Category: Updates from Mali Summer 2009
Turning somersaults in the dust
Dear friends of GAIA,
After a week in Mali, I have returned home. My body is here, but somewhere, behind my retinas, a change has taken place and my view of Providence has been irrevocably altered. I look at clean streets and solid sidewalks and bright streetlights and I miss the families that should be gathered there, sharing dinner by lamplight. I miss the children that – if this were Bamako – would be turning somersaults in the dust by the side of the road, the bicycles transporting crates of chickens, and the rows of chairs full of bodies watching soccer by communal TV. Driving down street after street here in Providence, there is not a single donkey standing in an intersection. There are no baskets of oranges, no stacks of brightly colored plastic teapots, no curtains of sneakers hanging by their laces from store fronts, by the side of the road. Crossing the bridge over the river, I do not compete for space with big green bashis filled to the brim with smiling people, who laugh at the slightest provocation and share smiles as we edge forward, in endless traffic together. Horns do not honk. Policemen do not whistle. Diesel fumes do not fill the air. This city, on this side of the ocean that divides us, is silent. It is night time in Providence. The people who live here are locked in their houses. The mullahs do not sing out the hours of prayer.