Once a quarter my micro-finance organization has a meeting with five women who have been elected to represent the voice of our loan clients. These are most likely the loudest five women in Segou.
Our meeting was supposed to start at two pm on a Friday. I biked back to work after lunch to find the office locked up still from Friday prayer. So a boutique owner lent me a chair and some shade and I waited for half an hour for my bosses to show up and let me inside. Once inside it was almost three, and there was no sign of these five women anywhere. Normal work hours are 8am to 4pm here so when I saw it was past three and still no women I thought the meeting would just be canceled.
Two women show up around 3:30, so my boss and I start the meeting. Because the women don’t speak French, my boss was in charge of running the meeting and I was just to sit there and wait for translation. Over time more women show up and the meeting keeps getting repeated to catch the late comers up.
At one point all five ladies were screaming their heads off and my boss was screaming back at them. Because it was in bambara I still had no idea what was going on so I just sat there in awe of the argument. I mentioned earlier that these were the five loudest women in Segou, well the room was almost vibrating from the commotion. And by that time it was pushing 6pm… on a Friday. All of a sudden everyone sat down very calmly and said its over and the women left. I looked at my boss and asked what happened and he just shook his head and said they were talking about bread prices.
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