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Children are children everywhere. Even in Mali. A bitter fairy tale is the result of a personal point of view on childhood in one of the poorest countries in the world. As UNICEF's statistical data record and remind us, Mali has just over twelve million inhabitants, with 65% of its territory being desert or semi-desert, and 10% of the population nomadic; the average illiteracy rate among men and women exceeds 70% and more than half the population lives under the poverty threshold. However, the human smile, and especially the children's smile does not know about neither statistics nor poverty. As aforementioned: children are children everywhere.
Children play soccer, throw the ball at each other, jump, chase and always find one another amidst their mates' laughter and roaring. Even the environment becomes an ideal space for entertainment: narrow streets, mountains, dunes, ponds, lakes and rivers are all part of their games, so limitations become unnecessary. Physical borders simply do not exist. Nature create games and define childhood in Mali. Definitively, children are children everywhere.
Life expectancy in Mali in 2007 was 54 years old and 34% of children between 5 and 14 years worked during period of 1990 to 2007. Exploitation is a fact, but children in Mali help in domestic tasks: they go to fetch water, carry food and help in the maintenance of family economy. Photographs portray smiling children who look for the camera, because maybe behind it there is new game hiding, one they still do not know about, but would like to learn to play. However, does a child in Mali feel that he is having a difficult and challenging childhood like they want to make us believe in the West? Is not a child's happiness and innocence the same all over the world?
In this African country children can continue to be children. A bitter fairy tale is a full-colour hope song so that the life of every child who plays or looks to a camera remains a fairy tale. The bitterness that grows and spreads in the world of adults must stop and stay there, without involving children, thus offering them the best of all the possible fairy tales.
Landscape in Dogon Country.
On the "broken streets" of Djenne, few people dare to face the scorching heat of the afternoon.
As the day starts to cool, children return to what they were doing.
On the same steps,
day after day without a glimpse of a future.
Malian children playing a football match till the last light of day.
A young boy swings on the crossbar of a
football field in the capital of Mali, Bamako.
Children spend their days on the street. A typical day in Mali.
An adolescent sells fruit near a beverage store.
Many hours are spent each day waiting for someone to hopefully buy something.
A teenager looks out of his window.
Children working in a construction site.
They are carrying sack of mud to consolidate the foundations of buildings.
Children have fun with each other on the streets. Children anywhere will always be children.
June is the rainy season.
A child has fun during a break in the rain.
Childre transport straw with the help of a donkey cart.
A family cleans their kitchen utensils by the Niger river.
A group of teenagers cooling down in the Niger river.
Children by their home doorway, dancing in the shadow of a tree during the hottest hours of the day.
Children prepare wheat, the reward for thier efforts will be their next meal.
The city of Djenne is known for its great mosque.
However, at the inner areas of the city, the narrow streets are surrounded by dirt.
This adolescent of smooth skin contrasts with the wrinkled wall next to her.
Beauty is not everlasting.
A child about to step into a Mosque
to give food as an offering.
Malian children manage to persuade a tourist to buy them candies.
The children form a line at the door of a food store.
Two girls help their mothers with the housework. These tasks become
part of their responsibility as daughters and future mothers as well.
After a day spent at the street market, they return while chasing each other, so the way back feels shorter.
