The Compound
Most people in this town survive on agriculture. I mean, we ALL survive on agriculture, but in this town people survive directly on agriculture. Sure there is some basic industry, and a bit of imported technology — mostly cell phones — but otherwise people live as they always have, by building their own structures, and eating food harvested by themselves, their families, or by people they know by name.
The Road
On my last day in the village we walked around town greeting and saying goodbye to friends. This involves mostly visiting family compounds, since this is the basic unit of residence in rural Mali. A family compound consists of a number of small buildings and walls of mud, brick or cement. The structures are generally built in a circle, or rectangle, enclosing an open area, which contains one or two mango trees, perhaps a small crop, a well, and in more prominent villages, a single water spout coming out of the ground, that connects to a rudimentary city water supply. The whole compound is usually the size of a baseball diamond. The buildings are either mud huts with grass roofs or small concrete buildings with tin roofs: bedrooms, storage, bathrooms. But the most important component of the compound, by far, isn’t a structure, but is the open area in the center, where four generations of family, in addition to any other compound members who are adopted to the family, congregate at all hours of the day. In this central area many things happen: food is prepared and cooked over coal and eaten, card games are played, familial conflict brews and resolves, business is negotiated, medical care is administered, religious ritual performed… And it all takes place in the open, with the witness and love of all members of the compound. In rural Mali, the living room, dining room, nursery and nursing home are all one place where everyone takes part, and it all happens above the red dirt of Africa and below the common stars. Who would want to go inside?
Anyways, on my last day we visited a number of compounds. At one visit there was a boy, maybe eight years old, who had an obvious injury on his foot. His older cousin told us that he had been bitten by a snake, a week ago, while working in the fields harvesting
Halloween?
peanuts for his family. His foot didn’t look “ok,” to me, but as we visited with his family he sat quietly and listened to our conversation, as if the world owed him nothing, at the mercy of nature, not completely sure that he would be ok, but not resentful of his fate. The entire time he waved at his foot as if it were hot…
Snake bites are quite common in rural areas of West Africa, where people spend a lot of time in fields for subsistence, and people often die from them. If you were to attend a church or mosque on any given week you can be sure to hear several people pleading for help for a family member who has been biten. Nevertheless the boy’s cousin told us that, in this case, he would be ok.
On my way out of town the rain clouds rolled over Mali. The clouds always come in imposingly from the east, Burkina Faso, towards Senegal. Along the drive to the Bamako I watched many small, sad villages roll past, bustling with life while wilting under the wild African rain. I somehow thought of rainy days in rural Idaho, and the small sad farms along similar two lane farm highways.
A night of over priced Indian food (probably the only in Mali) was followed by the inevitable emotional airport goodbyes. Of course one never knows whether their flight will actually leave the Bamako airport as planned (or at all), especially with the discount airlines that I frequently utilize, and after two hours of delay (with no update on as to whether the
Making tea at the bike shop
plane would actually leave)… well… I arrived in Barcelona. Due to the delay I missed my second flight, and I found myself moved to a later flight and, to first class! After a few minutes atop the hill at Park Güell, mesmerized by the view of the city and the sea, and by a Spanish guitar duo that happened to be practicing behind me, I rushed back to the airport. Cut to a few hours later, I sit in first class with the taste of fine Swiss chocolate and wine and a gourmet dinner still on my tounge, I looked down on an indescribable view of the french alps, with glaciers snaking down away in every direction from the vaulted peaks, and a thin layer of clouds haloing Mont Blanc as if it were the geographical incarnation of the protestant patron saint of Geneva. But my sublime moment was shattered by the most whiney voice imaginable screeching “but now I can’t see the movie!” …the voice of a young American boy approximately the age of the boy with the snake bite from earlier.
And well, contradictions stirred up around in my brain.
Amadou showing me the Mosque
I am arbitrarily born in a particular geographical region. So why is it possible for me to drop in to the center of West Africa for ten days and fly out aboard a five star restaurant (when I’m not even hungry), but it isn’t legal for an African to risk their life to take a boat across the Mediterranean to Italy? Are these imaginary lines in the earth that we call borders serving as an excuse to uphold a global aristocracy, which is something that western countries suffered many revolutions to eliminate? Why is the resource-rich continent of Africa still having so much trouble meeting the needs of its citizens sixty years after the end of colonialism?
