Boy in a boat

25.2.2008 Dance Weekend in Selingue

So, After my criticisms of the Toubabous (that means white folk in Bambara) with their cameras, I finally got ahold of one, and could not resist the urge to connect in every way possible to the young boys in the boats. To me, they are poetry in motion. Watching the boats skim across the water in the morning haze is to me equivalent of watching the sun set over the mountains I love, or standing awed in front of a michaelangelo masterpeice. Something about the simplicity of the boats and the asymmetry of the movements to propelle them holds me enchanted.

This weekend I took a short trip with some girlfriends to a lakside village for a dance workshop and an escape from the pollution and noise of Bamako. I will not give a full account of the weekend, but here are some words I would use to capture what the space and journey was to me.

Prayers clothe the night
Birds unveil the morning.
The village lives in distant
sounds, waking in shifts to
the weeping faded sun.
The Lake is an empty slate
calling me from dreams,
a silver palate that collects
shadowy slivers of boy. The
fishermen are young, slim as their
canoes, calm as the water,
alone in the quiet dance
of their rowing.

Our dance is a vital
powerful expression of life
celebrating a body
-my body, body of a friend,
the body of Fanta
who moves in grace at seventy.
Even wrinkles smile through the rhythm.
We are 5 white girls...
the drums quiet and slow to our shy,
awkward movements. Our minds may
know keyboards and computers so well
but our bodies are lost to this primal beat
But when I draw close, the music
derobes me of my shame, and I rejoice
with deep, sanguine movements

Above us, the dry forest shudders in the breeze.
We stamp dust into our noses.
And smile the sweat from our eyes.
Each of us takes, in her own way, some thread
of that rhythm and joy. The vitality lives
still as the fingers find rhythm on the keyboard.

18.1.2008 Sunset on the Niger

I’m sitting on the edge of a dripping tangerine horizon; with each drum beat the sun sinks lower into to the jagged charcoal plateaus, becomes one glowing sliver, and levels below the hazy distant hills. I am left with the glowing tableau of soft peach clouds and the sharp spear of a canoe slicing through rippling water. The fishermen are pulling in their nets: a man in front gathering hand over hand the days catch while the thin shadow of a boy pushes the long pole into the mud below, propelling the slim boat through the water.

Black silhouettes moving across sun-streaked water - those of us on the shore appreciate the scene for its graceful harmony: a sunset dance in a foreign land. Scores of westerners in zip off nylon pants line the edge of the broken tiled bar terrace at the edge of the river; sunburnt faces straining into the extended LCD screens, ample bellies thrust over wide set feet in sturdy shoes. They click away to capture the moment before turning back to their cold beers. I don’t have a camera with me, otherwise, I too would probably be clicking away with the rest of them. Instead I pick up my pen and wonder, as I often do, how the scene appears from the eyes of the boy in the boat. This photo-op could mean for him, nothing more than survival.