The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying Mali

You've probably heard the name of Timbuktu and maybe thought it was just a silly name for a made-up place, but did you know it's actually a city (once upon a time, a very important and rich one) in Mali? Mali is in West Africa. mostly covered by the Sahara Desert and cut through by the Niger and the Senegal Rivers. My kids picked it off of our giant wall map to learn about in this year's Educational Summer Vacation (read more on what that is here) and here is what we found out! 

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Monday

A long, long, loooong time ago, Mali was part of the Ghana Empire in 300 A.D. (That actually has nothing to do with the modern-day country of Ghana; "Ghana" is just a word that means "king.") 

It later was part of the Mali Empire in 1200 A.D. (names of leaders in that time period that you might recognize from history class are Sundiata and Mansa Musa), and the Songhai Empire in 1300 A.D.

After that, it was colonized by the French in 1892 and finally gained independence in 1960.

Tri-color flag of Mali with the "pan-African colors."

My kids drew the flag of Mali and added it to our wall, then found Mali on our giant wall map and filled out their faux passport pages.

Download the Free Printable Passport Pages

I had a picture book about Mansa Musa all ready to go, but my kids beat me to it. They remembered hearing about him in school and told me the story of how he was the richest person who ever lived, with a net worth equivalent to $400 billion today. He gave out so much gold as he traveled through Egypt on his way to Mecca once that he ruined their economy for years. 

 

We read a great (but long) picture book called If You Were Me and Lived in... the Ancient Mali Empire by Carole P. Roman. 

And even though my American, Christian family is definitely not the target audience of the Jannah Jewels series, the younger kids enjoyed the graphic novel The Treasure of Timbuktu on their own time.

Islamic early chapter book where strong, independent Muslim girls learn about their cultural heritage through time-travel and adventure.

Tuesday

Mali is famous for its music, actually. I read this post, summarized each paragraph for the kids, and stopped to show them the videos (they particularly liked this song and this one)

If you have older kids, you should watch this video on the Festival au Desert, also called the "African woodstock." It talks about the festival being suspended due to Al Queda taking over in 2010, which I'm excited to read about in the novel I got from the library called The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu. (If that isn't a great title, I don't know what is.)

If your kids are younger, stick with this video of the Bambara Dance on YouTube instead. It looks fun and extremely exhausting, and if they tire themselves out trying to imitate the dancers you could probably use the break.

After showing the kids this video of a Malian instrument called the kora, I asked them what makes sound. We talked about how musical instruments all work by making vibrations, which bump into the air molecules and make them vibrate. When vibrating air hits our ears, we pick that up as sound. We talked about the different ways to create those vibrations: strumming, plucking, blowing, or hitting an instrument. Could they create their own musical instrument?

Two of the kids wanted to sketch out their ideas:

A hybrid between a piano and a stringed Malian instrument called the kora.

Like a car, but the steering wheel changes the length of the string, the brake dampens the sound, and the gas strikes the string.

Three others made a prototype with materials from our recycling bin:

Drum with a stringed instrument attached to the side.

This was actually kind of cool to listen to, it made sounds by bouncing different kitchen implements on the side of the counter.

The String-a-Doo: a milk carton with holes cut in it and rubber bands strung across the inside at all different orientations.

Wednesday

Mali is home to animals like gazelles, antelopes, giraffes, lions, panthers, hyenas, crocodiles, hippos. I asked the kids what they thought was the most dangerous animal in Mali?

They guessed but none of them guessed right. I gave them some statistics:

• Lions: 250 deaths/year
• Hippos: 500 deaths/year
• Crocodiles: 1,000 deaths/year
• Panthers/Mountain Lions: extremely rare (rarer than lightning strikes)
• Mosquitoes - over 1 million deaths per year 

To be fair, it was kind of a trick. It's not the mosquito itself that kills so many people, but a single-celled parasite that some mosquitoes carry. 

We watched this video on malaria (my college daughter is currently animating some biology slides for her professor and said that she could tell the animator wasn't a biologist because the blood cells were drawn backward in this video):

Malaria is considered to have been eradicated in the U.S. mostly due to the widespread use of screens on our windows. I asked the kids to make a PSA on how to recognize and avoid malaria, and the results were absolutely hilarious. They recorded a TV-style commercial, but if your kids are shier or more artsy they might rather do a billboard instead.

Thursday

The official language in Mali is French, but Bambara (also called Bamanankan) is spoken as a first or second language by 80% of the country. It's also a language spoken in Senegal, Niger, Gambia, Mauritania, and Côte d'Ivoire.

Bambara is a tonal language in the Mande language family. There wasn't a written alphabet until the French assigned the Latin Alphabet (with a few additions) to it in the late 1800s. 

In 1949, the N'ko script was invented by a West African so that there would be a native way to write the Bambara language, but the Latin script is still way more commonly used.

Chart downloaded from Omniglot.

While watching this video on how to write N'ko, we tried to follow along and write the letters.

I wasn't planning on cooking anything during our week visiting Mali, because it's usually a lot of work and some African food doesn't thrill my kids enough to be worth it, but they were adamant that we make something so we tried these honey sesame sticks called meni-meniyong.

Friday (and Saturday)

Today, we were going on a long car ride and that was the perfect excuse to put on this hour-long documentary on the Dogon People of the Bandiaraga Cliff. I doubt they would have paid attention at home but that's the beauty of road trips, I guess.

I also brought along this book about moms carrying their babies strapped to their backs called The Everlasting Embrace by Gabrielle Emanuel, which was perfect because we saw plenty of it in the documentary.

The next day, we watched a video about mud brick building in Mali and how important it is, and then we found another use for mud. 

Following this tutorial from Kid World Citizen, the kids collected dirt from the yard, mixed it with food coloring in a bucked, and painted designs on rectangles of scrap fabric to make a patterned cloth called a bògòlanfini. 

Painting the mud cloths. Definitely an outdoor activity.

When they were all finished, we put them in the sun to dry for a day. After washing, the designs were a lot fainter but were still there! I actually wasn't sure it was going to work. Real bògòlanfini are usually painted and washed several times over to make the design really pop.

Drying on our neglected deck that really needs to be sanded and re-stained.

In all my years of doing The Educational Summer Vacation, I've never come across a boring country and this was no exception. I knew very little about Mali before this week, but learned a lot! The kids had fun (especially painting with mud) and I can't wait for the next random reference someone makes to Timbuktu — and I will actually know where that is for once.

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