When we first arrived, we spent a lot of time of walking. Our previous house was near the river and it made for a country walk to school, with farming fields and mango groves all around. Since we've moved, car troubles have resulted in a lot of walking to the main road. We also began a nightly walk through the neighborhood. It means getting to know your neighbors a bit (turns out there are a lot of friendly folks willing to offer a ride- walking is really the best way to get to know a place.) It also means a lot of time inspecting the earth.
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| Just behind the lettuce fields, a path opens up.... heartbreakingly filled with garbage |
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| Sometimes we get to see this beautiful horse |
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| Almost magical, if it weren't for the depressingly real trash |
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| Favorite purple flowers we always stop to smell |
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| Almost serene |
While it is impossible not to feel panic and remorse about all of the garbage around, there are small pockets of beauty too. And mystery. I began noticing the "packages" around our neighborhood shortly after we began walking to school every morning. I saw them on the main road near the carrefour just before the turn off for the river. I also saw them occasionally on the intersections of the dirt roads in our immediate neighborhood.
After a trip to Segou, when we visited the bogolan workshop, I had an idea of what they were. Our instructor had mentioned the small sacrifices made at the crossroads, and the hope that they would bring healing and prayers for those in need. When I asked a friend about the packages I was seeing everywhere, he had a slightly different interpretation.
Rather than wishing for strong thoughts for the weak, he suspected the contents, wrapped in leaves, were meant to send curses and bad luck out into the world. He said sometimes they were left on doorsteps or in front of houses.
Perhaps the real answer is a bit of both. Intentions are everything. Maybe a similar leaf wrap contains the ability to do harm or good, depending upon the spirit in which it was discarded. What I haven't really been able to get answers about is what exactly is inside. Or how it is prepared? Or by whom?
I think I actually saw a table full of them as I drove past a market one day, deep in the middle of a side neighborhood as we searched for a short cut around traffic. These days I am mostly content to sit with my wonder a bit, observing without the constant need to seek answers.
I marvel at the frequency. I saw them every morning on our walk to school- someone was feeling insistent. When we began walking to the road from our current house, those packages could be seen at least once or twice a week.
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| Most of the ones I saw were not still wrapped in plastic |
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| Intentions: for the good or the bad? |
Another mystery that is likely to end with more questions than answers concerns a little patch of road, also at an intersection- a coincidence I hadn't considered until just this moment. It's on one of the main paved roads and gets a lot of traffic. There is a square hole there. I don't think it would be too much of an exaggeration to describe it as a living hole. It is a stubborn, resistant hole. It will not be tamed.
All manner of solutions have been tried- from the obvious- just pave over it, to more creative solutions such as placing a palm leaf in it to alert drivers, to putting a board over it- for those drivers who somehow manage to miss the palm leaf, to this:
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| Rainy road alert |
I suspect this latest addition- the tall board sticking up, was the result of recent rains which flooded many roads and would have left the dangerous, deep hole invisible to drivers. Every solution seems to work for awhile, temporary fixes for a determined hole that won't go away. It's as if each fix becomes absorbed by the hole. After only a day or two, the hole reappears, still square, still empty inside, still disrupting the roadway.
Although I am not pro-concrete, I wonder why someone doesn't just fill it with concrete (although, honestly, I think I do remember something like that happening, and the top of it bowed and curved under the pressure of the cars until one day, the hole reappeared and whatever had been used to fill and pave over it had been absorbed by the hole.) I often imagine Stephen King could wrap a good tale around the energy of this hole and maybe some creepy ill effects spreading out to the people who pass by it daily.
On the other hand, maybe it could be a spirit of the earth, determined to break free from the confines of concrete and steel and other manmade impositions. Maybe it begins to draw in the rest of the road way, like the pull of a sinking ship, until the surrounding warehouses and big trucks are consumed.....
Just a few little mysteries of Bamako roads.
