Photos
There is a road south of Bamako that continues on to Guinea. It's characters and personality are rich, rich red, and full of texture. The road is not exactly one you'd see where I'm from in America withbut miniature lakes huge dips and ridges and a snaking safe passage around them forming a curving undulating narrow path around the wild terrain that is the road. I jokingly and in bad Bambara said the road itself was the wilderness supposedly boardering it. The bumps and shaking of the groaning vans crawling slowly along the road sound are wild and crazy. You feel a bit like your ridding some obstacle course in an old beat up van the driver smashes into parts of the terrain driving slowly and the road forces him to, but way to fast for human comfort. It's humorous in retrospect I suppose, though a disturbing prospect. This road is one of the main roads that ties Mali South of Bamako to Guinea and links all the villages in between. In all fairness the bad sections of the road described above are truly small sections of the road, but the can consume hours of your trip as memories of pavement and speeds above 30 miles an hour coast into the distant memory.
For all its wild, strong and exciting character the road is beautiful in a very deep way. I love roads. I think it comes from the family trips we took traveling across country by car from Seattle, Washington to Kalamazoo Michigan. We would travel over five days across the country by car and later by train and the trips left an impact in, well I guess my soul. There are a few things my memories that have left indellible marks in my heart and mind like tatoos. Traveling the long roads and rails, photographing the beauty of nature and people may shortly find itself to be my highest passion and lifelong occupation. My Mother's Mother, once she was older maintained her good health by walking long distances across the town my mother grew up in. Then Grannie kept walking in poor shoes until she developed health concerns, eventually falling, complications ensued and I don't remember exactly of what but she passed a bit later. As a family we would go on walks when I and my little sister Karis were young, picking up all manner of seeds, leaves, observing nature through her seasons and taking in the beautiful world all along the roads of my hometown. So you see the Southern Bamako red road with its seemingly endless and unchecked green fields and wildernesses speak to someone inside of me.
The fields and trees as far as the eye can see lining the road, or rather the roads veining them are something like fiction. I imagine driving in the rural areas around Tallahassee that the forest stretches without end. I imagine that were I to walk out into the nature around my town that I could walk forever and not hit the other side. Its an important thing to imagine because it ensures that somewhere, even if only in fiction, the unregimented, unrestrained pure and beautiful world is wide beyond ones ability to master it. In my imagination the world is still big like when I was a child, every part of it hasn't been crossed and colonized and there are still places where you can wander in openness and freedom. So the story this African road shares with me is that there actually is an endless wilderness still left and that somewhere humanity can exist without constriction. Obviously the story is fiction. Yet it's good to know such fiction can still be written.
Anyways, the bus ride is great and wack at the same time. We hit Degela and one of the coolest guys ever, John Wu, Mali code name Soloman Coulibaly leads me to his home there. Over the next few days John interprets for me an unraveling story of magic and legend that exists at the edges and in the history and childhood experiences of the people of several of the villages South of Mali.
The houses in the villages here are earthen, there is no electricity, the people are warm and quite busy going about the work that sustains them. Most people are farmers, but many people also hunt and do other tasks like repairing the many bicycles, and motorbikes people use for transportation. Degela is filled with green and while the earthen floor in the center of the village in worn earth without small green growing things, just outside of that area green is everywhere.
One of the first people we interview is the Degela Donsoba (chief hunter). Donsoba tells a story of the origins of Donsoya (hunting tradition) which take leave of normal reality a bit and I didn't get much of what he said. I'll have to translate it later. We do make out that there are special plants taken before a hunter goes to sleep through which they may attain visions of future events. Quite cool I thought. they call such plant knowledge here Jiridon. I was not able to discover which plant and the specifics of the method as it is reserved for donso, but Donsoba told me to return when I am a Donso and he'll tell me. Another cool.
We visited a man in charge of a magic wishing tree that fulfills peoples wishes traveling from all over the region to address their desires. Then John met a member of an old educational system at the core of the preIslamic cultural heritage who said he would show me a bit of it. In brief conversation John also mentioned a guy the next village up who spoke about a hill people by sometimes invisible little people with backwards feet. Okay... The people who had heard the story though it quite a bit odd, but I having spent quite a few years looking into West African culture was familiar with such tales though I hadn't expected to run into them in Mali. Wokolo in Mali, Kontomble in Burkina, Mmoetia in Ghana, and I believe Azili in some part of Benin or Togo, these little people are discussed by quite a few people who swear to their existence having met them, regularly meet with them etc. A Native American friend in America mentioned that Natives speak about the little people quite often when non-Natives aren't around and a judge in (I believe the Phillipines) was fired a while back when he said he received counsel from magic little people apparently part of the local beliefs. Similar creatures are spoken about in Haiti and I think a number of other place though I'd have to find some notes. As we began to talk about Mali's stories about Wokolo it seemed a whole magic world opened beneath a thin veneer of simple everyday village life.
These villages are in fact over a thousand years old. There are stories routed in the mind, developed so long ago, but continually experienced, and ways of life crafted around across all those years. I wondered how a thousand year old place still holding strongly to old traditions might differ from the cities I've live in. I began to get some of my answer in these villages south of Bamako.
It seems that one of the things that makes Blacksmithing and hunting different in these regions is this age. Rather than the old things being left behind for a space aged access to information, things, and exciting new possibilities, old things are worked into and reshaped creating an amazing dimension to life. You have spirits and magic little people, sometimes visible or not, you have sacred geography and immense secrets, quite mind blowing in their unraveling. You have knowledge also. Imagine one of several thousand years ago you figured out how to do something. Then imagine from then till now your family was educated into that knowledge base, expanded, developed and enriched it. Well that it the context in which people live out their lives and vocations. Farmers reportedly make it rain, Blacksmiths resist fire and the sharp edges of steel, hunters resist the dangers of wild animals historically lions, elephants, crocidile etc. And people find ways to live in an area unguarded by police, large cement buildings and fences. People find ways to stay safe when there is the constant threat of warfare on the horizon. I would later learn there is a warrior tradition here, martial arts and people skilled in the use of weaponry and hand to hand combat like one imagines certain periods of Asian history to have been. And like the warring period in Japan when samurai, war and danger raged across the land the region has seen war and warriors like Europes medieval knights, Japan's Samurai, and the worlds history of such things. So people found ways to survive, and though we in the west know little of the remarkable knowledge developed in this part of Africa to do such things I've heard a bit. Believe you me, it belongs on the world stage with all of the great triumphs of human accomplishment. I've heard and seen some remarkable things. I thing what benefits me greatly is that I have no desire to write them off as complete make believe having seen some of there demonstrated truths and real life usefulness.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Sabalibougou, Bamako
Here's my Flickr page, full of photos though none yet of the Tuareg Numuw and Sabalibougou
It's been a while since I was really able to sit down and write and I feel a bit like I'm telling the story backwards, or at least in a strange retrospection. Where my writing a voice on a radio telling a story sometime in the past I'd tell you settle down into your couch, close your eyes and listen to my tale. Bamako is a city much like any other major city. A ton of people all rushing about during the day trying to make their fortune. In so many ways it feels like if the cities and governments were abandoned by the current governmental and industrial leadership and the regular people took over and began to make their own nation. Everywhere things are placed togetherin an organized, disorganized fashion, shops are small so all the inventory is placed out on the sidewalk, so people walk in the street and the busses and motorbikes take turns trying to run them and each other over. There are a million bright colors on products and people, the houses earthen and sometimes made of dirt. Now when I heard of mud brick houses I though of an earthen sunbaked ceramic. I have learned that actually in Mali mud brick is dirt in the shape of a brick and rubbing it the wrong way, rain etc. makes it fall off, and come down just like you might imagine a dirt wall to. People live inside of these things, though I can't imagine how the fare the rain storms. But what is lovely is this means that everyone has a domicile and people don't have to live outside. Incredibly Black in my opinion. Okay, no place to live? Well we're going to find you a place even if we stitch it out of trash bags, we'll make a way. Beautiful. Until you look around the concrete and dirt houses, colorfully stylish people and things and see the endless parade of trash and putrid festering things on the ground. God save us from the contagion one foot roared to the rest of my body today as I accidentally disgustingly placed it in some sort of putrid water substance. Trash is everywhere in the city. My friends the Tuareg smiths live on the other side of what looks to be a river basin, water fall, hilly settlement overlooked the Niger basin, with a beautiful view. This scenic breath taking wonderful place to live is offset by the fact that the most scenic part is also a sprawling trash dump. It actually looks like a landfill on top of a resort quality area turned foot traffic highway. The animals eat things out of the trash, the water is frightening colors and everywhere Black folk are living, smiling, I saw not an ounce of crime, stress, and everyone employed in some hustle making it happen. The city is fast paced but with an African familial and social rhythm that contrasts it. I love the market as I've said before and it loves me. It's style is bewitching. I love my people always, but hear where people aren't afriad to just be as they are (or are less afraid than I'm used to), you find a reason to smile and stare everywhere you look.
I work in the quarter of town with the landfill at it's center called Sabalibougou. I love the winding road in from my area of town. The read earth on the sides of the road, the careening sway of the overcrowded transportation system called the soutrama, the craziness of the soutrama experience... I love it. I ride to work and then hike through the market, then the frightening disgusting, brilliantly beautiful dump, up the hill, around some corners and up another hill to my friends shop in his yard. Mohammed has like six of the small anvils they work in this part of the world and a crew of six to three people given the day. He has to gorgeous wives, beautiful children and lovely shade situation hooked up over the work area, delicious food and what seems to be a good degree of peace. Working with the Tuareg smiths is great because their work is incredibly rich in design and style. They make many a knife and sword, which is of course right up my alley. They work completely by hand and so by the time you've finished a product it is truly a wonderful thing. There are all these techniques for embedding curved metal into blackened ebony, indenting shapes into the metal and applying one metal to the next, bronze and coppers on steel etc. They create incredible leather boxes which I may as well photograph because I sure can't afford.
the Tuareg smiths speak Tamasheq and a little Bambara, along with French. I speak more Bambara than French, no French and no Tamasheq. So we communicate with very few words and hand guestures. One of the Tuareg smiths is deaf though so Mohammed being his close friend is quite used to a kind of sign language I've grown accustomed to. So in this way we hand craft art. Being a bladesmith (novice, beginner, all that) I of course was interested in the Tuareg knives, handles and knife like designs etc. Mohammed asked me, so do you want to make a bottle opener, or a box first? Of course my response is the bottle opener handle with a knife blade. I go buy my hardened car spring steel I know from back home and go to work. I sure learned something over the next few days. There seem to be many things you can do in life. However, the reason some people do certain things and not others is because it just makes good common sense. The Tuareg smiths work with smaller hammers, and small handles, smaller anvils and sometimes no fire. The point is that the work is for sale to turists. My knive making education and learning experience comes from a group of smiths who live in hugely forested areas in rural Southeast America where hunting culture is the culture. My knife making education has been in outdoor knives, hunting, survival, etc. I still wanted to work like that in Africa but with a little fire, tiny anvils and hammers and a completely different work set up I learned a bit of common sense and a bit about going with the flow. At least I learn that it'd be a good idea after I finished my knife. It was beautiful to.
The Tuareg women work in leather, and make delicious food. Their designs are excellent drawings etched into leather which become bags and pillows and all sorts of leather things. When you see the tuareg leather work, metal and many decorative things you really have to marvel at the creative mind. It's not that they are doing the impossible, or working in gold, it's just that their work is beautiful, especially when light shines on it. It looks like something good is inside of it.
One day working at Mohammeds place just chilling out either dodging the rain, sun, breathing in the good life Mohammed mentions the fact that the hammers and tools are not just simple tools. They have have a sacrifice don't on them, blood poured out, and a cow feasted on by I can imagine a host of happy Tuareg folk. I'm not sure the celebration it was tied to, either the opening of the forge site, the blessing of the tools for the work ahead... dunno. Thing is, Mohammed told me he wasn't involved in the magic because God didn't want it. So you can picture me wide mouthed when he spoke about the ritual. Well sure, makes sense to me I'm familiar with sacrifice, and that a blacksmith should seek blessing for his tools and hold a feast in that honor is something I could see. I guess I just associate sacrifice with African ritual and Islam the beautiful religion of this region, these folks, and this household with... well not. Especially when a person says no don't do this or that because God says not to. Certain groups define Islam more closely to standards one might find in the east and the Tuareg are one I know. And yet here I was working with blessed hammers all the time and didn't know it. Cool.
Later on that day I heard drumming and singing. Thinking it was a recording I ignored it and upon heading home for the day only on a whim did I follow my nose-ears to the sound. And low an behold... a possession ritual. The music was a haunting beauty, stringed instruments sang and whinned along with the singer an instrument himself. Calabash rattles where being played, djembes which I thought interesting and while the music wove its song story a woman danced carrying the spirit. They were dressed in the ancient cloth of the region. Sort of like being drapped in heritage I guess. It's called bogolon and it's nothing to look at, but something about it is rich. It's hand woven so maybe that's the pull. The women, spirit person walked around, I'm not quite sure what she was doing other than dancing and being present, but it did feel refreshing. I certainly didn't expect to see people that involved in their ancestry here. I know Africans navigate Islam, defining it for themselves and creating their own way of relating to God and the world. And yet I also know the large religions have actively killed people for dancing with their ancestors, following the ancient traditions. Certainly comming out of Mohammed's blacksmith shop and them regularly making their prayers to the east I had not expected to run into this ceremony. I wonder who these people were, why were they still dancing and singing in this way and why Mohammed smiled when I asked where was the music coming from saying yeah go check it out. African complexities I must say.
I wonder at the meaning in the Tuareg designs and much of the design I see here in Bamako and Mali. layered on top of an endless succession of tradition and culture is todays religion Islam and todays culture interest, America. The long trail of the meanings of things is sometimes lost as cultures transition into a new period. I like the roots of things it seems. I like the full story, the deep whys, because something there seems to wish to speak. It's as if something wants to say hammer's are alive, the remember the fit of your hand, the history of your work, and the memories of yesterday are still on todays air. Can you taste them there when you breathe? It's as if beneath the surface the world is alive with stories waiting to be told, the trash to be cleaned from the lanscape, and an endlessly beautiful song revealed, resplident and brillant like the Sabalibougou view near Mohammed's shop.
It's been a while since I was really able to sit down and write and I feel a bit like I'm telling the story backwards, or at least in a strange retrospection. Where my writing a voice on a radio telling a story sometime in the past I'd tell you settle down into your couch, close your eyes and listen to my tale. Bamako is a city much like any other major city. A ton of people all rushing about during the day trying to make their fortune. In so many ways it feels like if the cities and governments were abandoned by the current governmental and industrial leadership and the regular people took over and began to make their own nation. Everywhere things are placed togetherin an organized, disorganized fashion, shops are small so all the inventory is placed out on the sidewalk, so people walk in the street and the busses and motorbikes take turns trying to run them and each other over. There are a million bright colors on products and people, the houses earthen and sometimes made of dirt. Now when I heard of mud brick houses I though of an earthen sunbaked ceramic. I have learned that actually in Mali mud brick is dirt in the shape of a brick and rubbing it the wrong way, rain etc. makes it fall off, and come down just like you might imagine a dirt wall to. People live inside of these things, though I can't imagine how the fare the rain storms. But what is lovely is this means that everyone has a domicile and people don't have to live outside. Incredibly Black in my opinion. Okay, no place to live? Well we're going to find you a place even if we stitch it out of trash bags, we'll make a way. Beautiful. Until you look around the concrete and dirt houses, colorfully stylish people and things and see the endless parade of trash and putrid festering things on the ground. God save us from the contagion one foot roared to the rest of my body today as I accidentally disgustingly placed it in some sort of putrid water substance. Trash is everywhere in the city. My friends the Tuareg smiths live on the other side of what looks to be a river basin, water fall, hilly settlement overlooked the Niger basin, with a beautiful view. This scenic breath taking wonderful place to live is offset by the fact that the most scenic part is also a sprawling trash dump. It actually looks like a landfill on top of a resort quality area turned foot traffic highway. The animals eat things out of the trash, the water is frightening colors and everywhere Black folk are living, smiling, I saw not an ounce of crime, stress, and everyone employed in some hustle making it happen. The city is fast paced but with an African familial and social rhythm that contrasts it. I love the market as I've said before and it loves me. It's style is bewitching. I love my people always, but hear where people aren't afriad to just be as they are (or are less afraid than I'm used to), you find a reason to smile and stare everywhere you look.
I work in the quarter of town with the landfill at it's center called Sabalibougou. I love the winding road in from my area of town. The read earth on the sides of the road, the careening sway of the overcrowded transportation system called the soutrama, the craziness of the soutrama experience... I love it. I ride to work and then hike through the market, then the frightening disgusting, brilliantly beautiful dump, up the hill, around some corners and up another hill to my friends shop in his yard. Mohammed has like six of the small anvils they work in this part of the world and a crew of six to three people given the day. He has to gorgeous wives, beautiful children and lovely shade situation hooked up over the work area, delicious food and what seems to be a good degree of peace. Working with the Tuareg smiths is great because their work is incredibly rich in design and style. They make many a knife and sword, which is of course right up my alley. They work completely by hand and so by the time you've finished a product it is truly a wonderful thing. There are all these techniques for embedding curved metal into blackened ebony, indenting shapes into the metal and applying one metal to the next, bronze and coppers on steel etc. They create incredible leather boxes which I may as well photograph because I sure can't afford.
the Tuareg smiths speak Tamasheq and a little Bambara, along with French. I speak more Bambara than French, no French and no Tamasheq. So we communicate with very few words and hand guestures. One of the Tuareg smiths is deaf though so Mohammed being his close friend is quite used to a kind of sign language I've grown accustomed to. So in this way we hand craft art. Being a bladesmith (novice, beginner, all that) I of course was interested in the Tuareg knives, handles and knife like designs etc. Mohammed asked me, so do you want to make a bottle opener, or a box first? Of course my response is the bottle opener handle with a knife blade. I go buy my hardened car spring steel I know from back home and go to work. I sure learned something over the next few days. There seem to be many things you can do in life. However, the reason some people do certain things and not others is because it just makes good common sense. The Tuareg smiths work with smaller hammers, and small handles, smaller anvils and sometimes no fire. The point is that the work is for sale to turists. My knive making education and learning experience comes from a group of smiths who live in hugely forested areas in rural Southeast America where hunting culture is the culture. My knife making education has been in outdoor knives, hunting, survival, etc. I still wanted to work like that in Africa but with a little fire, tiny anvils and hammers and a completely different work set up I learned a bit of common sense and a bit about going with the flow. At least I learn that it'd be a good idea after I finished my knife. It was beautiful to.
The Tuareg women work in leather, and make delicious food. Their designs are excellent drawings etched into leather which become bags and pillows and all sorts of leather things. When you see the tuareg leather work, metal and many decorative things you really have to marvel at the creative mind. It's not that they are doing the impossible, or working in gold, it's just that their work is beautiful, especially when light shines on it. It looks like something good is inside of it.
One day working at Mohammeds place just chilling out either dodging the rain, sun, breathing in the good life Mohammed mentions the fact that the hammers and tools are not just simple tools. They have have a sacrifice don't on them, blood poured out, and a cow feasted on by I can imagine a host of happy Tuareg folk. I'm not sure the celebration it was tied to, either the opening of the forge site, the blessing of the tools for the work ahead... dunno. Thing is, Mohammed told me he wasn't involved in the magic because God didn't want it. So you can picture me wide mouthed when he spoke about the ritual. Well sure, makes sense to me I'm familiar with sacrifice, and that a blacksmith should seek blessing for his tools and hold a feast in that honor is something I could see. I guess I just associate sacrifice with African ritual and Islam the beautiful religion of this region, these folks, and this household with... well not. Especially when a person says no don't do this or that because God says not to. Certain groups define Islam more closely to standards one might find in the east and the Tuareg are one I know. And yet here I was working with blessed hammers all the time and didn't know it. Cool.
Later on that day I heard drumming and singing. Thinking it was a recording I ignored it and upon heading home for the day only on a whim did I follow my nose-ears to the sound. And low an behold... a possession ritual. The music was a haunting beauty, stringed instruments sang and whinned along with the singer an instrument himself. Calabash rattles where being played, djembes which I thought interesting and while the music wove its song story a woman danced carrying the spirit. They were dressed in the ancient cloth of the region. Sort of like being drapped in heritage I guess. It's called bogolon and it's nothing to look at, but something about it is rich. It's hand woven so maybe that's the pull. The women, spirit person walked around, I'm not quite sure what she was doing other than dancing and being present, but it did feel refreshing. I certainly didn't expect to see people that involved in their ancestry here. I know Africans navigate Islam, defining it for themselves and creating their own way of relating to God and the world. And yet I also know the large religions have actively killed people for dancing with their ancestors, following the ancient traditions. Certainly comming out of Mohammed's blacksmith shop and them regularly making their prayers to the east I had not expected to run into this ceremony. I wonder who these people were, why were they still dancing and singing in this way and why Mohammed smiled when I asked where was the music coming from saying yeah go check it out. African complexities I must say.
I wonder at the meaning in the Tuareg designs and much of the design I see here in Bamako and Mali. layered on top of an endless succession of tradition and culture is todays religion Islam and todays culture interest, America. The long trail of the meanings of things is sometimes lost as cultures transition into a new period. I like the roots of things it seems. I like the full story, the deep whys, because something there seems to wish to speak. It's as if something wants to say hammer's are alive, the remember the fit of your hand, the history of your work, and the memories of yesterday are still on todays air. Can you taste them there when you breathe? It's as if beneath the surface the world is alive with stories waiting to be told, the trash to be cleaned from the lanscape, and an endlessly beautiful song revealed, resplident and brillant like the Sabalibougou view near Mohammed's shop.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Photos and Thanks
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10253487@N03/
I've wanted to express my many thanks to all the people who have helped me in this undertaking for quite some time. Internet access has been spotty and electricity increasingly a fading memory. Once I get back I intend to post better thanks, improve my websites and post more of my videos, writings and eventually artwork in regards to this trip.
One group of people I would like to thanks both now and later is my Mt. Zion church family in Seattle, Washington. I have not lived in Seattle in 10 years, but I grew up there attending Mt. Zion and growing up there. In effort to make this trip possible I appealed to Mt. Zion to provide a bit of financial support and they absolutely did. The support I've received from Mt. Zion, including my upbringing there is obviously more than I could put into words. I remember choir rehearsals, My father's choir rehearsals, sitting on the deacon board on Sundays with my father and in the balcony when I got older. I remember the Brotherhood breakfasts, the songs, sermons, on and on. I've have endless new memories since my time in Florida, and now a new and equisite bunch from this trip, but good memories linger in the mind like the scent of good food and I am appreciative of them and the folks that people them. Thank you again to everyone at Mt. Zion who helped to make this trip possible for me. Thank you if you wanted to and couldn't at the time. Thank you if you couldn't but I knew you when I was a child because the wealth of memories is a real and tangible one as well.
Thank you if I've forgotten to thankyou and know that I will be posting a more extensive version of this at a later date on a better website once I get somewhere with an internet speed past 2... Here is a link to some photos I've been taking while visiting villages, meeting people and studying blacksmithing in Mali and the cultural foundations that undergird it.
I've wanted to express my many thanks to all the people who have helped me in this undertaking for quite some time. Internet access has been spotty and electricity increasingly a fading memory. Once I get back I intend to post better thanks, improve my websites and post more of my videos, writings and eventually artwork in regards to this trip.
One group of people I would like to thanks both now and later is my Mt. Zion church family in Seattle, Washington. I have not lived in Seattle in 10 years, but I grew up there attending Mt. Zion and growing up there. In effort to make this trip possible I appealed to Mt. Zion to provide a bit of financial support and they absolutely did. The support I've received from Mt. Zion, including my upbringing there is obviously more than I could put into words. I remember choir rehearsals, My father's choir rehearsals, sitting on the deacon board on Sundays with my father and in the balcony when I got older. I remember the Brotherhood breakfasts, the songs, sermons, on and on. I've have endless new memories since my time in Florida, and now a new and equisite bunch from this trip, but good memories linger in the mind like the scent of good food and I am appreciative of them and the folks that people them. Thank you again to everyone at Mt. Zion who helped to make this trip possible for me. Thank you if you wanted to and couldn't at the time. Thank you if you couldn't but I knew you when I was a child because the wealth of memories is a real and tangible one as well.
Thank you if I've forgotten to thankyou and know that I will be posting a more extensive version of this at a later date on a better website once I get somewhere with an internet speed past 2... Here is a link to some photos I've been taking while visiting villages, meeting people and studying blacksmithing in Mali and the cultural foundations that undergird it.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Mali south of Bamako, near Kangaba
Here are some photos from the some of the villages!
Just south of Bamako about two hours or more there are several wonderful villages I just returned from visiting. Going to each place I was lured in and swallowed by the endless beauty of the countryside. Truly I can imagine just bicycling around Mali for months at a time. It's the same beautiful countryside as in the American South where I live, but unchecked by powerlines, roads, and cities just over the horizon. It's like if the South just stretched out. Past burning crosses, lynchings, urabanity and modern agriculture on into pure beauty where there's just really kind black folk, with lots of beautiful clothes, or just beautiful selves. Then inside the village the stories... did you know there are magic little people with backwards feet who live near and in villages in Southern Mali. Just like in Ghana! There are also tall people who are sometimes invisible, magic spirit snakes and roosters, sacred trees, woods, hills and caverns. My goodness... an enchanted world, full of real hardships, smiling children, snot with no tissue, and bathing in the clear blue open air.
I'll have to write a bit more about my trip when I get the chance because I'm on a boomerang trip right back and leaving town tomorrow. I've found some Blacksmiths who say they'll teach me about there culture. I'll be living with them for a few days, visiting Degela and it's sacred trees and woods, going back and smithing again, and then catching and annual warrior festival where people sit on hot coals, stick pokers through their tongues and show themselves to be unconquerable on every level. I can tell you in short that what separates Blacksmithing in this region from what I've learned in the States is the endless history, the rich folklore, and non-western ways of learning. People refer to folks who died a thousand years ago as if they were around yesterday, thousand tree old trees are part of daily life and animals and little people something like elves show up in dreams, nighttime, and while you are wide awake to give life altering knowledge, power, or possibly a fright! The richness is encrusted onto the things people do here and blacksmithing is no different. It is a thick layering of magic and wonder where fiction lives, and life is not stuck to the ground thus the imagination may fly and you may just find yourself witnessing the impossible. Everyday and everywhere I hear claims of superhuman possibilities, even witnessed an interesting thing myself. Maybe I'll tell you about it in a few.
Just south of Bamako about two hours or more there are several wonderful villages I just returned from visiting. Going to each place I was lured in and swallowed by the endless beauty of the countryside. Truly I can imagine just bicycling around Mali for months at a time. It's the same beautiful countryside as in the American South where I live, but unchecked by powerlines, roads, and cities just over the horizon. It's like if the South just stretched out. Past burning crosses, lynchings, urabanity and modern agriculture on into pure beauty where there's just really kind black folk, with lots of beautiful clothes, or just beautiful selves. Then inside the village the stories... did you know there are magic little people with backwards feet who live near and in villages in Southern Mali. Just like in Ghana! There are also tall people who are sometimes invisible, magic spirit snakes and roosters, sacred trees, woods, hills and caverns. My goodness... an enchanted world, full of real hardships, smiling children, snot with no tissue, and bathing in the clear blue open air.
I'll have to write a bit more about my trip when I get the chance because I'm on a boomerang trip right back and leaving town tomorrow. I've found some Blacksmiths who say they'll teach me about there culture. I'll be living with them for a few days, visiting Degela and it's sacred trees and woods, going back and smithing again, and then catching and annual warrior festival where people sit on hot coals, stick pokers through their tongues and show themselves to be unconquerable on every level. I can tell you in short that what separates Blacksmithing in this region from what I've learned in the States is the endless history, the rich folklore, and non-western ways of learning. People refer to folks who died a thousand years ago as if they were around yesterday, thousand tree old trees are part of daily life and animals and little people something like elves show up in dreams, nighttime, and while you are wide awake to give life altering knowledge, power, or possibly a fright! The richness is encrusted onto the things people do here and blacksmithing is no different. It is a thick layering of magic and wonder where fiction lives, and life is not stuck to the ground thus the imagination may fly and you may just find yourself witnessing the impossible. Everyday and everywhere I hear claims of superhuman possibilities, even witnessed an interesting thing myself. Maybe I'll tell you about it in a few.
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