Village life

Besides spending time talking and dancing with the interviewers, meeting the caregivers and children in households, village chiefs and health agents and getting a glimpse of village life was the best part of the evaluation. People were remarkably friendly, welcoming, hospitable, and generous – always spreading out mats for us to sit on or offering us wooden stools or chairs.

I enjoyed watching children follow the surveyors through the villages and hearing their giggles when they’d call me « She-ppy », after I attempted to introduce myself in Bambara. The mothers of these kids were howling with laughter watching me with their kids – the kids would ask me questions but didn’t quite understand that although I know how to say, « ne togo Shelby », I didn’t understand another word of Bambara so my blank expression left them entirely at a loss.

But, they’d heard my foreign name and continued to try it out, so for the duration of the interviews, I’d hear one whisper « She-ppy » and then peels of laughter when I’d turn to the child who said it and wink or poke their belly. The kids would sit right next to me, grab my hand and give me a shy smile while raising their shoulders to their ears. When we drove out of the village that day, I heard « SHE-PPY !! » and saw 5 of them running out to wave goodbye while jumping up and down. I opened the window and waved, quickly asking the interviewers how to say goodbye in Bambara.

At times I felt like an animal at the zoo. Kids would stare at me with wide, curious eyes, sometimes expressionless, other times giggling. During some interviews in the households, babies would look at me and start crying if I got too close. In one village, an adolescent woman with obvious development delays walked right up to me and took my hand and flopped it back and forth – palm facing up, palm facing down. Then she took my arm and twisted it gently. Then she put her hand right on my face, cried out, and ran off. I still can’t decide whether or not I scared her. While we were walking through a village in the far north, one of the interviewers with our team said to me, « Some of these kids have never seen a white person! » I asked, « Really ? » and she nodded and linked my arm in hers.

Anecdotally, it seemed like most of the women interviewed had no education or perhaps incomplete primary school. I don’t recall a village where any of the households had electricity. Sources of water were open wells, occassionally covered wells, and pumps. A few villages closer to Bamako used motorbikes as primary modes of transport, but the majority of villagers walk, ride bicycles, or use donkey or horse carts as their main modes of transport. Most of the population practices subsistence agriculture and we’d drive past staple crops of sorghum, millet, and maize each day. There are cash crops for peanuts, cotton and there’s also cottonseed oil production and wheat flour mills.

Mali has strong radio network and even very remote areas are serviced with radio for sources of info, but health agents, village chiefs, and family members also fill the role of providing information. In rural households, there’s usually a head of household who controls the allocation of resources for the large, extended families. Polygamy is common and the mothers-in-law and senior wives play influential roles in making decisions for the family. Mothers, sisters, grandmothers, and co-wives share the responsibility of caring for children and household work.