I asked Awa what it would take to eat rice that evening, and she was hesitant. To feed my whole family would require 27 kilos of rice (60 pounds), and just that alone would be around $16—far too much for me to spend on something as trivial as a birthday. “Why don’t you just have us cook a small amount of rice in the evening and then we’ll also make toh for everyone else so you don’t have to get so much?” But I was insistent. If I was going to have a good dinner on my birthday, so was my family.

Awa asked what people normally did for birthdays in America, and I said we generally ate a nice dinner and had cake. Cake, or gateau in french, exists in Mali as a distant relation to donuts. But at my mention of gateau, Awa insisted that we also make some for my birthday. It was a brilliant idea.

Word quickly spread that I was insisting on arranging dinner for the family for my birthday, and my first gift came early. One night about a week before the big day, I was sitting at Dubala while Hawa and Jenaba were susuing. My intentions to cook dinner came up and I was asking them what they thought I needed to get. Hawa said 30 kilos of rice (which Awa later refuted as WAY too much, we clearly only needed 27). Jenaba mentioned the tomatoes, the cabbage, the spices and things that could be bought in village. “But don’t buy onions,” Hawa insisted. I looked up and Hawa stopped her susuing. “Don’t buy any onions,” she said again, and Jenaba agreed, also repeating the phrase.

Birthday onions

“Don’t buy any onions?” I asked. “But we’re making yassa. It’s an onion sauce. I can buy onions.”

“No,” they both insisted, “Jaba be soro yan.” Onions can be found here. I was buying dinner, but the women of my family were contributing onions from what they had recently finished harvesting. I was so touched!

On the Thursday before my birthday I bought all the vegetables at market, and Awa gave me a woven basket to keep them in until the feast on Sunday. It wasn’t more than two days before I started noticing a strange sour smell in my kitchen and then realized the tomatoes were starting to turn. Nasty, rotting tomato juice was seeping out of the bottom of the basket and white mold was starting to devour the less fortunate tomatoes. For my twenty eighth birthday, I would have rotten tomatoes for dinner. Mmm. I threw out the worst of them, but the Malians’ philosophy was to pick the mold off and cook the shit out of the tomatoes and never think twice about it. So that’s what happened with most of them.

Awa wanted me to buy fish because meat was too expensive, but Seydou reminded me there were still two chickens that had been given to me upon my arrival that I had yet to eat. So, those were designated as part of the feast as well.

27 kilos of birthday rice

On Saturday, I went to my neighbor’s house to buy the rice. When relaying this story to a friend, I was asked, “How did you carry all that rice home?” Don’t worry, I didn’t! Two teenage Malian girls did. On their heads. Thank Allah for Malian kids…

My birthday itself was great. I spent the morning befriending Baniofla (it was my birthday on which she decided to be brave and walk with me to Dubala. It was my second gift, maybe even a little better than onions). Throughout the day, my family and neighbors came over to give me blessings to have a good next year. Birthdays aren’t generally known nor celebrated in my village, but my villagers somehow knew exactly how to make me feel loved on my day.

Jenaba, Jelica, and Seydou

Around midday, Jelica, Jenaba, and Awa came over to start preparing. Jelica and Jenaba picked rocks out of the rice while Awa and I started mixing the dough for gateau. Awa brought over a furneau, the metal frame on which to rest a pot over a fire, and once a tray full of little dough balls were made, Awa got to work frying them in oil. When the rice was picked clean, Jelica and Jenaba joined us in rolling balls of dough. Meanwhile, the girls in my family were put to work at Dukurala peeling and susuing all of the onions. Seydou helped by coming over to make tea and chat.

In the evening, we cooked the rice and sauce at Dubala, and enjoyed the feast. Then, Awa, Jenaba, and my teenage girl sisters and cousins came over to my house to hang out. They bought boisson, powdered drink flavoring akin to Kool Aid and we chatted until around 11, at which point we were all exhausted. When everyone had left, I fell quickly and contentedly to sleep. It was a great birthday.

The first day of this woman’s arrival, Baniofla could sense the excitement in the air as everyone hurried to greet the newcomer. “Bougourie nana! Bougourie nana!” her older sisters and brothers yelled as they ran across the widening to the empty house that separated her house from Dukurala. Baniofla was intrigued, but not enough to leave her mother’s side as she finished up the day’s laundry. With the last of the clothes hung to dry, her mother reached down and picked her up. “Lets go greet Bougourie!” her mother said, and Baniofla was happy to see what the excitement was about from the comfort of her mother’s arms.

They walked across the widening and entered a small courtyard. For as long as she could remember she’d played around the outside of the compound’s mud walls, but never before been inside. She looked around as her mom shuffled through the crowd. Most of the neighborhood kids were there by the entrance, all their attention focused on the back wall, under the new gwa. She looked back in that direction, and saw many of the older men in village seated under the gwa. It took a moment, but then she saw it: seemingly a person, but not like any person she’d ever seen. This person had light colored pinkish skin and strange looking short hair. It was seemingly a girl, though she was wearing pants and no head scarf. Her mother continued walking closer and Baniofla’s grip got ever tighter around her mother’s neck. “Bougourie, i ni ce!” her mother greeted as they approached, and then the white face looked up and spoke back in a strange accent unlike any she’d heard before. “Hawa! Nse i ni ce,” the voice reciprocated the greeting, and Baniofla shivered. She knew her mother’s name!

She could feel the fear overtaking her body, all the way in her toes, and pulsing through her clenched finger tips. She couldn’t breathe, but had managed to stay silent, perhaps unnoticed, until the unimaginable happened. Her mother finished greeting Bougourie and then, with no warning, thrust Baniofla forward, telling the woman Baniofla’s name. The woman answered back happily, but she couldn’t hear a word of it. She could feel her body shake and could hear only the screams coming loudly from the center of her body. She turned away, burying her face in her mother’s shoulder. Tears collected in her mother’s shirt and she could feel her mother’s footsteps leading her away, back home, back to safety.

The rest of the day she tried to carry on as normal, playing with her siblings and cousins, but she couldn’t help feeling like something was terribly wrong. As night crept closer, she couldn’t get the image of that horrible light colored skin from her head. That night, she lay on the mat under the mosquito net wedged between her mom and her sisters, and each time she closed her eyes, the day’s big event replayed in her mind. Her body would again fill with fear, and each time she would clutch her mother’s side, whimpering out tears, until her mother soothed her quiet again.

Over the next few days, it got worse. Bougourie was all anyone would talk about. Her siblings all spent time playing at Bougourie’s house, leaving her alone because she refused to go back. They talked about a strange metal toy that could stretch to be taller than anyone or contract to fit in your hands, but Baniofla wasn’t fooled. Worse, nowhere was safe from an unexpected visit from the evil light skinned one. One evening, walking with her brother Sada to Dubala in search of leftover toh, she looked up to find Bougourie sitting next to the women pounding millet outside. She froze in fear, her screams filling the air, until Sada lifted her and carried her back home. Another morning, she was eating her porridge for breakfast, like every other morning, and Bougourie strolled through her yard, greeting her family. She had no choice but to drop her spoon and run inside for safety.

Everyday, she found Bougourie in some unexpected place, and everyday through her screams she could hear the laughter of whoever was around, teasing, urging whoever she was with to let Bougourie hold her or to have Bougourie take her to Ameriki when she left. As the days passed, though, nothing terrible happened. She started being jealous that all the other kids spent time at Bougourie’s house. Sitting at home with her older sister Katou, Baniofla decided to find out what they liked so much about going there. “Lets go to Bougourie’s house,” she told Katou, and soon she was on Katou’s back entering the tiny courtyard again. Bougourie sat back against the mud wall under the gwa, and as they entered, she said “Eh? My friend Baniofla came over? Good morning!” Baniofla peered around at Bougourie, but at the sight of her, she was still overwhelmed with fear and buried her head in Katou’s back, muffling her screams. “Don’t cry!” Bougourie insisted, but it was too late.

More and more often, Bougourie sat at Dubala in the evenings while the women susued. Baniofla came to expect it, and would hide her face in Katou’s neck as she rode piggyback to Dubala. She realized that so long as she didn’t look, she could exist in the same space as someone with terrible light skin. The others would urge her to look, and Bougourie kept insisting they were friends, but Baniofla stayed focused, and kept her eyes trained on Katou’s neck.

Until one day she didn’t. Bougourie was there, as usual, and Baniofla had come with Katou so she could susu the breakfast millet for the morning. Katou had gotten a small bench so Baniofla could sit behind her, out of sight of Bougourie, while she susued. Bougourie greeted as usual, insisting they were friends. Then she said, “Huh, Baniofla, tiga,” and stretched out her hand offering peanuts. Baniofla was hungry, and upon Katou’s suggestion, she peered out from behind Katou’s tafe, or skirt, and accepted the peanuts from the strange light colored hands. When she was finished, those same hands offered more. Someone so generous with peanuts must not be so bad, she figured, and peeked out more and more from Katou’s skirt. The more she looked, the less scary Bougourie seemed. Her skin was still wrong, but she looked more like a person and less like a monster the more Baniofla watched her. Perhaps they could be friends after all.

The next morning, Baniofla was playing in the widening with the neighborhood kids when Bougourie came out for her morning walk. She stopped to greet her neighbhor BaJeneba, and all the other kids ran over to say good morning. Baniofla decided to join them. “Eh? Baniofla? You came to say good morning to Bougourie, did you?” BaJeneba said as they approached. Baniofla smiled, but said nothing as the adults shifted their attention back to each other.

“Where are you going?” she heard BaJeneba ask Bougourie, and then Bougourie’s response, “Just out for a walk.”

“Baniofla,” BaJeneba said, “Bougourie’s going for a walk. Are you going with?”

“Yeah, lets go for a walk,” Bougourie said, her light skinned face peering down with a smile. Still saying nothing, Baniofla swallowed hard and did what she knew she had to do. She took a step forward and reached out her tiny hand. White fingers clasped around it and together they started walking down the path towards Dubala. With each step, she could feel it getting easier, and by the time they reached Dubala, she knew she wasn’t scared anymore. Aunt Jelica was susuing, and Bougourie grabbed a small bench to sit and chat as usual. Feeling brave, Baniofla grabbed a bench, too, and sat right next to her. “Baniofla,” Aunt Jelica said, “Aren’t you scared?” But Baniofla said nothing. When Bougourie went to leave, she reached out her hand again, and let the white fingers clasp around hers. Not even a pitter of fear danced in her stomach, only pride, as she walked home with her new friend.

The good news was my village was exactly how I’d left it. The kids were two years older, but generally even wore the same oversized worn t-shirts as they’d had before. My mom still went to market on Saturday and Monday. Awa still hadn’t seemed to have seen an idle moment since I met her. Seydou was still on top of his responsibilities as keeper of the toubab. And I seemed to slip right back into things, sometimes forgetting I’d ever left. This time, though, everything was easier. In Peace Corps, I had felt I had to prove myself to my villagers and find some worthwhile project to improve their lives to repay them for the hospitality they’d given me. This time, I came back as a friend, no more, no less.

Initially, I’d felt I had planned my trip all wrong. Anyone with sense would come to Mali in the fall, enjoy peanut harvest and then watch the world slowly descend into the blessing that is cold season. No one in their right mind would start a trip in hot season. But here I was, and I was so thankful, because it turns out hot season is the best time to come back. All the work of harvest was over and most of the wood was collected for the year. The women were slowly rebuilding their garden walls with sticks, and the men were sometimes remudding houses, but otherwise, no one had very much to do. Which meant they had more time for me.

I made every effort to venture out of my house each morning and evening to see the women at Dubala, while they susued, or pounded millet. However, figuring out what time the women tended to susu was harder than I’d remembered. In the mornings, I often showed up late, finding empty kolons, or mortars, and nothing to do but return home and wait for the tea brewing to start. I had better luck in the evenings, though evenings were a little more raucous, as all the girls helped when they came home from school. In the mean time, I drank tea, chatted, read my kindle, and spent my evenings at Dukurala, watching the stars, and chatting with my mom and my sisters.

It took five days for me to feel useless. I had forgotten the general pattern of my life in the village: each day starting with so much promise, then stalling as I failed to accomplish anything. Then the feelings of guilt for having come all this way with nothing to show for it, and then of course wondering why I didn’t do more. But in the end, always a redemption.

I had spent my day surrounded by teenage girls. Ten of them, to be exact, with an additional ten to fifteen smaller children also in my courtyard at any given time. The girls descended on my yard like a flock of crows, their voices loud and crass and never ending. I wanted to engage with them, wanted to enjoy their company, as I liked all of them individually, but as a group in the tired afternoon sun, they were more than I could take. I sat reading my kindle while they gossiped and teased and braided each other’s hair.

In the evening, I went to Dubala as usual, sitting on a tiny wooden bench next to my family’s kolons. BaHawa and Jelica were there susuing, but so were half the girls who had been at my house, the ones I was so tired of. I sat quietly, distracted by my thoughts, only half paying attention to the conversations around me, until BaHawa rested a minute from her pounding and said, “Bougourie, I heard there was a plane that just disappeared and no one can find it. Do you know about this?”

I looked up from my bench, speechless for a moment, before telling her I had heard about the plane, and as far as I knew, no one had found it yet. She nodded and continued her susuing.

“Huhhh?” Jelica said, the Malian noise for surprise, “A whole plane disappeared? No one can find it?” Now, it was Jelica who paused in her susuing.

I elaborated with what I knew, that it was going from Malaysia to China, and that they thought it might have fallen into the sea, or else maybe it crashed somewhere else. No one knew.

“Well, that’s why you don’t ride airplanes,” Katou said, matter-of-factly, and everyone agreed. I smiled. I was amazed. I sat in the dusty nothingness that was eastern Mali, surrounded by women who have rarely ever seen anything else. And yet this tiny piece of international news intrigued even them.

Before long, the conversation shifted to what it’s like to ride on an airplane, culminating with the question, “Are there roads in the sky?” My bambara explanation of air traffic control was less than adequate. But these simple conversations, they were my reason for being here. They were what I had to show for my day, and they were enough.

That night a man in my village passed away. He’d been old, never married, which was almost unheard of in Mali, and drank a lot. His death was somehow alcohol related, though I got no further details. My women insisted I knew him, though no matter how much they described him, I couldn’t picture him. “The old man that always wanted to drink from your nalgene,” they’d said. I had no idea.

The next morning, I walked to Dubala with my mom Batoma and found Jenaba and my aunt Hawa susuing. Batoma was wearing her bright blue prayer scarf over her head, as women did when they went to pay their respects at the house of the deceased the morning after a death. Soon, all the older women in my family—my other two moms, my aunts Seli and Fatoumata, my grandma Baba—all appeared at Dubala, prayer scarves in place. They left in a group to greet the other groups of women at the man’s compound. I sat and chatted with Jenaba and Hawa until they were done with their susuing, and then Jenaba said, “Bougourie, an ka taa.” Let’s go.

I always felt uncomfortable going to greet after people passed away. I had never learned the blessings and didn’t know the protocol. I had felt like an intruder the two other times I’d gone to greet. We didn’t get far past Dubala before the men of the village were coming towards us with the body, headed to the cemetery for burial. Jenaba grabbed my wrist and I followed her lead. We stopped as they passed and lowered our heads. The sound of shuffling feet was all that intruded on the silence.

The man’s compound was lined with prayer scarf-clad women, each scarf bright and almost shimmering in the sun. A woman was wailing in grief in the middle of the compound, while other women supported her and helped her walk towards the door. As she passed, Jenaba and Hawa pulled me with them to stand against the compound wall, heads down, backs turned slightly away. I was grateful to Jenaba and Hawa for ensuring I was acting appropriately. We stood there for a while after the woman had left, and other women started coming up to us and greeting, normal morning greetings. I can handle normal morning greetings, I thought to myself. We never ended up giving any blessings. Perhaps the wailing woman was the one we were to give them to. After we’d greeted most of the people, we left and as I returned home, I realized this wasn’t as awkward as it had previously been. Mali was always getting easier.

I spent the rest of my morning at home, and in the afternoon, when Awa had finished washing clothes, she stopped by to chat. Awa was tiny, like her father Brahman, but also like him, it wasn’t the first thing you noticed about her. She was fast, always thinking quickly, and running late. She squeezed more into a day than most of the other women I knew, which says a lot in Mali. She was just less than a year older than me, and our friendship had started early in my initial stay. One day she had jokingly asked if I wanted to go help her in her garden and I had answered yes. She had been surprised, but then said, “Ok, an ka taa,” and at that moment a friendship was born. I had spent a lot of time in my first few months at site following Awa around, sitting nearby and watching, as she completed whatever task she was doing. (I was generally thought of as incapable of actually helping.)

Today, we didn’t chat for long before Awa asked if I liked onions. I answered yes, a little apprehensively, as I’d already twice been given bowls of cooked onions in oil, which was by far not my favorite snack. “I want to cook onions. Would you have some?” she asked. I was hesitant, but she seemed to really want to, so I agreed. She jumped up to get everything she needed from Dukurala, and returned with the furneau (the square metal thing on which the pot sat over the fire) a large bowl of the tiny onions my village grew, four tomatoes, and a cube of msg. We sent a kid to the store to buy oil, and soon we were busy peeling onions. When the onions were peeled, I was instructed to chop them, along with the tomatoes and some garlic I was contributing. Awa placed everything in a pot over the fire she’d built in my yard, and then sat down to chat while it cooked. It took a while, but when it was done, we had a pot full of tender onions in a tomato sauce that we ate with a loaf of bread Seydou had brought me from market the day before. It was delicious. However, more than anything I was amazed that this was how Awa chose to spend her afternoon. Her days were always full of work, and when she was given an idle moment, she insisted on filling it with more work. As soon as we’d eaten our onion sandwiches, she left to go pound millet for the night’s dinner, followed by pulling water from the well and filling up various water containers at Dukurala, followed by more tasks well into the night.

Another evening at Dubala, while Jenaba and our neighbor, Mamou, were susuing. Jenaba asked what I had done during the day and I told her I had done some reading. “Will you teach me to read?” she asked with a sly smile, clearly an impossible request.

“Of course,” I replied, trying to be encouraging.

“Don’t you think I’m too old?” she asked laughing, though she was likely only in her early thirties.

“No, you’re not old, you’re like a kid! You could certainly learn to read,” I told her, though I knew the likelihood of her actually making time to learn was very slim.

“Do you have Bambara books?” Mamou asked excitedly.

I shook my head. “Only English and French,” I told her, sorry to disappoint her.

“Oh,” she said, “I used to have some Bambara books, but they were ruined in the rain.”

“Can you read?” I asked, and she nodded with a wide smile.

“Yep! I like to read. It opens the mind,” she said. I was shocked. This village was always full of surprises. I made a mental note to somehow find some Bambara books to give to Mamou.

A while back, an NGO had come to provide adult literacy classes to my villagers. My uncle Amedou had been trained as the Bambara teacher. Seydou, BaHawa, and apparently Mamou had all learned to read Bambara. I asked Jenaba why they didn’t do that again. She shrugged. “People do study here now. At ngoh,” she said.

“Ngoh?” I asked, repeating the unfamiliar word back to her.

“Yeah, people study at ngoh on Thursday and Sunday nights.”

“Which people?” I asked, trying to get a better understanding, “Do women study there?”

“No, just men.”

“What do they study?”

Jenaba shrugged. “You should just ask Seydou. He’ll explain it to you.” With that, she looked down at her kolon and returned to her susuing.

I was intrigued that men spent two nights a week studying something that Jenaba couldn’t find the words to explain to me. I had a feeling it had something to do with Islam, but wanted to see how it was explained to me without me using the word. The next morning, Seydou and I sat under my gwa, a pot of tea bubbling away on hot coals between us, and I explained about the previous night’s conversation.

“What is it?” I asked, and Seydou smiled.

“They study Muslim things,” he said, and I smiled at his explanation, clearly simplified Bougourie-Bambara.

“Why do they study Muslim things?” I asked, also smiling at the silly questions that my limited vocabulary produced.

“It pleases them.” he said plainly, and I wished there was a Bambara equivalent to touché.

Since my return I had noticed a few changes in the level of devotion among some of my villagers. I’d always perceived my village as a pretty moderate village in terms of religion. The villagers identified as Muslim, and the adults tended to pray each day somewhere around the appropriate times. However, many more people than I expected were deemed either too old or too young to fast during Ramadan, and the oldest generation still held spirit festivals twice a year, where a dog was sacrificed and its meat placed in the mud oven-looking structures that sat outside of Dubala and a few other places throughout village. My grandma Ba made and sold millet beer to the other elders, so the Koran’s negative stance on alcohol was also clearly ignored. Before, no one went to our mud mosque on Friday afternoons, and the explanation I’d been given was that it was too small for everyone to go, and thus no one went. Now that I’d returned people were making a point of going to mosque on Fridays, and apparently, men were gathering to study Muslim things twice a week. I asked Seydou what was prompting this change. He shrugged and told me essentially that it’s good to try to be a better Muslim.

“But people still drink millet beer and kill dogs,” I said.

“They’re not Muslim,” he answered, and I was surprised. I’d thought everyone in my village was technically Muslim. Seydou saw my surprise, and continued, “Mama, your grandmas, BaMusa. When everyone else decided to be Muslim, they felt it wasn’t for them. So they drink and sacrifice dogs.”

“When did everyone else decide to be Muslim?” I asked.

“When my dad was younger,” he said, pouring the tea into the tiny shot-glass sized tea glass, a long stream of tea making foam at the bottom of the cup, then pouring it back into the pot then into the cup then into the pot.

Wow, I thought. The older people in village could remember a time when there was no Islam in village. I’d always assumed it had been around for generations. But here was Mali, teaching me not to assume again.

“But all the younger people are Muslim?” I asked. Seydou nodded. “So when they die, no one will sacrifice dogs anymore?”

“Nope, they’re the last ones that do it,” he replied.

“What? This is terrible!” I said, “What about the spirits?” The night I’d spent in my village during the spirit festival, I had been told by my very concerned sisters not to go outside in the night. No matter what happened, I was to stay inside until the morning. When I’d asked what would happen if I went outside, they said matter-of-factly that I’d die. So I diligently stayed inside all night, and not a person in my neighborhood came out of their houses until after 7. How could all these people be non-believers?

“Those spirits aren’t real. Nothing will happen if people stop sacrificing things,” he said, his look of ‘silly toubab, don’t you know this’ was very clear in his eyes.

“And no more mud ovens?” I asked? He shook his head while passing me a cup of tea. I didn’t know the word for tradition, but I tried to explain that rituals are important, that in America our traditions are to put a tree up at Christmas, to eat turkey at Thanksgiving, and watch fireworks on the fourth of July. That those were our traditions and it would be very sad if we lost them.

Seydou nodded. “We have traditions here, too. They’re to fast for Ramadan and kill a sheep at Tabaski.”

We fell into silence and as I sipped my tea I pondered what it was that I liked so much about the spirit festivals. Maybe I felt this was the real Mali, and that with the loss of those traditions, a piece of the past was dying. Maybe I just felt it was exotic and somewhat cool, and was sad to see it falling away.

My brother Dao joined us and our conversation dipped and curved in other directions until a long silence enveloped us, something not uncommon in a place where the same people sat and chatted in the same place every day. Finally, Seydou looked up and said, “You know circumcision?” using the french word for circumcision, as he tended to do with health topics.

“Circumcision? Yeah, I know it. What about it?” I asked, not quite sure where this was going. Female circumcision was common across Mali, but it was generally a pretty taboo subject, one I’d never discussed in my village before.

“It’s bad to circumcise girls,” he said simply.

“Why?” I asked, searching to see what he knew, not wanting to put words in his mouth.

“It can lead to infections, which can cost a lot of money,” he said, which was a very good point, among others.

“Why don’t they stop circumcising girls then?” I asked.

“Eh…” he trailed off, before continuing. “They don’t think it’s a problem. There are campaigns on tv and radio trying to educate people, but in small villages like this, people don’t listen. They think it’s done everywhere, but that’s not true.”

“No,” I affirmed. “We don’t do that in America.”

I looked up to see Le Vieille, Seydou’s five year old nephew walking into my compound. “Na Seydou,” he said, “Ko I ka taa.” Uncle Seydou, they said for you to come. This was a common practice in my village: if you wanted to find someone, just send a kid to tell them to come.

“Who?” Seydou asked.

“Ba,” Le Vieille said. His mother.

Seydou stood up, stretching. “Bougourie, I’ll be back in a while,” he said, ending our circumcision conversation, and leaving me confused about the idea of traditions. I’d spent my morning saddened by the eventual loss of sacrifices to spirits in my village. But how could I tell anyone that they should continue sacrificing dogs twice a year, while condemning them for their tradition of circumcising their little girls? Who was I to think their culture would be losing something if the sacrifices slipped away? It was their culture. They would certainly do with it what they pleased. As for circumcision, I strongly believed that when a child’s health and well being got in the way of cultural traditions, that it was a good indication to change the tradition. Perhaps both would be lost. Perhaps that was a good thing. At least I had a lot of time to ponder.

The widening held the heart of the neighborhood in its dusty emptiness, like the moment after an long exhale. It was flanked by no less than eight compounds: two of Seydou’s brothers at one end, then Gaoussou’s cow pen, followed by my uncle Amadou’s house, then BaMusa, then the older Seydou at the far end, before looping back around with more of BaMusa’s family, my house, the crumbling remnants of an abandoned home (its owner long gone to work in Sikasso), and ending with the solar panels and the broken solar pump back in front of Seydou’s brother Amedou’s house.

The compounds were each contained behind mud walls, which formed a loose border around the space where so much village activity took place. Near the solar pump, a ficus tree shaded the six large wooden kolons, or mortars. It was here that the thud, thud, thuds of wooden pestles permeated the darkness each morning, accompanied only by the self important call of roosters. As the village brightened, the widening was criss-crossed by sheep, goats, and cows headed west to roam the fields nibbling the leftover millet stalks and whatever else they could find. The villagers woke up one by one and all found themselves in the widening at some point: schoolkids on the way to school, women in the midst of their morning chores, and the men on their morning walks to greet all the other villagers they passed.

As each day wore on, the widening found quiet. The biting sun kept the villagers hidden under gwas in their compounds, the men dozing in their chairs, the women washing clothes or shelling peanuts or drying onions for sale. Only the small children dared to entertain themselves in the widening at midday, laughing, running, fighting, crying, venturing from compound to compound.

By late afternoon, though, life was restored, initiated again by the lone thud, thud, thud of a woman susuing. As the day wore on, the chorus of pestles multiplied, the sheep, goats, and cows criss-crossed back home again, and the men, finished with their work for the day, chatted in the shade of a gwa by the older Seydou’s house at the far end. School children returned home all at once, their voices heard far before they could be seen. The girls joined the circle of susuing or grabbed jerry cans to fill at the pump across village, and boys took over the middle of the widening, chasing a homemade soccer ball until almost dark.

Most nights, the girls would be the last ones home after they finished their susuing under cover of darkness, the next morning’s breakfast millet freshly sifted in their calabashes. Some nights, quiet would envelop the widening until the first thuds of pestles the next morning, but sometimes, under bright moonlit skies, the kids would form a large circle of singing, drumming, and dancing, and their laughter would seep into the quiet, restful compounds nearby.

My house was nestled right in the commotion, in the middle of the west side of the widening. Two small mud rooms, angled perpendicular to the widening, along with a courtyard, a small garden, and a nyegen, or pit latrine. The door to my compound was on the far side of my house, away from the widening, giving the impression that I was farther from the center of my neighborhood than I actually was. A gwa stood at the widening end of my courtyard, under which a concrete slab had been built. The door to my house opened onto the slab, and it was here, under the gwa that I spent much of my time. By day, I sat with my back to the mud wall separating me from the widening and I chatted with whoever was stopping by. By night, I set up my mattress on the concrete slab, my mosquito net hanging from the gwa, and I slept under the stars that peaked through the millet stalks that topped my gwa.

My house was also nestled in the string of my host family’s compounds, which also sat perpendicular to the widening. My host family was quite large, and could be broken down into three smaller families: my dad Baba’s family, my uncle Amedou’s family, and the man I thought of as my grandpa Mama’s family. Mama was the oldest in the family, but didn’t have any of the responsibilities of being the oldest man, because he was too old to walk much further than his compound wall. Thus, my dad was the one who made most decisions, including what we ate for dinner on a given night (it rarely changed from toh), and whether anyone was allowed to go work in the city. Baba’s house was across from my compound door on the very edge of village. We called it Dukurala, or the new house. My dad, his three wives Ba, Na, and Batoma, my sisters and brothers, and Awa lived at Dukurala. When he wasn’t in the city working, my brother Nouhoum, Awa’s husband, lived there as well.

On the other side of the widening from my house was my uncle Amedou’s compound, where he lived with his wives Hawa, Fatoumata, and Seli and their assorted children. Behind Amedou’s house was Naani Seydou’s house, where Naani and his wives BaHawa and Jenaba lived. Naani was Mama’s son, and Mama’s house was directly behind Naani’s. Mama had only taken one wife, whom we called Baba, but as is customary in Mali, when a man dies, his wives go to his younger brother. So, when Amedou’s dad passed away, his two wives, whom we called Ba and Bani, went to Mama. Mama’s three wives were the ones I considered my grandmas. Ba and Bani, however, didn’t live with Mama. Instead they stayed in what we called Dubala, or the big house, which was located across another empty expanse, across from Mama’s house. Dubala was the center location for my family, though only my grandmas lived here. The main family kitchen (a mud room with a fire and a giant cauldron for toh) was where lunch and dinner were cooked and served each day in giant metal communal bowls. It was also where the women susued, and where I spent much of my time.

Jelica and her husband BaMusa were part of Mama’s family, but lived over amongst Seydou’s people’s compounds, as did Lamini, who was Amedou’s son, and his wife Mamou. All in all, 63 of my host family members were living in village upon my return, with many others off working in the cities or in school. In rainy season, many would return home to work the fields.

While I was assigned to be a volunteer for my whole village, I mostly only knew people from Belakuna, and I knew the people who spent time in the widening better than those who didn’t. I knew my host family and its inner workings better than any other family, and I knew the people in Baba’s house better than Amedou’s or Mama’s. And within Baba’s house, out of my three moms, Na was the one who was more my mom than the other two, with Batoma coming in second, and Ba a distant third.

It is here, in the widening and in the surrounding compounds, that my story takes place. It is in this neighborhood, in this family in particular that I became a part of a village. Sandy, well trodden paths extended out from the widening in all directions, like arteries, leading to other places, other stories. But it was from the heart of Belakuna, the place where the path widened, that I let each day unfold in front of me and learned what I could from whatever unfolded. This is my story.

I sat in my courtyard under my newly built gwa, shielded from the midday sun. One by one, the important men shuffled in to greet me and welcome me back. They brought in chairs—the long reclined palm wood kind and the smaller metal framed rubber band kind—and they perched around me in a rough half circle and asked about my trip. Behind them was a wall of children, perhaps fifty in all, standing, sitting, pushing, smiling, scolding, crying, laughing. So happy to see their toubab! I scanned their faces—they all looked the same!—and I was so happy to see them, too.

I tried to stay focused on the conversations around me, but I couldn’t help but be distracted by the kids, by the constant coming and going of village men, by the general chaos that always accompanied this many Malians in such a small courtyard. The reality of the moment was overwhelming: I’d actually done it. I’d actually returned to village, and right now, I was actually sitting in my yard surrounded by the people I had missed so much the last two years. I couldn’t stop smiling.

I looked up to see my youngest host mom, Batoma, pushing through the crowd to greet me; I was so happy to see her, too! My aunt Hawa came to greet me with her youngest daughter, Baniofla, who was all of two and a half, and completely terrified of the strange white woman in her midst. She clung to her mother and shook and screamed for her life, while we all laughed at the poor little girl before she was taken away. My smile grew wider with each new person I saw.

More men shuffled in and out, and then a familiar voice pushed through the crowd, one I had forgotten that I would get to hear today. It was Awa, my host sister-in-law and my first friend in village. She had left to go work in the city halfway through my stay last time, and I had gotten used to life in the village without her. I couldn’t believe she was now standing in front of me! Awa held out a cup of water and did the slight, bent knee curtsey that was customary for women to do when greeting guests. I took the water, just now realizing how thirsty I was, and drank it while internally pleading with my stomach to stay strong. Bleach would have been a good thing to remember, I thought to myself.

I’d barely noticed that Seydou had disappeared, but when he returned, he held a chicken by its feet, hanging upside down, resigned to its fate. I smiled, knowing it was customary to give guests of the village a chicken. I was touched by their generosity, by the generosity of their custom, and was so grateful to be back in their company again. I watched as Seydou handed the chicken to one of the men and quietly explained that he was giving the chicken to me as a gift. The other men continued their conversations while the man accepted the gift from Seydou. He then passed it on to the next man, explaining again that Seydou was giving me a chicken as a gift. The chicken was passed around, working its way up the hierarchy of importance, until it ultimately ended up with my host dad, Baba. I accepted the chicken from Baba, holding onto its knobby legs while he explained to me my gift. I thanked him before handing it back to Seydou so it could return to me later fully cooked. We would undertake this ritual four more times before the day was done.

Awa left and returned a while later with a bucket of water and placed it in my nyegen, or pit latrine, so I could bathe. With this, the crowd dispersed until just Seydou and I remained. “Come see your house,” he said, as he led me inside for the first time. My eyes adjusted to the dimness of the small kitchen room, and I took in the dusty smell and the familiarity of the place I used to live. The dull mud walls looked more worn, pock-marked by termites and riveted in the places rain had gushed down during all the storms I had missed. The black plastic I had put on the ceiling to keep termite dust off my things had fallen down and been removed. However, there were my tables to the right, dusty and covered in cobwebs, but otherwise just as it’d left them. The big map of the world was still nailed to the wall, as were the pictures of Chicago and the valentine my mom had sent me just before I’d left. The pictures I’d hung of my friends were curled around the edges, but otherwise intact, and the dusty curtains I had sewn still hung from the window. My large bucket for washing clothes was filled with many of my dishes, which Seydou informed me he himself had washed. He then unwrapped a bundle of things he hadn’t known what to do with: lentils, black beans, bulger, and the bag of sunflower seeds I’d collected from my garden, all dusty from two years of waiting. In my second room, my bedroom, my bookshelf still stood, some of the books damaged by rain, but most of them still very readable. “A kine, wa?” Seydou asked. Is it good? “Yes!” I told him, “So good!” I looked away as my eyes started to tear up. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this fortunate.

Seydou left me alone and I changed into my tafe, or wrap skirt, to use as a towel for my bath. I grabbed my soap and went to my nyegen, a little nervous of what I would find. Not surprisingly, though, it was also just as I’d left it: unused for the last two years. As I bathed, I thought back to my first arrival. It had been much the same as this one, except the first time I was terrified. I had wanted so badly to give a good first impression, but the village men surrounded me and bambara words I couldn’t identify tumbled out of their mouths. I looked back at them wide-eyed and awkward, wishing my emotions weren’t so visible on my face. I had been exhausted from the bus ride, and even more exhausted from the new realization that I was a forty minute horse cart ride from the road on a path I couldn’t retrace if I’d tried. I had put all my trust in a village full of people I couldn’t understand.

My house had been nothing like I’d been imagining for over a year and the finality of knowing my fate had been too much for me in my dehydrated, exhausted state. I had wanted more than anything to be left alone, to catch my breath, to have the chance to accept my circumstances as they were, but when I had finally been allowed to bathe, Seydou sat in my courtyard, waiting for me to finish. From day one, his priority had been to make sure I was taken care of at all times, though I couldn’t see the value in that at the time. Instead, I had stood in my nyegen and silently cried giant gulping sobs, pouring water over my scrunched up face, trying to convince myself I could in fact live here for two whole years. How far I had come from that very first day, I thought to myself now, my smile still wide across my face.

After I dressed, Awa returned with a giant bowl full of leftover toh, the squishy, dull green mix of millet and water cooked til it was more or less solid, the consistency of forgotten oatmeal. It was generally dipped bite by bite into baobab leaf sauce, dark green and slippery, but as leftovers, both toh and sauce were combined into a slimy mixture that evaded hungry fingers searching for bites. For some reason, though, I liked reheated leftover toh better than regular toh, and this day, sitting down to eat with Awa and her four year old daughter, La, it was even better than I remembered it.

When I finished eating, I walked next door to my host family’s compound, where I found my teenage sisters and cousins sitting under the gwa. I sat down near them and was soon surrounded in a full circle by no less than fifty kids. I looked at them all, not knowing what to say to all the peering eyes. I was rarely the object of so much attention. My host sisters made things more awkward by taking pictures of me with their fancy new cell phones. It was the clearest change I’d found: only men had had cell phones when I left. One by one, the older women came to greet me, and it wasn’t long before my aunt Fatoumata asked if I remembered everyone’s names. She pointed at kid after kid and I pulled names from some far crevice in my brain, impressing even myself with what I could remember.

Before long, Seydou returned and saved me from my awkward sitting. We left to greet the dugutigi, or village chief. We walked the familiar paths across village, and the only noticeable change was the mud missing from the tops of compound walls, washed away during the last two rainy seasons, making the walls shorter and thus easier to see into people’s compounds. We greeted the dugutigi, and Seydou explained to him that I had come back to visit, that last time I’d been part of Peace Corps, but now I was here all on my own. He emphasized that I even saved up my own money to buy a ticket, which was quite expensive. I didn’t remember explaining to Seydou too many details of my return, and was touched that he’d pieced everything together. “A diyara an ye,” the dugutigi said. It pleases us.

In the evening, I went as I always had to my host family’s house, and found my designated chair under the gwa. I sat watching the stars peek out one by one in the dimming sky. My family shuffled around me, their evening routine the same on this night as every other. My sisters returned from susuing, or pounding, the next morning’s breakfast millet, my mom and dad prayed, Awa filled the clay containers with water for the horses and donkeys to drink. All the details of an evening that I’d forgotten were now right there in front of me, smiling, welcoming me back.

Seydou came by to tell me my rice and sauce that the women of his family had prepared for me was ready. My dad and I followed him to my house, where a giant bowl of rice and a smaller bowl of sauce filled with the pieces of my first returned chicken were waiting. We washed our hands and Seydou ladled spoonfuls of sauce over the hot rice. With our right hands, we took fistfuls of sauce-soaked rice, stuffing our mouths with the salty, msg-laden goodness that tasted like home. No one made rice and sauce quite like my village.

After dinner, I leaned back in my chair, staring up at the black moonless sky, dotted with more stars than I had seen in ages. I could feel the heat from the day radiating off the mud wall behind me. Long gone were all the apprehensions I’d concocted over the previous weeks. Forgotten were the feelings of isolation I’d perceived in the stillness of the early morning bus station. All the doubts about my decisions seemed silly in this quiet moment. I was not alone! I was surrounded by my adopted family, my adopted village. They say you can never go home again. But, I sat in my courtyard under my slightly shorter mud walls with my dad and Seydou, and I knew that’s exactly where I had come.

I blinked as I stepped out into the glaring midday sun. The world was hazy, dreamlike. Sure enough, there was Brahman, sitting under his gwa, legs flat out in front of him, weaving more baskets to place for sale by the side of the road. I waved to him and he hesitated before getting up, making sure what he was seeing was real. “Eh?” I could hear him saying. “Eh, eh, eh, eh?” The Malian noise of disbelief. My, how I’d missed Malian noises.

And my how I had missed this clearing. A place that had once seemed so elusive, so easy to pass by without noticing from the cramped insides of Malian transport. I remembered my first time here, so overwhelmed by what I had signed up for. How would I ever find this small clearing by myself, I wondered? How nervous I had been the first time I’d taken a bashé, or transport van, home from San, my friend Hannah and I snug between the three other Malians in our row. I peered out the window the whole 20 kilometers, heart racing, pondering the best plan of action in case I missed my stop. And then, I saw it: the tree with straw stashed between braches to provide extra shade. The two small mud buildings further back, the well, the gwa. “Ne be jigin yan!” I had said in my fragile, over-annunciated Bambara. I’m getting off here. The driver looked back in disbelief and I repeated myself louder. As the bashé slowed, I breathed a sigh of relief and Hannah patted my back, saying, “Good job, Bougourie. It’s always the little things.” Though knowing I was capable of finding my way home seemed far from little at the time.

Oh, the hours I’d spent here, waiting for a ride into town, hailing anything that passed, always both relieved and nervous each time a private car stopped to offer a ride. And then there were the times I’d come just to see Brahman, my host sister-in-law’s father. How happy he always was to see me. How proud he always was to show off the trees in his nursery.

How numb I’d been the last time I was here, sitting on the mahogany colored rock, sketching designs in the dust under my feet, forbidding reality from surfacing in my mind. Just another day waiting for transport, I had told myself. But it wasn’t.

It was that day I’d promised myself I’d come back to this clearing. That I’d take the wispy path through the bushes back to my village as soon as possible. What confidence I’d had in that simple promise. But coming back is never easy. Time goes by, circumstances change, people move on. How many times I had wondered if this was the right promise to keep? If I wasn’t better off putting Mali behind me?

But then, I heard it: the smooth roll of wheels gliding over the sandy path interrupted by the jolty clip clop of hooves, the creaking of wooden boards yearning to come loose, the uneven chorus of the axel and straps rubbing against the horse, against each other. I looked up to see Seydou and his horse cart, or wotoro, emerging from the bushes. The wotoro looked smaller than  I remembered, but Seydou—his black winter hat resting loosely above his heart-shaped face, mouth concealed by a dusty black airplane eye mask that the Malian men so fashionably wore to keep dust off their faces while driving—Seydou looked the same. As he rode closer, he pulled down his eye mask and I could see his full moon cheeks and his almost bashful smile revealing the few crooked teeth had left.

He hopped off the wotoro and we greeted the long, extended greetings reserved for those who have been gone a long time. Welcome! How are you? And your family? Are they in peace? Your mom? Your dad? All the people in America? Michelle? Is she at peace? Tom? Jim…? I stumbled through the answers, out of practice. After loading my bags, Seydou instructed me to get on the wotoro. I mounted with ease, my back to the cart, one hand on the axel, one on the side, one quick jump and I was sitting in my assigned place up front just behind the horse to the right. We waved goodbye to Brahman and rode off to his customary instructions to greet everyone, mumbling, “They will hear it,” after each person named. He finished as he always had, with a laugh, using his only English word “Bye bye!” and waving.

My body moved with the wotoro, naturally predicting the bumps and curves. The path was the same, if but a little more sparse than I had left it, as the women had already collected most of the wood for the year. The horse trudged along, pulling the cart past leafless bushes waiting for rain, the dusty khaki ground littered with pockets of dry leaves and dull, mahogany pebbles. We passed all the forgotten landmarks, the rocks I knew to avoid on my bike, the seven baobab trees to the right. And then in front of me, the familiar rectangular mud homes set back against the horizon across all the spiky, partially cleared millet fields, collectively making up a village, my village. Just as I had left it. I was home.

I, too, was there, standing with them, my body hollow from lack of sleep, my bags already loaded under the bus. I stood there watching the scene in front of me: the porters with their wooden carts stacked with millet sack-covered boxes, the women whose bright scarves concealed sleeping babies bundled to their backs, the low murmur of morning greetings uttered from each arriving passenger. I watched them almost in disbelief. I’d imagined this day for almost exactly two years, and now here I was, too tired to be appreciative, excited, or nervous.

My mind echoed with conversations from another world, one I’d felt no more a part of the night before at a French-run rooftop bar, stocked with cocktails, tapenade, and well-intentioned ex-pats. “You’re taking Malian transport?” they asked, surprised, “Why don’t you just fly to San?” As if San had an airport. But standing here now, I realized I’d never before questioned taking Malian transport. In fact, I’d never questioned much about living in Mali, because before, everyone else I knew was living more or less the same as me. Now, my toubab peers knew a much different Mali than the one I knew. Many had done Peace Corps elsewhere in the past, but had moved on to verified development careers, with a house, a guard and a translator. Few, if any of them, would ever find themselves here, watching the last of the bags being packed under the 6am bus to San.

And in the stillness, I felt acutely alone, only steps from the bus that would take me a day’s drive from the next closest English speaker. Was this really what I was supposed to be doing? Or had I just squandered the last two years saving up to get to a bygone place, one that dissolved overnight in the haphazard actions of a few disgruntled junior officers?

The station attendant pulled out his list and the passengers crowded around the door of the bus as he started reading names. Amadou Kone…Jenaba Dembele…Samba Diallo…and the passengers started boarding one by one. I listened intently for my name and pushed through the crowd when I heard the familiar syllables: Bougourie Coulibaly. I took the next available seat towards the back. Before long, the bus was pulling away from whatever small comfort and security I wanted to cling to in Bamako.

And then I remembered what was pointed out to me the night before: I was entirely free. I had no responsibilities, no organization to dictate when I came or went, no one to answer to except myself. I watched out the window as the Bamako metropolis stretched and sprawled then dwindled into flat, sparse countryside. And this freedom loomed large over the dusty unsown fields, filling the sky, stretching to the flat horizon, daring me to be intimidated. But I wasn’t. This was my freedom. This was my journey, and right now I knew I was headed in the right direction.

There’s a place on the road to San where just the trace of a path crosses the hot asphalt. If you blink, or day dream, or glance at your phone, you would certainly miss it. It’s even possible to be scanning the flat, monotonous horizon and seemingly be staring right at the path and still not notice its well-worn twists into the dull beyond. Behind you were pockets of forest, and ahead of you lay spiky partially cleared millet fields, then a village, then fields, then forest: the same pattern you’d noticed for hours. So it’s understandable to miss the details. I certainly didn’t notice my first time by.

But if you were paying attention, you might notice not only a path, but also two mud brick buildings tucked off to the side, one with its back to the road, and the other back further, facing you, but unfinished. You would also notice a well, and a little closer to the road, a structure called a gwa, built with four tall logs and covered with thatch, designed to provide shade. If you were really paying attention, you would also notice a little bench by the road with woven baskets, and maybe. Maybe you’d even see Brahman.

You see it’s Brahman who lives in the little house with its back to the road, perfectly stationed at the crossroads of the little wispy path and the big black gadrone, or paved road. He’s a tiny man, but it would take you a while to notice that about him. You’d first notice his smile, and then maybe his laugh, or perhaps his enthusiasm for everything. A happier man might be hard to find in these parts. You’d probably see him sitting on a mat under the gwa, with his legs flat out in front of him as he weaves more baskets to place for sale on the little bench by the road. And you’d probably find him chatting with whoever is passing through. By the nature of his location, he tends to know everyone from everywhere.

From the window of a bus, it is easy to overlook such things. To glance at Brahman’s house and never think twice about who lives there and who passes by, or where the path leads after it disappears into the bushes. But if you’re lucky, and you can stop, and greet Brahman, and take that sandy path, you’ll twist and turn past the fields, and Korogeulabougou to your left, then through the brush, past two cross paths, around where the big baobab tree fell, though its remnants are probably long gone by now, and then one more curve, and you will come upon a short, squat, crescent of a village with four palm trees precariously standing watch off to the right. You’ll first see this village from across all the spiky partially cleared millet fields, and the smattering of rectangular one-story mud homes set back against the horizon will look something like a Cezanne painting, just without the rolling hills of the French countryside.

From here, the sounds of the village won’t quite reach you, though you’ll have long since stopped noticing the hums and whirs of the brush around you. You’ll stare at this village, cast orange and motionless in the late afternoon sun, and it will stare back at you, matter-of-factly and unwavering. Perhaps you’ll want to believe in the secrets it may hold, its whimsical spirit, the stories that must lie just below the surface, waiting for you. Maybe you’ll stay long enough to find them. But for now, you’ll just follow the sandy path to the western edge of this tight-lipped village, down and up at the washed out riverbed that puddles when it rains, straight between the tall mud walls of two neighboring compounds, and past the broken solar pump where the path widens. Here, you’ll find a village like any other, methodically preparing for sunset. To your right, a circle of women and girls will be pounding millet into flour, and the thuds of their pestles will echo off the walls of the nearby compounds. Boys will run barefoot in the sand in front of you, chasing a homemade soccer ball, or maybe just each other, and further down, in the long shadow of someone’s home, the old men will sit and gossip and simply pass their time.

Yes, if you are lucky, you will find yourself here on this path at the cusp of evening. And you’ll stay for a night or a week or a year. If you let them, these people will become family, and you’ll learn the nuances and intricacies of their lives. And this dust-swept village will become your home. At least it did mine, when I was in your shoes.

I’ve wondered a million times how to start a story from the middle, and I feel no closer to an answer than when I started. It’s a puzzling place for a storyteller to be. So much has happened, and, yet, still not enough.

My story began here three years ago. It was with such excitement that I posted my first entry explaining the adventure that I saw lying ahead of me. I was so proud to have decided to leave my job, my life, family and friends, to instead make my home on the dusty Sahel. Mali, I told myself, would be where I truly learned to live.

And live I did.

It’s almost uncanny how accurately I described how I expected my life to be. “My village will likely be around a thousand people, and I will be assigned a counterpart who will assist me in my integration as well as my implementation of various projects as a volunteer. I will likely live in a mud house, with a couple rooms, a propane-powered stove, a pit latrine, and a pump well located within walking distance from which to collect water,” I wrote. And so it was. Though you knew that already.

I intended to share with you all of the pieces of my story, so you could follow along at home. I tried to wrap up my thoughts in short vignettes to shed light on my experiences and also expand people’s perceptions of life half a world away. Initially my task was not that hard. Everywhere I looked I saw remarkable things worth sharing. Every moment felt special as I adjusted to a world so different from the one to which I was accustomed. First through training, then when I got to my site, I wanted to explain every hue, every interaction, every thought.

However, the longer I stayed, and the more I adjusted, the harder it was to explain anything. The more I learned, the less I could decipher which aspects of my fascinating new life were worth relaying to all those following along at home. Every sentence I scribbled in my weathered and worn cahier possessed a back story that was too tiring to get into. And there I go again. Cahier. The French word for notebook. Perhaps I should have added footnotes? But then what is a vignette if it only makes sense thanks to a littering of superscript addendums smirking after every sentence?

But now I’ve returned to you. Feebly explaining my absence, and humbly trying again to describe the indescribable. I have so much to catch you up on; the only question is where to begin?

Do I start from where I previously left off, with Selini? With what was supposed to be my next posting about getting a kitten from Jim’s village? One who turned out to be crazy, and adorable, and ultimately eaten by village boys? What about the second kitten I got twenty minutes after I told Seydou I wanted a new one, the one so small it fit in my pocket, bent tail, underdeveloped mew, worms and all? Do I better explain Seydou, the man who started out as my village-appointed overseer, but turned into my most trusted Malian friend? Do I try and fill in all the missing pieces I left out the first time around?

Or do I start from where my Mali story was put on hold? The morning I learned of the coup? The day I left village, or left San, or left Mali? Or Ghana? Or when I arrived in America? Where do these things start and stop?

Or do I give up on the past and only inform you that somewhere in the space and time after Selini, I have both left and decided to return to Mali? I could say that the harmattan winds are beckoning me, but the truth is that I’d made up my mind that I was returning before I even left village. A temporary hiatus was clearly much easier to face than an actual ending. And while it took almost two years to save up for it, I’m following through with a promise I didn’t ever think twice about making at the time. I suppose you could call me stubborn. Determined. Most likely, just crazy. Either way, I quit my job, repackaged all my things into storage, and bought a one way ticket to a dusty, sun-scorched afterthought of a village. How long will I stay? What will I do there? Why am I going back? These are all good questions. If you’re looking for answers, though, I suppose you’ll just have to stick around a bit longer to see this story to its end.

Shitan was quiet and submissive in the presence of Seydou’s male friends, and I was quiet and exhausted as the night inched along towards morning. It was even harder to follow Bambara conversation when I was tired, and though I was leery staying up late the night before a holiday, I knew I couldn’t leave until I ate. I alternated between dozing in my chair and keeping myself company with my wandering thoughts. As the time passed, I frustratingly wondered how long it could possibly take to make pasta, something that cooked in mere minutes. It wasn’t until I realized that it was like the American joke in slow restaurants: ‘What, did you have to go kill the cow before you could make my hamburger?’ They actually probably did have to slaughter the goat before I could receive my meal.

It was around one in the morning when Seydou’s sister-in-law arrived with two large bowls of macaroni and meat. I sleepily ate, feeling guilty with my frustrations that surrounded something that was such a treat to the Malians. Meat and macaroni meant special occasion, and I should have been grateful to be included in this small pre-feast, even if it meant less sleep.

The next morning I woke up early as usual, and was soon the lucky recipient of more meat and macaroni for breakfast, this time from Hawa. The village was quiet as the men and older women went to the mosque to pray and the younger women cooked lunch. I took advantage of the quiet to sleep a couple more hours before getting ready for a day that would prove bipolar from a combination of too little sleep and too much time with Malians.

I got dressed up in my finest Malian outfit and spent the rest of my morning at Seydou’s brother’s house, drinking sugary Lipton tea and watching an international track and field competition. An American won a gold medal, and I chuckled at the jarring juxtaposition of the Star Spangled Banner infiltrating the heavy morning air of the dusty mud compound. It felt like a lazy summer Sunday in America—if I blurred my eyes, I could almost be on my mother’s couch watching track as she went through the Sunday Tribune. As the time passed, though, I grew anxious, not knowing what my family’s plans were for the day, and not wanting to miss anything. I was enjoying watching the competition, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing.

After eating rice and tigadegena with more meat, I left and ventured to dubala to see what my family was doing. I arrived just in time to find rice being dished into the many bowls that would feed my large family. I walked with Hawa back to my house, as I was still not allowed to eat at dubala (their reasoning was always that there were too many people; I’d given up my protests). I was left alone to eat my generous portion of rice, tigadegena, and meat.

Not long after Hawa left, Shitan stopped by with one of my host moms, Batoma, and my host brothers Tijani and Yunisa. It is customary in Mali to invite people to eat with you if they stop by while you’re eating, and with an abundance of rice and having already eaten lunch, I invited them to join me. We crouched around the bowl, enjoying handfuls of rice. Eating with others always made me feel like part of the family.

After my second lunch, I went in my garden to check on recently planted thyme. My presence in my garden drew the attention of passers-by, and before I knew it a crowd of people ranging from kids to teenage boys had gathered to look at the toubab’s garden. Some simply looked over the wall, asking me what was what, and others walked around my house and entered my garden to get a better look. In the middle of explaining things, a teenage boy I did not know walked across the garden, leaning on the wall, and started yelling over it to someone a ways down the street. In doing so, he obliviously stepped on my tiny thyme sprouts.

I couldn’t spew Bambara fast enough; instead, “What are you doing? Get away from there!” came out in English. Everyone laughed at the silly toubab inexplicably speaking English, which frustrated me even more. I kicked everyone out, knowing I’d reached my limit for Malians for a while. I shut my door and sat by myself, relishing the quiet, but also feeling guilty and frustrated for not being with Malians on their second biggest holiday of the year.

By the time I felt refreshed enough to enter the world again, I returned to dubala to see what everyone was doing. I ran into Jelica as she was leaving, who told me they were all going to Jenaba’s to hang out soon, and that I should come. She told me to wait for Hawa to finish the dishes and to go with her. Hawa was taking forever, though, so I decided to visit Cekoroba [my host dad’s brother, who is called ‘Old Man’] because he can’t walk well enough to leave his compound and I thought he might enjoy the company.

We sat and talked for a while, and I quickly came to the realization that he was one of the few people in village I had little trouble understanding. He finally looked at me and said somewhat out of the blue, “Well, are you going to take my picture?” I took my camera out of the small case I had it in, and said of course I would take his picture. He told me he had to get his hat, and so we waited for his wife (who we call Baba, the same thing we call my host dad) to return so she could fetch his hat from inside his house. Much to his delight, I took a very distinguished looking picture of Cekoroba. I promised him that if I went to Bamako, I would get it printed and give him a copy.

Leaving Cekoroba’s house I wanted to go to Jenaba’s but knew I’d promised Shitan I would go on a walk through village and found her just in time. Shitan, Shata, Arijatou (all teenage girls), and I went walking through town sembe sembe-ing. It was customary on Seli to go around town visiting different families and giving them blessings in exchange for candy—almost like a Malian trick-or-treating. I quickly realized I had not been properly prepared for this endeavor, though, when Shitan, Shata, and Arijatou spewed off a few minutes worth of “May God give you a good year; May God give you good health, etc.” in unison, while I could do nothing but stand silently by hoping no one noticed my silence.

I got frustrated when people would notice and ask, “Can’t you sembe sembe?” I didn’t have the Bambara skills to say, “No, I don’t know all those blessings, no one told me beforehand that this was something I needed to learn, I’ve never had to sembe sembe before…” As the day wore on, my patience was dwindling in frustrating cultural situations, and while I knew Malians just had no concept of the challenges I went through adjusting to their culture, it didn’t make it easier.

We walked to the far reaches of the village, and I alternated between feeling out of place and appreciating being included in this Seli custom, despite my shortcomings. Finally, I felt I’d given sembe sembe-ing sufficient time, and told the girls I was going to Jenaba’s house.

It had been hours since Jelica had told me they were going to Jenaba’s house, so I was very glad when I found Hawa, Mamu, and Jenaba still there. I sat down and immediately my frustrations vanished, replaced instead by a feeling of relief. While I found Shitan to be immensely helpful, she was only 16 and functioned more like a little sister than a friend. I enjoyed her company, but sembe sembe-ing with Shitan I felt like a guest. With Hawa, Mamu, Jelica, and Jenaba I felt like a friend. They were my own age, and they were the people in village with whom I felt the most comfortable.

Overall, I enjoyed myself on Seli. It was certainly a nice change of pace from normal village life, and the increase of protein was much appreciated.