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...
