african bliss for bohemian mermaids

no(w)here

africalis — Thu, 7 Jun 2007 12:09:00 GMT

i can see my fingerprints still blowing about on weathered grains of sand the pressure of my feet continuing to echo through centuries of solid rock pressing undiscovered fossils further into forgetting i can see my eyes still boucing off the memories of black children a foreign shade of blue, blinding the familiar continuing to ask such simple questions that exponentially answer themselves with more mystery i can see my dreams still dangling from the starkly skybound branches of a baobab tree wandering into too many worlds that have yet to create a language other than sleep waiting for my lucid return so that i may teach them how to interpret their own dual nature we are made of gravity and goats of the accidents of our own intuition and the unaccustomed tradition to dig through the physics and the psychics and the mystic of our own roots and i am still tapping the untasteable syrup from that forest of arid ancestry where the only thing absent is my senses

suffering from pleasure

africalis — Mon, 21 May 2007 22:22:00 GMT

i saw my little sisters today-my sweet brilliant siblings who are so blessed with the joys of their childhood. they are showing me their twenty seven stuffed puppies who all have their own email adresses and online doghouses, and i am thinking about how unreal this is. how so many children have no stuffed puppies and this one has twenty seven. how most adults in burkina faso have never seen a computer and this goddammed stuffed dog has its own virtual shopping mall for accessories. this world does not make sense. my littlest sister sleeps under a mosquito net. it matches her tinkerbell bedroom set and serves as a princess canopy for capturing sweet dreams and fairy tales. there are no mosquitoes in the house-and certainly no deadly insects. children all over west africa are dying of malaria or dengue fever because they don’t have mosquito nets to sleep under, and here is this precious life saving item being used as decoration for a little pixie princess. this world: does not make sense. my family, sitting in a house with such a clean roof over their heads, sitting around a finished wood table and eating so much food that after dinner they can feed leftover grilled salmon at twelve-ninety-nine a pound to their dog. and then the dog gets special doggy ice cream in a little disposable plastic cup every time she sits or rolls over or jumps three feet in the air. the _dog_. what is this imbalance, this world of people feeding their dogs caviar with a detached awareness of the bloated bellies of malnourished children in mali? this disconnection is so massive, the awareness so incomplete that its ineffectiveness is more vast and devastating than the problem itself. here i am, trying to bridge these two worlds with a shaky construction of pictures and memories, trying to explain the realities of poverty and _actual_ suffering that are so far from anything they will ever know; trying to inspire gratitude and compassion and maybe, action. but this world:: does not make sense. i am showing them my pictures from west africa. pictures of schoolchildren sitting on the mud floor of their schoolhouse with no books or desks or pens or playgrounds, telling them about how children in africa don’t have recess when they’re at school, and how most of them don’t have toys. and for my sisters, its not even close to their realm of consciousness to be able to fathom this. i feel like one of those moms who yells at their children to finish their bowl of cereal because “there’s starving children in africa.” exept most moms who say that have never _seen_ a starving child in africa, so when they say it they don’t feel like putting down their own fork and packing up the leftovers and shipping the contents of their cupboards to some village in northern ghana. and that is what i want to do. every thing i touch is felt with this awareness. everything i eat feels like too much. everything i do is filtered through my disturbed consciousness and infused with a contradictory sense of devastating gratitude.surrounded by such sparkling abundance-this world : does not make sense

worlds confused

africalis — Wed, 16 May 2007 21:20:00 GMT

worlds confused: i am waiting out here for the fung wah bus:triple culture shock-from new york’s underground to chinatown to east coast traffic-all with african soil still stuck to my feet. i am feeling the unnerving quiet of america. there are no colorfully clad women with babies tied to their backs carrying giant baskets of fried plantain on their heads and selling them through the open windows of a still moving bus. there are no black people pressed up against me and squishing me against the hot metal walls of a tro tro. there are no people on the front of the bus preaching the good word: of jesus christ our lord and saviour hallelujah! no one is praying out loud and singing gospel music while we sit in traffic. there’s no hip-life or reggae blasting through improperly wired speakers. there are not crowds of people walking the streets, throwing unfamiliar hand jestures at each other and shouting in an untranslatable language. there are no people sitting outside occupying the shade beneath every tree and just, sitting. i am noticing the empty: the people hiding in their big four wheeled machines and four door houses and not even aware of how fortunate they are. so i close my eyes, feeling too blessed to comprehend. now i am taking small bites of this salad that my mother made me. the first raw thing, the first green vegetable, the first vitamin rich bit of nourishment i have tasted in six months. and i am thinking about the millions of people who eat mashed cassava three times a day and have never known a vegetable other than onions. i am thinking about the naked children with their bulging malnourished bellies and their skinny legs and how people sleep when they are hungry so that the hunger goes unnoticed and i always saw people sleeping in the middle of the day. i am looking at the diversity and lushness of the abundance in the refridgerator, the basket of million colored fruits on the counter and the drawer full of whole grain sprouted bread and i have tears in my eyes, because my memory is looking at the bland yellow mush i have been eating with my hands and i am thinking about how starvation seems so normal in the context of where i just was. it is okay to eat nothing but yams and bananas for breakfast lunch and dinner all week long. there were no calcium rich broccoli trees, no sprouted garbanzo bean pates and no root chakra nourishing beets. no one is talking about anorexia or health food or being vegan or living an energetically abundant raw food lifestyle. they are just hungry and don’t even know it. they are missing minerals unaware and lacking optimal nourishment without the consciousness that there could be anything more than what they have. so i put my fork down, my stomach full of gratitude and guilt, my mind full of awareness of this abundance and inbalance. now i am taking this hot shower, the first in six months. feeling the freely running water beat down and dissolve the desert off my skin. i am thinking about the volta river drying up and the power going out in ghana every twelve hours because the rainy season forgot to arrive and there is so much water missing from africa. i am thinking about the children who pour buckets of cold water over their heads and lather up with lemony soap while strattling the open sewer and how you can watch the dirt run off their bodies and mix back in with the earth. and i am thinking about the subsaharan women who spend all morning carrying gallons of water on their heads from the village wells and how straight their spines are. and so i turn off the faucet and drip dry with these composite feelings of gratitude and guilt. i am brushing my teeth with this clear water, thinking about the people in mali who chew on licorice sticks and don’t know how to use a toothbrush and most of their teeth are missing but their smiles are still pure and shining. i am thinking about how this water will not give me guinea worm or giardia or anyother unwanted parasite and how incredibly lucky i am to have money to buy toothpaste and what a precious item that is. and when i am home and clean and fed and i step outside at dawn, the smell of spring:strikes me with a catapult of sweet-the most delicious scent of green earth and damp soil and precious pollen and life, earth breathing her renewal and exhaling perfection. i cry at these smells, at the way they touch my nose and trigger my memory and intoxicate my sentient being. i cry at the feeling of cool crisp morning air, of dew on my bare feet and the sound of new england birds. this beauty is so full, so rich: and i am too fortunate - so incredibly blessed, to be back in this bliss, with africa infusing all my perspective.

fufu voodoo juju

africalis — Wed, 2 May 2007 01:56:00 GMT

well, what could be more amazing than squatting in a momentarily abandoned guesthouse with a dozen african drummers and dancers on the coast of ghana? nothing, i tell you. nothing. i am here with them, and i can hear the ocean through my left ear and the whispering graveyard through my right, the constant drums through my feet and all the nights of gospel music echoing from the sketches of churches scattered amongst the fetish forests.

there is no running water at the house, and so i spend a happy portion of the morning lugging buckets up the path from the nearby pump. i would carry them on my head, like a genuine ghanain mama, but then i could only carry one bucket and not two. and there is no electricty either, and so when the sun goes down we sit by the kerosene lantern and eat globs of fufu or banku and we talk about all the difficulties of life in ghana and how terrible it is to see small children selling sunglasses in the winding walls of traffic that fill the streets; or we talk about religion and they preach to me about how everything belongs to god, and then i have to answer their peculiar questions about meditation. they want to know if i am chanelling evil spirits or communicating with the devil, when i am sitting on the porch with my legs crossed and my eyes closed for long periods of time. really, i think they rumor me to be a witch...but they're curious and terrified to admit it..

someone is always sweeping the dancefloor at sunrise, and shortly after that i am on it..stomping like the earth will not turn unless i push it with my feet. by 10:00am the day is too hot- and then, i am sitting in the palm-thatched shade amongs the potentially percussive logs, working on carving a soon-to-be-beautiful djembe. wow. now i have blisters on my hands from chipping away at this musical wood and they match the blisters on my feet from jumping jumping jumping and it is all amazing, my last two weeks here resonating with the tribal lives of this afrikin family.

written reincarnation

africalis — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 22:21:00 GMT

they sell water here in little plastic sachets, branded with names labeled as "the truth pure water" or "the lord for drinking" or "heaven's thirst". today, when the heavyset ghanain mama handed me the sachet, it was wrapped in a wilting piece of paper. this paper, i realized upon attentive inspection, was a page torn out of someone's journal. maybe written yesterday or yellowed with the tropical time of an experience years ago. maybe it was a journal page of someone you knew who journeyed to ghana as an NGO director seven months ago, maybe i met this person in a bus in burkina faso and they dropped their precious book in a hasty decent from the tro-tro.

paper lives many lives here. it is sometimes used to serve up greasy skewers of grilled canine chunks, or hot handfulls of boiled peanuts and yams. people burn it to start their little tin-can cookstoves, or to descreetly wipe the e.coli off their well maintained asses.

i am thinking about the unfathomable life being birthed into the pages of my stolen journal. perhaps my dozen haikus on mango trees are transformed to ashes in the flames beneath a roasting rat. the story recalling the time my married dance teacher pinned me up against a wall and tried to kiss me beneath the blue light filtering through the leafless baobab tree-the story is wrapped around a steaming piece of goat meat. the pages of the traditional symbols and ceremonies of the fulani women in mali are covered in urine and decaying in an open sewer.

these words, living some unpredictable destiny, being recycled for a myriad of unfit uses, unknowingly soaking into people's skin, being digested as they dissolve in the goat fat, are inhaled in the kitchen flames and leaving unseen ink prints on children's damp behinds.

dear journal-you are stolen and dispersed and alive. best wishes on your reincarnation.

lis

modern myths, urban legends, and the yinyang of night

africalis — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 02:27:00 GMT

you could spend eternity in the hollowed out entrails of a wooden unicorn, or sleep away forever in the back seat of a four by four fashioned out of mohogany. its funeral fashion, and its a ghanain obsession. death is the biggest party you'll ever have, and you best be arriving in the barrel of an AK47 larger than His magesty. or perhaps you'd prefer to be interred in a seventeen footlong coke bottle? whatever your dying wish, the craftsmen here in ghana can carve your coffin to your withering heart's desire. ghanains spend more money on their final resting places than this country's GNP can account for.

but otherwise, the curious kin here have been asking some odd questions of me lately, pulling laughter and compassion from what is left of me. a young girl today asked me: do you bathe with regular water, like black people? yes, of course! i answered. well then, what is it that you wash with that makes your skin white?

how perfect and innocent!! as though i used to be black and i scrubbed it all off with some expensive american bodywash! the next question was: is it true, that white people think africans live high up in the trees and eat eachother for breakfast? well, i answered, i certainly don't think that is true. i mean, i've never been served humans and eggs on white bread before, and there really aren't that many trees here..

and then-one question asked of a landlocked burkinabe: is it true that there are people who go out into the ocean in big ships, dumping salt in the water so that when you swim you can taste it and it tastes like salted fish? oh my, the salt was there long before the boats were..my sweet, we do not put salt in the ocean. (how does it get there? and, they want to know, how do i get such fine hair extensions sewn into my arms?)

bless such divinely innocent questions, coming from the sweetest people who have never journeyed more than 10km from their village, where the population is maybe two hundred; where there is no electricity, no literacy and the people cannot count to ten. it is so amazing. if only i could wonder such magical possibilities in this world, with the inexperienced mind of a newborn and the curiousity of a wide eyed kitten.

exchanging words for ever

africalis — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 21:32:00 GMT

please, tell me if you've been here. i want to know, if you've travelled through my wor(l)ds or journeyed on your own. i hardly know who you are, if you have visited this site regularly or avoided it until now. share. exchange bits of your mind with mine. share. tell me if you are inspired or terrified or beautified, or maybe you are totally unmoved by my retellings. tellme. tell me that i am not imaginary, that this life is not some divinely invented dream. tell me that you know i exist, that you remember me, that you know me or want to know me or wish we'd never met. tell me what you love to hear or criticise the way i write. how can a chef go on cooking if there are no mouths to feed? tell me, are you out there and are you hungry? how can an artist create in the dark, if the eyes of the beholder are invisible or closed? tell me, can you see me from over there?

Gallery: oh this life

africalis — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 19:55:00 GMT

a multicultural melange of imagery

jesus lives

africalis — Mon, 9 Apr 2007 22:23:00 GMT

here in ghana. he's being reborn every couple of feet in the form of forever church services, signs that proclaim his immortal presence and missionaries that perpetuate this preaching epidemic. all the businesses her reflect that: how about 'jesus is my rock capret enterprises' or 'god is love forever supermarket.' then there is 'jesus prince of peace parts store', 'glory be to his grace auto mechanic'..the list goes on..

ashanti storm secrets

africalis — Sun, 8 Apr 2007 22:57:00 GMT

the lake starts off like glass, a calm so perfect you could disappear through the surface into the depths of eternity. maybe that is why the ashanti spirits come to rest here when they've been released from their perfect black bodies, because the lake looks like forever. there are no dugout canoes, no motorized boats or electricity or cars driving around, just water and wind and flourescent pink chickens; simple log planks that float along with fishermen's nets, spirits that float along with sudden storms...

now i am watching the wind transform the still surface into a terrain of rippling ridges, thunder escaping through the clouds as they pour over the surrounding mountains. soon, in the fog, the opposite side of the lake disappears so that the edge becomes a horizon like an accidental atlantic. complex flocks of birds begin hurrying for shelter, sensing the inevitable streams of water that will fall from their uncertain skies-their wings beat with such powerful desperation that they leave a whooping echo in the humid air.

i am standing out here under this palm thatched gazebo, mostly exposed as the waves of rain begin in the east, blowing towards us with an accompanying orchestra of drops: drops of water on water, water on the tin roof and on the soft earth and through the now constant thunder, all thickening and darkening as the intermittent lightning spectacle dances her electric fire through this stormy sky, illuminating the air above the lake. across this sacred space, the spirits start blowing across, flashes of white ghosts in the gusts, escaping their aquatic graveyard and following the force of the wind to the west, towards my wet watchful eyes.

these ghosts: they are arriving-awakening some old ashanti anger. they begin to dissolve on the shore, rematerialzing in a violent force of upheaval, lifting trees from the ground like it is easy and hurling them towards us. through all the storming sounds, i hear the panicked shuffle of the others as they begin running through this impossibly flooded land, toward the nearby hut for shelter. and there i am, paralyzed and magnetized by the magnifiscience of this monsoon, suddenly alone and awkwardly exposed, in this terrifying darkness broken by the sky's momentary flashes: it is just enough- enough to illuminate the tree that is two feet from my own as it gets uprooted and tossed onto the bungalow behind me. enough to see the hammock that i was sitting in moments ago fly away to the sky; the plate that i had just finished eating off of get consumed by the instant forces of this earth. i am watching it all with an inappropriate sense of calm, humbled and in absolute awe as i witness this alive planet reclaiming her raging skies, exercising her powers and exorcising her demons.

through the sheets of rain i can see now- the bungalow where everyone else ran for shelter has fallen: the roof has blown away and all the bricks are broken and crumbling into the remains of the building. everything is destroyed, including the bodies of three other villagers who are driven on the edge of the storm to the nearest (100km away) hospital. they are okay now, and i am okay always, but i am wondering: how is it that my angels found me here? freezing me in admiration to save my simple frame from being buried by branches and bricks and boats and lawn chairs....

goddess bless.

through the chocolate forest

africalis — Sun, 8 Apr 2007 22:57:00 GMT

ghana is one of the worlds largest producers of, yes, CHOCOLATE. and my goddess, what could be more amazing than hiking through eighteen kilometers of chocolate forest?!! beans glistening on the trunks in all their rich expensive exportable glory. and i ate the fruit. the flesh of a cacao bean- it is pale and soft and almost tart, protecting the potent purple seed of perfection that is its desired product. mmmm. straight from the trunk and in the element of yum, sucking on the raw cacao and thinking about smuggling some seedlings back home in my already dirt-filled backpack.

from the chocolate forest i wondered into the jungle canopy, then from the tree tops to the rock shrine, from this solid altered ashanti altar to the forest stream where you can feel the flow of hippo feet and crocodile teeth, flowing further back to the ocean, building shrines of shells to honor ourselves and onward, to waterfalls and confusing cities and unfinished ecovillages and back to accra. there is electricity only sometimes, and i am lucky in this moment to be writing to you.

the good-gift bye to burkina

africalis — Sun, 8 Apr 2007 22:57:00 GMT

its been so long since i've posted anything, even though i write pages and pages everyday. so-here's the last story of the previous chapter of that other lifetime when i was in burkina faso... i was ready to go, after a month of never speaking english, eating ground cassava and onions everyday and forgetting how to interact with a flushing toilet and a metal eating utensil because i haven't used either of those two things for so long. though bobo was the first place i'd been that had become like a home, seeing the same people in the streets everyday, riding my bicycle down the same dirt paths and dancing everyday to the now too familiar rythms. it all came to a celebratory full circle on the last day, when my adopted burkinabe family decided to throw a bit of a going away party for me, inviting all our transient friends and curious neighbors and fellow dancers - and it was all so beautiful and delicious. all the sisters and i spent all morning in the market, buying barrels of tomatoes and onions and pasta and fish, then all afternoon cooking in the smoky kitchen hut over the rocket stove (yes, rocket stove!!) and then spending all evening eating the feast with our hands and laughing and drumming and exchanging gifts-i couldn't have felt more loved in such a faraway place. the following day, the path flowed forward in perfect syncronicity, yet again, and i got an easy ride to ougadougou with a burkinabe friend, stayed with another extended family who lent me their motorbike while i was there-got my ghanain visa and jumped on another uncertain bus with another uncertain destination, slept on another patch of muddy ground between two parked buses at four in the morning because i had no choice, crossed another border and for the first time in many months-saw rain!!!

what i'm really doing

africalis — Sun, 4 Mar 2007 04:58:00 GMT

in all the poetry, i neglected to portray a tangible idea of what i'm doing here, really:

so, i'm in a burkina faso, in a bustling village known as bobo-dioulasso. sounds like a clown school, but its really a haven for budding artists and a more urban expression of cultural preservation. i've been here for two weeks, maybe a bit more, and have another few weeks ahead of me. i bought a bicycle, which is faster that the donkey-cart alternative, and i don't have to slap its behind with a stick or feed it anything. it is blue and heavy and has a pedal generated headlight and shiny chrome fenders and today: a flat tire.

i ride it fifteen kilometres every day at seven:thrity in the morning to my two hour dance class. i pass baskets of baguettes and oily eggs and too many cups of nescafe. its so sweet in the morning, with the sun low at my back and all the hoards of school children shouting 'hey white girl!!' in the local dialect.-which, by the way, is quite extraordinary. the greetings alone can take up the three minutes, and sound very pre-recorded and repetitious- something like this: aneesokomah. eresara. somo oudou. okokaney. abba oudou. okokanay. banda oudou. okokanay. eray. mbaa. moley. mbaa. duola. mbaa. ca va. mbaa. etc...

so, i spend most of my time in movement, dancing djiellidong and doudoumba, jumping and drumming and living in the rythm. after dance, i eat lunch with my teacher and his entire extended family, elders and aunts and cousins and sisters and babies and brothers and uncles. all the infants get handed to me, while the women finish preparing lunch and pick away at the infinite pile of laundry. when we eat, we sit in a circle under the shade of a mango tree, scooping up globs of millet and baobab sauce, always eating with our bare right hands out of the same shared aluminum bowl..

then, when we are full and our hands are sticky, the melody of the afternoon sings through our finger tips. we play gory and balafon and djembe while the heat waits behind the trees. it is the same everyday: in the afternoon, we walk around to parties and dance rehearsals and percussive jam sessions; we'll run errands in the market and drink three rounds of tea.

and when the day is done, i'll ride home, back up the hill, past the vegetable market, where the streets start to smell like sauerkraut from all the heads of cabbage fermenting in the hot sun...

Gallery: mothers of mali

africalis — Sun, 4 Mar 2007 04:11:00 GMT

photos compressed-do not enlarge! (really bad quality)

mother of mali

africalis — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 03:26:00 GMT

she is bold:

ears strung with gold

her fetishes made from the bones of the old and on her head she holds

the fabric of souls

her slender neck sinking from the weight of full bowls

four meals (her hips spin like wheels, i am told)

and she heals

with hands that are stiff with the strength of steel::

sisters::

scarring their skin to idetify their kin

clits cut at age ten and then

they endure

the weak will of men

with too many wives nine infants through their thighs and a soft yellow tint

to the whites

of their eyes

the sky cries for these lives

through the infinite ancestry refusing to die still strong

stretched palms and arms long

tipping scales weighing trades of millet and song

here women walk on smiling past what is wrong but to daughters of dogon born into dust:

life is long

tasting trees

africalis — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 03:21:00 GMT

earth's limbs are heavy with the weight of almost ripe mangoes, birth dangling over the dusty desolate streets, i find dreams in my sleep.

the sweet air of burkina deep

in my mind.

the morning drinks of syrup milk and an undefined sun: divine

adoring the flourescent green of banana leaves goats feast on the garbage and forage ignoring

what their meat is worth

while rythms weave through the relaxed evolution of fruits

a steady drum a midday flute

the tune attepts to mute

the rapid dilution of our ancestors

softly forgotten

by the accidental heart of

new roots

the places we are left

africalis — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 02:56:00 GMT

last night i slept in a village of trucks, buses constructed from a melange of tired taxi engines and the carcasses of retired train cars. everything is in the dirt, the bitter rinds of unfinished oranges, the bleating desperate goats, the fly covered babies and trash bags trying to decay in the dust, and then: my own elated self.

people are eating pail porridge with purple ladels; they wait on their mats and pray while patience permeates the hot air of sunset. i fall asleep on the exposed limbs of a boabab tree, and wake to this:

the sound of the village, rising in the morning- its starts with the pleading gasping yelp of donkeys, their awful calls orchestrating the dissonant bleating of goat kids and then, a constant rooster. for one moment, they all pause to inhale, and the monotonous drone of flies ascending to the skies grows louder and closer and then dissipates, until one pair of wings is buzzing clearly in your ear. high hawks echo off the cliff walls as the avian orchestra calls: soft light into the new day. all the sounds bounce back and forth between the buses, between the baobab trees and the ostrich egg on top of the mosque and the doors to the dogon caves.

donkey calls continue, escalating roosters and all the goats are crying until the children rise, then sigh. low tones of conversation in an untranslatable language begin on the ground beside me. the shuffling of feet the pouring of water the lighting of matches the fire starts to crackle it is morning. human sounds now-the straw broom sweeping the dirt floor the opening of a sack of baguettes the distant pounding of a mortar and pestel crushing millet. and somewhere far away, the hypnotic harmonic sounds of schoolboys chanting the koran, reading their scripts in the dust; voices quavering in a monotonous cacophony of conversations channelling allah. all together and at once, it sounds like the goddess yawning: she opens her eyes to a day that has repeated itself for ten thousand years.

now it is market day. after hours of trading fish on foot, weighing out acacia berries and plantains, donkey carts stomping squash seeds into the ground and everyone kicking up dust the air is thick: it sits on my skin and eyes and lungs. everyone is coughing and the sunset is illuminating the particulate air, turning the whole town a perfect hue of pinkish orange, fading out to the tops of the temples where blue begins.

and the people: they do very little. and when they are done doing very little they sleep. they talk to animal spirits in lucid dreams, spend all afternoon stirring millet porridge and tending to the cooking fire. crushing baobab leaves with a mortar and pestal the size of a bathtub and baseball bat and after that, they rest. they walk slowly with their water, washing children and dishes and laundry in the same tepid filth, transferring dust and grease between hair and teeth.

oh the animists- are alcoholics. they drink until they see double and then nothing-disillusioned hallucinations of kola nut nonsense. they sit in their dark huts at midday with no future no consequences no concept of space and pray, minds erased by millet fermentation, a contagious ennebriation diluting the rational and invoking: inner animal celebration.

when hearts and eyes are wrong

africalis — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 20:39:00 GMT

there is this idea here, in the wolof language, called taranga-the word for senegalese hospitality. they will smile so huge, so huge with sparkling teeth!! they will hold your hand and call you sister, and insist so joyfully that you come to their house for tea. oh and no, no they'll say!! they don't want anything from you in return!! nothing at all! just the opportunity to exchange ideas and share they're culture..not for payment or gifts or anything.. they'll offer their hearts with such seemingly genuine generosity- total light in their eyes, purity emanating from their intentions...such an incredible invitation, you'll think! and so you'll go with them, on a pleasant walk around the village, to a friends hut for tea...

and then they've got you, cornered by the charm of their radiating smiles. as soon as your smitten, out comes the desperation. they'll grab your heart by its weakest point and flood your love with sob stories. they'll manipulate you into feeling like they've helped you so much-given you so much from their cultural mind, and now, what will you do for them? will you buy their children books for school? will you get some medicine for their dying mother? well, you must do something! after all, we are sisters, we are family, and i've shown you my light, so now you must give me everything in your pocket. so you'll give them something-five dollars and a packet of pens. and they'll smile and say "oh my. no, no. thats... thats not enough!! oh, my child, that's nothing to me!!"

such skilled emotional blackmailing. i've never felt like such a poor judge of character as i do here. its like all the rules we subconsciously use to navigate through society don't apply here...how do i get out of this? i try to reverse the charm back on them, but make it genuine. i'll smile and hold their hands and send them love and blessings, offer to share my food with them, tell them i want absolutely nothing from them in return and mean it. and then i'll slip out of the village, without saying goodbye...giving the next place a second chance and finding this quality to be repeating itself everywhere - wanting so much to believe that there are genuinely kindhearted people, and then consistently being reminded that even unrequested smiles cost a pretty penny around here..

in the garden of contempt

africalis — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 06:18:00 GMT

day 6: after three flat tires and a lot of hassle, i make it across the border to senegal. i am in dakar now, and it is visciously mocking me- i feel like an unwanted weed in the original garden of mother earth, my status sweetly and discretely revealed to me, metaphorically speaking:

" oh, sweet little weed!!how ever did your seed end up here, in our precious eden?! well, you are welcome. let me tell you how we live here, so that you may harmoniously inhabit this land with us. but first, please, give me your flowers, so that you may hear my story better..yes, kind sister, thank you. now little miss weed, would you please give me your leaves so that the sun may shine down on my humble family? you wouldn't want us to live in the darkness of your shadow, would you? i need the golden sun so that the story of our lives may shine into your naked ears. ah, thank you my friend, my friend and sister and family. oh, and one more thing, before we start..could you kindly uproot yourself? my children are starving and need to drink from the milk of your feet.." and so it goes here, this passive robbery: my naive attempts to be home in this land lead me into a subtle self sabotage, as the luscious lives here coax me into mowing my own self down..

the end of unknown roads

africalis — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 19:56:00 GMT

the road to nowhere is paved with chance-

there is only one way to go, from morocco through mauritania. one spectacular road that is actually paved. the road turns to sand, the sand into stories, and the stories into figs for you to taste through these dehydrated words:

day 1- sometimes when the bus is driving through the desert at night, i wonder if it will veer off the path, through the dunes into the ocean, with a sleeping foot pressed down on the gas pedal and dreaming. at moments i feel so asleep that i don't know the difference between trust and the inevitable; then i am jolted into consciousness by the sudden movements of the bus, swirving to save our selves from smashing into a toppling truck stacked with hay; breaking too fast around an invisible corner or in avoidance of the wild camels sleeping in the streets.

i can see the shape of these flatlands emerging in the moonlight; see where the arid ends in ocean and the wind and moon meet on the crests of waves. occasionally, intense gusts of the desert storm will whip clouds of crystal into the air, scarring the sides of the bus and blinding the infinite road ahead.

day 2-dahkla

this town is like the skeleton of something that happened by accident, the ghost of a hasty mistake. the inhabitants are a resistant entourage of nomads seeking substance in the desert and finding it only in eachother, then leaving. the streets are broken, doors locked shut and clothes suspended on the line, bleached by time and waiting for bodies but warming only the wind. the children here play soccer alone, kicking deflated balls against abandoned walls because they can't find eachother's feet..

day 3-there is nothing now but the occasional saharawi cayote. 360 degrees of flatlands, savage hawks perched upon low boulders; sand in the street; desert dying in oppressed ocean. in the morning it is blue, lunar light illuminating the surface of the sand; the rocks repeating themselves to the horizon.

day 4: noudibouh, mauritania:

how can i capture this? breathing in a pungent concoction of low tide and the feet of sheep. the tribes here build refuge out of refuse, suck water from the bones of goats and can turn a bag of flour twelve different ways for every meal of the week. and the scene is hypnotic to watch: the flight of garbage through the saharan sky. i am being blasted by sand and bottles and bags, the windturning tornados of trash that spin suspended above me. it is poetic and beautiful and difficult and mysteriously real.

a two hour wait in the bank to exchange $20 leads to an invitation for lunch with a saharawi family, which turns into an entire day till sunset of gift giving and tea drinking and being told to sleep. mamia takes me to her house, and we start with tea. we heat the water on hot coals, wash the first round of gunpowder green to release the strong first flush, saving the glass of dark brew and boiling another. after seven clumps of sticky sugar are dissolved in one smallpot of tea, you pour back and forth from two feet above the glass- from glass to pot and back again, creating a frothy collection of bubbles. and after an hour of frothing and pouring and spilling you are left with four tablespoons of sweet and potent tea to slurp and savor.

after this we prepare lunch. mamia's mother has a very special proposition for me. she has one brother, who lives in the desert and herds goats. he is unmarried-and today is my lucky day!! i must marry him, she tells me. i must!! she will teach me the koran and i will convert to islam. i can herd goats and drink from the milk of camels and live strangely ever after. i politely decline, and this is not the first time i've had to..

day 5: THIS is the impossible adventure you fear and desire simultaneously. we are back on the long road through mauritania to senegal. the sand speeding laterally across the street at the same speed we are travelling, 60km/hr. it is coming from the east, maybe algeria. this road took four years to construct, and i can see now that the desert's dunes could reclaim it in four hours. along the drive i see the skeletons of empty car wrecks, a graveyard of breakdowns and broken tires. i wonder what happened to the people inside them, if their bones became dust or sand or if they made it to their destination or if they even had one . and then i wonder what my own fate would be if the car suddenly stopped and i was 250 km from the nearest anything. but now i don't have to wonder, because our car just died here in this sandstorm.

i step out of the car and i can feel the wind's potential to carry me over the ocean like i am a hollow bird, made of nothing. and that is what i am in this element, an inconsequential obstacle to the vastness. if i were to sit for more than one hour, the crystals would stick to my skin, reclaim me for their kin and shape my fractalled figure into the dunes.

i get back in, covered in desert. i can build a sand castle on my pant leg and live inside of it. i start thinking about the half liter of water i have left, the brown banana and melting triangle of cheese to sustain me, and decide i'd better hitch for my sweet life..

time limps by and i climb into first car that passes-a decaying mercedes already full with a family of masked men. with a heartbeating melange of fear exhaustion uncertainty gratitude and necessity, i climb in...

we are quiet at first, till my timid french peeks through my lips with the courage to say the equivalent of "so, you guys from around here?" this ice breaker leads into an instant session on islam conversion. "you love allah? allah is your god? even if you don't know it yet, allah is your god." "yes of course, i mean, oui! uh, merci." they speak of the conflicting beliefs between the muslim world and the average christian american, the difficulties in reconciling politics and religions between countries and how terrible it is, and how god has granted them the strength to endure. i start sensing the depth of the tension when the expressions of their negative image of americans is followed by the question 'so, where are you from?'

canada. definately canada. of course, canada!! ah we love canadians, peaceful people, you are welcome here..praise allah! this innocent lie smooths things over quite well until we're stopped by the police and they demand my passport. i discreetly slip my incriminating document into the officer's hands, and he looks at me and says 'vous etes americaine?'

uh oh... 'sometimes..?'

we are quiet again. i pray for my precious life for the next 220 kilometers, during which there are three stops for prayer, two for tea and one for me, where i thank the infinite stars for my arrival in nouakchott..