Good News..

Good news.... the milkman is alive and well in Mali, delivering fresh mil to Malians and Peace Corps Volunteers alike. Here in Mali (and indeed all across West Africa)the Fula or Fulani people are well-known as cow-herders and during the rainy season (when cows have more to eat, thus producing more milk) as sellers of milk. Fula women will show-up sometime in the morning, walking around villages selling their fresh milk. They carry the milk in a big bowl on top of their heads and sell two quantities: a little bowl-full (that will cost you about 25F CFA or $.05) or a liter's worth (200F CFA or $.43). In Mali it's usually good to boil your milk before you drink it because not all cows are vaccinated and TB is often contracted through their milk, so it is therefore important to ask how fresh the milk is, since if it's too old, when boiled it will curdle, making cheese. Some Malians also boil their milk but that's because they say it's easier to digest if boiled.

You can always tell a Fula woman when you wee her. I've been in Mali 11 months now and can easily distinguish the differences between the Fula people and the Bambara(the largest ethnicity found in Mali. Bambara is also the ethnicity of my village). Fula women are strikingly beautiful, usually tall and slim, most women have facial tattoos where the area around the mark is darkened. They also wear colorful clothing; lots of jewelry, and their hair is longer, and usually braided.

My first encounter with a Peul family was in the bush near my village. A family of nine - a father, a mother, 3 daughters, 3 sons, and one hired cow-herder- had walked with all of their possessions (including herds of cows, sheep, and goats) for over a month from a town near Mopti in northern Mali. Apparently they migrate south every dry season where there is more food and water. I was on a mission to buy some goat's milk in order to make goat's cheese. I got the milk on my second visit. But I ended up spending an hour with them under their tree where they ate, cooked and slept. They were a great family with beautiful kids and we tried to communicate as much as possible despite the language barriers. Bambara is their second-language, and usually very accented Bambara, and my Bambara is, well... improving. The mother asked if I could reach my country by car in one day. I tried explaining oceans to her and then airplanes, but I'm not certain it stuck with her. I helped her pound some millet with their large mortar and pestle and then I asked why her daughter (probably around the age of 12)didn't go to school. Well, there would be no one to help the mother look after five kids, the cooking, gathering of firewood, the fetching of water, etc if she was not there. How could you argue with that?

This is an issue I run into a lot of difficulties with in Mali. People usually think of now and not the future. I need help in the fields, let's have more boys; I need help at home, let's have more girls. It's an endless cycle that repeats itself over and over. When entering these discussions with people I try explaining the benefits of having a smaller family or sending children to school. These options present many challenges in the present (not enough workers) but it will benefit the the whole family in the future: healthier kids, all kids in school, kids with good jobs, the family is moving out of poverty. But this is hard to understand when you're a poor subsistence farmer who only knows farming in rural West Africa.

Sometime there is some understanding. My counterpart's family is a good example. Of his 5 siblings 3 are male and 2 female. 1 of his brother's worked the fields and attended Koranic school while my counterpart, Abdoulaye, and two of his brothers went to school. When Abdoulaye was in the ninth grade (at the age of 21), there came a time when there were not enough hands in the fields, and he was asked to return home, get married, and work the fields. In Mali, you can't say no to your elders, so Abdoulaye sadly but willingly gave up his dream of more education and any profession other than farming. His eldest brother finished school, but did not pass the BAC (an exam needed to go to university) but currently works in Bamako. His younger brother, is also in Bamako in the 11th grade. Abdoulaye's two younger sisters attended Koranic school.

This is a story heard too often in Mali. the sacrifice of now, outweighs the non guaranteed benefits of the future. And I empathize with people, it's a difficult decision. When you're a farmer depending on what you grow to feed your family throughout the year, it's difficult to give up that extra set of hands believing that one day your whole family will benefit from the sacrifice.

just some thoughts