Analysis Of Monique And The Mango Rains

Monique and the Mango Rains Monique and the Mango Rains describes a companionship that progresses between the writer, Kris Holloway, and a local health care worker or midwife in the Nampossela village, Mali, for the period of the writer’s Peace Corps assignment there, from 1989 to 1991.

After reading the book which mentions the maternal and neonatal situation in Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world, is pitiable. (1) Child birth takes place under lantern light, in Mud bricks with profuse sweating without electricity, no running water, no emergency backup. With only the grace of God and the skill of a midwife that child birth takes place in remote villages in the country of Mali, West Africa, having the third highest total fertility

Disadvantages of giving birth in Mali are numerous as one would be deprived of excellent medical facilities provided in any other country in a safe and clean hospital environment. Due to poverty, scarcity of midwives and proper child bearing centers, women have to give birth to children at home many a times. Also birth process is culturally related in Mali where circumcision of male and clitoridectomy for female is performed on the eighth day of the child’s birth in the cities of Mali. But in rest of the areas circumcision is incorporated along with other set of rituals which are performed on the occasion of the naming ceremony of the child. In Mali traditionally male and female development marked the growth from childhood to adulthood and they believe in passing of traditional and religious knowledge from old to new generation.

The book Monique and the Mango Rains is written on the backdrop of one of the poorest countries in the world where people are uneducated but they have their own culture and customs which they follow ardently. However the practices somehow match with the current world of hypocrite people but unknowingly they are present in the small village Nampossela of Mali where author interacted with Monique the central character of the

Though, it is work of Monique as a midwife which makes this book predominantly useful for learning the cultural dynamics in Mali of sexuality, childbirth and reproductive health of women. The young midwife Monique Dembele working in Nampossela and to the east of Bamako, the Malian villages, is the center of this appealing narrative penned by Kris Holloway who was helping in the Peace Corps in Mali from 1989 to 1991. Kris as instructed by Monique assists in midwifery work in the small, ruined birthing house, which was built by the Chinese in an earlier initiative of