Constance's nephew Michel (on the right) with his friend in front of the store
Constance with her journal of poetry
Men chatting on the storefront porch
The food stand in front of Constance's boutique
The name Fatoumata here is like Elizabeth in the U.S. in that the name is extremely common and there are multiple nicknames. While Elizabeth has Eliza, Lisa, Liz, Beth, Betsy and Betty, Fatoumata features Fa, Fanta, Fati, Fatou, Fatime, Fatouma, Time, and Tiou Tiou. And it seems like every third person I meet is called by a derivative of the name.
When I lived in New York, I wore comfortable shoes to and from work and nice but not necessarily distance-friendly shoes at work. Here people wear nice not necessarily distance-friendly shoes to and from work and they slip into comfortable shoes inside.
Unfortunately our water situation has not gotten better. Saturday night I "bathed" using an almost full liter bottle of water that I patiently coaxed out of several taps. This morning the same thing. What is the deal already!? There was just enough water Sunday morning for Rodney to wash the dishes that were piled high in the sink but that was it. It's too hot not to have water to bathe and flush toilets and wash dishes, to clean in general. It makes me reflect on the plight of the millions in the world whose access to water is limited. And it puts some perspective on the health and sanitation problems in the world.
On a recent walk through the neighborhood I noted how many of the buildings that are currently being constructed already have people living in them. They have a roof and a floor. They have three walls but the fourth is open to the public like a staged play and therein they conduct their daily business. Just in front of their open room they cook, wash laundry, and themselves, and children play. And across the street there are huge mansions with high walls on which iron spikes sit and multiple windows from which the inhabitants can look down upon their neighbors, if they so choose.
I was in Constance's store when an old man ran in and said something to her in Bambera. She handed him a bar of soap and he ran out. Did he pay? I asked her. No, she said, He's poor and his wife is giving birth right now. Oh, so he has a midwife. No, he doesn't have anything to pay the midwife, Constance said. So you mean he's attending the birth by himself, I ask incredulously. She nodded and said he would wash the newborn child with the bar of soap. I thought for a minute and then asked what the child would eat. Mother's milk, she said. No, after a few years, I said. She clapped her hands together horizontally, opened them and quickly threw them down palms up. In this occasion the gesture meant nothing. They will have to go door to door to beg. I soaked this up and then said, he's kind of old to have a newborn... The man had walked, more like hobbled, with a stooped gait and he appeared quite grizzly. He's not that old, Constance said. Being poor just aged him quickly.
The next day a woman came to the store and greeted us from just off the porch. She was well-dressed and appeared to be in the middle of a pregnancy. Twins, a boy and a girl, followed behind her. Constance came out from behind the counter and dropped a coin into her bucket. After the woman moved on, Constance sucked her teeth and said it was not good that she was pregnant again as she couldn't feed the two that she had.
Saturday Rodney and I went to the Artisan Village where all types of artwork was on display. Sand paintings like those the Navajo make (another coincidence), musical instruments like djembe drums and the kora, ceremonial masks, sculpture, bags, cloth paintings, material, jewelry, handmade crafts. And there were other interesting things as well, dried heads of rabbits and monkeys and snakes.
Constance says the latter is used to do gris-gris. She says frogs are used too. She says a sorcerer can put gris-gris on a frog and it will come find you to put a spell on you whether you are in another city or another country. Even the U.S., she says. I can't tell if she is trying to spook me or if she really believes it.
Frogs come out in her patio at night. Constance keeps her distance. I amuse myself by throwing peanut shells near them and watching as they go from being statue-still to leaping and flicking a tongue out at the peanut shells in a split second. If the peanut shells been insects they wouldn't have stood a chance. Neither do they stand a chance with a newfangled contraption that Maxime and Constance call Chinoiserie...from the Chinese. Maxime came out with a tennis racket. I was wondering if he played. But he simply pushed a button on the racket and started waving it in the air like a wand. It kills mosquitoes he said, and then he handed it to me. I waved it and then was surprised when I came across a mosquito and the racket zapped it. I heard the zap sound and saw a spark. A little gruesome for sure but considering I have no less than 8 mosquito bites at the moment, I can't protest.
At Mieko's on Sunday Rodney and I cooked again. We had pasta bursting with vegetables of every kind, eggplant ratatouille with curry, paprika, and nutmeg (yum!), salmon croquettes, and plantains. It's funny to me that I haven't been here that long but I am already craving Malian dishes that I haven't had in a while, the spicy tomato sauce over rice and a Senegalese dish of rice and fish cooked with lemon and tamarind. After eating, we made up our own game of Scattergories. We wrote the letters of the alphabet down on scraps of paper and tossed them onto a tray and created different playing cards with different fields. How creative we are! We had a rousing game and I ended up winning. Rodney says Mieko and I cheated because he was ahead for a long time but we both passed him at the end.
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