San Boren {part I}

Three days after most of Mali and Muslims worldwide gathered to pray and celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramadan the village decided to join. The new moon was finally seen. Apparently, if the new moon is not spotted by the Imam of the village or other ‘deciders’, than the prayer and feast cannot be held. It says so in the Qur’an (I’m told). So, on October 1st, the men and the more religious women of the village gathered at the exposed bedrock on the cliff between three of the family ‘quartiers’ dressed in their finest ‘tu gara’ (lit. big clothes) to pray and end the days of fasting. Here it is called San Boren, “Little Feast”.
Because I am forgetful and somewhat of a procrastinator, I failed to put together a nice Malian/Dogon outfit for the occasion. This usually requires a lot of fabric (hence “big clothes). Big is better, and if you’re a Peulh man, double it. The fabric should be brand new if possible, in fact the more creases from the packaging the better. Top it off with a rainbow umbrella, yellow tinted sunglasses, the ubiquitous prayer beads and a new fez (the popular one this year says 200E – not a tax document I realized but a design error).



Well, needless to say I looked like a bum. I had been without clean clothes and I opted for a yellow hued blue polo shirt and my cleanest dirty pants. However, I did have some Malian flair – a farmers beanie that looks like the type of winter hat that Charlie Brown’s mother would buy him, and my trusty turban/ scarf/ travel pillow/ towel that I never go anywhere without, or in other words my Linus blanket. So, Charlie Brown hat, Linus blanket, looking a little like Pigpen and – hey, I’m also growing peanuts. Coincidence?
Hadji and Binta would not stand for it. I had to represent the family, the Ba-Hassimi clan, and I was not going anywhere dressed like a bum. The facial expression from Binta reminded me a little of my mother’s when I would go to high school looking like I was going to jump a train to Reggae on the River. Hadji disappeared for a moment asking loudly where his other clothes were. Binta went in the house and emerged with a giant green tent leaving Hadji mumbling indistinctively in the darkness of the windowless rock house. It looked like a huge poncho. I slipped it on and marveled at the length. It was way too long on my 6 foot self and Hadji must be 5’7”. I bunched it up gently, lifting the excess up to my abdomen and we hustled to the prayer ceremony. I felt like a bride in her gown rushing to or away from her wedding.




Three or four rows of prayer rugs covered the sandstone. I joined the men at the back row of the ceremony while the women let out high pitched calls augmented by their fluttering tongues, something like a Norteno fiesta cry, but more reverent if that’s possible. The women do this for the dapper men. I felt honored and a little less foolish. The sexes are separated for the prayer ceremony so I sat as close to the women as I could while still being with the men. The sun was rising higher and we squinted at the Imam under a nest of umbrellas as the prayers began.
I have been to Muslim prayer ceremonies before and have been to the mosques of the village with friends and my host family. I still feel like I just do what the guy next to me is doing. That didn’t mean that I wasn’t performing my own type of individual worship on this particular day. True to my nationality and my generation I went with the flow while introspectively practicing my own individualism: patching together bits and pieces of Islam, Christianity and Eastern philosophy with a soundtrack by Bach and M. Ward and strangely... narrated by Alec Baldwin.
(photos are actually from last year, I forgot my camera this time)