In general, the Malinke people do not outwardly embrace their traditional culture on a daily basis. Occasionally, you will find a donzo, a member of the hunter class, carrying his antique shotgun and wearing the traditional leather-and-seashell jester cap and talisman-adorned garb that have been worn for ages by their class. And of course, you will see the same food and superstitious customs that have been the standard for numberless generations. But for the most part, day-to-day, the Malinke, like any other developing culture, embrace the future heralded by motorcycles, cell phones, and Jay-Z.
So for me, and often for the villagers too, the most exciting events and ceremonies are celebrated by a return to the traditions of the past, the things that make Malinke as cool as they sometimes are.
Take dancing for example. On holidays or big events, the official villagers drummers go around town after dinner, banging their drums to announce to everyone in earshot “It’s party time, baby!” Once everyone has arrived at the donke-yoro, or “dancing place,” the crowd makes a giant circle, with usually half a dozen drummers along the outer edge. One by one, they start up their beat, with a boom-bum-biddy-biddy-bum, or perhaps a bum-diddly-bum-diddly-bum-diddy-boom, until it becomes a full-on symphony of rhythmic percussion from the djembes, tom-toms, and more cowbell than even Bruce Dickenson can handle. Inside the circle itself, random girls will shuffle awkwardly to the area in front of the drummers, only a few at one time, and stand around, swaying back and forth like the shy guest of honor who doesn’t want to dance at her party while everyone is watching. Then suddenly, like a fish snagged in a line, they catch the rhythm and jerk into motion, skipping in place on their toes, with their arms pinwheeling in the air. It looks at once spastic, but very deliberate, and it is nothing less than a trip to watch. Adding to the ethereal mood is the thick clouds of dust kicked up that glow in the fluorescent lights that look like spirits floating and dancing along (that would be the Tyndall Effect, thank you very much 8th grade physics). Over the night, the girls switch off, never more than a few at a time, with all sorts of exciting variations on the dance, some jumping into the air, some gyrating on the ground. By the end, even the onlookers are exhausted from watching.
The reason for this dance was to celebrate the next day’s arrival to the village of the governor of the entire Kayes region. (Mali is made up of seven regions. According to the villagers I’ve talked to, they are all under the same laws but unofficially make up their own rules, like the way the US would be if the world was just a little less organized but had a little more national-gumption.) In an unprecedented move, the governor was making a tour of some of the major villages and communes across the region to see the living conditions and hear the voices of his loyal subjects. Okay, maybe “loyal subjects” is not quite the expression to use; not one person I asked knew the name of the governor, nor quite how long he’d been in office. Since the position is governmentally appointed and only given to highly accomplished generals, and as I said, travel to the interior of the region is pretty rare, the excitement for his arrival, while high, was somewhat vague. All that was known for certain was that the mayor of Niantanso - my host-father - and the governor would both be speaking, and that the event would be heralded by music, dancing, and loads of food to feed everyone who would be coming in from all the other five villages in the commune.
The festivities started that night and went on until morning, then resumed again as the people waited for the governor to arrive around 10:00 am. By nine, the dancing, drumming and waiting began, and continued with shrinking energy and enthusiasm until nearly one when almost everyone had gotten sick of the sun and gone off to lunch. No sooner had we left than we were called back because “He’s really coming this time!” An hour later, he came. I was ushered to the front of the line of the greeting procession, alongside the mayor’s cabinet and other VIPs so they could show off the local American Whitey. So yes, now you can brag to all your friends that you know someone who shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with the governor of the Kayes region of Mali.
For as long and arduous as the wait was, the event was rather uneventful. The mayor spoke, addressing issues such as citizens refusing to pay taxes because they don’t trust him to not steal the money (but he didn’t want to have them arrested because in Malian villages, “we are all brothers,” especially during election years like this one), the CSCOM (public health center) that was built but never stocked or furnished making it now a glorified solar-powered cell-phone charger, and other local concerns. The governor then spoke very, shall I say, politically, promising to try his hardest to address these issues and raising a few of his own (“The Census takers are coming. Please cooperate with them; do not hide in the woods this time.”). I was unable to understand two thirds of what was said, but I had the local English speakers translate the rest so that I could be certain that I really did not miss anything important. From my own perspective, and in the opinion of most of the people I spoke to, this was a day made special by an in-person sighting of the governor, delicious food, dancing and a mercifully short hour of anticlimactic speeches.
There is a Malian phrase, “Do’oni, do’oni,” meaning “Little by little.” It is the most frustrating phrase I have ever heard in my life. It is laughingly employed when I am struggling through the language, having a hard time carrying the mud to build a house, and it basically means that (in what I see as the root of many of Mali’s various types of problems) everything will happen much more slowly than it should. It is the reason the governor took three extra hours to get to our village, and it is the reason it took three weeks to decide what to do with my Peace Corps service. I left the PC training camp at the end of January with a plan to immediately start having regular meetings of a new “Water/Sanitation Committee.” Our first objective would be to have a few organized meetings according to the PC guides on how to hold organized meetings to come to a good consensus on what would be the first major project I would help the village with. I had an idea that I wanted to fix a water pump that happens to be in my front yard and that had broken years ago. The pump head had been removed but the money was never raised to fix it, and in the meantime, some troublesome little children had taken to dropping rocks into the pump’s narrow well, making repair a lot harder and pricier.
It’s a long story about why the meeting took three weeks to organize, but it generally involved people going out of town later and for longer than they said they were, and other people doing absolutely nothing until I actually made sure I was with them to watch them do it. In the end, we had, not an organized first meeting, but a group of enthusiastic people who had been randomly gathered from around the town because they were bored and who agreed that every single one of my project suggestions was great and should be mounted immediately. After further explanation, they finally got the point and agreed that, much to the chagrin of myself and my need for personal privacy, the pump in my front yard must be made to work once more.
So after lots of do’oni do’oni, here I am now in Bamako, beginning to write a proposal for a grant to initiate the project and updating my blog. The “hot season” is kicking into gear, following a disappointingly un- “cold season” just in time for myself and two PC friends to embark on an exciting vacation to Benin, Togo and Bukina Faso, three countries that, like Mali, I have been dying to visit since I was barely old enough to pronounce “Burkina Faso.” A special update on that trip will come when I come back.
The only other major newsworthy news worth taking up your valuable time with right now is that I am expecting another vacation in a few months, this time to the USA! One of my three favorite sisters is getting married and I am coming home to celebrate. If you want to hang out with me when I’m there, I arrive in Philly on May 17 and depart May 27. Keep in mind that time for hanging out with me will be somewhat cramped as I have to do a lot of important things while I’m home like upload photos online and pick out new wedding shoes, but save the date and give me a ring!
That’s all for now, and please keep in touch. According to Google Analytics, this blog has been visited by people in nine countries, so I’m really curious to know who my Swiss compadres are =P
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