Meet Alima

Meet Alima.

Alima is my ten year old host sister. She, in many ways, has been the single most influential factor in my Malian experience so far. From the day I arrived, giddy, nervous and immensely curious, Alima took it upon herself to be my guardian. Her gentle but enormous smile and bright eyes watched my every move. She corrected me when I used my left hand. She brought me to the pump to get my water every day. She spoke slowly and clearly and corrected my bumbling Bambara no matter how many times I messed it up. When school began she walked me across the village until I knew where I was. She came back each afternoon to walk me home. She checked on me in my room, sat with me and smiled at me when I was beginning to doubt my sanity, or when I was afraid of finding a scorpion. When I temporarily lost my solar charger, she walked me around the village in the hottest part of the day and helped me ask my neighbors if they knew who had "borrowed" it. She was a fantastic little sister.

Not long before leaving my homestay, I was talking with Alima about something related to school. She showed me her notebook and I noticed that her math scores were not so good. "Alima," I mock scolded. "You need to do your homework!" Smiling, she turned to a fresh page and pointed to my pen. She waited. When I realized that she wanted to do homework, it kind of blew my mind. What kid wants to do extra homework? Okay, I thought. No problem. Let's see what kind of math she's been working on. That's when things got sticky. Alima was doing addition, and it was not looking good. So, I wrote down a few simple problems. It didn't take much time to notice that she couldn't add. She could count as high as I wanted, but when I asked her what 5 + 7 was, she couldn't come up with an answer. From then on, at lunch and dinner we'd sit together and work on various problems: adding, subtracting, the concept of the ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands places. She was trying so hard, but it was clear to see that the Malian education system had failed her.

One afternoon I asked her what she wanted to be when she got older. "A French teacher" she promptly replied. "Great," I thought. I can help her with that. "Let's do some translation from French to Bambara," I suggested. Alima began to read a paragraph from her textbook, but something wasn't clicking. I had a sickly hunch in my stomach, so I asked her to read a line from a paragraph farther down. After an embarrassing short silence, she said, "I can't." She had memorized the text at the beginning, but had no idea about the rest. She didn't even know what she was reading. I realized that Alima was illiterate. Illiterate. Later, I couldn't even say it out loud to myself. It tasted like a dirty word in my mouth. Sure, I knew that the majority of my acquaintences in Mali would be illiterate, that millions worldwide cannot read or write, but for some reason, I couldn't believe that my Alima could be in that population. This realization was simply heartbreaking. Honestly, I wanted to cry. Alima's infallible, she's fearless, she's my protector. She's my ten year old little sister. How could I possibly do anything to help? I mean, it's not like she's dying or anything, but literacy is clearly not something she was learning in school ( especially when the teachers are on strike all the time) and she won't be learning it from her parents, who are also illiterate. Even if she was going to school regularly, she'd never have time for homework because of all of her household responsibilities keep her busy well past dark. Her teachers were not going to give her extra tutoring or special attention in such big classes. She faced so many barriers.I felt so deflated, so useless, so embarrassingly privileged.

I am not, by any means, a teacher, but I tried my damndest. It was hard. French is her second language, and Bambara is my third. On top of that, I was leaving for good in less than a week. By the time I left, she knew how to write the alphabet, and she could identify most of the sounds that each letter made. She could do simple addition and subtraction and correctly say the names of the sums and differences. She could not sound out words, she could not read. Alima is still illiterate, and probably will remain so.

I know that this is a sad story. I know that illiteracy is an enormously widespread problem and that one American can't teach a Malian girl to read in a week. I know that, and that was not what I was trying to do. In the end, I hope that Alima was inspired by my encouragement to find a way to continue her studies somehow. I hope that her parents can somehow afford to send her to high school when the time comes. I mostly hope that she doesn't end up like a lot of Malian girls do: married young with the promise of a lot of children and hard labor.

Now that I've moved out of homestay and as I prepare to move to my site, I will likely not see Alima for a long time. I hate knowing that with a little more time, maybe I could have done more. I hate that she might never learn to read. Stories like Alima's are why I'm here. I will meet many more Alimas in my life and my service here, and I hope that I actually can do something significant enough to improve their lives.