What I've Been Up To

Hello folks. I don't even know where to begin. I've been in Bamako quite a while now and have had a welath of experiences. I've gone from unable to speak to anyone in full sentences to regularly understanding the gist of conversations when people are speaking. I still need a larger everyday vocabulary, but I can communicate now. I've grown an appreciation for sign language. Enamored as I've been of them/us throughout my years, I've long vauled the wisdom in the sign language developed between Native American nations for communication when people did not speak the same language. Here amidst people who work all day with their hands, people selling things who are quite motivated to communicate, street vendors, and a deaf Tuareg blacksmith the language of the hands clarifies anything lost in verbal communication. My Tuareg friend like myself doesn't speak Bambara, but his sign language is clear as day, full of humor, and indicates specific metallurgical knowledge quite plainly. I've found myself continually at the market amidst the sellers of magic supplies, the sculptors of wood, and workers of metal. There is jewelry of many different shapes and sizes, metal covered with intricate designs, twisted, polished, texturized, silver, bronze and created metals. Tiny crucibles for melting metal and making different shapes grab the eye. Bronze pipping is for sale under rows of umbrellas that form a ceiling shielding the colorful flurry of people and the constantly moving artisans from the brilliant sun who still manages the peek through splashing sloppily on the worn brick ground along with all manner of water one avoids touching. The pipping turns into amazing medalions once designed, cut, polished and applied to a bit of ebony and dye leather. There are artists and vendors here from all over Africa and the rich environment is a feast for the eyes, a standing death threat to the unwarry pedistrian via vehicular assault, and a wonderful sea of colorful creativity, and a Blackness engaged in the living and doing. I imagine what if our engagement in society where I live could exist like this? Life would be amazing.

Artisana, likely misspelled here, is like a thriving creative heart in the big market in the downtown area. I love it. I came to Mali intending the study smithing in rural villages where rich philosophy was lived out magically, blacksmiths making tools for farmers, occasionally holding red hot metal in their hands inspecting the work. Well the tradition here is a thousand years old and one night while sleeping I spent quite a while discussing with some person in the dreamworld the similarities between the Mande creation story and the Ausarian Resurection of ancient Egypt. Many people throughout Africa, in their histories, speak about living in and around the ancient Nile Valley civilization. My maternal (mitochondrial is the scientific term) DNA matches with the DNA of a people in the extreme North of Cameroon called the Masa 99.2%. Reading what little I could find on these people I read one article said they shared more in common with the people of the Upper and Middle Nile valley than the neighbors in northern Cameroon. Anyways we all know the ancient Egyptians did architectural and other things we simply cannot explain. Some of us know that throughout the non-modernized world people do things we know to be impossible with regularity. At any rate this remarkable Mande smithing tradition with it's long and trailing roots called me in Tallahassee, Flordia and said... well, holla at me. I was like, uhh... fsho. Now I'm here and certainly on the trail of the magic blacksmiths of Mande, but I've stumbled upon something else similarly mind blowing. Artisana Artisana is filled with African masks and sculpture, some ancient, some new. Ancient swords and flintlock pistols of African manufacture, yet looking for all the world like they were found on a pirate ship cover the walls of a friends shop. Muskets, spears, masks covered in dust, some covered in cowries and beautiful cloth and applied metal are old yet seem quite alive. The high walls, every table space not in use, floor space and shop windows are filled with art work. The smiths work endlessly carving more and I wonder where it possibly can all fit. Beautifully ornate Tuareg silver jewelry fill some shops, crafted by a people historically desert nomads, camel ridding, indigo wearing, rainbow colored intricately designed leather bag wearing people of the Sahara. They also make boxes swords, knives, and a whole list of objects I'll photograph rather than desribe. There are smiths from Morocco who do more delicate work like making gold teeth, Mauritanian smiths, Fulani jewelry makers and so on. Also Yoruba barbers, Ghanian vendors, and the list goes on. So the magic I've discovered before even the Malinke Numuya (blacksmithing) is the beautifully rich diversity of African art being endlessly created here in the heart of the city.

A remarkable writter named Amadou Hampate-Ba of Malian descent spoke about a relevant peice of Malian philosophy from one of her ancient schools. Here in Mali there is a quote: "The Blacksmith is the first child of the world." Hampate-Ba spoke about the Malian conception of the smiths and the artisans in several writtings a friend recently put me up on. Hampate-Ba says essentially that the Komo school and historic Mali in general said the world was not simply created in the past, but is still being created. Thus in Mande genesis theory God did not simply make a world and let it go, but God made and is at this moment making a world as in the begining of time. The world is made in many ways, but one of them is through humanity, and thus the artisans traditionally saw artwork, tool making, basketry, weaving, pottery, and the making of the various things needed by society as a sacred duty, and themselves vessels through which the divine created. In fact the forge where the smith worked, and the loom of the weavers was part by part said to mirror the divine process through which all life was created. At artisana sometimes I think, okay, given the prices on this artwork, some of it just can't be afforded by everyday Malians, and I don't see thaaat many turists. So... well in America at some point someone would say, okay guys stop working, I'm not paying you until I get some sales because we've got too much merchandise. But I think about that idea that these artisans are actually creating a world through their work. Whether the shop keepers are holding the idea in mind today I don't know, but for sure production goes on, the artists stay working and the heart of Bamako is rich in form, line, and shape in a wealth that it seems can only increase. Outside of Artisana and throughout Bamako countless shops sell the tools and more functional work of the Malian artisans. When considered with the endless doors, and windows, dressers, tables, beds, clothing, etc. The Artists of Bamako truly are part of the creative process by which their world is made. Kinda deep right...

I've also fallen in love with the fabrics here. Everybody is wearing the flyest outfits ever. It's so Black I just smile and laugh all the time. People poor, maybe dirty from the work and the wear of the day and the days, are decked out in the flyest laced fabric, embriodery and designs. The drape of the fabric falls over the lean shoulders and tall forms of the old and the young with a wonderful elegance. The actual fabric having patterns woven into it, colors printed, or batik dyed into it is full and baggy like my folk in America like, but not as heavy and it breathes. I've long though sagging and the baggy style of 90s young Black men clothing emerged logically from the hammer pants and African influences in the Black clothing of the 80s. In fact cothing here with the long shirts men wear sometimes reaching shins and ankles, the huge low crotched pants achieve African American style without the sloppy look of trying to make clothes do something they were barely designed for. Visually it's quite evident we are trying to do in America what I see here. The younger men wear tighter clothing, Western style, with some styling themselves more toward the East, possibly more conservative, longer cloth. The pious, the African fashion forward, the western and the African traditional from all over the West of the continent all splash together in a rich color and style explosion. Everything I see on old folk, young folk, whoever, I'm like man, I gotta get that. Course I can't find everything I see that's ill, but I sure try. Plus fabric, at least what I buy ranges from $6 to $8 for a fit, and about $8 to have the local clothing making brothas at the neighborhood shop put in together. A far cry from the $100 the cheaper African clothes can be in Tallahassee, FL. Glad I brought wack American clothes here I'm going to give or throw them away when I come back and stuff my bags with fly African goodness. There's this great fabric I want to get that's kinda more like the Nigerian lace material, but man... they man $50 for it. 50 bones? I had to keep walking. I was thinking, wow that's crazy expensive. When I thought about it though, $50 cloth, $8 construction... It's still killing the American prices made with muuuch cheaper fabric. I keep walking though, I have to buy metal and kola nuts, travel around the countryside and learn to discover magic secrets and mysitc languages from animals in my dreams like the hunters of Mande.

All in all, short of getting sick and a few other wack experiences, which get two thumbs down, I'm loving it all. I miss my Tallahassee family though. With my parents it actually kinda cool because in planning this trip and recent months I've spoken more with them than in years. But I also think about seeing them and Seattle my beloved city by the sea. My love for my country has deepend. I've always loved our countryside Carrabelle, Pacific Northwest forests, the California cost and all the little towns, rural areas and big cities. I truly have loved travel since my parents packed my little sister and myself into a car and took us on long trips driving across country back to their hometown in Michigan. I think about taking a year to photograph the country ridding trains, and back roads. I think about big city nights, and eating at great restaraunts, and my friends whom I miss like a part of my heart everytime they leave Tallahassee for some other place. I want to see... well maybe I shouldn't name names cause I'd be at it all day, but obviously little baby Tuka-Tuka, my ATL folk, my folk building a brave new world for our people in Tallahassee and the list goes on. I miss comic books and my car, Wafflehouse and my cooking, 7th week yoga class and art school, he endless beauty of Saint Marks, the sanctity of Gurudev's ashram in Salt Springs and road trips. I want to do everything when I get back, I'll probably gain a few pounds, but then chisel it to Ninja perfection with my weekend Ninja workouts at Tom Brown park I'll hopefully be back to (Laughter). Oh and then Akoms, and ceremonies in the ATL, I'm so there when I get back. I love everybody like when you just recieve your netcheck! One.