37 pages • 1 hour read
Kris HollowayA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Chapter 3 begins with Holloway finding that the chickpea prophecy has come true, and the dugutigi’s wife Mawa has delivered healthy twin boys. The end of the day finds Holloway and Monique stopping by a villager’s home to remind him that his wife, who had given birth just two days earlier, needs a week of bed rest, but they meet stony resistance. Monique laments, “Ah, I must be aware of what comes out of my mouth. A woman’s husband must always be handled with care, especially this one” (43).
They stop next at Korotun’s house. She is married to Dramane, a wealthy man by village standards. They find Korotun in her home, the side of her face covered with a scarf. When she removes it, the women see that Korotun has been severely beaten. Aside from her face, Korotun has welts on her arm. Her husband beat her presumably for selling sweet potatoes in town, but in truth, he beat his wife because she has not become pregnant. Korotun’s scarf symbolizes the secret world that wives inhabit in their homes.
Korotun begs Holloway for help getting medicine to become pregnant. Monique and Holloway agree to get Korotun some vitamins so she can tell Dramane that she is taking pills to have a baby. While Monique rails against Dramane’s treatment of Korotun, Holloway points out that some men in America beat women too. This revelation shocks Monique, who assumed that domestic abuse didn’t happen in educated, civilized countries.
While her house is being built, Holloway takes on a new, more urgent project: repairing the birthing house. With the help of a grant and permission from the village elders, it is determined that the birthing house will be updated the following year.
Holloway and Monique walk to a neighboring town to educate the women there on the health of their children. An elder divines Holloway’s future, telling her she will have no Malian enemies and a white man in Mali will marry her, but only if she chews a smiling kola nut on a Thursday. Eventually, the nut is found, and Holloway chews it thoughtfully.
Holloway suffers from a severe bout of giardiasis, an intestinal infection that causes extreme diarrhea and vomiting. Monique arrives to care for her. Monique also brings word of the death of a villager’s young son from a Malian sickness, causing Holloway to reflect on the fragile line between life and death in Mali.
After recovering from giardiasis, Holloway finds Monique at the clinic where she is splendidly dressed, her hair carefully made up. She dismisses Holloway’s questions about her attire, saying she is only going into Koutiala to pick up supplies for the clinic.
While helping Korotun pound millet, Holloway finds out that Korotun has become pregnant. As happy as Korotun is about this news, she tells the two women, “Dramane does not want a girl, so you must both pray for me each day that I have a boy” (57). This wish foreshadows an unhappy future for Korotun.
After a long day at the clinic, Holloway confronts Monique about the mysterious man in Koutiala she has been sending letters to weekly. Monique calls him an old friend named Pascal and agrees to introduce Holloway to him.
The women attend the village celebration of the life and death of Old Woman Kelema. Holloway observes the radical difference in the Malian approach to death and the Western approach, thinking of her own grandmother’s wake and funeral. The Malian villagers wrap the old woman’s body, hold her hand in the center of the town, talk to her, and sing and dance around and with her body. Holloway gets caught up in the celebration and goes dancing with the villagers, but Monique is too self-conscious to dance.
After dinner the next evening, the women exchange gifts. Monique has had her father sew a pagne, or traditional long skirt, for Holloway. The author offers Monique a necklace of oyster shells to wear as they go to the movies. John accompanies them, and there they meet Monique’s old friend Pascal Konate. Monique loves the man, and he feels the same for her, but because they are both married, they can only meet in these public circumstances. Pascal is in the Malian army and works as a guard in the town’s prison.
The movie The Terminator is shown out of order, but the Malian audience enjoys it anyway. Pascal and Monique steal some moments together, and later that evening Monique tells Holloway that she has loved Pascal since childhood, but their marriages were arranged, and there was nothing they could do about them. With Holloway and John to accompany her, she and Pascal can see more of each other.
The women have a mock battle to see who can knock the freshest mangos out of the top of a mango tree, then head to church where Holloway learns about the loss of Monique’s first child, a son named Louis. He died when he was two years old. Monique confesses, “He was very sick and had awful diarrhea. It was before my training, so I did not know what to do” (74). Monique’s loss explains her desire and determination to educate the other women in the village so they don’t lose their children either.
The chapter ends with Holloway finding out that although Monique gets a salary for her position as midwife and health worker, the money is entirely controlled by her father-in-law and her husband. Francois has threatened to divorce her, but because she makes money and he does not, and because he loves the material items he buys with her hard-earned money, Monique knows his threat is empty. Holloway is determined to do something to change the circumstances of Monique’s salary.
The rainy season comes, and the entire village turns out to plant seeds by hand. Holloway explains how much the rains impact the community’s future. If the seeds are planted too late, growing time will be lost. If the seeds are planted too early, before the rains soak the ground, the shoots will die. Monique tells her, “Rain means that people live” (78).
At the clinic, Monique and Holloway are recovering from a long night assisting a pregnant villager who died after childbirth. The author reflects on the natural methods of birthing in Mali versus the Western medical attitudes that are so quick to advocate caesarean sections.
One villager, Oumou, approaches Holloway, begging the author to help her avoid having more children. Oumou has already lost two children and is currently pregnant again. Holloway and Monique assure Oumou that they will try to secure birth control pills for her, although this information must be kept from her husband.
A quick, brutal rainstorm hits, causing significant damage to the birthing house and reminding Holloway that repairs are desperately needed for this women’s place.
The dugutigi gives permission for a young man named Henri to assist Monique and Holloway two mornings a week. Monique is thrilled by this addition because it allows the two women more time to weigh babies and consult with mothers. Later, Holloway asks Monique if Henri will receive a salary paid directly to him if he completes his health training, a rhetorical question indeed. Angrily, she tells Monique that she will again ask the dugutigi about the midwife’s salary.
Holloway brings Monique to her home to make her a Malian form of pizza. The two women discuss giving Oumou birth control, as the men in Africa are reluctant to use condoms. Monique expresses her frustration at the stubbornness of men, who despite being told how condoms will protect them from AIDS and other transmitted diseases still refuse to do so. They also talk about why some women refuse to take birth control, either medicinal or natural, because they are afraid of social stigmatization. Monique determines she can keep the pills at her clinic to give to women without anyone else being the wiser.
Holloway has a private meeting with the dugutigi to talk about John coming to live in Nampossela as well as the progress on obtaining permission for repairing the birthing house. Holloway also broaches the subject of Monique’s salary, arguing that due to the amount of work she puts into her clinic, her dedication to the village, and her shabby home, she deserves control over her earnings. The dugutigi admits he can do nothing but says Holloway can speak to Monique’s boss, the patron Lassine Mariko, to see if the situation can be changed.
In Chapters 3 through 5, Holloway becomes fully immersed in Malian culture, learning to love the village and villagers, but also facing the truths of that culture: Women and children have high mortality rates, the patriarchal society dominates all, and the village’s future rests on the arrival of the rainy season.
The author’s friendship with Monique grows stronger as both women confront the losses and frustrations exclusive to women. These issues include the beating suffered by one woman, the death of a villager in childbirth, Monique’s lack of control over her salary, the unhappiness of Monique’s marriage, and her inability to be with her true love, Pascal.
At the center of all these frustrations is the village’s patriarchal social structure. When Monique must meet with one husband, to convince him that his wife needs bed rest to heal after a difficult labor, she laments that husbands “must always be handled with care” (43). In other words, Monique must preserve his pride to avoid offending him. Though his wife’s life is at stake, saving face is of paramount importance.
The importance of face is further seen in the women who are caught between their health, the health of their children, the fear of potentially losing a child, and the social pressure to have more children despite the risks. This culture values women for their ability to reproduce, and the expectation that they have many children weighs on them heavily. This is compounded by pressure to have baby boys, not girls. When Korotun says, “you must both pray for me each day that I have a boy” (57), this moment foreshadows an unhappy future for her.
Of the many reasons why these women might want to avoid further pregnancies, the high infant mortality rate is key. When you have already lost one child, the thought of losing another feels unbearable. This very grief is what inspired Monique to pursue medical training, to educate herself and other women so their children might live. Some women, like Oumou, opt to control their reproduction with birth control, but this is risky, as it must be concealed from their husbands. Many other women are too afraid of the social stigmatization they would endure if they failed to have more children, and so the cycle continues.
Despite these challenges, Holloway comes into her own while assisting Monique in obtaining birth control for the village women, getting permission to improve the birthing house, and working to give Monique control over her money. These victories prove that change is possible and that women do have power, even in a society that’s much more restrictive than Holloway is accustomed to.