gypsies, bed bugs, and to... oh the pleasures of village

A couple of weeks ago, my village was visited by a group, of what I would call gypsies. Seven or eight groups of these, gawulés, showed up one day and asked for lodging in some of the larger concessions. I arrived at my homologue’s concession as his family of gawulés was unpacking their donkey cart, packed to the brim with all of their belongings. My homologue described them as traveling beggars who ask for a lot and can curse. I looked up gawulé in my Bambara dictionary and it described them as a class of griots with the ability to curse. Apparently the come through every year, they have no permanent home, just travel from village to village. They stay for a week in which they demand lots of stuff, don’t pick up after themselves, are rude to tubabs and Malians alike. When they leave they ask for a cow or some sheep. And apparently if you don’t give them what they want, they can curse you. I tended to avoid them because they were rude to me but it was interesting to know that there is a class of people who can make a life like that.
Waking up in the middle of the night to intense itching in your legs, is no pleasant experience as I found out a few days ago. I was scratching away when I realized that this was no ordinary itch so I turned on my flashlight and saw that I had about a gazillion bites on my legs. My guess was bed bugs, but I have no idea how they got there, since I had been using the same bedding for several days before with no like experience. It was seriously one of my worst nights in Mali, they itched so bad I was considering early termination; waking up to loads of itchy bites on your legs in the middle of the night is no good experience.
I’ve noticed an intere3stign pattern in the way we eat dinner at my djatigi’s house. There’s about 25-30 people who live in the concession and three women who cook for everyone. For two days, one woman will cook (porridge in the morning and tô and sauce for lunch and dinner). Then another woman will cook for two days and so on and so on. Making tô is no easy task especially when you’re cooking for 30 everyday. Anyway after cooking the tô, they will put it into five bowls- there will be five tô eating stations were certain groups of people will gather to eat. I eat tô with Aw (my djatigi) who is the oldest women in the concession also a widow, along with Kadia, the second oldest woman in the concession whose first husband died and is married to her husband’s younger brother, Djakalia. Complicated eh? So then the only three young (ages14-17?) unmarried girls in the whole concession will also eat at this bowl. So it’s the marriageable girls and the elderly matrons every night sharing a bowl of tô. Even though two of the girls are always in another part of the concession, they come every night to eat tô, with the old women.
The realities of life here in west Africa hit you heard every once and a while, seeing a friends newborn die two weeks later because he’s sick gets to you, but what really sucks is waking up one morning and noticing a quiet calm in the village and then discovering a friend of yours is dead. This is what happened the other day in village. When someone dies in village the young men first go out and dig the hole in the cemetery, then young men and old men a like will come and get the body wrapped in white cloth and bring the body to the cemetery. Women are not allowed to enter the cemetery (women are also not allowed to slaughter animals, men are supposed to deal with death while women give life). But anyway they must pass by my house in order to go to the cemetery. So I notice the young guys coming back from the cemetery and then I wait and see that they’re bringing a body out to the cemetery. Dread hits me, usually my homologue comes and informs me when someone in village has died, but today he was out to the fields at the crack of dawn. So I go to the pump and I see that there’s only one woman from the nearby, usually there’s loads of people. I notice she doesn’t look to good, so I prepare myself and ask her what’s happened. She tells me that the wife of Daouda Koné’s (the village president) wife Aby has died. I was just shocked, she was sick but no one thought she was going to die; she was not old or weak. I started crying and made my way home, we weren’t that great of friends it’s just that you had no idea, she just died unexpectedly like that, it’s so terrible. I try to bring myself together and go to their house where I know the people of the village are now congregated waiting for the return of the buriers, so that the imam can say a prayer. So I covered my head in a scarf and went and sat with my djatigi and waited for the men and then heard their prayer, my djatigi told me not to cry, crying is really serious here in Mali, but I couldn’t help it, but I managed to pull myself together, gave the women of her family some blessings and then went to my djatigi’s house. Upon entering her house, I see the kids of Aby’s, they were waiting the burial out at my djatigi’s concession, her oldest daughter is maybe sixteen while her youngest son is maybe three. It’s them I feel for the most, death is so accepted here in Mali, but I can’t imagine how difficult it would be for her children to accept the fact that their mother is gone. Aby was one of the first women in village I remembered, she always gave me a squeezing handshake, indicating respect, and was one of the few women from village to have a stall in market where she sold things. I tried to avoid passing by her booth the other day. She will be missed by many. Rest in peace Aby. Allah k’a hiné a la. Allah k’a da yoro sumana. may god have pity on your soul, may your resting place be cool. Amen