The Rains
For the past month and a half, my eyes have never strayed far from the horizon. I watch as puffy clouds with luminescent white tops and flat, make-you-pout-grey bottoms roll by, wishing for them to bring rain. My tin roof sounds like a bowl of rice krispies as you pour milk on them, but I rush out to find a beautiful blue sky and mocking sun. These clouds that look like you could pluck them from the sky and eat them, spun sugar melting on your tongue, are just for show. I continue with my daily business as the Malians do, until the winds announce their arrival. Trees bend, sheep scatter, and newly washed clothes hung up to dry are cast into the dirt. At the signal of the winds, Malians rush frantically to move everything important under cover as I twirl around in my yard and watch the rain clouds - now giant, smoldering grey masses tinged with lightning - gallop across the sky. I don't even mind the dust clawing at my face.
Last night I tossed and turned fitfully, finally waking at 1:00 AM, drenched in an obscene amount of sweat, unable to make myself lay back down on my heat-radiating foam mattress. I grumbled and whimpered as I stumble-crawled to the floor in my middle room, curling up and praying more of a breeze would find me there. It was somewhere in the 80ºs, a warm but nice nighttime temperature, but the humidity held the air in its hot, slippery fingers. 1/2 an hour later I was startled awake and for a second thought I was back home in the summer, acorns crashing onto the sunlights. As more drops started falling and the wind ripped past my house, I realized a storm was finally coming, releasing the pressure. Getting back into my bed, I felt the spray of a leak. Too relieved to be upset that my mattress was quickly soaking through, I grabbed a bucket to catch the drops and turned to sleep on the other side, cooled by a breeze and soothed by the rain rushing onto my tin roof.
Rainsticks never made sense to me until I came to Africa. Stretching my young imagination as we poured rice into nail-riddled paper towel tubes in girl scouts, I could almost see it. But the first time I woke up to a storm gathering force on our metal roof in Cameroon, swelling into a thunderous surge, that's when it clicked.
The rains here are people's lifeline. Like farmers the world over, Malians stand in their fields, looking to the sky to tell them when to plant. They need the rains to work with them, need the storms to fall enough but not too much and not too early. These few, precious months are the only rains we get here. If they fail or change drastically, the country would starve.
As the heat reaches disgusting levels and the humidity gathers its troops, idle wishes of rain turn into pleas to the heavens for a short reprieve. They acquiesce, but at a price. With the rains come the flies, more than you can imagine, carrying micro-things-you-don't-want-inside-you to everything they touch. Then come the mosquitoes, annoying and also dangerous, injecting malaria into as many people as they can. The roads and the paths turn into muddy rivers, and all of the animal droppings -from cow down to chicken - scattered there mingle with the mud, leaving your feet splattered with questionable materials.
The Night
The night belongs to the children. When the moon is hiding, the only sounds are the croaks and chirps of toads and crickets, and you can lose yourself in the stars. Not held back by light pollution, they twinkle and gleam. The big dipper often rests on it's handle to the west, but other constellations are blurred in the innumerable sea of lights, the cotton swath of the milky way.
But then as the moon returns, so do the noises of human habitation, of children. Somewhere, someone is blasting music. Chores are rushed and hasty explanations are babbled as everyone who still lays some claim to childhood bursts out into the night. The giggles, screams, and pounding feet are in my ears well past midnight. The moon I am used to is calm, motherly, quietly beautiful. Here, the moon shows a different face; radiant, she fills the night with light and you squint when you try to look at her. When I sleep outside and the moon is full, I wake up in the middle of the night, my eyes tricked into believing it's the sun.
The Sunkalo
(Soon-cal-oh) is Bambara for the month of fasting, or Ramadan. Every day, my village wakes up at 4:00 to eat their first meal. It can't be labeled breakfast for it scorns simple coffee and porridge, instead claiming large servings of toh or rice and sauce, hopefully with some form of protein. Malian women, who'd be up by the end of the meal anyways, just start the rest of their day. Those fasting aren't supposed to have food or drink (that includes water) until about 7:00 PM, when the sun sets.
Early in July, Drissa mentioned how all 3 of the previous volunteers fasted for a day, but then didn't bring it up again. The rest of my village teased me before and now during the fast, when they see me take a bite to eat or a sip of water while the sun is awake. Many volunteers spend at least a day fasting to better understand and connect with their villagers. For me, the 2 days I joined them were for the pride in Drissa's face as he told other people, and their further nods of approval as they passed the information on. They recognized that I was fasting not out of any religious obligation but rather because I am theirs and they are mine, so we're all in this together. My fasting was a sign of respect, of community.
Still, I've found this month exhasperating. Based on the lunar calendar, the dates of Ramadan change about 10 days every year. This year, it fell exactly in August. August is a big month in Mali. The rainiest month of the year here, most Malians go out to work in their fields all day, each day, to prepare for and plant their main cereal crops. As they are planting for the coming year, families try to stretch the extremely low stores from the previous year - here, August is known as the hungry month. The days, usually noisy and full of people chatting and drinking tea, turn quiet between people out working and others sitting, too exhausted and hungry to do much more. Pregnant women, young children, and older people are exempt from fasting, but everyone else is expected to do so, even if they are doing manual labor in the fields all day. I respect my villagers' piety, but can't help wrinkling my eyebrows in concern for their health.
Peace & Love
Elyse
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