Update on Alapia Je

i have returned stateside, now residing in the tumultuous city.

i regret not updating this record of my experience in mali more often but i plan to post an informal goodbye to the village and home that i have left behind in the near future.

the experience was, needless to say, life changing. the village and mali and west africa - the people, the landscape, the culture and rituals - are often in my mind as i make my way through the tunnels and avenues of new york city. being a resident of this city has many benefits. one being that i meet malians and west africans often. i am able to relate to their situation here. a stranger in a strange land. i am reminded that i had it easier, in many ways, of being a stranger in a strange land that has no strangers.

amba alapia jamba o.

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)

Caga III

"anybody wanna peanut?"

The rains have come to Mali. This means all able bodies are called to the plow. To the fields they go to sow the millet, sorghum, sesame and peanuts for the next year’s subsistence. This initially left me behind in the village with the elderly and the young. I’m not complaining, I can tolerate children for an allotted amount of time and the elderly are some of my favorite people and best friends in village. However, I felt the need to participate and understand the way of life here. I worked on a farm back in Utah as well, to the disbelief of the men in village – “They farm in America?” So, after a brief visit to Bamako to ensure that I was healthy enough to continue service (mid-service check up, I passed) I asked the chief, Hassimi, if I could have a little land to cultivate.
Arrangements were made and I headed off with Alhadji, the chief’s eldest son, and the underrated family donkey, down the cut stone path that switchbacks down the cliff to the valley. The sandy orange dunes temporarily stabilized by the flash growth of grasses create ideal conditions for peanut farming. And O did I have peanuts. When I first arrived here everyone gave me sacks of peanuts as welcoming gifts. I spent the day prior shelling enough to plant about an quarter hectare.
We found the old worn plow and other minimal farming equipment stashed under a tree near the family plot. Alhadji’s son’s, Boucari (+/- 7), and Amadou, (+/-10), spent nearly half an hour chasing down the oxen while Hadji and I broadcasted the seed peanuts in the area that was going to be plowed. Every so often I’d watch the boys corner the longhorn in a gully only to be thwarted by the cunning bull. Hadji would shout unintelligible advice (from my perspective) to the lads until he finally cursed them and ran over to round up the old ox.
Now, there’s an interesting relationship that I have with many of the men in village. They will NOT let me do manual labor. I couldn’t figure it out for a while but I think I have some leads now. At first I thought they just didn’t think I could manage hard work with my delicate Western hands and sensibilities. I think I’ve convinced them otherwise by now so that leads to my next hunch: They view me as ‘outside’ of the farming class. The higher status you have in Mali the less you move. The big shots, the patrons, rarely lift a finger. Other ‘yes men’ types do their work for them. This makes me feel uncomfortable so again I usually insist that I do the work myself or at least try to. There is one more reason and perhaps it’s the most understandable. They see me as someone who has a talent or a skill. In a village of 700 or so perhaps 100 can read and write and most of the literate are under 25. It’s not that literacy and education intimidate them but they want to show me that they have a skill that they’ve been honing for their whole lives. They can wield a hoe like a surgeon can use a scalpel. I can read and write and do the bureaucratic, analyzing type of work that American education has trained me to do and they can cultivate and perform amazing feats of strength and endurance and they’re proud of that. That doesn’t mean that I’ll sit back and let Hadji plant all my peanuts. I wanted a part of the glory, part of the satisfaction that only hard work can bring. So, I allowed him to show me the ‘right’ way to farm and I took the joking laughs when I got pulled around by the ox plow like a puppy. Then I surrendered the plow and let Hadji finish the job proper.



When we had finished plowing I pulled all the weeds out of the plot with help from young Amadou. I had to keep reminding him not to eat the peanuts we had just sowed. He would be pulling out loose grass and I’d hear him say under his breath, “Ooo, a peanut!” and he’d eat it and I’d remind him of our goal. A few moments later… “Eh? A peanut!” Sigh.
It was a good day out in the fields ending in a magnificent thunderstorm that made the greens of the Malian spring even more vibrant. I had forgotten how amazing it feels to get dirty in the red earth and soaked by a cool rain.

Abolutions

I like this photograph because it shows the presence of Islam in northern Mali and depicts everyday life here. This is a man preforming abolutions before prayer with the ubiquitous plastic 'salidaga' or kettle in the door way of his small shop in Mopti. Check out the Arabic graffiti on the door.

Caga {part II}

The Dogon do not name the village well or the broken pump (now the rusted, village equivalent to the garden gnome). However, the spring has a name, a formal name: Caga. It is one of the first words I learned when I came to live here and the first place I visited. It serves as the primary water source for at least two of the six quartiers of the village – approximately 200 people. It is the laundromat and public bath, a place where stories are told and where gossip is exchanged among the women. Children swim and play their carved flutes into the echo of the grotto. It is the foundation of the community. In fact, it may be the sole reason why the village exists.

“The past lies embedded in the features of the earth,” writes Keith Basso, an Anthropologist who lived and studied the Western Apache in southeast Arizona. “[It] shapes the way they think…Knowledge of places is therefore closely linked to knowledge of self, including one’s own community and to securing a confident sense of who one is as a person”. This examination of place – of home really – can be applied to people across the globe. Yes, even suburban middle class Americans like myself. Of course, the further we remove ourselves from communities – such as not knowing our neighbors, isolating ourselves in the comforts of the digital age – and the more we live above or beyond our ecosystems that surround us, the less this applies. I still believe that deep meaning of place is there in all of us. It’s there under the surface. It’s what we long for. For the Dogon, place and identity (both individual and communal) are closely linked, inseparable, and the collective memory of the Spring helps to shape this community.

Perhaps this is a contributing factor to why the pump sits forgotten, why women and children wind down the steep rocky trails that have taken lives from families, why, even now at the tail end of the dry season when only a few inches of water pool below the spring, people choose to come here rather than pull water from the well to the west of the village. These other places have no memory. They have no work or story involved in their existence.

Communities need to grow and build upon the foundation that has already been laid down. “Your not going to invent a new [village], instead you’re doing a strange archaeology, trying to enhance the old, hidden design”, states Jaime Lerner, the city planner of the Brazilian city of Curitiba, one of the most successful examples of sustainable urban planning in recent years. “You can’t go wrong if the [village] is growing along the trail of memory… [it] is the identity of the [village]”.

rainy season passtime

you would think that after nine months without rain all i would want to do would be to stand in the rain and sing praises. well, i did that. it turns out that it doesn't take much time before you get cold and take shelter. so what do you do on rainy days when you have alot of energy? jumping self-portaits of course! this is one of many that i took one rainy day with my new camera that i just recieved (in one piece)via the surprisingly reliable malian postal service. warning: jumping photos are addictive. just ask any volunteer in the mopti region. they may deny it, but i suspect that an investigation of their pictures would reveal the damning evidence: a suspended pair of feet, an awkward landing, a mass of mid flight hair or a deer-caught-in-the-headlights-late-jump stare.