Independent Study Project

ISP time is more than half over now. I’ve done 12 interviews with polygamous women in the Bamako area about what it’s like living with one or more co-wives. Some of the questions, for example, were about how they divide up the housework and time with their husbands, how they feel about sharing their husbands with another woman (or two or three), and what their relationships with their husbands are like. It was fascinating. After that, each woman took a marital satisfaction survey. Only four of the women could speak French or read, so I had another Malian woman help me translate and record the others’ responses. Here’s a quick summary about the women I interviewed and what I learned:

Averages
Age: 45
# of co-wives: 1.58
Age at marriage: 17.4
Age difference between husband and wife: 10.33
# of living children: 4.25
Marital satisfaction percentile: 56.61

Interesting Info
Almost all of the women divided up tasks in a rotation based on cooking. Each wife was responsible for cooking for two days, and on those days she was also responsible for cleaning the house, making the husband’s bed, and spending the night with the husband. After her two days, the next wife would take two days, etc.

Most of the wives were fairly cooperative and helped each other out in various ways. They also considered the children of the other women as their own children.

Besides that, the goal of my project was basically to figure out what factors influence marital satisfaction for women in polygamous marriages. Based on the interviews, it seems like the three most important factors are the woman’s expectations about marriage, the behavior of the husband (specifically if he is abusive and/or if he shows preferential treatment to one wife over another), and the nature of the co-wive’s relationship.

So, that’s that, and hopefully I haven’t bored anyone to death. It really was pretty cool getting to talk to all the different women and hear what they had to say. One even told me that when co-wives don’t get along, “it’s like two hippopotamuses in one river.” Pretty remarkable. Now, it’s just writing and presenting that are left. Only a little over two weeks to go!

The Grand Excursion

I’m finally back in Bamako after the “Grand Excursion” which included Ségou, Djenné, le Pays Dogon, and Mopti. I apologize in advance for the length of this blog entry, but we saw so many cool things that it’s hard to keep it short.

Ségou

On Wednesday, we drove about four hours to Ségou. There, we visited a huge dam that was built by the French in the 1930s. Thousands of Malians died during its construction. Although fishing near the dam is illegal, all the men in the picture below are doing exactly that. The surrounding community relies on the fish, so the law is rarely enforced and fishermen are all over the place.

Unfortunately, I missed the rest of the trip in Ségou because, on the second day, I couldn’t be more than five feet from the bathroom, and I developed some sort of weird rash on the back of my leg. On the up side, if there was one hotel that I would have wanted to be stuck in for several hours, it was the hotel in Ségou. There was AC in the rooms, toilet paper in the bathroom, and CNN in English between the hours of 12 noon and 8 A.M. Pretty posh. Anyway, a round of antibiotics seemed to resolve the bathroom issue, and the rash seems to be on its way out, as well.

Djenné

On Friday, the group moved on to Djenné. Djenné is situated on the Niger Delta, so the city looks a lot like an island after the rainy season, and we took a ferry to get there. First, we visited a tomb, which is shown in the picture here. The sign says, “Tomb of the young girl Tapama Dienepo, sacrificed to protect the city from evil spirits.” True story. Apparently, if you go inside the tomb, make an offering, and walk outside of it in a circle counterclockwise (or clockwise if you’re famous), Tapama will grant your wishes. I tried it, so I’ll keep you posted.

Then, we visited Djenné’s main attraction, the largest man made sand structure in the world, a huge mosque. According to a Malian, before Tapama was sacrificed, the mosque kept collapsing during construction, but after her sacrifice, the construction was successful. During the rainy season, though, parts of the mosque still wash away, so the town has to make repairs every year.

On day 4, we visited an archaeological site from 250 B.C. where we saw what remained of Old Djenné, which was bases of mud houses and burial urns. I don't know if you can see it, but there is a human bone sticking up in the middle of the urn in the picture below. Crazy.


Le Pays Dogon (Sangha)

On Sunday, we got in the car for the seven-hour drive to Pays Dogon, which was by far my favorite region. As we got closer to Sangha, the village where we were staying, I started to feel like I was driving through the real-life version of the Lion King, and we actually drove through a small waterfall at one point. It was really cool.

The next day we went out hiking at 6 A.M. to avoid the afternoon heat. First, we happened upon some old men, and our guide explained that they were diviners. They ask a question and then leave peanuts, which foxes find overnight. In the morning, they return to interpret the footprints of the foxes to find an answer. We continued our hike and we saw cliff dwellings which were just stuck in these little cracks in the side of a plateau. No one lives in them now, but people still climb up to them (I have no idea how) and make animal sacrifices. According to our guide, the only people that ever fall are those who "climb with bad intentions." I'm skeptical. We kept going and we hiked through a village where the Dogon people actually live. Two other students, Jen and Ruth, and I lost track of the group, so we had a sort of interesting experience running through village yelling for "tubabus." The Dogons don't speak any Bambara or French so it was a little tough, but we eventually found a group of French people who had seen another group of whiteys and we were reunited. Regardless, the hike was absolutely beautiful and the houses where the Dogons live are really cool.


That evening, we got to watch a traditional Dogon mask dance. This was by far my favorite part of the trip, and probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in person. The pictures don’t really do it justice, but they’re still pretty sweet.

Mopti

The last stop of the trip was Mopti. It’s the commercial hub of central Mali, but besides that, the only thing there really is to write about is the man who explained (in English) that he wanted to give us "a demonstration of the air conditioned trousers" he was selling. Sadly, we did not buy them. Shocking.

Probably the most notable part of that part of the trip was setting the alarm for four in the morning on the day of the elections and huddling around a TV listening to McCain’s and Obama’s speeches in French. The next afternoon, Malians in the market kept stopping us to tell us that they thought Obama was great and several offered us goods for the “Obama price.” It was pretty funny.

The next day, we made the long drive back to Bamako. It was great to see the different parts of Mali, especially because many of the places we visited were so different from Bamako. After a week and a half of vacay, though, it’s time to get down to business and start work on my ISP. I only have three and half weeks, so it’s goodbye traveling and hello polygamy! (Sidenote: I am currently watching Miss Congeniality in French. Génial!)

Griots and Co-Wives

On Friday, we had a musical performance at school to learn about traditional Malian music and celebrate the end of classes for the semester. A group of musicians came, as did several griots who sang praises about our Malian family names. Traditionally, griots sang stories about families and legends, and they played an important role in Malian oral tradition. Today, griots sing at baptisms, weddings, and other special events, so it was really fun to get to take part in such an ancient tradition. The one downside was that they sang in Bambara, so we really had no idea what they were saying about our family names. I imagine, though, it was something along the lines of “Safi Traoré’s family is totally rad, especially because she’s in it.” (rough translation)

The next day, Saturday I had my first interview for my ISP! I met with a woman in a polygamous marriage and talked with her for an hour about everything from raising her children to her rotation of cooking and conjugal duties with her co-wife. It was incredibly interesting. It was slightly difficult because I had to read her the questionnaire that she would have ideally completed privately, but I still got some great data. It won’t be a perfect Psych experiment, but it’s going to be very enlightening in any case.

For the next ten days, we’ll being seeing Mali tourist-style on the “Grand Excursion.” We are visiting Ségou, Djenné, Pays Dogon, and Mopti. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to visit Timbuktu because of security risks of some kind, but the mosque in Djenné is supposedly amazing, as are the cliffs of Pays Dogon. I’m very excited, and I’m sure I’ll have to lots to blog about when I get back! Bon voyage!

Whoaa! We're half way there. Whoaa! 'Livin on a prayer!

First of all, a few people have been asking about my address here. It’s sort of a toss up as to whether or not stuff will make it here, but it has worked for some people so give it a try if you want to! Here’s my address:

Safi Traoré
c/o Modibo Coulibaly
SIT/World Learning
BPE 2953
BAMAKO, MALI
WEST AFRICA

It’s seems crazy, but finals are a week from tomorrow! I can’t believe classes are almost over, and today is officially the halfway point. There are exactly 53 days left! (Not that I’m counting…) After finals, I’ll spend a week and a half traveling around the country with my class, and then I begin working on my independent study project (ISP). I’m going to be studying the marital satisfaction of women in polygamous marriages, so I’ve been doing a lot of work preparing for that in the past few weeks, too. Hopefully, it will work out!

The past week hasn’t been too exciting now that I’m back in Bamako. Classes has been getting a little more time consuming lately because we have several projects due next week. My classmates and I have to do river observations on the Niger, which has been pretty cool. Basically, we go to the side of the river and just check out what’s going on. I visited a Bozo fishing village on the river’s edge as well as well as a huge area where they extract sand to make houses and other buildings. I’ve been doing some research on Bamako’s horseback riding club and their Olympic teams for two other projects, as well.

Other than that, though, life has been pretty unexciting, just hanging out and trying not to sweat. It’s still between 35° and 40° Celsius almost every day (that’s like 95° to 100° Fahrenheit). Supposedly it’s going to “cool down” a little bit mid-November, but we’ll see about that. For now, I’ll just have to sweat it out!

Sanankaroba in Pictures

I spent the past week in a rural village called Sanankaroba about 40 minutes outside of Bamako. Here are some highlights:

Chasing baby goats


Playing baseball with the village kids


Sleeping inside a mud hut (or outside when it was too hot)


Visiting children at the Village d’Enfants S.O.S., an international organization for orphans


Riding a donkey


Dyeing fabric


Attempting to carry peanuts like the Malian women


...still trying...

...and failing.


Dancing with the village women

The End of Ramadan

Everyone was awaiting the end of Ramadan with much anticipation. Based on the lunar calendar, the celebrations would either begin on Tuesday or Wednesday, so most people had been preparing for two or three weeks before. My host family had been busy getting outfits made and buying shoes and food. On Saturday, I went with my sister to the Grand Marchet in Bamako, which was basically like going to the mall three days before Christmas, but worse. It was probably 95 degrees, and the market was absolutely packed. Getting anywhere was sort of like trying to shove your way to the front of a crowd at a concert. It was crazy.

Finally, early on Monday night, someone saw the moon, and shortly thereafter, gunshots rang out in the capital, signaling that the celebrations would start the next day. On Tuesday, my family got up early to start making food. As we sat in the courtyard, groups of children and men came up to our door and recited phrases in Bambara asking for forgiveness for the things they had done. We all responded, “Amiina,” (“Amen”) and then gave the children small amounts of money. The first picture below is of my host sister Jolie on the left and my cousin on the right. The second is my other host sister Aïda and my host mom. They're in the courtyard in front of our house preparing food.


The visitors throughout the day were very interesting, but the Ramadan outfits were definitely the highlight. My entire host family had outfits made for them of bazin, an expensive fabric reserved for special occasions, and my host sister Jolie had one made for me to match hers. Bazin is made of cotton, but it has a thick waxy coat that sort of makes it like wearing an outfit made out of that red and white picnic tablecloth fabric. Basically, it was freaking hot. In the afternoon, I put the bazin on along with the heels my sister bought for me at the market, and then we left to go visit her friends as well as some of my classmates’ families. I looked pretty silly, but all the Malians were very impressed with my legit African garb.

Now that Ramadan is over, it will be interesting to see how Mali changes. Because people could only eat after sunset and before sunrise, they were generally exhausted by about 4:30pm, and many places weren’t even open after the late afternoon because people went home to sleep. Music and dancing have generally been absent, too, because those things are also banned during the daytime. Hopefully, life will get a little more interesting as things return to normal. After being here for a month, it will be nice to finally see the real Mali.

A Busy Week

I started off the week by getting some Henna done by a woman who came to our school. It was pretty cool, and weirdly enough, she just used black hair dye to draw on our skin. I was sort of hoping for something slightly more mystical (and something that wouldn't leave the hair on my arms permanently black), but it still looks pretty sweet. It should last for about two weeks.

With my newly henna-ed hands, I went to the zoo the next day. It wasn't really what you would expect when you think of a fun day at the zoo in the U.S., mostly because the words "developing country" and "zoo" probably just shouldn't be put together. When I walked in, the first thing I saw was a sign that said giving cigarettes to the animals was not allowed. Apparently visitors used to give the monkeys cigarettes all the time, but they started to get sick so they had to put an end to it. We were also pretty surprised to find out that the animals' living conditions are pretty poor. Most of them live in small concrete enclosures. A couple of the animals looked pretty sick, as well. There was a hyena that had both of its front legs broken, and it was just hobbling around. Needless to say, the zoo was a little depressing, but it definitely gave us some new perspective on things.

My next stop on the tour of depressing city institutions was on Wednesday. We no longer have classes on Wednesdays, so we're supposed to use the days to prepare for our Independent Study Projects. I think I want to do something involving children, so I spent the day with two other girls from my program at the Pouponnière. The Pouponnière is a government-run home for abandoned children. At any given time, there are between 75 and 125 children under the age of three, as well as about 20 mentally or physically and handicapped children that are slightly older. The director took the three of us on a tour of the building and after, we stayed for three hours and helped take care of babies. The building itself is fairly nice and the caretakers do the best they can, but they are severly understaffed. Children will go for hours without any attention either laying in their cribs or on the floor, and they are frequently left in puddles of urine for hours at a time. The three of us did the best we could to help, and we all left exhausted and covered in really smelly stuff. Hopefully, we'll get to go back and help again next week.

So, this week was pretty interesting. It was a little depressing at times, but it was good to see the city and learn more about Mali. Hopefully my next post will be a little more of an upper!