What do you do when you have extra money?

In America, having extra disposable income might mean you buy a better car, a new TV, as a college student, eat out somewhere besides Papa Johns.

In Mali, you get another wife.

It's difficult for me to completely understand the perspective of a Malian woman--after all, how would you feel if any married man could, at any point, simply take another wife? Yet equally shocked are Malians when they learn in America, men can only get married to one woman.

"Why?" They ask me to explain-- "Why can men only take one woman? After all, men are men, and women are women, they are different!"

Such is the bedrock of the difference between me and my Malian counterparts. Aristotle (I believe) stated that one should "treat equals equally, and unequals unequally." This idea, applied to men and women, is quite in line with Malian culture.

Men are farmers, the keepers of money and masters of the house.  Their role is to provide for their family. Men work incredibly hard...about 4 months of the year when they're farming. Then for the other 8 months of the year men are...preparing for farming next year.

Women are mothers, who are responsible for feeding and clothing her family. Her responsibilities involve hauling water, pounding millet into flour, cleaning the house and the concession, and finally, cleaning her family's clothes. If money is short, women additionally sell food at markets for her personal income, or tend vegetable gardens for food. If fieldwork increases, a husband can request his wife help with the farm work (in addition to all her household duties of course).

Men often defend the benefits of multiple wives: multiple women can divide up housework amongst themselves. When one wife is sick, the other wife cooks. One wife will visit her family in another village for a month, while her co-spouse keeps house. Or even more often, a wives and their children will live in two different villages, never really crossing paths at all, but the man will jettison back and forth between villages.

I do find that families with multiple wives are often healthier; admittedly, multiple-spouse familes tend to have more money, and practice many healthy behaviours that single-spouse familes don't practice due to Islam (no alcohol, emphasis on cleanliness). But there is some merit to what men tell me: a sick wife can always pass off housework to a co-spouse and take extra time to recover.  When ill, a single wife can only request the help of her kids or a neighbor.

Because of the role that gender plays, it's a bit different moving through Malian life. First, even as a white westerner, I am still most fundamentally a woman. I'll often walk into a house in my village, any house, greet whoever happens to be present, and sit down next to the kitchen.  I'll ask for some millet to sift of vegetables to cut.  I'm a woman, so I just know how to cook, right? On one instance in a crowded van, a man climbed in with his 3-year-old son. As he got his bags in the van, I simply took his bewildered looking child and sat him on my lap for the duration of the 1 hour trip. Every woman nodded approvingly--after all, a man can't take of his own child! Yes, there is a certain amount of 'female privilege' that comes with my life here.

Yet these strict roles, the very clear existence of "men's work" and "women's work" is an occasionally tough area to manuver. I'll give presentations to women on nutrition, and they begin laughing at me--"Fatim! I would love to buy meat and fish, but my husband would never give me the money or let me go to market to do so." Feeding the family is a 'woman's issue' but it requires money from men! Children's health is also a woman's issue, yet attaining money requires a husband's approval.

The way men relate to men, and women to women, is also quite different. I'll see a friend of mine at market, and she'll exclaim "where have you been!?! It has been too long!" Then we'll walk around the market together, holding hands. Women will also sit, leaning against each other and braid a friend's hair quite affectionately. Similarly, it is perfectly acceptable for two male friends to hug each other, or walk down the street holding hands intertwined. In Mali, spouses live in different worlds and rarely cross paths. There is much less public closeness or intimacy present between couples. Yet the intimate male-female friendships that are permitted in America are balanced in Mali by very intimate homo-social bonds: because of the distance between spouses, men here are permitted to be in much closer friendships with men, women with women, even after marriage. In America, a heterosexual man walking down the street, fingers linked with his other male heterosexual friend? Never. Here, it doesn't get a second glance.

I do not endorse Aristotle's statement regarding gender--treat men as men and women as women. Rather, a slew of individuals (Gloria Steinem, Martin Luther King Jr.) stated that we no longer make distinctions based on gender (sexism) and race (racism), but only consider the talents and skills of each person--humanism. You're a man yet have a talent in cooking? By all means, take over the range and make dinner! The grass needs cutting but your husband is sick? Nonsense, go out and cut it yourself. I explain to Malians that work is work, and what matters is only that it get done, not who does it. Yes, I will admit, there are surface differences to men and women. But I tell the Malians, "you need two teapots to make tea.This one is red, that one blue. They are different (i.e. color), but they are more fundamentally the same. That is how I see myself as I relate to men--different, but still, more fundamentally the same."

To successfully integrate culturally, one must not accept or endorse a culture, merely understand it. Indeed, it is an aspect of the culture I will never endorse or accept, but I do understand the differences and advantages.