Raffle!

I am informed we are having a raffle, all the women from our Tobaski asobi group and a couple of others. I am to bring soap and ten dalasis and report back to Toulay’s compound as soon as possible. And bring paper too. And a pen.

I bring a little Post-It notepad and everyone applauds because I understand what is going on. The women tell me which names to write and then we fold up the names and put them in a plastic bag. Pateh was the passing child called upon to pull the name out of the bag. Rugielle reads it—Ma Balde. Ma Balde gathers up the 90 dalasis and the nine bars of soap. I’m told to hold onto the slips of paper for next week.

The next Sunday we repeat the process, except Rugielle isn’t around so I read the winning name. “Ma Balde.” “Binta, she won last week.” “I know, but the paper says, ‘Ma Balde.’ Before, when I did not read, I do not know if that paper was Ma Balde, or…” Toulay tells me she kept the paper from last week and goes to get it. Sure enough, Ma Debbo, not Ma Balde won last week. Then all the women talk about how Rugielle can’t read but pretends she can.

The third Sunday of the raffle I am away for the drawing but I return and am informed that I’ve won! Fatou Bobo is holding my soap and money until I get back from school. I am excited because winning is exciting, and because now I’ll have soap for all the laundry I need to do and because now I can stop contributing ten dalasis and a bar of soap each Sunday (or so I assume). We count out the money and the soap—7 bars of soap and 80 dalasis. I’m surprised because I’d only been expecting 5 or 6 bars of soap and 50 or 60 dalasis, but I assume that I’ve simply lost track of how many people we began with. After all, why would the winners continue contributing? You would just end up returning your winnings, bar of soap by bar of soap, ten dalasis by ten dalasis, until you were right back where you began.
Fatou Bobo says Fama did not contribute, that is why there is not enough soap and money. She repeats this a couple of times, I guess to make sure I understand that she, Fatou Bobo, did not steal them and that I should be angry with Fama. Fatou Bobo also says someone came and asked for soap so she sold one of my bars of soap, but here is the money--she asks her husband for five dalasis and adds the bill to the pile of winnings.

The fourth Sunday Fatou reminds me that it is Sunday and tells me to bring one of the soaps and the ten dalasi from what I won last week. So there really doesn’t seem to be any purpose to the whole proceeding, other than to cause minor chaos each Sunday afternoon as everyone frantically scrambles to find ten dalasis and a bar of soap.

Except, actually, the raffle does make sense. I learned about them in Economics of Developing Countries. There are different formats for these lotteries village women will organize (sometimes the weekly winner is agreed upon by the participants, sometimes the winner is expected to host a little party for the participants) but the logic for all of them is that it is difficult for these women to get a large sum of money all at the same time. There are always little things that need to be bought—a tablespoon of salt, a cup of sugar—or money to be lent to a neighbor or given at a naming ceremony… Not to mention that not all of the women have a steady source of income from which to save. Ma Balde works as a cleaner at the hospital, but Fatou Bobo relies on the allowance given her by her husband, unless she is lucky and has some extra mint she can sell at the market. So while you are essentially winning the money just to pay it back again, it is actually a bit different because one week you get to buy something more expensive if you’d like to, something you might not have been able to buy otherwise. Yes, you’re essentially just spending your own money, but without this raffle, maybe you wouldn’t have been able to get all of this money together at the same time.

The logic behind eight bars of soap, however, I cannot explain.