Monique And The Mango Rains: Kris Holloway

Daniel Ascano
Dr. Tara F. Deubel
Cultural Anthropology 2410
6 June 2018
Monique Short Essay
Monique and the Mango Rains is a true story about a companionship between Kris Holloway, who is the author of the story, and a midwife in the village of Nampossela, Mali whose name was Monique Dembele. Holloway made it to Mali as she was in the Peace Corps and had been assigned to Mali for two years and was trained to “give health demonstrations, repair wells, build fuel-conserving stoves, plant trees, and protect the shoots from the ever-hungry mouths of goats” (Page 11). It is here that Holloway meets Dembele to try and help make the health care for the women in the area become better. Monique had been apprenticed for two years to train to become a

midwife. She had also studied for months to better understand health services and because of this, is the only one who is a health worker. Holloway, although initially going to Mali to attempt to improve life there, she ended up creating a relationship with Monique that was very close. They were so close in fact, that Monique had brought Holloway into her family. Both Kris and Monique had but one goal, to improve the life of the people and children of Mali.
In Mali, women are typically only important in being both a wife and a mother, and this mindset is normally embedded at a young age in which these children are taking care of the house to help ‘train’ them to become a housewife.

Some responsibilities that these women are required to undergo is to clean up around the house and make sure life at home is as orderly as possible. One way of which the women are forced into this role is in the fact that they are put into arranged marriages very early in life. Monique very much does not like this way of life because of the difficulties that arise because of this like the way that communication can be difficult between two people who barely know each other. Monique perfectly exemplifies this in her marriage as its shown that she is more educated than her husband and speaks an entirely different language. Speaking a different language would make communication almost impossible as if one cannot understand what one is saying then it would be difficult to be happy in a marriage. Once Holloway got closer with Monique, Kris discovers just how unhappy she is in her marriage and the extent that she would go to become happy like having an affair with the man she would have married. Monique was a woman who helped the mothers throughout the entirety of their pregnancy in the birthing house and clinic that the village had. Monique would teach these women the process of cleaning water, and basic hygienic processes like washing their hands

properly and how to stay clean. She knew the ways to identify how children were healthy by looking at their weight to find out if they were malnourished or not. Monique was a woman who was trained to administer first aid and do vaccinations as the women in Mali had a lot of risks to their health. One reason that these women had a lot of risks was because they were expected to have many children and childbirth is in and of itself a dangerous process. Women in Mali had a “one in twelve” risk in dying as opposed to the “one in over three thousand” that is around the world. (Page 8). Some dangers that women face during childbirth is the bleeding that can occur that can be very excessive, and some unsanitary environments that can lead to infection. One harrowing thought is that female genital cutting, abbreviated as FGC, is a common occurrence when one looks at the woman who live in Mali. The reason for this is because these women are not to feel anything pleasurable throughout their intercourse and the proves of this causes many issues throughout the entirety of these women’s lives.
When one looks at the problems that can plague a society, in this one the biggest one to the women was abuse from their spouses. “The lantern light was dim, but I could see that one side was swollen, her eye half closed with puffy tissue. She met my stare, lowered her gaze, and quickly draped the scarf back over” (Page 51). While arranged marriages made it so that the arranged spouses families are close to one another, when one goes outside of this arranged marriage, it leads to these peoples being ostracized and left out as an outcast to their family. There is another danger that woman had to consider and realize existed in their life, and that’s rape. “He forced you? Yes, she shrugged. It was painful and then it was over” (Page 130).
One thing that people must realize, is that there is no culture that is better or worse than another.

This is because each and every culture has been shaped by something and what might be normal in one culture, might be alien in another. What people must do however is understand that these differences are there and accept them and not judge anyone based on what their ways and beliefs are. Kris managed to come about this conclusion as even though she completely disagreed with the custom of mutilating one’s genitalia as it is morally wrong based on western culture. To these people however, it is just another way of life. It shows in the way that Monique reacted when she learned that Kris had not been through what they call ‘koloboli’, “I have never met a woman like you, who has not gone through koloboli. I thought every woman had it” (Page 114). Kris believed that these people who participate in domestic violence, rape, or physical violence were in the wrong and that everybody should be healthy and equal. She realized however that she could not do anything as she would be intruding on these people’s societies and it was down to these people to fix these problems. Monique was one such person who understood the problems and attempted to fix things in her society as she lived

it.
This was a very interesting book that was very personal and made it so that I could understand these two women who came from two different cultures but came together as leaders and life changers. This book was a very interesting read as the way she wrote the book left me as the reader moved and inspired as I was invested. I was invested in seeing her experience in working with the Peace Corps, how the Mali live their life, her relationship with Monique, and I felt something for everybody here. I would recommend that someone would read this as it is a moving experience to read this.
Work Cited
Holloway, Kris, and John Bidwell. Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Midwife in Mali. Waveland Press, 2012.