A Look Into My Village

Written January 5, 2011

At the end of stage I felt nothing but ready to be thrown into any village. I had put all fears aside and was so ready to leave stage to see what it would be like for me. I had heard people talk about their experiences and what I might expect, but that it is different for every village. I was just ready to see for myself already. Now that I’ve been in village for 20 days, I have often felt that I’d give anything to be back in stage. I used to complain about my host family with nothing but fondness, missing them. The faults I used to drive me crazy seem so silly to me now. They understood what the Peace Corps is and what I am doing here. They took care of me, were patient and gave me space when I wanted it.

I don’t think anything can really prepare you for village and adapting. What we learned in stage helped a lot with what to expect, but with such new and strange things, my reaction could not be prepared ahead of time. I’m feeling a little lost and unsure of my role here.

My village is pretty scarce. There is a Marché every 3 days. The Marché has vendors selling secondhand clothing, pagnes, flashlights, some small trinkets and minimal food. Women sell fried dough, fried millet cakes, fried fish, and dried, hard dehydrated peanut butter balls. You can also find some vendors with rice and sauce. A big seller on market days is dolo (local millet alcohol). It’s served out of giant garbage cans on wheelbarrows into calabashes shared by everyone- dried gourds cut in half like a giant bowl. I was expecting to be able to find some vegetables or fruits on market days, but I have only seen one woman selling wilted cabbage and one woman selling a tuberous root called patates. I can’t even find onions or tomatoes, which are generally the bare minimum you can find at a Marché here.

On non-market days, there is not much open. There are some small boutiques where you can purchase tomato paste, pasta, rice, soap, and other small knick knacks. You can also usually find some locally made bread. There is also usually a woman or two selling some fried item on the side of the road.

My house is behind the Marché, past the one school in village. I have a small courtyard with a mud wall around it, but with no gate at the opening so people come and go as they please. I have a small hanger that is falling down with the strong winds that have recently arrived. My house is a small square mud hut with a tin roof and a cement floor. It has 2 small windows and streaks of mud running down the walls where the roof leaked during the last rainy season. I’m doing my best to make my house into my home. I got some furniture made in Kaya (my regional capital) and I’m attempting to paint it a bright blue (a color much happier than the red dirt and dust all around me). My kitchen is a separate circular mud hut with a thatched straw roof that seems to be blowing away a little bit each day.

Across from my house is my neighbors’ family courtyard. The village is divided into family courtyards. There are 5 brothers and their 6 wives (one has two) and all of their children. The men live in mud houses and the women live in circular mud huts. I spend most of my time with my neighbors. I can’t really communicate with them because they all speak Moore and only one wife speaks mediocre French. I hang around while they pound millet, make to and sauce, do each other’s hair, wash the clothing, go to the pump to fetch water or go to the market to sell their goods. These women do a lot of hard labor. They all wear pagnes around their waists folded over in place. They use another pagne to attach their babies to their backs. And a third one wrapped around their head- this one, called a foulard, has many purposes. The foulard is there to be fashionable, to keep their heads warm and to balance and relieve the pressure from carrying so many heavy items on their heads. They put everything on their heads from giant (I mean giant!) sacks of rice to tubs of food they are selling to firewood to plastic containers filled with 50 pounds of water. I’m amazed by what they can balance on their heads and all the while there is always a baby loosely attached to their back.

I recently went out with some of the women to collect wood. They came and got me with axes balancing on their heads, basket in hand and baby on back. Of course my first thought was axe and baby in too close proximity! Then, we found part of a tree that had fallen and they began chipping off chunks with their axes. There were 3 women chopping at once, babies bouncing on their backs with every swing, wood flying everywhere and older toddlers climbing all over the log at the same time. Every time a chunk of wood came close to hitting a kid, the toddler would move for a minute then go right back to the line of fire. At one point, the axe head flew off of Ratmata’s axe nearly hitting a group of kids. She smiled, shrugged, retrieved the head and kept going once she reattached it. I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness I was witnessing. What seemed like such a dangerous situation that would never happen at home to me was just another day’s work to these women. When we finished, they readjusted their baby’s’ pagnes, put the baskets full of wood with each axe on top onto their heads and we walked back.

The women prepare every meal, watch the children, clean and do the laundry and prepare food that they will sell at the market. The men appear to do nothing. I constantly see them sitting around chatting or napping in the shade. Maybe they do more when they cultivate but the harvest took place right before my arrival. They hardly interact with the women. They eat separately and sleep separately from the women and children.

There is also a lack of what we consider childhood here. You are attached to your mother’s back with a pagne until you can walk on your own. Then you are the one attaching your baby brother or sister to your back. There are 5 year olds with 3 year olds attached to them. It seems like there are high expectations for children to continue the laborious life set before them by their ancestry. Little girls are trained at a young age to learn all of the household labor to be done. Little boys are allowed to run around and do whatever they want all day.