Community Forum

Talking about AIDS and condom usage


Mamadou, Amadou and ??

Current construction


A bit of NY in Bamako

Yesterday as I was coming home from work Amadou, the phone card vendor, asked me what I do during the day. When I told him I am a volunteer at Projet Jeune working in the field of reproductive health, he asked if I could do a presentation for the young people that gather at his stand at night. Good idea Amadou! The work day is never done when we are working with the community... We made an appointment for 10 pm in the evening...

At home I cooked some spinach with onions, tomatoes and garlic to go along with the couscous Andrew made the day before. And I heated up some of the fish I made on Sunday. (Constance had melt-in-your-mouth pork, onions, and plantains waiting for me on Monday. I honestly had forgotten what pork tasted like and didn’t think I would see any in this country.) I was happy to see that Andrew had finally bought some things for the household, although he had not checked to see if we already had some of them. I asked him how his day was and he gave a curt fine. So I said Oh that’s wonderful, drawing it out. He took his food in his room and closed the door. Oh teenaged angst!

I told Rodney about Amadou’s request so he could accompany me. I said I didn’t have a prop for the condom usage demonstration and we searched around for one and decided that the batons for his doumba drums were perfect substitutes. On our way there we was stopped by another group of youth. Never have they stopped us before so I think it had to have been divine providence that they asked where we were going and then requested that I do a presentation for them as well. What are the odds of that happening? I invited them to the presentation but they said they would rather have their own since they were a large group and already had enough seats for everyone. I'll have to see if I can do that one tonight.

When we got down to the phone card stand there were about 6 people total including, Amadou, the phone card vendor, his friend Mamadou, their friend Amadou whom they call Vielle (The Old One), a sixteen year old, another who came later and whose name I didn’t catch, a young woman who lives behind the phone card stand, and 20 year old Tacao (pronounced Taco), who has found a way to communicate with Rodney despite having only a little bit of French in common as far as languages go. Tacao is related to either Amadou or Mamadou and she braids hair and paints nails at the phone card stand.

I started by asking what they knew about AIDS and how it is transmitted. Then we delved into the three part strategy to fight AIDS: abstinence, and in lieu of that fidelity to your partner, and condom usage. They were very attentive although Mamadou wanted to ask about every rumor he ever heard about AIDS including some very off the wall ones. Later I asked Rodney why someone would belive all those crazy rumors and he said drily, We're in Africa. Crazy stuff happens here. Would you believe it if someone came and told you that in the next village strangers were chopping people's hands off? I looked at him and said what? That's exactly what the Belgians did in the Congo to get people to produce more rubber, he said, and those who believed the rumors had a chance to keep their hands. Whoa!

Rumor has it that AIDS was created by a white man who forced an African woman to have sex with an animal, that it was created by condom manufacturers to increase profits, and that manufacturers put the virus in condom lubricant. They wanted to know how it started. I admitted that I didn't know as I hadn't been there but Rodney said the first case was in Tanzania in the 60s. I said that lubricant did not contain the virus and that whether or not it was created to increase profits it was here and had to be taken seriously. That if people were so concerned about the profits they too could go into creating and or distributing condoms to join in on some of the profit-making. They also wanted to know it mosquitoes transmit AIDS or if they can get it and die from it. I said research has shown that mosquitoes do not transmit AIDS and I have no idea if they can die from it, although I suspect that they are not susceptible to human diseases.

We discussed strategies to convince an unwilling partner to use condoms. They wanted to know why more funding was given to AIDS than to malaria which kills more people, according to them, and I let them know the difference between communicable and non-communicable diseases. We played a handshake game that I devised in Brooklyn for my teen girls, with the handshakes symbolizing unprotected sexual relations, and me serving as the starting point for AIDS. It became clear how quickly one person can affect many others.

We also talked about how some traditions including levirat, the tradition of a brother taking on his dead brother's wife as his own, and sororat, the tradition of a sister taking on her dead sister's husband as her own, and even accepted practices such as polygamy and adultery can serve as conduits to further the spread of AIDS. They wanted to know what I thought about levirat, sororat and polygamy. I said that those were practices that were not in my culture but that I wasn't there to judge, but rather to inform them of the dangers. That perhaps if they were to partake in levirat or sororat they should insist on voluntary HIV testing first (and determine the true cause of death) or that when engaging in polygamy or adultery condoms should be used to decrease the risk.

And finally I broke out the doumba baton and did the condom demonstration. This was the highlight and all of a sudden people that had not originally been in attendance came out of nowhere. I did notice that Taco disappeared sometime during the forum. Amadou said he thought it was more important that young women be informed since so many of them refuse to use condoms on the basis that they are not prostitutes. I agreed and said that it was also a function of unequal levels of education. He insisted that I should be talking to a group of young women right now. I said yes but let's be real, it's 10 at night there are no groups of women outside. I have to think of places where perhaps other groups of women congregate but that most often occurs during the daytime. They wanted to know how big of a problem IAIDS really was in Africa and Rodney helped to quote some stats for them, some especially scary ones coming from where he has been in South Africa where it is estimated that 20% have HIV or Botswana or Swaziland where it is estimated that 50% have it. While Mali's incidence rate is still very low, lower even than most communities in the US, the conditions here are ripe for a explosion.

I told them at work that I did what they call an animation last night at the phone card stand. They were so thrilled that they packed my bag full of condoms and gave me a wooden penis on a stand so that I could be that much more effective.

I’ve been looking up more on the ethnicities in Mali and the Puel ethnicity, specifically, the one that I have been told I resemble. And have found the following:

The main ethnic groups of Mali are the Mande, including the Bambara, Malinke, and Sarakole, accounting for 50% of the total population. Other groups include the Peul (or Fulani), accounting for 17%; the Voltaic, making up 12%; the Songhai, constituting 6%; the Tuareg and Moor 10%; and other groups 5%. The Bambara, mostly farmers, occupy all of central Mali bounded by the Côte d'Ivoire frontier in the south and Nara and Nioro in the north. Malinke live chiefly in the regions of Bafoulabé, Kita, and Bamako. The Peul (or Fulani), semi-sedentary herdsmen, are to be found throughout the republic, but mainly in the region of Mopti. The Songhai—farmers, fishermen, and merchants—live along the banks and islands of the Niger River, east of the inland delta. The nomadic Tuareg, of Berber origin, are mainly in the north, in the Adrar des Iforas. The Minianka, largely farmers, populate the region of Koutiala, and the Senufo, also farmers, are found principally in the region of Sikasso. The majority of the peoples in Mali are Negroid; the Tuareg are classified as Caucasoid; and the Puel (Fulani) are of mixed origin.

The Fulani of Mali, also known as the Fulfulde or Peul, are estimated to range between 850,000 to 1,000,000 people. The majority of the Fulani are from a sub-group known as the Futa Jalon. The Fulani people comprise the largest nomadic society in the world covering at least six nations in West Africa. Fourteen million Fulani are spread throughout Northwest and Central Africa. The major concentration of Mali's Fulani population is located within a 150 kilometer radius of the city of Mopti. Most urban Fulani tend to be sedentary, commercial people, whereas the rural Fulani tend to be migratory herdsmen.