Happy Mother's Day America
this week i was a little lax on the whole blog preparation because i joined the southern koulikoro bike tour on tuesday for a couple of days. i biked 10 km to balanzan from sombo to join my regional teammates to do a soak pit training (a soak pit is a mini-well dug beside the negen to catch bath water instead of letting it lay rank at the surface of the soil-it prevents malaria and other water borne diseases). then on wednesday we all went to my village in sombo to do a malnutrition formation. it was a good time and i look forward to planning the next tour in november in the non-hot season. on to the task at hand...
well, i wanted to write about gender differences here and what opportune time to do that than now, on mother's day.
i started to write stuff down on paper two days ago, but it wasn't going anywhere-this topic is actually very huge so i apologize if i err.
in mali, women run the household. from the time a girl can walk, they contribute to the successful management of the home, getting water at the pump, cooking meals, washing clothes, helping to raise the younger children, collecting firewood. men here have the public life. they work out of the home farming, teaching, military, etc. they contribute to home labor by building houses, gua's, cutting the firewood for the women.
most women don't have higher than 6 years of schooling, whereas men usually make it to at least 9 years of schooling and beyond. because of this, i find myself having more conversations with men because they have a better idea of what's going on. i don't want to call it a shame, there really is no way of qualifying it otherwise only when you take women's illiteracy vis-a-vis circumstantial events like needing to read medicine labels for their sick children, or being informed in the next local election. don't even ask about newspapers-i live en brousse, in the bush. all news and information is disseminated by radio.
One thing about women here is that, despite looking like a subjugated position from a western perspective, when they run the household, they make all final decisions of the family-even what the husband is to do, she counsels him. Traditionally, women are charged as well with the education of the children in the family until the go to school at 7 years old. They are some of the strongest women i have ever met in my life.
domestic violence does happen, as in anywhere in the world. as does corporal punishment of children, beating of dogs, cats, animals both men and women do these things. any animal that's to be killed for food is killed by the men, usually facing east (an islamic tradition).
more often than not, the men take care of their wives with pride and respect. for instance, here it is considered healthy and a sign of wealth if the wife is overweight. and women take pride in feeding their families and taking care of everyone.
well, i wanted to write about gender differences here and what opportune time to do that than now, on mother's day.
i started to write stuff down on paper two days ago, but it wasn't going anywhere-this topic is actually very huge so i apologize if i err.
in mali, women run the household. from the time a girl can walk, they contribute to the successful management of the home, getting water at the pump, cooking meals, washing clothes, helping to raise the younger children, collecting firewood. men here have the public life. they work out of the home farming, teaching, military, etc. they contribute to home labor by building houses, gua's, cutting the firewood for the women.
most women don't have higher than 6 years of schooling, whereas men usually make it to at least 9 years of schooling and beyond. because of this, i find myself having more conversations with men because they have a better idea of what's going on. i don't want to call it a shame, there really is no way of qualifying it otherwise only when you take women's illiteracy vis-a-vis circumstantial events like needing to read medicine labels for their sick children, or being informed in the next local election. don't even ask about newspapers-i live en brousse, in the bush. all news and information is disseminated by radio.
One thing about women here is that, despite looking like a subjugated position from a western perspective, when they run the household, they make all final decisions of the family-even what the husband is to do, she counsels him. Traditionally, women are charged as well with the education of the children in the family until the go to school at 7 years old. They are some of the strongest women i have ever met in my life.
domestic violence does happen, as in anywhere in the world. as does corporal punishment of children, beating of dogs, cats, animals both men and women do these things. any animal that's to be killed for food is killed by the men, usually facing east (an islamic tradition).
more often than not, the men take care of their wives with pride and respect. for instance, here it is considered healthy and a sign of wealth if the wife is overweight. and women take pride in feeding their families and taking care of everyone.
posted by chance @ 4:20 PM
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