The Truth About Cats and Dogs

"You can't walk alone. Many have given the illusion, but none have really walked alone. Man is not made that way. Each man is bedded in his people, their history, their culture, and their values." - Peter Abrahams

The interplay between men and women is always everpresent in discussions and in interactions here. And of course, marriage is the pinnacle of that interplay. Rodney and I have talked about the idea of cross-cultural relationships. Our time here as made is so very evident that such concepts are extremely difficult to navigate in reality. Both parties come to the relationship with different expectations and different ideas for how the marriage should work (as if there weren't enough problems with that within cultures.) And when those expectations are not met, the partners are either faced with disappointment, a sense of failure to meet certain standards (their own failure or that of their partners), anger, frustration, or even the ridicule of their peers.

Rodney said he was dating a woman in South Africa who mentioned that if they were to get married his uncles would have to fly there and negotiate with her uncles how many cattle they would give the family for her hand in marriage. Rodney, aside from not being ready to talk marriage with her, thought the idea was preposterous. Why should he pay the wife's family for his wife? Would that mean he had bought her, literally? While the idea was distasteful to him, the idea of not receiving a dowry was distasteful to the woman, whose family paid to educate her well, to standards higher than most around her, and who had come to expect that they would one day be receiving cattle for her hand in marriage. What other cultural landmines would lay beneath the surface of the road they might travel together or their joint life journey?

And Maxime's friend came into the store the other day and tried to convince Constance that she should be at home. She had told me before that Maxime didn't want her to work. The friend said at the very least she should close her boutique at 4pm when normal business hours ended and go home and tend to the family. I asked him if the family was not tended to and he said that wasn't the point. That a wife's place was at home. Constance ignored him and I'm sure it's nothing she hadn't heard before. But also being Malian and being raised in Mali she was well aware of the resistance she would be facing. And then I think of all the people who have tried to convince me to marry while here and I think that they would have absolutely no idea what they were in for, if I was foolish enough to take someone up on that idea, and I guess that goes two ways.

I have still been trying to wrap my mind around 15 year old, 8th grade Ouima getting married. She told me about the 15 outfits a tailor is currently creating for her. But when I gave Ouima and her sister Safaraou my contact information, Safaraou said that while she would email me, Ouima had neither email nor a cell phone. I guess she wouldn't at this point but I hope that gets rectified soon after she gets married. But what leverage is she coming into the relationship with...no job, no money, no phone, little education, no accomplishments on her own. And I know it is my Westernized background that leads me to think this way, but God help her if her husband is not generous with her.

Tacao was telling us that her father died when she was young leaving her mother and brother and herself without a man in the house. Her mother, a science professor who used to travel regularly to Canada and France, got remarried to a man who already had one wife and went on to marry two more, for a total of four wives. While he forbade Tacao's mother to work, neither did he give her money. The family lived on handouts from relatives and that is why 20 year old Tacao has refused to marry to date. She says it is most important that she gets an education and a good job so she can support her mother and younger brother. So while she studies she works braiding hair and doing nails and henna designs at her cousin Amadou's phone card stand.

Yet Mamadou, Amadou's friend, says that men are the ones that suffer from the Malian idea of marriage. Everything that is purchased for the house and the wife and the children, the man must buy, he says. Now I ask you, who is really a captive of this situation? Mohammed who is from Algeria says the same thing. That Malian women don't want to work but want to stay at home and spend a lot of money (Mohammed is divorced from a Malian women). Which comes first, the chicken or the egg, the women wanting to stay at home or the men insisting? The men giving money or the women wanting it? And if people want to move outside these constrictions is there room for that.

And with the women staying at home all day, many men in Mali don't cook. I mean at all. And they say this proudly. Rodney replies that he thinks everyone who eats should know how to cook, even if they don't cook, so they can be self-sufficient and not vulnerable to another. But then to me, Rodney says that women in Mali can't afford to be too busy to cook for their man because their competition will. I said that is true, but most of the women here do that and still their husbands are committing adultery right and left anyway so what gives.

When Mamadou said that men are the true captives, having to pay for everything for their families, I agreed. He was surprised. I said yes whenever you keep someone in prison, you yourself have to be in prison to keep them there. That if societal constraints were lessened reduced, partners could feel free to work together to set up their households in a manner that best worked for them. That rather than a woman waiting for her husband to give her money she could find work if she so desired. But as long as the great majority of men have the only household money (and thus power) and their wives are restricted to the house, the concepts of equality, partnerships, and a robust workforce will not change and the development of the country will continue to face roadblocks.

Note: Yesterday Rodney, Tacao and I went to the river and found a litter of three abandoned kittens. We called Constance if she wanted one for Sophie and brought it back. (A lot of people here are unnaturally scared of cats. They think they are withces.) The kitten began adjusting to its new home, walking amongst the cabinets and feet and chair legs in the store and drinking milk Constance had set out for it. I felt bad for the others we left but one of Constance's friends is interested in having one as well so we will go back. No one wants the female kitten though as she could get pregnant and have a litter. Life is hard for females of all species...