Song of my home

Bamako. Beautiful, and graceful in a very dirty, haphazard, unexpected way. It calls to you in the stretched fabrics, freshly died and drying the sun, colors: rich and clean and full. It calls to you in the ballad-like songs of guitar and Kora, in the call and answer greetings, in the voices that rise and fall throughout the music. Long notes that make you imagine stretches of sand and sky. Bamako. The rough roads, the small boutiques, the faintly fishy peanut sauces and sticky rice, always still a bit dirty. The women who wash: Straight backed and long pushing and scrubbing and dipping, legs straight bent from the waist like chairs folded in two. Bamako. Small grass huts: the constant, rhythmic pounding of bassins--fabrics... glimpses of shirtless men in grass huts, legs spread out, facing each other, each pounding one after another with heavy wooden mallets, held in both hands. One raises his mallet while the other crashes his own down upon the bright colored fabric, pounding it into a smooth glossy sheen. The array of huts at dusk: the sound emerging like music. Wood on wood, pounded by so many hands, the music held together by the soft, low grinding of the mill where the women gather to collect flour. They crowd around carrying half gourds on their heads, chattering and laughing, the grainy grey flour falling from the dull metal mill. Bamako. The dirt pitch and makeshift goals- two long beams, stuck in the earth, with a string tied across the top. Swift colors darting, grunts and calls, and the ball rolls fast from one to another. Teams sauntering past, laughing, joking, running. Bamako. Little ones with protruding bellybuttons. Wide eyes, patient faces, runny noses, sticky hands, smooth shoulders. Voices that imitate my own with uncanny accuracy. "TooBahBoo” the sound that follows my footsteps when they glimpse me from the street. Bamako. Wide grins and teeth, smooth heads, skin like night, but deeper, smoother. Muscles that move like the music, quick hands that sew together the bassins, creating patterns around which the dye emerges. Tie- dyed with plastic bags and scrap rubber. Under the trees, smooth skin melts into the night, hands move automatically assured. Bamako. My home.