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.
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