Each morning Amadou goes to “work” at the Radio/CLIC. I must say “work” because he doesn’t do a whole lot of it. Maybe he’ll check in to see how the Radio is doing or make sure that the computers are running well. Most days, however, he sits at his laptop and plays Scrabble or Spider Solitare. I don’t mean one or two games – I mean all day. From 9 to 1 and then from 4 to 7. How much Spider Solitare can one really play? When someone comes in to the CLIC to pay and he’s sitting right next to the paying area, he’ll scream someone else’s name for them to come and deal with it. While I don’t fully understand the patron system yet, I’ll go out on a limb and say he’s a patron – full fledged. For lunch and dinner he rides his moto to his house, parks it, parks himself on the sofa to watch satellite news and then eats and relaxes. Talk about a taxing day. Additionally, he’s constantly traveling to Segou and Bamako (he’s been four times since I’ve been here) for “work related” meetings, which I’m pretty sure don’t exist. I think it’s just an excuse to get away from his family. He’s never showing any affection to Haoua, and barely even talking to her ever. Maybe he’s unhappy with his marriage, I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s fair that he’s never home to spend time with his wife or the kids.
Each morning Haoua wakes up and takes care of the kids, making breakfast and sending them off to school. Some days she goes to volunteer at the CSCOM (health center) but most days she stays home and watches TV for a better part of the morning. If Dado (the cook/maid) isn’t there, she’ll make lunch, which usually takes a couple of hours. After, she likes to rest and watch Maria Ines, and maybe takes a nap. At night she’s usually cooking something – either toh or meat. Basically, she’s always occupied doing something. There’s always cobbal to make or dendi to pound or something. But all in all, the life of African women is hard. She has to tend to every little problem that comes up and Amadou doesn’t do anything to help her, except give her money for food for the family.
Haoua sifting some milletNow, I’m not saying that either of them are Saints or demons. In fact, I think they’re both pretty lazy. They’ve hired Dado and Haoua to do their cooking and cleaning, which is great because it gives them food to eat and some money, but bad because it makes Haoua patron-like and lazy. Additionally, the introduction of satellite television into their lives is ridiculous and evil and I don’t like it. I think it’s really bad. It’s obvious that Amadou makes good money – he’s the head of Radio Dande. But just the other day Haoua was saying she wishes she had some money to do things. That she’d really like to start a small boutique. I wanted to offer to help her, but the truth is, I’d rather use extra money here to help people that don’t have anything. The main problem is that I know Amadou has the money, but he’s obviously being selfish and spending it on himself and his trips to Bamako instead of giving some to his wife and kids (I don’t consider clothes and food as generosity).
Nonetheless, I agree that the life of women here is hard. This is perhaps the reason that I’d like to get involved with some sort of women’s organization and help them to make some extra money and start doing the things they want to do. Things they find enjoyable. I hope that happens because it’s really important to me to see these women happy.
I’ve never really considered myself a feminist. I obviously have my own beliefs and ideas about how things should be done and about the way that women should be treated, but I never put myself on the Feminism bandwagon. Here though, it’s different. You see these women struggling everyday just to have 30 minutes to rest from cooking, cleaning and taking care of the children – not to mention the ones who are out in the fields or the Peulh women who sell their milk all day – and you want to help. You proclaim yourself as a feminist because here it matters. In America we argue over things like better pay and the right to choose. But here, many are fighting for freedom of oppression.
Women in my concession mortar and pestaling millet.Just as a side note, the last time I came to Sevare I took the bus, but I was forced to sit on the floor because they overbooked their seats. It was fine, no problem. But the problem was the man and woman sitting next to me. She was young and looked very sad, almost like she was forced to be sitting on this bus with her very young infant on her lap. Then there was this man, potentially her husband in a forced marriage, who was sitting behind her and insisted on reaching around to the front of her and grabbing her breasts. She seemed very, very uncomfortable with him doing this to her, and I was heartbroken that I sat here but couldn’t do anything. I kept looking out of the corner of my eye and the man noticed me and continued to grab at her. I just wanted to reach out and say, “Hey, it’s okay. Why don’t you come sit next to me? I don’t think it’s okay that he’s grabbing you like that and you don’t have to tolerate it if you don’t want to.” But I couldn’t, for several reasons, the least of my worries being the language barrier. Culturally I shouldn’t interfere, but morally I should. I don’t quite know where to draw that line yet.
