Praying with the Samakes

Since its Ramadan right now in Mali, the members of my host family (the Samakes) pray many times throughout the day. They close the day with a long prayer in which they touch their head to the ground 17 times. Near the end of my homestay experience, I began praying with them on a nightly basis. I’ve come to enjoy doing it now and although I don’t do it for the same reasons as they do, I find it a nice chance to turn off my thoughts for a while. My host brother Sadio stands in the front and leads the prayer and the line of men and boys behind him and finally the row of women in the back. The women are also accompanied by all of the children so the woman’s row is usually where most of the action is going on. When I looked around I often saw my host sisters bending down to pat or situate their babies on the mat while continuing their prayer. Throughout the prayer I hear Adaman, my 2-year-old host brother calling out to his 19-year-old mother. He continually shouts ‘ba’ until she acknowledges him. I look over at this young mother, Badialo, and rediscover for the millionth time my fascination with Malian women. Badialo continues her prayer and pats her child and calms another young child sitting next to her all mid-prayer. She bows and Adaman bows with her, pretending to know what’s going on. I look to my right and one of my other host sisters, Oulimatu, has a child on her back during prayer and one crying on the mat in front of her. Not a word of complaint is heard from these mothers. Never have I heard a Malian woman complain.

Above is a picture of me and some of my Samake siblings. In this host family I have 12 host sisters and 9 host brothers.