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Emory Students Help Launch African Sky Scrubs
By Katherine Reiter
October, 9 2009
I ni ce! These are the tales of three students and friends who embarked on a trip of a lifetime. For the past several months, we have been working with Dr. Lacy on a scrubs project through the Emory University student group, Nourish International. With the funds we raised through small campus ventures, we were able to purchase four treadle sewing machines for the scrubs workshop. With the supplies in hand, we arrived in Mali, ready to work, laugh, and learn with our new Malian friends.
During our initial days, we experienced Malian life firsthand though the eyes of Yacouba’s family (country director for African Sky). To those on the streets, we were toubabs, but to Yacouba, we are family (Abi Samake, Abu Sangare and Matu Traore, to be exact). We spent hours playing with the neighborhood children, relaxing, drinking tea, and exchanging Bambara and English. Life in Mali is far from slow, however. People are constantly performing daily chores that most American’s would take for granted, such as washing clothes by hand and traveling to the market for food that will be cooked on the wood burning kettle stove. We enjoyed leaving the frivolous American life behind for a few weeks, and came to realize that we were just as happy living in Mali with their “limited resources.” While we were in Bamako, we selected local fabrics to use in our sample scrubs order with the tailor. Why scrubs, you might ask? With the simple design of scrubs, and local fabric readily available, tailors can create a fair trade product that doesn’t go out of style. As a result, consumers become more aware of fair trade practices and world customs, and money flows directly into the hands of Malian tailors, aiding the economy.
We made our way to Dissan, a small farming village south of Bamako. We couldn’t stop smiling as we hopped onto the backs of mopeds and traveled through unpaved paths across freshly planted fields. Once in the village, we were greeted by a pack of children and began a thirty-minute stare off. Either our Bambara was so poor that we were making no sense at all, or they were just as shocked as we were to see four toubabs in the middle of rural Mali! Although we were quite far from the comforts of Bamako, I thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Dissan. I saw my first shooting star in Dissan, and I only wish that we could have spent more time there.
We trekked from Dissan to Markala by bus, arriving at Tamba’s house by nightfall. (We quickly learned that bus schedules are only a suggestion and really depend on how many people have bought tickets.) We began with a well dedication in Welentiguila, across the river from Markala. An Emory student had funded the well earlier in the year. Upon our arrival, we were greeted by hundreds of children chanting “African Sky! Mali!” They led us to the school site, where the well was located, and where the celebration would commence. As we settled in, the crowd began to dance and sing to the beat of a rhythmic drum. From the crowd, a creature emerged, led by a fellow villager. As the dance of the gazelle intensified, so did our adrenaline. It’s hard to describe the feeling of being in the middle of Mali, surrounded by loving and thankful villagers, and having series of masked dancers greet you. As we traveled to different sites, we also took part in a boat ride on the Niger and witnessed a boat race between the men and women of a fishing village.
It is amazing to see how quickly the terrain can change in Mali. We traveled to Bandiagara, in Dogon country, where it was amazing to look over the cliffs at the expanses of Mali. We learned local folklore and came across a traditional sand divination. Sand divinations consist of delineated areas in the sand in which questions are written and nuts left out. During the night, a fox answers the question by taking or leaving the nuts.
As we concluded our trip in Bamako, everything seemed to be coming together. The scrubs looked great and the tailor shop was painted. We had made friends, laughed (a lot!), and even came to understand ourselves better. As we sat around Yacouba’s house on the last day, I began to feel as though I had become part of a family in a once foreign land. I hope that one day I will have the privilege of returning, to not only learn more about Mali, but to learn more about myself.
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