Site Visit

This week I finally saw the village I will be living and working in for the next two years. We first stopped in Kita for a night, where the three current volunteers were waiting. We made a big Mexican dinner and wandered around the city for a bit, met all the officials and roamed through the market. The next day we climbed into a rickety blue van where we sat on rice sacks with about 20 other Malians (not to mention a few boys and hanging on the side and two goats on the roof). Slowly we plodded, as the tin roofed houses began to give way to straw covered huts, and soon those almost disappeared as we passed by rolling fields of mango trees and cornfields and wild African bush. Two hours later we arrived at our villages (not to mention the 20 minute tire change). My concession has two huts and a private gated area in between. Privacy is something I find I covet here, as everything is so communal even the concept of personal space is not quite understood. I met my coworkers at the health center and sat in on several prenatal consultations. It was shocking to see so many young women – 15, 17, 20 with a toddler on her hip – walking into the health center. It is difficult to detach myself from comparisons. At 22 I cherish my independence and the thought of a family seems far in the future. I wonder if these women find happiness in the communal family love that is so valued here. But I can’t help projecting my Western assumptions that a women deserves to do more than raise her 7+ children and live at the whim of her husband and his other wives. Or at least let them enjoy the last of her childhood!