I Bless the Rains Down in Africa

(That's right, I pulled out the Toto)

During my shameful lack of blogging, Rainy Season came and has almost gone again…sort of. Even I can tell it hasn’t been a very good rainy season, and this is my first time experiencing one. Rainy season is supposed to last from July-October/November-ish, and we’ve certainly had some rain, but nothing like what was described to me. It’s worrisome…this is a country where over 80% of the population are farmers.  Mali is already one of the poorest countries in the world…Number 4, I believe I recently read? I know the millet isn’t as tall as it should be. I know some crops got planted later than they should’ve been, because the rain didn’t come. I know the farmers were/are worried. The lack of rain will affect these people, my community, for a long time to come, particularly next year around this time during “Hunger Season,” when people are using up the very last of their stores before they can harvest again. It’s not good.

I have had some interesting Rainy Season experiences. For instance, planting. Like much of rural Mali, most of the people in my village are farmers. In Mali, men and women are both responsible for farming, although they have different roles. The men plow the fields, using a metal contraption called a soli that has one wheel up front and two handlebars in the back, kind of like a wheelbarrow. One person leads a team of some combination of horse, donkey, and/or cow. The animals pull the soli, and another man guides it with the two handles. The whole team plods along back and forth, back and forth to loosen up the soil.

After the field is plowed, the women can plant the seeds. Women and children are in charge of planting. Which means I got to help! Alima took me out to the fields on several different occasions. The first time we walked 40 minutes out to her dad’s field to drop off his bike (don’t ask me why; he took a donkey cart out there). Then we walked home again. An hour later, we walked the 40 minutes back to the field. Out in the fields we climbed the trees. Alima helped her dad plow a little. Then they decided it looked like rain and I had to go home. Allah forbid the toubab get wet! Despite my protests, we went home. (It didn’t rain. Weather is finicky here).

The next time, Alima and I went out alone to the millet/bean field. We walked all 40 minutes out there with Alima balancing a gourd on her head, the big gourd full of 3 smaller gourds, each with a small cloth handle and full of millet and bean seeds. Halfway there, Alima told me to wait for her as she turned off into a random field, walked to a random tree, and pulled 2 planting tools called dabas out of the branches. How she knew which field and which tree were the right ones I’ll never know! We continued walking and had almost made it to our destination when some men working in the fields called out a greeting to me. I turned around to respond to them but kept walking – and walked right into Alima’s back. She stumbled and struggled to keep the gourd on her head balanced, but in the end it toppled – and all of the seeds with it! I felt awful! Millet and beans seeds were all over the ground. We picked up as many as we could and stood up to continue on our way. Before we walked away the men greeted me again, this time chuckling behind the words. Oh, that funny toubab!

Once out at the field, Alima taught me how to plant the seeds. Step 1: take off your shoes. Whack the dirt with your daba (it looks like a hoe), drop in a few seeds, cover the dirt with your daba, step on the dirt, take a small step forward, and repeat. A lot. Because we were planting the seeds so close together, we ended up basically just remaining bent over double the whole time as we worked our way up and down the rows. After about 20 minutes Alima decided it was break time. We sat in the shade and drank some water, then continued planting for another 15 minutes or so.

At this point, Alima decided I should learn how to make tea. But we hadn’t brought any tea supplies with us. Which meant we had to walk all the way back to town, stop at my house to get some money, go to the butiki to buy tea and sugar, and go to Alima’s house to pick up the fire brazier. And then walk all the way back out to the fields. Which we did. An hour later, we were back in the millet field armed with tea supplies. Alima had carried the brazier the whole way, stopping to pick up sticks as we walked in order to keep the fire going. As Alima started making the first round of tea, her mom Djeneba and some other women and kids arrived at the field with lunch – toh, of course. Djeneba had been worried that toh wasn’t good enough for me (it is) so she’d bought and brought a loaf of bread and a can of sardines. I don’t get it, they know I don’t like fish, but apparently sardines don’t count as fish. I would’ve rather had the toh. Instead I forced down the sardines, and found them rather to my liking! At the very least, I didn’t hate them. And then I ate toh anyway. Soon after lunch (and tea) was finished, the storm clouds rolled in and the toubab had to leave. And so we once again walked all the way back to village – all that back and forth for barely 30 minutes’ worth of work! If only I could make them believe I can handle physical labor. Sigh.

Tea is made in 3 rounds and we’d only had the first out in the fields, so we went back to Alima’s house to continue making tea. I said I would stay until the rain started. We sat in Djeneba’s house with Alima’s brother Yaya and her half-sister Fakouma. It was quite fun, just the four of us laughing and joking around as the wind picked up, the sky darkened, and the thunder and lightning started. I was enjoying myself so much that even when the rain started I stayed to finish tea. I taught Alima the chorus to Shakira’s song Waka Waka (This Time for Africa). If you don’t know the song, you should, but since you don’t, the chorus goes like this:

·      Zamina mina eh eh/ Waka Waka eh eh
/ Zamina mina zangalewa/
Anawa aa/ Zamina mina eh eh/ Waka Waka eh eh
/ Zamina mina zangalewa/ This time for Africa!

It’s a Cameroonian priori language and translates more or less to

·      Come, come/ Do it, do it/ Come, come/ Who called you?/ Yes, I did/ Come, come/ Do it, do it/ Who called you?/ This time for Africa!

Obviously this is not Bambara, but apparently African languages in general are easier for Malians to pronounce than English, because Alima immediately picked up on all of it except for the last English line. That one we still occasionally review.

So I was having a great time and all, but eventually I decided I needed to go. I needed some Michelli time. Alima was getting giggly and silly and I was starting to get cabin fever. I told the kids I was going home and they looked at me like I was a crazy woman – who in their right mind would go out in that downpour?!? I played it off like it was nothing. “I’m not scared of a little rain!” (It was a lot of rain. And thunder. And lightning). They tried to get me to stay till the rain ended but I insisted on going, and so I did. As soon as I stepped out into the open I was soaked. But I had to keep going! I made it through the concession and into the street before my flip flop broke for the first time. Malian flip flops are generally pretty cheap and tend to break eventually – the middle thong part breaks through the top of the sandal and you have to push it back through. You can do this for a long time before you have to buy new flip flops, and I’d been doing it for awhile. 

My courtyard after a rainstorm

I stepped into the street (alley) and it was like walking into one of those kiddie areas at a water park. The houses lining either side of the narrow alley had drainage pipes coming out of the roofs and facing out into the street. Funny, I’d never noticed them before. But now? Now they were gushing out water like you wouldn’t believe! Between the 4 pipes and the narrow street I was doomed. It was at this point I started to think maybe I was in fact a crazy woman. But on I went! I made it to the first intersection before my flip flop broke a second time. And a third. And a fourth. By this time I was soaked, fed up, and starting to worry that the book in my bag might be getting a little damp. So I took off my flip flops and trudged home in shin-deep water, fighting currents, rain, and Allah only knows what was at the bottom of the water – I went the short way, the way we’ve been avoiding since Rainy Season started and the ɲεgεn runoff has gotten a little too rank down that street. Crazy woman indeed.

I finally made it home and wrapped up in my towel, leaving my soaked and muddy clothes outside – they certainly couldn’t get any wetter or dirtier! I sat down to read. Storms are always kind of exciting because it means everyone goes inside and we toubabs get a little bit of daytime privacy! So I was excited to continue reading my latest book, Three Cups of Tea. (Read it, it’s good!) I got about 15 minutes in when the rain stopped. Figures. It wasn’t long before the kids were knocking at my door! “Michelli? An be barokε?” (“Michelle? Can we hang out?”)