Irene makes me cry

Catchy title? Blunt, nonetheless. At our two day formation at Tubaniso, the truth comes out. In the Malian culture, if someone is older than you, they can tell you to do basically anything they want and if you don’t do it, it’s disrespectful. Not understanding that I should be exempt from that, I came to a realization that I’m really being pushed around. Especially with her crying child, Irene has been extremely bossy, telling me what I can and can’t do, asking me to get up in the middle of a meeting to get her water or an orange or to go charge her phone or add sugar to her coffee. (So all you walked over interns out there in America, I feel your pain, even here). These little things get on my nerves, but after an exercise with homolouges and volunteers at our training, I noticed its not just these little things. It’s everything. I can’t do anything without her permission or approval. I can’t go anywhere, I can’t do any work with anyone else besides her or she gets jealous and offended, and most of all, my opinion doesn’t matter. I don’t understand anything, according to her. And though I am fun to have around, and I help her out tremendously, though she loves me, she doesn’t respect me as a working adult. I should be her right-hand man and remain so. I work for her, in her opinion, not for the village of Dombila. Peace Corps trainers were embarrassed by her, skipping sessions, bossing me around. The cultural facilitator even said, “I know you are trying to respect her, but in my opinion she is not a respectful person. And she obviously doesn’t respect you.” I’m her adopted daughter, and in Mali a daughter is a servent. And I can work as long as its under her demand and close supervision. Luckily, she’s right about a lot of things. But sometimes she’s not. And sometimes I am called to build hand washing stations or wells and I’m sorry that you have prenatal councils, but I can’t spend my service sitting around waiting for you to have time to work with me. I once spent 5 hours waiting for her to record a radio show with me because she doesn’t think I can do it myself. I could have done that and a million other things.
But what made me cry was when she announced her list of complaints against me. “She works on things and doesn’t even tell me about them until after that happens! She comes in the morning and tells me what work she wants to do when I should be telling her! She does not respect me, and all of the work that she has done without me has turned out terrible. The hand washing stations leak and people are cheating her for money. She even goes out and drinks tea with other people, even after I told her that they are putting charms in the tea to curse her.” (That last one says it all.)
We got a long way to go, me and her. I have to set some boundaries for myself and its not going to be easy. But I’ve let her push me around long enough. We get along and have fun together, but we still do not understand each other’s roles. I do need to keep her more in the loop of my side projects, which I will begin to do. But in all my struggles of trying to fit in to the Malian culture, I placed myself too far down on the hierarchy. No more using my phone to call her sons. No more making me sit around all day in Kati with her family so that she won’t look bad if I go back to the village before her. No, I don’t understand everything in Bambara. But I do understand some things. And I feel like we would be a lot further in our work if she would just listen to me every once in a while. So who knows. Malians don’t hold grudges, so I know whenever she is mad at me, it probably won’t be for long. But it’s respect I want. I don’t want to be her boss, but I don’t want to be a doormat either. She’s my boss now, which isn’t her job description either. Homolouge- same. Ironic for two people coming from two different worlds to achieve this balance of equality. It may happen eventually, but it’ll be a bumpy road.