These are Memories that Make us Cry

There have been so many times over the past 10 months when things have seemed perfectly clear and happy and we have felt connected to people and inspired and hopeful by things we have encountered. There have been other times when we have felt overwhelmed, out of our element, and discouraged...At a camp site in New Zealand one beautiful night, we began to make a list of some of the memories that have been most impressionable. Africa featured heavily on our list; it was full of intense emotions for us...Thinking about these memories makes us cry.


* Querido* Old men are the best customers at traditional cafes, here in Argentina. They seem out of an another era, and would make great photos, sitting at sidewalk tables, deep in conversations over coffee and cigarettes. The other day, while we were sitting in a cafe, we saw two old men hug each other and say goodbye. One called after the other, "Ciao, querido!" (beloved one).

*Gentile* On our 3rd day in Senegal, we were feeling a little bit overwhelmed. We had failed to be adventurous enough to take a bus from the capital city to the beach town of La Somone, where we were staying. The bus station had been desolate and daunting and we ended up spending way more money than we wanted to take a 3 hour cab ride out to the beach. While swimming in the ocean just outside the walls of our over-priced, Western-style, fancy hotel (there weren't other options for us. Senegalese people don't often stay at hotels. only priveleged tourists like us do), 4 beautiful and friendly Senegalese boys started talking to us. In a mixture of French and English, they welcomed us to their country, asked us about the United States and ourselves. At one point, one of the boys told Joe, "you are so gentle..." The word for kind in French is gentile, so we knew what he meant. We loved it. The caretakers of our hotel, Le Fenix, there in La Sonome were also amazing. They were not accustomed to a "high-dollar" tourist (at $90 US, we spent more in 1 night at this hotel than most Senegalese make in 1 month) like Joe stopping to talk to them. From the gardener to the manager, Joe befriended all of them. He practiced his French and got all kinds of travel advice (the manager, at one point, told Joe that "every price in Senegal is negotiable"- a very important thing to know!) and information about Senegalese culture from them. While I could not understand what they talked about (in French), I watched these guys seek Joe out time and time again (the gardener knocked on our door one time, just to chat). They did not stop smiling the whole time they talked to him.

*Tortue* The Dogon country in Mali is anthropolically famous because when French academics "discovered" (began to study) the area in the 1960s, people were living in clay-walled homes in the cliffs. They had been there for hundreds of years, and their cliff- dwellings were advantageous because they were camouflaged and from their vantage point the Dogon people could spot danger and enemies for miles. Now, the Dogon have moved out of the cliffs and down the valleys, but they are still a very distinct people, with a different language and history than others in Mali and the region. Taking a guided walk (there are no roads) through the Dogon is high on the list of tourist attractions in West Africa. Usually, walks last for 3-4 days and tourists sleep in Dogon villages along the way. Finding a good, Dogon guide to lead you on a walk is a challenge, though. We decided to take our trip to Dogon with our new friend Nick, who we had just met, from Maine. Nick was a Peace Corps volunteer in Guinea (a West African nation close to Mali) and he had a recommendation for an English-speaking guide from another Peace Corps volunteer. Our guide's name was Usman. He was awesome. But he spoke almost no English. We communicated with him in broken English, broken French and broken Malinque (the local language in Guinea that Nick spoke and most Malians kind of understand). We did not learn anything about Dogon people or their land or history from Usman. At one point, he was trying to tell us a story about the the spiritual leader of Dogon villages/clans who would lock themselve in a clay house with an alligator and a tortue for days in order to divine some inspiration and direction. Nick asked what a "tortue" was? We really never knew what Usman was talking about and we usually didn't ask. But this time, we did. It was hot as hell and we had been walking all day long in the blazing heat. We were standing next to ancient, pygmy (a very long time ago, the Dogon apparently used to be pygmies) cliff dwellings and Nick wanted to know what a "tortue" was. Turns out it's a tortoise (French). But the four of us giggled up there for about 20 minutes. Usman did not know why we were giggling and we didn't really either, but we were nearly hysterical with laughter. Felt great.

*Le Compagnard* Our last nights in Mali were a blast, surprise, surprise. We met up with Nick, our Mainer Peace Corps friend, again, in the capital city, Bamako, and saw some incredible live music and became regulars at a Peace Corps/ex-pat bar called Le Compagnard. We had a little crew of people who spoke varying degrees of English and French. We communicated with a lot of hand signs. Our first night there, I realized that the 3 men sitting next to us were speaking Spanish, which is a rarity in West Africa. Not only were they speaking Spanish, but I was understanding everything they said, which meant they were not Spaniards. I got excited and leaned over and asked them where they were from. They were Mexicans! In Mali! [at one point we asked them if there were any other Mexicans in Mali and they answered us in all seriousness that there was one more, a woman who worked at a company in Bamako]! Joe and I, being great big Mexico-lovers, began an immediate rapport with these men, who were pilots with a Malian airline and had been living and flying in Mali for a year. They joined our eclectic group, which now spoke a mix of French, English, and Spanish and hung out together til the bar closed the next two nights! Joy!

*Akon* Akon, a world-famous rap/R&B singer, who moved to Jersey City from Senegal when he was young, is a national icon in Senegal. Everyone listens to him at all times, everywhere. We were fans before we got to Senegal, but while we were there, we became indoctrinated. Sadly, people in Senegal don't know what he is singing about. He sings in English, and they don't speak English. That does not prevent people from singing along, however. During our first week in Senegal, and in West Africa, we were lying on our hotel bed in the beach town of Saly, sweating to death, with the fan turned up high. But we could still hear the little kids outside, in the poor neighborhood where we were staying, singing Akon. They were butchering the English (and had no idea what they were singing about), but they sounded damn good.

*Angel girl* We had some rough times in Senegal (well, all of West Africa). The heat, the dust, the unexpectedly high costs, the very long, horrible bus rides or very expensive cab rides to get from place to place wore on us...A week into the Senegal portion of our trip, after taking a couple-hour cab ride, we arrived in a town called Joal-Fadiout that our guide book had described as a historical, 1/2 muslim, 1/2 catholic beach town. I despaired upon seeing it. The beach was awful, the town was super undeveloped and I could not imagine what we were going to do there. Luckily for us, the very young (16? 18 year old?) proprietress of our hotel was an Angel. I don't know how else to describe her. She had the sweetest, most lovely voice, smile and face. She soothed me down to my core. She wore a head scarf/covering so we could only see her perfect little face- no hair, no neck, etc. She made everything better when she smiled at us. She made us dinner the night that we stayed at her hotel. Joe told her that I was a vegetarian and she had many questions about that fact. "Did I eat rice? Tomatoes? Zucchini? Did I drink beer? Tea?" Normally, this might have been a bit annoying after a while, but I didn't care, as long as she kept coming to talk to us. She made our time in an otherwise run-down hotel in a very strange, desolate but interesting town...

*Banfora boat children* Burkina Faso is the fourth-poorest country in the world according to the United Nations development index. It feels like it, too. One day while in the small, pretty city of Banfora, we rented the most horribly decrepit bikes imaginable so that we could visit a regional park with a lake where hippo herds lived. After suffering through the ride on our stupid bikes, we arrived at the lake. But the boat man was not there to take us to see the hippos. So, a man sat us down in some chairs in the dirt at a little store (can I call it that? they sold soda, that was it) to wait, while he went to summon the boat man. Needless to say, we were a novelty in the area. Several kids came to sit by us and stare. It was hard not to stare back, especially because they were all awfully skinny and deformed in some way. One kid could hardly walk because he had bandied legs, another had a giant, distended belly from malnutrition and they all had orange hair because they were missing essential vitamins. I tried to smile at them, but I was nearly crying the whole time. They were so cute and so earnest and I wondered if they were going to make it in life? Would they see adulthood? While we were sitting there, a gorgeous, fat little baby girl came running into our circle. She was about 2 and she had incredible energy, while the other kids were lethargic. She ran around and grabbed things and threw things and generally acted like a 2 year old. I was transfixed: a healthy child! I could not help feeling like I wanted to abduct her and take her far away. I wanted to make sure she retained her health and energy and enthusiasm.


*Mali/Burkina border* We took a horribly over-crowded, miserable little van on an relatively untraveled route to get from Mali to Burkina Faso. We had successfully gotten ourselves stamped out of Mali, at the Malian side of the border. It was a bit of a question how it would go because we were 2 of only 4 tourists on the bus and sometimes border guards might ask for a "donation" to ensure our passage from one country to the next. The Burkina side of the border consisted of a lone, cement building in the hot, red dust with nothing around for miles. One guy, one desk, one stamp in a cement building. This border guard took his time. He had nothing else to do, no other entertainment, so he talked to every single person on the bus, while filling out their visas. Joe had been in there with him for a really long time with no progress on our passports, but was having a great time chatting, when a Burkinabe young man who had been living in France and was returning to Burkina to visit his family, slipped the border guy his passport with a 1000 CFA note (about $2.5) in it. He wanted quick attention, obviously. Duh, Joe, I thought: why didn't you try that trick? But the border guard took the note out, gave it back to the kid and said that he would need it while he was studying in France. It was amazing: an immigration official, with nothing, in the middle of nowhere, giving back a French resident an amount of money that would buy a Coke in France, but might make a real difference in his own daily life in Burkina...


*Joburg Bus Station* Johannesburg: the most dangerous city in the world, apparently. South Africa has a serious problem with crime and violence and we always had to be very vigilant while there. We were only going to Johannesburg in order to fly home, and we had been hearing scary things about it the whole time we were in the country. We arrived in Joburg on the bus. The hostel we were staying out was going to send someone into the bus station to escort us out to the car, because the neighborhood has such a bad reputation for violence. We were just supposed to stay inside the station. Fine, but I had to go the bathroom. Was that allowed/advisable/smart? Would I be mugged or knifed? I had to go find out, but I told Joe to flag down one of the many cops hanging out in the station if I took longer than 5 minutes. I went and got in line for the ladies room. I was the only white woman in a crowd of very large, very tall black African women, most of whom had enormous and heavy bundles that they carried on their heads when they moved up in the line. I stood there nervously, but as I approached the front of the queue, one of these ladies told me that I was next (someone had tried to cut me in line and I was going to let her! she had 100 pounds on me), another told me that their was no toilet paper and a third handed me some out of her own bag. They did not smile, but they made me feel safe- like people were watching out for me in the most dangerous city in the world.