Journee Internationale De La Femme 2010

We celebrated here in Koutiala. I had my outfit made and was looking forward to the day. The night before I went by Koro’s for a visit. She had a head ache and said she was not going to participate in the next day’s festivities. I was so disappointed.

The next morning started with my usual bike ride. When I got home I left the house with the top of my IWD outfit and a skirt on my way to the market down the street. My host mom was dressed in her IWD outfit and invited me to go with her in the car. Now this doesn’t happen very often and I wasn’t sure where the celebration was so I took her up on the ride.

International Women's day is an important day in developing countries to rally people together for women's rights. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton identified equality for the world’s women and girls as the central challenge that will determine the peace and progress of the 21st century.

This year marks the 100th aniversary of International Women's day. In 1910, the first international women's conference was held in Copenhagen and countries around the world began celebrating the event annually beginning the following year. In places like China, Russia, Vietnam and Bulgaria, IWD is a national holiday today.

Every year, there is a theme to the day. The UN's theme for International Women's Day 2010 is Equal "rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all." Here in Koutiala there were two themes to this year’s IWD, one a National Malian theme because 2010 marks 50 years of Malian women’s freedom from colonial rule and the second a local Koutiala theme was Husbands helping their wives space the birth of their children for the health of the family. There were speakers, women from the audience giving testimonies, and theater skits with a woman dressed as a man that got a big response from the audience.

I sat with Fanta Diallo my host mom but kept an eye out for my friends the artisan women. Fanta was cooking the food for the event so she left when the time came and low and behold Koro showed up and stayed through lunch. At lunch time my friends the artisan women, Koro and I all ate lunch together. Even though my language is not that good we laughed, talked, and teased each other and just had fun together.

P.S. Kounandy is doing so much better this week.

Kounandy

Kounandy my name sake was born September 2, 2009. Koro didn’t even know that Awa was pregnant I suspected but during training was told that Malian women don’t talk about pregnancies so I never said anything besides Awa never did get big so I shrugged my suspicious off. When Kounandy was born she was the smallest baby I have ever held. I worried that she wouldn’t make it.

I hold her everyday at work while her mother does bogolan. They fitini Kounandy and beleble Kounandy that’s little Kounandy and big Kounandy in Bambara. Kounandy has pissed on me, thrown up on me, and shit on me as well as laughed with me, slept in my arms, and blown bubbles at me.

The name Kounandy was given to me during training by my mom who named me Kounandy after her grandmother. Kounandy means lucky person in Bamabara. I feel it is a privilege to be named this and a privilege that Awa named her baby girl after me. The name is not as common as Fatamata, or Salamata; Kounandy its perfect for me

The worry I have for Kounandy’s well being comes from the fact that Mali’s infant mortality rate is one of the highest in the world. Mali is in sub-Saharan Africa one of the regions making “insufficient progress” towards improving an infants life.

The following are some rankings on infant mortality. These figures show that the situation is getting worst in Mali not better even with all the NGO’s and Peace Corps work. What is the answer I don’t know. I don’t even know what the answer is for this one infant my name sake.

2006 figures

USA ranked 33 under five 7.8

Iceland ranked number 1 under five 3.9

Mali 191 Under five mortality rate 199.7

Haiti 136

CIA’s 2009 estimates

Singapore 1 2.31 out of a thousand babies die within the first year

USA 46 6.26 out of a thousand babies die within the first year

Mali 217 102.05

Here in Koutiala, Mali the public hospital just received funds from a Belgium NGO to improve children’s nutrition in the region. This came out of stats that showed Koutiala as a high risk area for children’s nutrition.

UNICEF says that child survival programs are inexpensive, basic interventions that save the lives of children under five from the leading causes of child death and promote healthy and productive families and communities.

Today, almost 25,205 children under age five will die mostly from preventable or treatable causes. This is a loss of over nine million children each year. A majority of these child deaths are from everyday conditions. Pneumonia, treatable with 27 cents’ worth of antibiotics, accounts for almost one of every five deaths among children under age five each year. Diarrhea, treatable with 6 cents’ worth of oral rehydration salts, causes 17 percent of young children’s deaths. And more than one third of child deaths result from complications related to birth, a cluster of causes that includes tetanus, which is preventable with a $1.20 tetanus vaccine for the mother during pregnancy.

Kounandy is only one face of all the infants at risk, she is the one that has touched my heart.