RACE
Feb.4
Yesterday my host dad Jakalia asked me a question that I can't answer. We were sitting in front of the electric glow of his butiki, waiting for the tea, and I looked at my watch for awhile. He asked "What is it?" I paused and replied, "It's really amazing how something so small can be so complicated. This little watch that I bought for a few dollars... it required metal mines and plastic factories and trucks and the whole history of thought that lead to time-keeping, and the complex machinery of a WATCH. And yet we rarely think twice about it." He nodded, and started looking around, his heavy eyes lingering on shiny objects with square edges: "Look at all of this, the tea pot, motorcycles, bicycles, cell phones, lanterns, flashlights, batteries, TV, radio, cold sodas... ALL OF IT, it came from white people. What have black people ever made?" I just looked at him. Then he said slowly "Our minds our not as good."
There are few things in life that annoy me, and in Mali I can deal with heat, giardia, and 62-hour bus rides ... but it is certain small things that start grating on me. First, the chanting of "Tubabu" (white person) by little children, wherever I go. I want to yell back "I'm not WHITE! I'm tan! And you're not BLACK! You're brown!" It is such a human tendency to dichotomize, to exaggerate difference, when in reality everything runs on a spectrum. Some Caucasians are ivory, some medium beige, while Africans too run from deep ebony to the honey or caramel of the light-skinned Peuls or the Touaregs.
Feb.4
Yesterday my host dad Jakalia asked me a question that I can't answer. We were sitting in front of the electric glow of his butiki, waiting for the tea, and I looked at my watch for awhile. He asked "What is it?" I paused and replied, "It's really amazing how something so small can be so complicated. This little watch that I bought for a few dollars... it required metal mines and plastic factories and trucks and the whole history of thought that lead to time-keeping, and the complex machinery of a WATCH. And yet we rarely think twice about it." He nodded, and started looking around, his heavy eyes lingering on shiny objects with square edges: "Look at all of this, the tea pot, motorcycles, bicycles, cell phones, lanterns, flashlights, batteries, TV, radio, cold sodas... ALL OF IT, it came from white people. What have black people ever made?" I just looked at him. Then he said slowly "Our minds our not as good."
There are few things in life that annoy me, and in Mali I can deal with heat, giardia, and 62-hour bus rides ... but it is certain small things that start grating on me. First, the chanting of "Tubabu" (white person) by little children, wherever I go. I want to yell back "I'm not WHITE! I'm tan! And you're not BLACK! You're brown!" It is such a human tendency to dichotomize, to exaggerate difference, when in reality everything runs on a spectrum. Some Caucasians are ivory, some medium beige, while Africans too run from deep ebony to the honey or caramel of the light-skinned Peuls or the Touaregs.
My second pet peeve is the pump. Any time I go to get water, there are invariably a small gaggle of girls and maybe some women, and they take my jug and pump my water for me. Yes, I’m a guest, and their culture always treats guests with utmost hospitality, but…it just seems ridiculous that when I try to take the pump from them, they shove me away, … no, the Tubabu woman must not work. She can’t work. It is the same when I go to the fields. If I start breaking a sweat, I am immediately told to go sit in the shade and rest. I have come to terms with this cultural kindness of theirs, but I wonder all the time – Where does it come from? Where do their ideas of what white people can or can’t do come from? If we can build airplanes and cell phones, why is it so hard to believe that I can beat shea paste into shea butter?
The final thing that drives me nuts is the “We have no money. America is rich. Take me to America.” I always argue, I tell them, No!! You don’t want to go to America! We are sad, stressed out, lonely people who do not get to sit under mango trees drinking tea all afternoon. Why do you think you are poor? You have enough to eat. You have a roof over your head. You think you are poor only in relation to the mass consumption of Americans, which you think makes us happier.
I start to target television – the only window my villagers have into the world of white people. Every night they watch the Brazilian soap opera with rich white people who never work and argue about money while they cheat each other. Desperate Housewives is on tomorrow at 2, interspliced with some advertisements for LandCruisers and CocaCola. Little brown faces gaze at the flickering images, to grow up one day to say to a white person, “Your skin is beautiful. Mine is not. Your mind is good. Mine is not.” And I cry inside and wish I could throw the television off a cliff.
DEATH
Feb. 6
A new sound wakes me in the night. I lay in the dark, listening. Yes, human voices, women’s voices, calling and responding in high pitched wails. Beneath it I hear a steady deep patter of hands on taut leather.
I grope around for my flashlight, slip on my flip flops, and push open my screen door to investigate. I have heard that there are fetish rituals that women are forbidden to see, but the voices sound feminine, and I think this is something different. The air is crisp, the stars hang thick across night’s black ceiling, like glow worms offering their light to a giant cavern – each one insignificant, but combined their efforts allow me to walk towards the music without using my invasive metallic light.
The sound rises from my friend Yaya’s compound – Yaya, one of my best friends in village, with whom I pass many afternoons and whose smile never fails to brighten my day. As I near the entrance two older women come out and I ask them what is happening.
“Yaya’s mom died.”
…. the sweet, frail, toothless woman who always made an effort to greet me in slow Bambara (one of the few women who can), who showed me how to turn raw cotton into thread in the shade of her mango tree… I nod and enter.
Framed by the glow of three small campfires, a circle of women turns in measured steps, their voices lilting upwards with the smoke from the fires. Their song is not sad, their eyes are not moist. No! The women are celebrating, they have spread the message through the village, risen from their beds, donned their finest clothes, and come together in the darkness to embrace the life of this woman.
They greet me and usher me into the circle. Jakalia’s mom, my “host grandma” is in the center of the circle with three other elder women with gourds, pounding out the beat, dancing, lifting their arms, exalting in song. Another group of dancers gyrates nearby to a deafening staccato rhythm, and after I tire of the one circle I make my way to the other. As I near it, I realize it is next to the room with the corpse.
The rancid stench of urine clings to my nostrils, but the women gathered in the room do not seem to notice or to mind. They sit in a circle around the body, which is covered in a pale pink shroud. Their faces are lit by lamplight and they chat, they laugh, they sit in silence.
It finally dawns on me that there are only women. Old women sitting, middle aged women with their powerful voices, young women with babies strapped to their backs or nursing next to the fires. Of course. Those who bring life into the world are those who usher it out.
One group of dancers snakes across the courtyard through a doorway. Curious, I follow. On the other side, next to the road, sit the men. They are silent, circled around two low fires, many asleep, others just staring into the flames. The womens’ voices break their torpor, as they move slowly to stand around the men, holding them in the warmth of their voices, as a mother embraces a child, protecting him in her powerful, soothing grace. In the orange glow of fire light, I see a strange green speck. A cell phone! I edge closer. Some guy is playing tetris on his cellphone! Moments like this, of stark juxtaposition between tradition and modernity, never cease to amaze me. Just as I was reveling in the beauty, power of this tradition, here is a guy who could care less. He’d prefer the beauty and power of Western gadgets. I sigh and return to the women gathering close around the fires for warmth in the cool morning air.
Just sitting, listening, I feel how rich these people are. We may have more plastic and doohickeys, and yeah, better health and more opportunities, but I realize how impoverished we have become in spirit, in community, in our disconnect with the cycle of life and with each other. I think of an old woman dying alone on a white sterile hospital bed with no one around but a man in an ironed labcoat and the sound of a beeping heart monitor, and I shiver.
What better way to say goodbye to a loved member of the family, who has lived her life fully, than with song and dance and food, with the clank of shells hitting gourds, the plump breast of a nursing mother, an embrace of her life and the lives she left behind.
The final thing that drives me nuts is the “We have no money. America is rich. Take me to America.” I always argue, I tell them, No!! You don’t want to go to America! We are sad, stressed out, lonely people who do not get to sit under mango trees drinking tea all afternoon. Why do you think you are poor? You have enough to eat. You have a roof over your head. You think you are poor only in relation to the mass consumption of Americans, which you think makes us happier.
I start to target television – the only window my villagers have into the world of white people. Every night they watch the Brazilian soap opera with rich white people who never work and argue about money while they cheat each other. Desperate Housewives is on tomorrow at 2, interspliced with some advertisements for LandCruisers and CocaCola. Little brown faces gaze at the flickering images, to grow up one day to say to a white person, “Your skin is beautiful. Mine is not. Your mind is good. Mine is not.” And I cry inside and wish I could throw the television off a cliff.
DEATH
Feb. 6
A new sound wakes me in the night. I lay in the dark, listening. Yes, human voices, women’s voices, calling and responding in high pitched wails. Beneath it I hear a steady deep patter of hands on taut leather.
I grope around for my flashlight, slip on my flip flops, and push open my screen door to investigate. I have heard that there are fetish rituals that women are forbidden to see, but the voices sound feminine, and I think this is something different. The air is crisp, the stars hang thick across night’s black ceiling, like glow worms offering their light to a giant cavern – each one insignificant, but combined their efforts allow me to walk towards the music without using my invasive metallic light.
The sound rises from my friend Yaya’s compound – Yaya, one of my best friends in village, with whom I pass many afternoons and whose smile never fails to brighten my day. As I near the entrance two older women come out and I ask them what is happening.
“Yaya’s mom died.”
…. the sweet, frail, toothless woman who always made an effort to greet me in slow Bambara (one of the few women who can), who showed me how to turn raw cotton into thread in the shade of her mango tree… I nod and enter.
Framed by the glow of three small campfires, a circle of women turns in measured steps, their voices lilting upwards with the smoke from the fires. Their song is not sad, their eyes are not moist. No! The women are celebrating, they have spread the message through the village, risen from their beds, donned their finest clothes, and come together in the darkness to embrace the life of this woman.
They greet me and usher me into the circle. Jakalia’s mom, my “host grandma” is in the center of the circle with three other elder women with gourds, pounding out the beat, dancing, lifting their arms, exalting in song. Another group of dancers gyrates nearby to a deafening staccato rhythm, and after I tire of the one circle I make my way to the other. As I near it, I realize it is next to the room with the corpse.
The rancid stench of urine clings to my nostrils, but the women gathered in the room do not seem to notice or to mind. They sit in a circle around the body, which is covered in a pale pink shroud. Their faces are lit by lamplight and they chat, they laugh, they sit in silence.
It finally dawns on me that there are only women. Old women sitting, middle aged women with their powerful voices, young women with babies strapped to their backs or nursing next to the fires. Of course. Those who bring life into the world are those who usher it out.
One group of dancers snakes across the courtyard through a doorway. Curious, I follow. On the other side, next to the road, sit the men. They are silent, circled around two low fires, many asleep, others just staring into the flames. The womens’ voices break their torpor, as they move slowly to stand around the men, holding them in the warmth of their voices, as a mother embraces a child, protecting him in her powerful, soothing grace. In the orange glow of fire light, I see a strange green speck. A cell phone! I edge closer. Some guy is playing tetris on his cellphone! Moments like this, of stark juxtaposition between tradition and modernity, never cease to amaze me. Just as I was reveling in the beauty, power of this tradition, here is a guy who could care less. He’d prefer the beauty and power of Western gadgets. I sigh and return to the women gathering close around the fires for warmth in the cool morning air.
Just sitting, listening, I feel how rich these people are. We may have more plastic and doohickeys, and yeah, better health and more opportunities, but I realize how impoverished we have become in spirit, in community, in our disconnect with the cycle of life and with each other. I think of an old woman dying alone on a white sterile hospital bed with no one around but a man in an ironed labcoat and the sound of a beeping heart monitor, and I shiver.
What better way to say goodbye to a loved member of the family, who has lived her life fully, than with song and dance and food, with the clank of shells hitting gourds, the plump breast of a nursing mother, an embrace of her life and the lives she left behind.
Feb. 7As if that wasn’t enough, the celebrations continue for three more days. The day after her death, hundreds of people come from surrounding villages, the hunters dressed in their traditional attire, the women wearing their best matching fabric complets. Yaya’s compound transforms into a giant festival – people from all over the village bringing firewood to keep the fires going, food to cook and feed the throngs, and non-stop song and dance, telling the story of her life.
The men lift the body onto a wooden stretcher and carry it to a fetish house, then out into a field where they fire off guns, and then they RUN the body to the grave. On the way I pass a cow and a goat being sacrificed, but I keep running in the chaos, the dust, the yelling, trying to not get trampled.
We arrive sweating at the hole that the men had dug during the day, tucked back in the sacred woods, next to Yaya’s father’s grave. The women sing, and for the first time I see tears flow, and they place the body into the grave on a bed of song and gentle voices. Then sweaty, shirtless men frantically cover the grave in stones and branches. From dust to dust.
Yaya and his brother.
I think, I want to die like this. To have my spirit swept into the earth by exalting voices, pounding feet, clapping hands, smiles, and laughter. To have school stop for two days and no one goes to work, to have everyone whose life I have touched come to tell stories and cook feasts.
If I die and any of you are around to witness it, I want song and dance, food and drink, stories and celebration. There will be no black at my funeral.
If I die and any of you are around to witness it, I want song and dance, food and drink, stories and celebration. There will be no black at my funeral.
Photos: http://usc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2209082&l=b01cf&id=3408340
PATIENCE
Feb. 26
My reserves of patience have been pushed to new extremes. Friday morning we left our tranquil beach house in Senegal at 9am to head back to Mali... and I got into Bamako last night at midnight, 63 hours later. We rode two separate public transit cars to get back to Dakar, battered old buses with people stuffed in tighter than sardines, then got on our bus in Dakar to head for Mali that afternoon. The road between Dakar and the Mali border has to be the worst road I have ever experienced (worse than Kangaroo Island Australia, worse than the road to Kenicott Mines in Alaska). For hundreds of kilometers, our bus crawled along at pace I could have out-run, bobbing up and down in potholes big enough to eat a man. We "slept," while the "air stewards" sprawled out on the dirty aisle floor to catch up on sleep before their driving shift. There was a Nigerian sitting behind me who, every time the bus hit a REALLY bad pot hole (one that made us all fly out of our seats), would yell a stream of English swear words. It made me laugh that we EVER think flying is difficult, with their constant beverages, reclining chairs, seat back pockets, LAVATORIES, air conditioning, and ... well... they're usually only 10, maybe 15 hours, not 62.
My stomach wasn't feeling well, and by morning I was in desperate need of a hole in the ground. We stopped in a little village for the Muslims to pray at dawn, and I got out started asking around if anyone spoke Bambara. No, no. I made it clear I needed to "use the facilities," and a woman handed me a pot of water and sent me behind the huts, where I found a patch of dirt enclosed with straw where people can pee, and a field of peeing men who had just gotten off the bus. Shit. (quite literally). I saw another woman and told her in Bambara, "I need to poop." She understood and I made it just in time. Diarrhea and African public transport are not a good match.
The border crossing to Mali took us all day, with bus-searches, customs, bribes, gendarme stops, and a half bus-load full of people who didn't have proper passports or visas. Apparently there were sewing machines strapped to the roof that weren't Claimed... Another two hours of my life. We got into Kayes, Mali at 9pm and the bus owner decided to stop for the night. We were glad, because we all had grossly swollen ankles from sitting for 30 hours, and we have a Peace Corps house in Kayes with showers and beds. We walked there, glad for the exercise, and slept for a few hours, then walked back at 4am to get back on the bus.
We found no one. Gradually passengers started gathering, but no bus people. The hours ticked by, and we sat. The owner had told us (very forcefully, in a heated argument the night before) that we would leave no later than 5. He showed up, then disapeared. At 9am, there was a crowd of angry people, a woman who had a job to start, but there is no recourse in Africa. No "I demand my money back." We just had to wait. At 10 my friend Jacq sat in the driver seat and started honking the horn. She took one of his cigarettes and smoked it (even though she doesn't smoke). At 11:30 we finally left, ... and 12 hours later got into Bamako. Sweaty, dirty, exhausted, frustrated, with swollen cankles just to rub it in.
And today I get on my 7 hour bus to Sikasso.
Senegal photos: http://usc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2209082&l=b01cf&id=3408340
