tidbits

here's a few extra things worth noting about my recent travels.

Eight year olds writing songs is awesome.
As I said, I was staying with the family of my father's patients. The kids are 6 and 8 year old boys. It's also worth noting that, when packing lightly, I tend to sacrifice additional clothing for the sake of music, and on this trip I had gone full out and brought both my portable speaker (hooks up to the ipod) and, more importantly, my Martin Backpacker's Guitar.

As soon as I brought out my guitar one night, Abraham (8 years old), gaped and asked - can you help me with my song?

Obviously, the answer was yes. Yes, I can.

He had already written two lines of his song--a song, he noted, about standing up for yourself and not being a wimp. The first lines were as follows:
I'm gonna show you what I got
I'm gonna show you what I can do

Me: "Awesome! It's like a late seventies rock Monster Ballad"
Him, obviously perplexed: "Sure."

Over the next few days we would sit down for as long as he could concentrate (rarely greater than 20 minutes) and try to add lines. We added:

I'm gonna stand up straight and tall
[something something something] you
I've got the strongest will around
I support it with my heart

We had trouble, though, speaking positively about ourselves (and our strong will), without insulting the relative lack of will of others. We also had trouble putting the rhyming word at the END of the line. As soon as we tried to think of a line using Start to rhyme with Heart, the word Start inevitably showed up in the first few words of the phrase.

It was a valiant effort, but we got stuck. If any of you would like to work on the song, the chords are G, C9, G, Em, G, C9, G, D. I figured I'd go simple on his first composition.

Anyway, he eagerly awaits my possible return in January and has promised to work on his lyrics.
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Travel buddies are good people.
One of the things that is uniformly satisfying about traveling to nontraditional destinations (when you're not alone in the bush), is that you can be pretty sure that you'll meet some interesting fellow wanderers there.

Unfortunately, I think, I'm speaking mostly of traveling expats. It's difficult to quickly forge a connection with the native Africans with whom you share essentially no life context. The glancing blow that is the friendship of intercultural exchange, usually severely restricted by the constraints of understood language, quickly becomes unsatisfying. When you run into a fellow obroni, or tubop (in bambara - the prevalent language in Mali), on the other hand, it's likely that you share a comfortable language. It's also likely that you have found yourselves on that particular underdeveloped patch of dirt at that particular time at the behest of some similar interests and values.

So, for the love of immersion and adventure, there are second Thanksgivings and nights out dancing until 5.

I attended a Second Thanksgiving when I was in Bamako. As opposed to the older expat-with-families Thursday event, this was the younger, what-the-hell-else-will-we-do-with-our-saturday type deal. It was an -- everyone show up and bring supplies and we'll cook ourselves the most JV, uncoordinated Thanksgiving inspired spread in the world -- type event. And it was awesome. It occurred at the home of the assistant to the American Military Attache to Mali.

He's a 25 year old named Ben, who enlisted at 18, rode the army program through college to become a linguist, spent years in Hawaii translating mandarin documents, and has now been in Mali for a year or so, doing something military, but more interestingly learning bamabara, french, Mali-an guitar, speaking god knows how many languages, and covering the bathroom walls of his expansive government home (designed to fit a family, in a compound of houses that looks to have been airlifted straight out of SoCal) with dry-erase quotations, proverbs and doodlings. I drooled over his packed bookshelves (they get a several thousand pound shipment allowance). Obviously, I had a man crush.

It was potluck.

I decided there was nothing more American than occupied territories, so I decided to bring a little of Puerto Rico to Mali. I made Ernie (my borriqua ex-roomie)'s concoction of Rum, sugar, lime, ice and rum. Shake shake shake. Drink. Collapse.

Others made mashed potatoes, stuffing, beans, some street-bought rotisserie chickens to serve as turkey, apple fritter and so forth.

In addition to those of my generation, we were joined by the father and eight year old brother of an Indian-American third-year peace-corp-er from the bay area. There was Uno. A good time was had by all. At least I think it was. I had had a few glasses of the stuff I made. But I'm pretty sure others were having fun too.
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As for dancing until 5, I'll only say: when you're in Burkina Faso's linguisticually satisfying capital, Ouagadougou, with Mali and 20+ hours of bus behind you and Ghana and 20+ hours of bus ahead, why rest up when you can go out dancing all night to Burkinabe beats with your Austrian hosts, the Malian guide they picked up on their recent travels (who claims to speak 18 African languages, and who can definitely speak at least French, Bambara, More, and decent English), and the Frenchman on his way home tomorrow? Best that you sleep through the travails ahead of you as much as possible.

Trust me. I'll tell you about them later.