Oumou Samake, Mali
Profile of a Woman in Literacy
Day after day of her life, Oumou Samake labored as a farmer in the arid soil of Mali, her homeland in western Africa. Like her mother and grandmother before her, Oumou was illiterate and extremely poor. She struggled from dawn to dusk to grow crops that would survive in the parched earth. Stories of a famine in the 1970s that killed hundreds of thousands of Malians haunted her. Fatal diseases like malaria were a constant threat. During the dry season, Oumou and her family often went hungry.
Oumou Samake foresaw no changes for herself or her children. Mali is one of the world's least-developed countries. Like its neighbors Mauritania and Senegal, it is almost entirely desert and sub-desert. Only two percent of the land is arable. Paper has to be imported into this landlocked nation, which has a literacy rate of 25 percent. Poverty and diseases account for an infant mortality rate ten times that of the United States.
But change does happen, even for a peasant woman in one of the poorest nations on earth. Education was the means by which Oumou Samake began to change her life, and set her and her children on a steady course out of utter destitution.
A Promise Made
In 1991 Oumou became interested in classes and community projects taking place in her village of Dafara. The classes were coordinated by the Oulessebougou Alliance, an indigenous Malian development organization, with support from Laubach Literacy's Women in Literacy program. With Oulessebougou guidance, Oumou and her neighbors discussed ways to obtain more water, combat disease, and grow more nutritious, hardy crops.
Oumou also discussed reading and writing, and became convinced of literacy's ability to help her improve her life. At a ceremony attended by officials of the government and the Oulessebougou Alliance, Oumou and 200 other villagers proved their beliefs by pledging that in 15 months they would read to their visitors words they had written. This was a promise of great faith, because at the time no one in Dafara could read.
Each night after a full day in the fields, Oumou studied reading and
writing, using kerosene lanterns and chalk boards supplied with Laubach
funding. She gained basic skills in her native Bambara language, and also
learned some math. She participated in projects to dig a well and to grow
vegetables for consumption and sale.
One day Oumou and her neighbors realized that they were making a profit from the sale of their vegetables. The women used their new skills to form a cooperative to distribute the profits equitably. Through tireless work and faith in herself, Oumou Samake had dramatically changed her life.
A Promise Fulfilled
Early in 1993 Oumou had the opportunity to fulfill the promise she had made 15 months earlier. In another celebration this new reader reflected her concern for her family by reading her own declaration about the meaning of literacy in her life:
"When you know how to read and write, you can take care of your babies. When you start something, you can read how to do it better...like preparing food to make our children strong."