Upon returning to homestay I found out that my mom (I guess technically she’s one of my host aunts) had her baby! Mom and daughter are doing well. Here are a few things that I learned about pregnancy, birth, and babies in Mali:
1) Never reference the pregnancy to the pregnant woman. Apparently I committed this faux pas by asking “Is that your fourth [kid]?” while pointing to her swollen belly. Well, it was mostly a rhetorical question in my opinion. I mean, she was nine months pregnant; I thought it was an obvious yes. However, even at nine months, women deflect the question or lie about it. I’m not sure why this is, but it’s kind of humorous to see a very pregnant woman deny that she’s pregnant. I guess we tiptoe around the question in the States until it’s really obvious, but not to the degree that Malians do. Luckily my moms have a great sense of humor and recognize that I have no concept of Malian pregnancy mores, so it was no big deal. They laughed about it. They laugh a lot at me, actually.
2) There are lots of babies here. I’m pretty sure this is Baby No. 21 for my family’s compound, but just to drive home the point, an anecdote: Oumou recently told me that this is her fourth girl. This confused me, as I thought she had an eight year old son, Daramani. It turns out that he’s not actually hers. He’s from her husband’s previous relationship (scandalous!), so she can’t really count him as being her son, even though she’s raising him. Okay, so I say, you have Miriam and Salimata and now this baby, so who is your fourth daughter? So she tells me that her firstborn, a daughter, was given to her husband’s sister because she only had boys and wanted a girl. My first thought was WTF you gave your kid away?! My second thought was why would you want more kids, specifically a girl? I thought girls had less value to a parent because they eventually get married and leave the family. Wrong-o. Girls are preferred because they do housework (boys are not responsible for anything around the house). Cooking, cleaning, firewood fetching, water fetching, child wrangling and selling goods at the market are all responsibilities of women and girls. So, if one raises a gaggle of boys, all of these tasks fall to the mom. I can see how she would want a daughter to help out. I asked Oumou if she was sad that she gave away her first born. She replied, “Of course not. I knew that I would have many more.” That shocked me a little.
3) Maternal care in the third world is really bad. Oumou had her baby in a hospital in Bamako. Unfortunately, she was surprised with the sex of the baby because she had been told by the ultrasound technician that it was a boy. For this, I asked my teacher to help translate. Apparently the techs are so poorly trained that they made the mistake. This is especially significant for Oumou because she has no boys of her own. Since Daramani technically isn’t hers, he is not obliged to take up the traditional responsibility of a son, which is to care for his parents in their old age. So, Oumou would like a boy as a sort of insurance policy, I guess. Having a boy for Baby #4 would have meant two things: first, that she would be taken care of should Daramani shirk responsibility, and second, she could stop having children. She told me she wasn’t too disappointed because she likes girls and the baby is healthy, but I think her husband was disappointed (in her?) a little. Explaining the concepts of X and Y chromosomes and eggs and sperm (in French or Bambara) is way above me. Beyond that, I didn’t feel comfortable trying to explain that if someone’s going to receive blame for the sex of the child, it should be the man, not the woman. Gender roles are very clearly defined in Mali. Though I usually relish in challenging expectations of any kind whenever possible, I just didn’t feel like family planning and concepts of gender equality were appropriate topics to discuss at this point in my service. I hope that in the future, as I integrate better and become more comfortable with my Malian friends and family, that gender roles and family planning are things I can talk about.
4) Babies are nameless for a while. So, maybe you’re wondering why I haven’t given you the name of Oumou’s Baby #4. This is because in Mali, babies are named at a ceremony held one week from their birth. Since all children belong to the father, they usually name them themselves, or the imam at the mosque takes a name from the Qur'an. Anyway, in this situation, Oumou’s husband let her name the baby even though it goes against the tradition I just described. I think letting women influence the name of the baby is becoming more common. She was named Haari (haah-REE), after Oumou’s mother. The naming ceremony, called “denkundi” or “child head shave” is a pretty cool ceremony. As you can probably guess, the baby’s head is shaved on this day. The hair on their heads from birth is considered bad luck. Some people put it in a small bottle and attach it to a string of beads around the baby’s waist as a sort of talisman. (On the same note, some people save the umbilical cord and use it for medicinal purposes if the baby falls ill- I don’t know details, but hearing that grossed me out a little, not going to lie.) I did not witness the actually shaving, but here’s what I did see. About fifty men showed up in the morning after returning from the mosque. That’s when the name is announced and a sheep is slaughtered. The men traditionally give money to the parents and then everyone eats. The women prepared and served about 20 kilos of beans. In Mali, it’s bad luck to enter someone’s home while they’re eating beans and not eat some. Imagine an ancient Malian lady, my grandmother, chasing my friends down with a bowl of beans and watching over their shoulder as they sheepishly and hurriedly ate a handful of beans at 7 in the morning. It was pretty funny. They are serious about their beans in Mali. In the afternoon, the women all show up in their best outfits and either give money, soap, or fabric to the mother. Then, they drum and sing and dance and give blessings to the mother and baby. A popular one translates to, “May the baby not die early.” The ceremony was really beautiful, and I felt so privileged to be a part of it. I’m so happy for Oumou that she and Haari are doing well. Here is a picture at the ceremony:
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