The Eighty First Story

Sitting in this spot, the reality of where we were really started to sink in (for me, my mother is a little quicker on the uptake, I think). We arrived in town by mid afternoon, and the very first thing Mamadu did was to order us food (We had already learned to order food at least three hours before getting hungry). He asked us if we wanted meat or no meat. Mum and I looked at each other, shrugged a little and asked for meat. He shouted something to a little boy, and we wandered around the rest of the day, only later realizing that the child had gone to catch the town's one goat.

Now- I'm quite certain we paid more than enough to replace that goat. It's not that I feel bad about it, per se. It's just- what if some other travelers came through the next night, and the townfolk had not yet gotten a new goat and had to explain this? Or maybe that's what happened- maybe this place usually had a goat on hand, it had recently been consumed, and when we surprised them by ALSO asking for meat, they had to scramble, and as luck would have it, someone else had a goat. But what if that emergency goat already had plans? What if it was meant for a particular feast, and now there was no goat? What if someone had to get married with no meat dinner? What if someone had already started to prepare it for a sacrifice and had to start all over?

In short- I spent the night thinking about how, in a place with very few travelers, one set could really fuck things up if they wanted to. We didn't order meat again till Timbuktoo.

the Seventy Sixth Story

This tree, when we were walking up to it, was in full bloom- covered in large white flowers that, from a distance, looked like magnolia. As we got closer, some of the flowers started to lift off; by the time we were within a hundred yards, it was bare, and the sky full of egrets

the thirty sixth story

another story from Mali, this one very short. The Dogon country features some remarkable gorges. We stayed part of a day and two nights in a village located inside one of these, with very very tall, very very steep walls on two sides. There was a donkey in this village, too. He would bray, and, with the echoes, the sound simply never left the valley. It would bounce back and forth, the echoes echoing each other long after the donkey had brayed again, harmonizing with himself.

the fourteenth story

Been a bit, here's another short, unedited story.
In Mali, with my mom, we went on a walk through the Dogon country. At one point, we dropped off our packs in one village and walked to another- Mamadu knew I was a metalsmith and wanted to introduce me to the blacksmith. On the way back, Mamadu looked at the sky, and casually said "maybe we should hurry". Mom and I thought very little of it, he seemed so relaxed about the idea; and while we didn't stop to take pictures, we didn't really hurry, either. After about fifteen minutes, Mamadu looked at the sky again, and said, in his same, relaxed manner "Maybe we should hurry". Mom and I started walking faster, but the rocks were tall, and climbing not easy, so we still weren't making good time compared to what Mamadu would do on his own. About half way home, Mamadu looked at the sky again and said, with respect but a bit of an annoyed edge "Maybe we should hurry". Mom and I got the point, and started moving as fast as we really easily could. Then, about 3/4 of the way there, Mamadu looked at the sky, grabbed my bag and said "Maybe we should hurry", and started helping shove us up rocks. Within sight of the village, but with one very large dropoff left to go, Mamadu looked at the sky and said "Maybe we should hurry" Only then did mom and I see what he had seen over an hour before- a black wall. We started clambering down the cliff. Mom, who has always been more comfortable with down than I, took my camera, and all three of us entered into the downward climb at a speed that makes more sense as a partially controlled fall. We made it to the bottom just as the sand hit. I grabbed my camera back and wrapped it in my hastily removed headscarf, and we started trying to run for the village, totally blind. Just as we made it to the village, the sand stopped, and the rain hit. Newly exfoliated, we sat in our lovely mud hut, built with its back to the direction of the wind, and watched waterfalls form on the rock walls of the valley.