on the sky
There is something about the sky in this place. It’s bigger. It’s closer. It’s right here. This sky has presence, and personality. I’ll do my best to keep us on good terms.
All posts tagged: mali
what’s to eat #3
Lunch date this week. Only one dish on the day’s menu: Senegalese Chebjen (or Ceebu Jën, or Thiéboudienne)–rice with fish (and some vegetables, and hot pastes, and a fish paste, and a sweet paste). Ginger juice to accompany.
on mud mosques
Yesterday: 1.5-hour trip to Tadianabougou. Arrived during a meeting between village chief, village boutique owner, enthusiastic farmer, company reps, and a few chickens. They sat in an easy circle under a most perfect tree–the kind that reaches out wide to offer shade, a good climb, and enchanting protection. Just the right tree for an important meeting. The chief wore a bright salmon-colored frock and spoke little. He sat on an old, low chair with worn plastic straps conspiring to be a seat; by the end of the meetings, the straps had parted beneath him and he slowly sunk down until his bum was nearly on the ground, legs still propped up by the chair frame. I introduced myself, and took tea. After the meetings I asked whether I could take a photograph of the village mosque, made of dirt, mud, clay. Someone asked the chief in a quick string of Bambara, he replied, and it was proclaimed in French: The village chief has authorized you to take a photograph of the mosque. Thank you, merci, iniche. …
on not knowing
the accumulation of Things I Do Not Know has reached impressive proportions: i do not know the roads here, or the routes, or most destinations. i do not know half of what people say, or how i’m to feel about it, or how to reply. i do not know how to do my job, or whether i’ll be any good, or whether i’ll find it satisfying. i do not know what’s in most of the food i eat, how to cook over a gas tank, or recognize the things for sale at market. i do not know when to engage strangers, or how, or whether i appear as foreigner or fool when I idle in the street. i do not know how to be funny here, or when to smile, and I can’t quite figure out the tortoise who lives in the yard. and yesterday i realized that i Do Not Know how to tie a bathrobe. the string on the outside and the string on the inside and the loops on the seams don’t …
what’s to drink
Zrig in the late morning, Timbuktu style: fresh milk water millet sugar spices. Thick, sour, sweet, with cinnamon-nutmeg flavor. Someone called it “Timbuktu wine.” Served with guests and a jumble of conversation in sorai, arabic, and french
on control
Control is crazy-making. It’s impossible to live and let live when information, opinions, and judgements invade the screens we live by at a breathtaking pace; when we organize our time on calendars in clouds; when modern impulses conspire with gadgets, driving us to decide, allocate, schedule, confirm, reach out, touch base, and on, and on. I am victim to these same urges, even as I realize the mechanisms control me more than I care to admit. Control is a wicked illusion; it is a mindset of denial, of keeping fears–inadequacy, incompetence, chaos, confusion, imperfection, disturbances–at bay through sheer will. Control is a (highly soothing) barrier to reality, but it is ultimately futile, and exhausting. So here I am, newly without a home of my own, without a car of my own, without a smarty-pants phone. I eat the food that is fed to me; I go to the places others are going and I stay there until they leave; I use electricity when it is available and I don’t when it’s not; I bathe from a …
outerNotes 