Village Women

From the title of my email you might get the impression that im going to be filling you in on some juicy gossip from the mystical land of senegal or about some sort of love interest. and its true, I love women. And Senegalese women are some of the most beautiful I have seen. beautiful skin and well defined features, truely a blessing. but this isnt that sort of email... its about my uttmost respect for the women that carry me through my day and make my small village function on a daily basis.
As you might know, women here dont exactly have it easy. They are often treated as second class citizens. they have to often share husbands, and by that i mean that men often have more than one wife, as according to muslim law they are allowed many, presumptiously no more than 4 but... there are some with more. But women do all the grunt work, all the domestic work.
Anyways these women continue to astound me on a daily basis. My father abdulye, certainly a good man, spends a good majority of his day praying. And it is understandable, he is the religious leader and there is certainly nothing wrong with having a strong devotion to the creator. but he is only able to keep up his 5 daily prayers, and the many others hs engages in but is not required to, because his wives take care of the household. I have two mothers. And it appears they are on a cycle of being with him. For example, Ami So was in our household for the first 3 weeks I was in my village. Last week she left and Jeneoba Jope is now taking over duties. Each morning the women pull the daily water from the well that is easily 50 deep, maybe more. they pull and pull, again and again, working together to make the job a bit easier. Like many of you probably imagine, they than carry enormous amounts of water on top of their heads. They than go back to the house, make breakfast, clean up after breakfast, and than begin their daily chores. Oh and after she has made the breakfast she will than carry it to each group of people, the kids, the women, my father, and me, and than come collect it when we all finish. Meanwhile my father will become thirsty so she will need to stop whatever she is doing, walk to the water bucket, bring him a cup of water, retreat and continue whatever she is doing.
After breakfast she will generally sweep up around the compound, picking up the accumulated trash that piles up through the day; watermelon rinds and plastic bags are the usual; and make the dirt in the compound look neat and acceptable. Later she will make lunch, building a fire for each meal, clean up, and than begin another chore. Maybe she needs to wash the clothes. Most likely she will need to pound the millet or sorghum so it can be cooked later. Oh and clear the millet of sand. Oh and crack peanuts for the sauce. Maybe she needs more water. Meanwhile while she is doing all this in the course of day she has a baby strapped to her back... the entire time. They carry babies in a towel so that the child is straddled behind her facing in the same direction. This is done with a beach towel.
Now this is not to say men dont do any work... they work in the fields in the morning and occassionaly the evening if there is lots of work to be done, and they upkeep the maintence such as the fencing and replacing structural dalage to the huts. Difficult work except it may take a week. aA the fields are only being used 8 months of the year. Starting now there is nothing to plant, im interested in what the men will do.
It appears that there is a silent consensus amongst the men that the women are truely the backbone of the operation, that they are incredibly strong women who do the majority of the work while the men relax and drink tea and talk about... well i dont understand what they talk about. Im interested to know. But they will never admitt that the women does more work, and they dont like it when i tell them that they are lazy. The women do.
And there it is... me spelling out what life is like for women in my village. They are strong, not only physically but mentally, they bend over backwards for the men, they are magnificent human beings and put me to shame when i begin to feel tired or that ive done too much work and i need to rest.
alhumduliah.
brad