©2013 Laura Ann Twagira ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WOMEN AND GENDER AT THE OFFICE DU NIGER (MALI): TECHNOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, AND FOOD CA. 1900-1985 By LAURA ANN TWAGIRA A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in History written under the direction of Barbara Cooper and approved by ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Women and Gender at the Office du Niger (Mali): Technology, Environment, and Food ca. 1900-1985 by LAURA ANN TWAGIRA Dissertation Director: Barbara Cooper This study examines how rural women in twentieth century Mali integrated the technological infrastructure of an industrial agricultural scheme for their own food production needs. The scheme called the Office du Niger (Office) is one of the most ambitious development projects in Africa. Established in the French Soudan in the 1930s to produce primarily cotton and secondarily rice for export, the Office drew upon the Niger River to feed a vast irrigation network that radically altered the surrounding agricultural landscape. Initially, the Office was populated through the forced migration of families. Chronic hunger plagued residents at the colonial Office for many decades and recurred in the post-colonial years. At the Office, women often struggled to produce food. Yet, it was the quality and not simply the quantity of available food that concerned women. Good food was measured by the taste for specific textures, smells, flavors, the sensations of fullness, as well as the nutritional content. For women, maintaining control over food also meant attending to taste. I argue that women used the resources of the Office to engineer a highly adaptive local food production system that depended on female labor power and made use of modest technologies (such as metal cooking pots) that are generally overlooked in favor of the more impressive irrigation infrastructure of the scheme. Gradually ii women adapted the project elements (the new labor calendar, built-infrastructure, industrial machines, and market logistics) to their own needs. This process of adoption spanned the colonial and post-colonial eras and entailed the interplay between women's labor, the environment, modest technologies, and industrial technologies. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my advisor Barbara Cooper for her tireless support of my research, writing, and development as a scholar. I also thank my dissertation committee members Julie Livingston, Bonnie Smith and Gregory Mann for their encouragement and support. I am also grateful to Allen Howard and Temma Kaplan from the Department of History for their on-going support of my graduate studies and to Dean Teresa Delcorso for her grant writing support. In Mali, I benefited from the help of numerous archivists at the National Archives of Mali, staff at the Office du Niger including its institutional archivist Mrs. Fatmata Maïga Sidibe and the local agricultural and women's development workers Fatoumata Guindo, Bintu Dieunta, Assanatou Dieunta, Bintou Diarra, Aïssata Couibaly, N'Faly Samaké, Assane Keita, and Bintu Kané. My interviews would not have been possible without the gracious assistance of the Bah family, the Kassambara family, and the Samassekou family. I further thank Aïssata Kassonke for her help with my interviews, Bonheur Doumbia for his help with transportation, and Oumou Sidibe who helped me in my first few weeks as a researcher. My research and writing were supported by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education, the 2011 Kranzberg Dissertation Fellowship from the Society for the History of Technology, and a 2011 Bernadotte Schmitt Grant from the American Historical Association. I received additional support from the Rutgers University Department of History, the Graduate School at Rutgers University Department, and the Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies Summer Fellowship program. Finally, I thank my husband Benjamin Twagira for his complete encouragement, support, and understanding. iv Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents v List of Tables vi List of Figures vii Glossary of Bamana Terms viii Map The Office du Niger and Surrounding Region, ca. 1932- 1947 x Introduction The Taste of Development: Gender, Technology, 1 Environment and Food in Twentieth Century Mali Chapter 1 Wild Rice and Millet Beer: Measuring the Harvest by 21 Women’s Production, ca. 1900-1930 Chapter 2 Early Colonial Food Politics: Producing for the Market 74 and Standardizing Taste, ca. 1900-1935 Chapter 3 Peopling the Landscape: Colonial Irrigation, Technology, and 122 Demographic Crisis, ca. 1926-1944 Chapter 4 "We farmed money": Re-Shaping the Foodscape and 175 Women’s Marketing, ca. 1944-1965 Chapter 5 Metal Pots and Buckets: The Power of Modest Household Technologies 231 at the Industrial Office, ca. 1946-1965 Chapter 6 Red Millet and Rice Babies: The Fight for Local Food Security 280 ca. 1960-1985 Conclusion "Une Véritable Sécurité Alimentaire" 341 Sources Consulted and Bibliography 347 v List of Tables Table 1 Women's Seasonal Labor and Agricultural Production 50 Table 2 Average Prices in Ségou for basic foodstuffs, 1913-1927 88 Table 3 Demographic Shift at Niénébalé, 1926-1927 128 Table 4 Population Gains and Losses for Kokry and Niono Sectors, 1935–1943 130 Table 5 Intensified Recruitment and Coercion during World War II 134 Table 6 Office du Niger Population 1960-1979 300 Table 7 Office du Niger Population by Region Reflecting the Arrival of 303 Hunger Migrants, 1981 Table 8 Office Sectors under Consideration to Allow Families Permission to 306 Send Rice to Relatives Table 9 Guards per Sector, 1982-1983 317 vi List of Figures Figure 1 The Office du Niger and surrounding region, ca. 1932-1947 x Figure 2 Motto of the Molodo Zone 342 vii Glossary of Bamana Terms Baarakolo Large round organic container (frequently used to collect water) Basi Couscous Bogoda Clay pot Daba Hand-held hoe Da Plant leaf used in sauce preparations Dege Cold porridge Jigine Granary Dolo Millet beer Dugutigi Literally the town's caretaker (often translated as chief) Duloki Blouse or tunic Dumuni Food Fenw (pl) Things Fonio Wild growing grain Gwa Kitchen, hearth, or home Gwatiggy Man in charge of the granary Jeba Wild growing rice plant Kongo Forested or wooded area Kuna Wooden serving bowl Minauw (pl) Possessions, equipment (muso minauw are women’s household tools) Moni Warm porridge (usually made from millet) Namugu Dried baobab leaf powder (used in sauce preparations) Negeda Metal pot Nere Tree seeds used to make the spice soumbala Nyo Millet San yelema nyenaje Harvest celebration Sege Potash Seri Warm porridge (often made with rice or corn) Soumbala Spice made from nere seeds viii Tafe Measure of cloth (often wrapped around a woman’s waist as a long skirt) Tegedege Peanut paste (or Bambara groundnut paste) Toh Main dish prepared from millet Toh pasa Spoon for stirring cooking toh Wari Money ix x 1 Introduction: The Taste of Development Gender, Technology, Environment and Food in Twentieth Century Mali Women in Twentieth Century Mali The history of rural women in twentieth century Mali is a history of technology and of environmental change. Through the quotidian production and preparation of food, the vast majority of women in Mali engaged with and took a formative role in major processes in the history of the colonial French Soudan1 and its successor, the independent nation of Mali. Throughout the twentieth century the region was predominantly rural. As a result, government administrations in need of finance sought to direct the agricultural economy. Government interventions and development programs were often heavy-handed, and over several decades of forced labor regimes, industrial development, decolonization, rural socialism, military dictatorship, and famine the region saw dramatic and in some cases rapid transformation. The gendered dimensions of such wide sweeping change were significant. Food supply was politicized in these years, making women's daily food labors extremely important. Women experienced these political and economic shifts most immediately through changes in the environment, access to food resources, and women's technologies. By looking at the women who lived at the major agricultural program called the Office du Niger (Office), broad changes in rural society and women's lives come into focus. The Office was arguably the 1 The territory in the western Sudan called the French Soudan (Soudan Français) was conquered by the French military in the late 1880s and 1890s. It was briefly reorganized as the Haut-Sénégal et Moyen Niger in 1900. In 1904, the colony was again reorganized as Haut-Sénégal-Niger, and finally renamed Soudan Français in 1920. For simplicity, I refer to this territory only as the French Soudan for the colonial era. In 1960, the former French Soudan and colony of Senegal united as the Malian Federation, but this political unity lasted for only a few months. That same year the territory formerly called the French Soudan became the Republic of Mali. 2 most important development intervention by the French in West Africa and later occupied a significant role in the economy and politics of independent Mali. The scheme intensified technological and environmental changes taking place all over the region. The technologies most directly associated with women--more appropriately called musow minaw or women's things--included modest domestic tools such as the mortar and pestle and various metal household goods. A range of industrial agricultural machines also entered the changing rural landscape at the Office. Women adopted threshers and other agricultural machines for their food labors bridging the domestic and industrial nature of twentieth century change. Much about women's lives at the project is distinct from that of other women in the region.