a couple firsts, and a new mom

**pics to be added soon**

Saturday, Oct 18
So I’ll soon have a new host mom – Danger’s getting married again! I haven’t yet met the new girl, but I hear she’s at least 20 years old and already has a kid. Not sure about much else – Mamu (our resident housecleaner, cook, etc.) knows less about it than I do, and I don’t see Danger much anymore. He’s gone all day and comes back in the evening when I’m cooking dinner and then reading. His habits haven’t changed, mine have – it used to be that I would go to sit on his porch as soon as the sun went down, where Awa would feed me and at 7:00 everyone’s favorite TV show came on, a Brazilian soap opera dubbed in French called “Au Coeur du Pêché” – “In the Heart of Sin.” This soap started on Malian TV just a couple of weeks before I arrived in country last year, so I got to watch it from the beginning and I must admit I got hooked. It starred a guy named Paco who always had a 5 o’clock shadow, and since the TV’s the only source for what most Malians know about the outside world, they now call any white male with facial hair “Paco.” Indeed, I’ve had a group of kids following me down the street yelling “Paco! Paco!” Not that I’m complaining – it’s not often that I get confused for a gorgeous Brazilian soap opera star! It’s much better than “toubabu,” anyway.

Anyway I mention ACdP because it finally ended just before Ramadan (if you’re interested, and why would you be, Barbara (the conflicted villain) shot Tony (the purely evil villain) and then jumped off a cliff. Paco and his true love got married finally, and Paco’s long lost brother Apollo showed up (who Paco had earlier impersonated, not knowing they were related, after everyone thought they were both dead). As it turned out, Apollo just had amnesia.). During Ramadan it was replaced with “Rencontre avec les Ulemas” – “Meeting with the Qur’anic Scholars” – which was deathly boring, and then by a new soap – which isn’t nearly as good as ACdP and I’m determined not to get addicted to. I now have to cook if I want to eat anyway.

Back to Danger’s new muso. Because of the way Malians typically marry, I’ve no idea how well he knows her or for how long he’s known her. It’s entirely possible he’s “known” her for quite a while (in polygamous societies it’s not called “adultery” it’s called “dating”), though from what I know of Danger I don’t think this is the case. I suspect she’s just someone in village who “needed” a husband and was having a difficult time finding one due to her illegitimate child. Speaking of whom, I’m also not sure what will happen with… him? I’ll assume for now that it’s a him. Anyway after M’ba’s wedding she of course went to live with her new husband – and her two sons stayed with her family. When I asked if they were going to live with M’ba and husband later I was told that would be decided later. Illegitimate children, then, don’t really have a proper place, and I assume it’d the same with Danger’s new wife (although I think Danger will let him come and live with us). Awa had had a child with her first husband, but he was unambiguously the property of his (legitimate) father so he stayed behind when she left that family and married Danger.

I guess some of these questions should be answered next Thursday, when the wedding is supposed to happen (he’d told me it would happen “next week” three weeks ago, then “this coming Thursday” two weeks ago, “Friday next week” two days ago, and “Thursday” today – apparently all the various gift exchanges weren’t complete before, but presumably are now.


Sunday October 19
Well I had two firsts last week: first time making pumpkin bread on my now improved brousse oven, and the first time watching a woman give birth. The later may come as a bit of a surprise, since I work at a Maternity ward, and perhaps I should have had this experience a long time ago. It’s a bit different though, being a guy – I mean the Malians all think I’m a doctor , no matter how many times I’ve told them I’m not, so they wouldn’t think it was weird if I was standing there watching – it’s just me that thought it would be weird. Still I was curious, so I decided a couple weeks ago to gather my courage and walk in then next time the opportunity presented itself.

I mention these two firsts – pumpkin bread and birth – together, though they may seem incomparable, for two reasons: a) they happened on the same day; and b) contrary to what you might expect, the pumpkin bread was more amazing. Now I can picture a couple people recoiling after reading that, so before you go accusing me of being an inhuman monster, keep in mind that a) I did not know the woman at all and in fact have never seen her before or since; b) I walked in right in the middle of the process, literally two minutes before the baby popped out; c) pop out is exactly what happened – it was out before I realized it had started emerging; d) the Malian birthing environment, at my clinic anyway, is quite impersonal and doesn’t foster cute mother-baby interaction – after it came out, the matrones didn’t give it to the mother to hold, didn’t exclaim “it’s a girl!” and there weren’t even any other family members around for the mother to share the moment with – they just weighed it, wiped it off a bit, wrapped it in some fabric and laid it on a table. Oh and finally, e) you didn’t taste my pumpkin bread.

Yes, the whole “miracle of birth” as I experienced it for the first (well, second) was fairly anticlimactic.


Friday October 24th

Well Danger’s long-awaited wedding happened yesterday, at least the religious ceremony. I’d never seen a Malian religious wedding, just the official government one – well it was something else entirely. His new wife, Salimata (Sally), isfrom a village out in brousse – how she and D got hooked up I don’t know, though I think it was just word of mouth – D needed a wife, and she (being an unwed 20-something with an illegitimate child) needed needed a husband. Danger’s uncle lives in the same village, so that was probably the connection – as for why he didn’t get someone from here in town, I can’t say.

Anyway I told Danger I wasnted to go, and since it was to be out in brousse and I’m not allowed to ride a moto that meant I had to bike it. Clearly I had to leave before the main procession of motos in order to arrive in town, but luckily there was another guy who was biking who knew the way – actually come to think of it, he was probably biking just to show me the way – everyone else moto’d it. It turned out to be 18km away – 6km to where we left the road and another 12 on a small path through fields of milled, sorghum, and cotton. It was quite a pleasant ride, though it was the middle of the day so by the time I arrived I was quite salty – luckily I’d thought to bring my nice outfit in my bag. Before long the moto caravan started arriving – all of Danger’s (male) friends and male relatives. We sat around waiting for the others, and after a while I asked where the bride was – after all this was her village. I was told she was off in a different concession with her (female) attendants, so I figured we’d all meet at the ceremony.

When it came time to tie the knot (the Bambara verb for “to marry” translates literally as “to tie the marriage”) we all went to the mosque. The ceremony was held outside in front of the mosque, with everyone involved (imam included) sitting on straw mats, with a few goats and sheep wandering around in the grass behind us. When I say everyone involved I mean about 50 men aged from twenty to ancient. No women were there, not even the bride, and neither was the groom. Danger didn’t even leave home! I was somewhat annoyed that I’d ridden all that way, and everyone had failed to point out that neither D nor my new mother were involved in the ceremony!

The ceremony itself went like this: with everyone seated, the imam talked first to a guy who was evidently the griot hired by Danger, saying something along the lines of “did you agree to seek Salimata Touré on behalf of Zoumana (Danger) Baro?” – “Yes!” Then he turned to the old man sitting next to me, evidently Sally’s father, and continued: “Old man! Did this guy come seeking Sally? What did you say?” After another shout of “HEY! OLD MAN!” to get his attention and a repetition of the questions, to a round of giggling from the crowd, the response came: “yes and I agreed and gave her to him.” A whole stream of benedictions followed, punctuated by a chorus of “Amina (Amen)” after each. Then the whole thing was repeated – questions, answers, blessings, and Aminas – two more times. Then it was over, and they started handing out a fistful of party favors to each person there, consisting a mix of Kola nuts, little quarter-sized biscuit/cookies, dried figs, and menthol cough drops (which the Malians use for candy). It was getting late and I wanted to make it back home before sunset, but they wouldn’t let me leave before serving everyone rice with sheep meat and sauce. By the time my escort and I hit the road I was quite thirsty – I’d left with only one liter of water for the whole trip – and we had to race the sun, but it was even more pleasant than the ride out anyway. Just before sunset is my favorite time of day here, when it cools off a bit, the sunlight isn’t so blindingly bright, and everything casts improbably long shadows, throwing the normally boring shades-of-sandy brown landscape into stark contrast.

I arrived home before anyone else who’d been to the wedding, and told Danger all about it. It was a bit strange having to confirm for my host-father that he was in fact now married again, but I suppose he had to set up the real party, which was already going strong in our concession. The wedding night works like this: the bride is attended by a delegation of her female relatives and (female) friends, and shortly after sunset a delegation of men from the groom’s side is sent to go fetch her. The bride’s delegation must resist giving her up, and they then commence bargaining for her. This is after and apart from the bride price (after all they’re already married at this point), and once it’s agreed on they put the bride (who’s wearing a shroud by the way) on the back of a moto and bring her to the groom’s house, where the party is now going in earnest. They stash her away in the groom’s bedroom and there she remains, still shrouded, for the duration of the party with a group of women attending her. The following seven days (less if she’s not the first wife) are spent in a kind of honeymoon at home – the bride doesn’t leave the bedroom, more or less, except to go to the bathroom and bathe. The husband is allowed to go out, where his male relatives and friends will be hanging out chatting and playing cards and his female relatives will be preparing food for everyone.

The strange part for me, then, is that I attended both the wedding and reception, and live at the groom’s house, and I’ve still never seen my host mom! I saw her briefly last night, but shrouded and among a large group of overexcited people yelling various things at me, including (from the only other boy in the room, who was in his mid-teens) “hey you see this? I’m going to make your Bintou (Laura) my new wife! Ha ha!”

The rest of the part – loud music (annoying techno and Afro-pop from a DJ, not good live Malian music), shouting, stamping around, and all – lasted for the remainder of the night. Thank goodness I saved those earplugs I got from my Air France flight 15 months ago!