The Women of Yacolidabouo (Ouyine Assouagne)

During our trip in November 2009, we set up a meeting with the women association of the village which was an altogether different experience than the men. I should add that the women association include young and older women as opposed to men who segregate the elders and the young men.

At our first meeting, we could see the synergy among women, how they are able get together and work together. They arrived on time and in numbers for our kick off meeting and I have to say that they were prepared. The president was in attendance as well as the vice president, the secretary and they even thought about bringing their own translator. Not all women were fluent in French so they made sure to bring someone from the association who would handle any translation issues, the Communication Director.

We spoke about their children and our assessment that they are not too disciplined at school, how they need to be involved in their children schooling and participate in Parent-Teacher meetings. This latter topic was a little challenging because we did not want to appear telling them how to raise their children, rather initiate a conversation and exchange of ideas on how to better structure children life before and after class. The subject of raising children is still developing and we expect to create children workshops/discussions for our next mission in 2011.

After talking about their responsibility within the village, their children and their husbands, we asked what do the women of Yacolidabouo want? They spoke among themselves for about five minutes and presented a clearly and constructed idea. In the Southwest region of Cote d’ivoire and precisely the Bete region, a man marries a woman from another village NEVER from the same village or group of villages. Marriage for a woman means that she is leaving her village and is welcomed to her husbands’. The trade off in this marriage vows is that women do not own any land or property in their husband’s village; therefore, they remain completely independent from them.
In their own words, the women told us that they need to find a way to become financially independent. Rice being the main food in their diet, they realize the closest they can buy rice was 30 miles away. So they want to develop a co-op or association to purchase, sale the rice and use some of the income from the sale to lend to each other for their own small businesses. But they need our help to learn how to manage and would like no men to be involved in this project. We were curious as to why? We could not get an answer but understood that some cultural issues cannot be violated. We just have to work around them and make sure that everything that they are accustomed to remains intact.

What's next? Their wish is to start fresh, with an all women team and Yacoli.Org as the Project Manager responsible for fundraising, Angele Kouamé as the Project Manager responsible for guiding and organizing the women locally. Our Finance program fundraiser this year will focus on the women association of Yacolidabouo named: ASSOUAGNE OUYINE which means TOGETHER WE ARE IN CHARGE.