Both literally and figuratively. PS: The heated debate at the end is over whether this structure is actually a bridge, a stool, or a replication of the Eiffel Tower, and therefore whether it qualifies for competition. Staff Leadership Training Relais Touristique Hotel Tin-buktu Moussabougou Sira Moussabougou, Bamako, Mali +223 66 72 01 58
There’s something about the vantage point from above that makes the origin look altogether different, And maybe worth the climb back to earth. Siby Village, Cercle de Kati, south of Bamako, Mali.
In the space between steps, it’s hard to imagine that the destination will be worth the passage. There’s not much about the road less traveled to inspire confidence. Wise people say it’s all about the journey. But if we weren’t pulled forward by something –call it hope– then we’d simply stop in place. It’s the destination, imagined or real, that propels us onward. If we’re lucky, we’ll find the treasure (whatever it may look like) that we seek.
Found myself guilty of that slippery, easy, well-intentioned mistake of cultural re-adjustment: Believing that all people, deep down, are essentially the same, and gripping that belief as a compass through foreign territory. It’s not true, of course; there are deep and oft-divisive differences. But the big problem with the we-are-same perspective is that it’s my same informing my assumptions. How are we the same? In what ways? If any one person answers these questions, the response is rendered invalid on a collective level. What I see or expect to be equal or translatable or essential comes from my own subjective perspective. When you get down to it we are not, in fact, the same. And we are certainly not the same in any way definable by me alone. It feels like swimming in deep water, searching with your feet for something to stand on, lurching forward–sometimes in a panic–to get to solid ground. It can be deeply unsettling to realize that, in intercultural dynamics, there is no ground to stand on: it’s all about the swim. There is no quick …
In some neighborhoods of Bamako, houses and their yards are enclosed by high walls; some are grey cement, some are painted, and others have wild and intrepid foliage spilling over their tops. A single wall separates one house from another, obscuring the view but not much else. From my kitchen, I can just see over the wall and into the next door courtyard. On the other side lives a large family whose patriarch is very old, very loud, and more or less unhinged. He usually wears purple bazin, he doesn’t see well–perhaps at all–and occasionally he shakes, a shock running through his body from hand to foot, or head to knee. But this isn’t about what’s to see; it’s about what the wall can’t keep out: the sounds this old man makes, to an audience he alone perceives, and extra loudly when the rain comes. Most of what he says is incoherent, but there is one word that pierces the verbal fog with thunderous effect: Allah. It comes down heavy, and urgent: Allah. Sometimes the word punctuates his …
In moments of hazy confusion I mix languages, I forget cultural basics, I speak of “here” as if I were elsewhere, I wake from sleep unsure of where I am. Peanut plant pulled fresh from the earth in Sinsina village, offered as a gift. This is the hand behind this awesome blog, most recently on aid work in the Central African Republic, but on many other things as well, and also the hand behind this moving, inspiring, and oft-hilarious twitter feed. major props, my friend.
outerNotes 