No comment- stories of Malian tradition

I am getting farther and farther away from things I know and understand. This is supposed to be a good exercise in growth and personal reflection. Instead it's become something of a circular road. Drissa and I have been working on a painting series for many months now. It began as a tribute and recording of traditional dance- the why, the how, the when. Our series of paintings is meant to be transformed into children's books that detail the history of traditional dances.

But as the first project nears an end, we have travelled far from things I find familiar. Drissa must start the skeleton outline of each of these compositions, as I can't even begin to imagine the scenery. I am tasked with writing the story to accompany our paintings. A children's story. Somehow, I must find the child words to talk about the tradition of jabbi- painting henna on the hands in a certain color before the wedding- this color to be revealed at the big dance ceremony- this color to signify if the woman was 'innocent' before marriage or.....not. Who would say they weren't? I wonder.

But Drissa assures me that the women know if they start their marriage with dishonesty, it will bring bad luck. I suspect he doesn't really have the answers to my questions, and if I am going to be able to write the book, I will need to find a woman to pose my many questions to.

We are on the last of the images. Currently we are working on the seclusion. A period of 3-5 days when the woman must stay in the house of her husband. She can receive visitors, but she can't go out.

As Drissa fills in the details, my questions mount. How am I ever going to turn this into 'kid-friendly?" He tells me normally the woman wears a cloth but not much else. I suspect this is so she will be "ready" for her husband, at any moment. He also talks about the displaying of the sheets- the blood stained cloth that is hung outside the hut to prove her innocence to everyone in the village. Except he explains it as a cause of celebration- she is passing from a young girl to a woman.

I am of two minds here, as so much of tradition inspires. It is good to celebrate passages of age and life stages, something I believe America has lost. I believe this lost rite of passage has become the cause of much confusion and disrespect in youth. But the public airing of your most intimate life? I am not sure I can get behind that one.

Isn't it really a way to control women and keep a firm male dominance in place? I think it will be better to leave this part out- of the painting and the story. Instead, we have a woman sitting on her mat, wrapped in white cloth sharing oranges with someone who has come to offer gifts.

"She is like a queen," Drissa insists. "She sits and doesn't do anything but wait patiently while others serve her." I don't see it quite that way. Prisoner is what comes to my Western mind. Or maybe it is my female mind. I wonder how Malian women view this tradition.

He agrees that it is something that happens rarely now. He laughs a bit, saying young girls don't always wait for their husband. But I know that, too, is a perspective he can't really offer with truth. Young girls these days are coerced by their school professors and strangled by the poverty that faces them. They often have little choice, and the choices they do make, don't really belong to them.

Last year his own sister was married off- at the tender age of 18. Perhaps even a bit old by Malian standards. The brothers protested, but I imagine it was a feeble attempt to get their parents to permit their sister to continue her education. There isn't much of a promising life at the end of that road.

Schools in Mali still need a lot of positive PR. The university system is even worse, spending more time closed than open. Students, like Issa, Drissa's younger brother, may find their names on two lists at the end of exams. If they pay a little something, they can get their name off the failing list and permanently inscribed on the passing list. And if they don't...? They take the course again, or drop out altogether.

Isssa has chosen to continue his studies, but he concentrates on painting for a future. They find a lot of mural work for restaurants and embassies, and Issa has secured a few small jobs painting ads on the outside of barbershops and groceries.

As for our painting series, we hope to be finished by February. The paintings really are beautiful and likely to garner much admiration- that Western kind that ogles over day to day scenes of ordinary life, finding a charm on the surface that may not exist in reality.

If we do a second set, I would like to focus more on the dance and the movements. A kind of abstract expression of the beauty of human form and capability. The dances are beautiful, and powerful. There is a transformative effect when one takes up the traditional movements- and it complicates the real life details.

I am getting better at living in two minds, accepting conflicting details of beauty and oppression. Because sometimes, life is just that way. I think it might help to look at it as history. Transcribing the past traditions. But it is a challenge to write about something that I disagree with. I admit the pages sound stilted and factual. I find it difficult to infuse passion and magic. I am not sure if the story is beautiful, or if it is even meant to be beautiful. Maybe it is just meant to be history. Without judgement or comment or personal interpretation. Maybe this is what I need to remember to transform this ritual into a child's book - I am merely recording lessons of their history, their culture and their country. Perhaps they will view it as a record of their progress. One day.

Collective Monsters

I’ve been seeing monsters everywhere and it’s not just because I’ve recently finished reading The Girl In Between by Leakan Zea Kemp. That story was wonderfully odd and slightly unsettling in a way so many of the books I’ve been reading lately haven’t been.  

The monsters have been around long before I began that journey. It has to do with the construction going on everywhere. The corner of horses has been razed. Just another casualty of progress. But I have found a tragic poetry in the removal of their grazing grounds, now filled with machines, overturned dirt and cement. It’s a huge road project that is turning over all the back country lanes and transforming them into highways. It will be pretty when it is finished, in that sterile, carefully planned and organized way. They will plant trees and flowering bushes in the round-abouts and along the road edges. There will be enough green to please the eye and dull the senses, making one forget to even wonder what it looked like before, wild and untamed. Beautiful and natural.

Getting around the traffic backups as a result of the construction means taking even longer short cuts, through Akuedo- a name I love to say. Akuedo is a village by Abidjan terms and the streets there are small, barely wide enough for two cars to pass. There are no high walls hiding the houses. They have doors that open directly onto the sidewalks. The windows are covered with wooden shutters giving the place a quaint European feel.  I enjoy the disorienting aura of this small town all the while knowing it is just lying in wait, a vulnerable victim of progress that is encroaching. In a year, or maybe less, the monsters of steel and concrete will have arrived to tear down houses, enlarge roadways and build row after row of apartment buildings lacking character and history.

I am in the middle of this change and it is painful to watch. During the rains I ponder the effect of all that cement working as a barrier between earth and sky, disrupting the natural relation of water falling down and being soaked back up again. I imagine the water as a living thing (and isn’t it really?) surprised as it hits the once soft and supple terrain, shocked by hardness and forced to scatter, searching for a place of comfort, soft soil to welcome it home again.

I see these monsters cloaked in a shadowy haze, like something from a Stephen King novel and I wonder what will happen when there is no more soil left for the rain to soak into. What will happen when every inch has been broken and defeated and the world is covered in concrete? Maybe it sounds dramatic or extreme but I fear most often that no one is taking it seriously enough.

 The construction/destruction debate is not the only evidence of energy being devoured. Once the metaphor is in my mind I begin to see signs of it everywhere. I search for solace in the world of dance and when it fails me, I blame it on the monsters. I've been seeking not just to replicate what I knew in lives past but to make it better. When my day to day fails or even when I want to celebrate, I turn to dance. Making art is generally something I do alone, a private exploration of my inner emotions and reactions to the world around me- but dancing? It's something I turn to for that sense of sharing and belonging. Its a creation made in multiple and seems to be most pleasing when there is a team of people sharing energy together. And that's what the draw is- that sharing of energy in community.

The past few weeks, however, I have been the only person in my dance classes. They've morphed into private lessons. While this seems like an amazing opportunity I have come to dread the moments I am there. They are stale and stagnant, slow moving and boring. My dance classes have suddenly become incapable of sending me off into that other realm of freedom and liberty of thought and simply just being. I remain rooted in agony. It's because of the monsters. I've come to steal energy and it's not there. My dance teachers are tired and unmotivated. They know I will never dance like them and so they offer up watered down movements while they focus on easing their pains from the rehearsals and performances of the previous weeks.

I am tortured by this change because if I don't have dance to turn to then I have nothing and there must always be something. I know I am the monster that's come, not to share energy but to gnaw and gnash and gobble up all I can before making a hasty retreat back to my lair, where I will dine greedily on my treasure until it begins to wane. Only then will I venture out in search of more. The problem is the source appears to be drying up and I need to find a new well, a new village to plunder of its energy children.

Of course, in some stories, the dragon is remorseful- he doesn't want to be trapped forever stealing children and gorging until his belly is full, sleeping away weeks in a coma of digestion, rising only to be forced to steal and pillage again. He wants to be a happy dragon, living in peace with the villagers and using his fire breathing capabilities to light their cook stoves and share stone soup.

With this new metaphor in mind (not all monsters are bad) I set off for my dance class determined to reach deep inside and find some energy to share. It's been mostly successful. I am forcing myself to dance with enthusiasm and exuberance I don't really feel. I push through the awkward moments of feeling silly and frustrated by steps I cannot master. I demand repeats of what I do not know and add my own flourishes to steps I love. I try not to care that the drummers are sending out tsunami waves of energy with their rhythms and I know I can never repay them. Guilt has no place here. I dance to the best of my ability and hope they will accept it.

In the end I suppose it could be a matter of pretending until it's real, fake it until you make it. Though no amount of pretending or faking is going to save the green spaces. Maybe art is the first step to making that change, though at times it seems too small and insignificant a step. A beautiful quote from this school suggests otherwise.  

There are many practical and physical things that need to be done - but the problem is mobilizing people's will and purpose. Essentially, what needs to change is our perception of the world and our relationship with nature. A feeling of connection to the natural cycles and interdependence of the world will assist individuals to see the cycles and balances in their own life, and from there potentially move to a community and worldview. 

In essence, defeating the monsters within, our collective monsters.