy drawing water from the well, heating water to prepare breakfast, and cleaning up the compound. By the time that the men have fully risen to eat breakfast, they have already gotten started on the day’s routines, feeding the kids breakfast, pounding millet, starting on laundry with small babies, wrapped around their backs like bundles, their constant accessory. They’ll start making lunch, and after lunch will go to the shea or peanut fields, spending hours with their backs bent all the way over underneath the high sun, collecting the small nuts that they will later mash and heat to turn into shea butter. They’ll prepare dinner, clean up after dinner, watch after any given number of children (their own and others’), and will be up well after dusk has fallen, preparing for the next day. When the men sit out under their ga and drink tea at high noon, you won’t see the women relaxing. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen my moms just sitting–there is always a child on their laps or a stirring spoon or wooden pounding stick in hand.
Because Mali is very much a traditional patriarchal society, men are with few exceptions the heads of families (even if the father dies, the eldest son will often takes over the family “tigi” (chief) role) and unquestionably given the credit for the overall success of the family. And it is true that able-bodied men do their share of exhausting physical labor. Yet after spending some time getting to know the ins and outs of one village family’s daily life, I could never doubt that it is women who bear the greater burden. From the time they are teens, these women know the path laid out in front of them–and however many may want to challenge it, few will get the opportunity to do so. Some, like one of my fellow trainees’ host sisters, will show enough promise and be fortunate enough to be able to continue their schooling into the secondary level, but this is a path closed to most girls, and should they make it through secondary, university is an even farther-away dream.
I look at my 18 year old brother and 20 year old sister and see a picture in contrasts. They are from the same family. My sister, while she completed some secondary schooling, has a child, has gotten married, and has more or less settled into her life as a wife in the village. My brother is studying medicine in Bamako. He constantly speaks of a pull to go abroad, and this is reasonably within his reach. Somehow school, and a life outside of this small village vis-à-vis education, is made possible for my brother. But not for Awa. And not for so many other girls. who, like her, will settle early on into a life they didn’t necessarily have the freedom to choose.
Seeing all this, the daily grind of the women and their quiet strength, determination and persistence, really reinforces my interest in working on girls’ empowerment issues while I’m in Mali. As volunteers we are supposed to tout the benefits of family planning, proper nutrition and adequate preventative care. These are all things a woman is more likely to take a stand about if she is educated and feels that her opinion is valued, in her family and in the community at large. I don’t think you can talk about women’s health—or for that matter children’s health–without addressing disempowerment on some level. I don’t know yet what this effort might look like for me, but the more I get to know my host moms and sisters and the other women of my homestay village., the more I feel it’s extremely important.
