On the walk back to my place, the smaller village between Kassa and Soro vibrates with murmurs from a crowd of villagers sitting in the mosque; they’re praying at a funeral. This is the moment that opens me to the grace of Islam – my spirit loves silence and solitude.
So begins my life for almost three weeks: I start the day with a cold bucket shower, armed as always with flip flops, the hope that I don’t slip, a block of Lifebuoy soap and a burgundy mesh I use to scrub away the dirt that sticks to my skin. Back in my room, I get dressed and pack a bag with a sweater and the peach dancing pants given to me by Ibrahim. I then grab my umbrella and start my walk to Soro. Sometimes dolphins swim close to the shore. In Soro, Mory is the first person who sees me. He bites his tongue trying to pronounce Lerato and christens me Aisha. I have been teaching everyone how to say my name instead of settling on a local name. I put my foot down every day in Bamako when Charles tries to call me Aminata. But Mory refuses to consider calling me anything but Aisha.
‘She is the wife of the Prophet,’ he says, ‘It’s a very good name.’
He invites me to wait at his house and leaves me with his girlfriend, Mafodia, while he goes back to weeding their vegetable garden. Mafodia spends most of her time cooking, dancing or twisting her hair and applying white cream on her face to remove the melanin from it.
When the time comes for us to go the hall, what looks like the whole village follows us. People stop sweeping and cutting weeds, fires are put out and pots removed from braziers. The hall overflows with onlookers. Those who arrive late for the show put their heads through the windows.
‘What’s this?’ Mohammed asks me, his long index finger drawing a line from my head to my toes. He calls Mafodia.
‘Look around you. What do you see?’ he shouts at us.
‘Everyone is dressed appropriately,’ she whispers, in spandex, leotards, harem pants and sports bras. My wide pants aren’t acceptable.
‘Fix it,’ he shouts at Mafodia, who runs to her house to get a pair of harem pants.
My wardrobe faux pas sorted, he turns his back to face the troupe as they stand in a line against the wall, waiting for the drums to start beating. Mory, John and two other drummers take their places.
‘Let’s go,’ Mohammed shouts at the drummers without looking at them. One beat, and he spins around like a provoked mamba. ‘Do you call this drumming?’ He doesn’t wait for them to answer. ‘This is a joke.’ He leaps to the drummers, taking John’s stick. He beats the drum until the room shakes.
He starts his classes with aerobics; another thing I hate. ‘I don’t care,’ he hisses when I complain about not getting what I sign up for. I’m on the floor five minutes into it.
‘Stop wasting time and get up. Now.’
His face shines with his smile again, but only for a split second. He gives us a five-minute break after the aerobic session so I can catch my breath. I lie on the floor sucking a plastic packet of water. Mofodia pours some water over my body to help me cool down.
Mohammed leans against the wall with a wide smile on his face. ‘Getting what you’re paying for?’ he winks, clapping his hands to summon us to the dance floor.
The drums start beating and Mohammed shouts out his instructions again. ‘Shoulders straight, hips loose, and a smile at all times, Lerato. People want happy dancers,’ he says. ‘Let’s go,’ he barks before stopping the drummers again. He pushes them to the side. ‘Give me the sticks, hurry,’ he says softly to Mory before beating the djembes until his body shakes. ‘This is what I’m talking about.’ He wants them to beat until sweat streams down their chests. Mory peels off his sweat-soaked clothes, leaving him in black swimming shorts. Mohammed doesn’t want us to just dance. We must jump until it looks like we’re flying and land en-pointe; he calls it ballet African. We move with vigour and land with grace.
I’m expected to keep up with everything except when they spin their bodies in the air. When the class ends, and some guys run into the sea, Mafodia holds my hand to support my exhausted body while we walk to the house. After a cold shower using Omo washing powder, I sleep in her bedroom. There’s still the afternoon session to get through.
My routine stops on Tuesdays when I get a boat to Conakry, and walk around its litter-strewn streets to get money from Western Union, buy fresh fruit, and second-hand copies of Time and the Economist.
My weekly trek comes with hopping into a boat made for ten that’s packed with thirty people, sacks of their shopping and live chickens.
The two boys who work on the boat each have a bucket which they use to fight the Atlantic as it seeps into our boat. ‘We are going to die,’ the woman next to me says as more people pile in. There are no life jackets. A young lady huddles with her two younger siblings and their plastic bags. A woman hops in and tip toes over the bags on the floor before squeezing her formidable curves between me and another person. She starts praying, softly at first, then fervently as we sail further away from Conakry’s lights into the dark night.
The boat boys are still at it with their buckets. The boat rocks, and our prayer warrior goes wild. When she is not slapping my shoulder and thigh, she pinches my arm or raises hers to the heavens, praying in tongues. Or so I think. Guinea has forty languages; she could be making our dying prayer in her mother tongue. ‘Amen,’ we repeat after her when we reach Kassa. My amen is the loudest; I haven’t got around to renewing my travel insurance. It expired ten months ago.
Monsieur Sylla’s face always looks like he has just swallowed a bitter potion. I don’t pay any attention to him on the Saturday morning I find him sitting in front of the gate, snarling as always, when I offer him my ‘bon jour’ on my way to the shower. He’s still at the gate when I go back to my room, the cheekbones that usually cling to his bony face are puffed up with irritation. I’m getting dressed when fists bang on the wooden window. He screams at me to come out of the room. ‘Knock on the damn door,’ I say, my short temper on its way to getting lost. He continues yelling. ‘I said come out. Now.’ His wife and their four daughters are also at my door. ‘I said I’m busy,’ I yell when I open the door.
He jumps on me as soon as I leave my room. He thinks I’m lying when I say I’m travelling to write about Africa, and accuses me of being a spy. He wants to confiscate my laptop. I tell him that it will only happen over my dead body.
Word that his tenant is co-creating a scene reaches Mr Diallo. He sits at the head of the table while his landlord and I sit across from each other. Neighbours are in the yard for the show.
‘You say you’re not a spy but refuse to show me your laptop. You’re a journalist but won’t show me your work.’ He wants us to go to the police station. He threatenes to kick me out; I yell that I don’t have time to look for another place. We go on like this, with me telling him he’s wasting my time, until he finally says what he has been thinking. ‘Who’s paying for you? Is it your husband or boyfriend?’ I fling the table across the yard and lunge at him.
‘Are you fucking kidding me, you little piece of male shit,’ I scream, rattling in English before cobbling up a French translation. ‘How dare you reduce me to my vagina? You piece of shit.’
I scream at him and everyone telling me to calm down. ‘Swine,’ I hiss.
End scene; storm to my room to get my bag and umbrella. Nothing irritates me as much as the assumption that I need a man to bankroll my life or make my dreams come true. It undermines my autonomy. The only thing I need from men is for them to step out of my way and spare me their patriarchal bullshit.
When I return from Soro, I stop at Joan’s restaurant for my usual dinner of fried fish and a salad of avocado, lettuce, tomato and boiled sweet potato. She’s from Ghana and calls me by my would-be Akan name. ‘Efua, is that you? You know how to get angry, eh? Now the whole village is scared to death of you,’ she quips.
‘Good. People must mind their damn business.’
When I get home, I go to Monsieur Sylla’s house with a kola nut for him to break for us bur
y the hatchet. Drama is the default language of West Africa and I’m fluent in it.
I move to Carrefour Cosa in Conakry after twenty-one days of dancing with Mohammed. My host is a friend from Bamako who invites me to stay with him and his cousins while house sitting for their aunt, who’s in America. I get my second bout of malaria and spend my last days in Guinea in my bed. Looking at the mirror on the morning I leave for Bamako, I stare at my reflection for a long time trying to figure what’s odd with the image staring back at me; I don’t have a double chin anymore.
The only person who pays at the roadblocks on the way to Bamako is our driver. One of the passengers, the motherly Khadija, writes a prayer in my journal after wishing me many more trips around Africa. It says: ‘La illaha illallah Muhammadur Rasulullah’. There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His messenger.
X
A GIFT FOR MY SOUL
21 August 2009
RAMADAN IS HERE and life at number 227 Djicoroni Para is infused with holiness. King and I are the only people who aren’t observing the most significant month of the Muslim calendar, when Allah reveals the first chapters of the Quran to Prophet Mohammed. It’s the most important time of the year to Moussa, who spends all his time reading the Quran and praying. The others start joining him at prayer times. Around Bamako, pavements are covered with prayer mats and the streets around the grand mosque spill over with people. When the streets can no longer contain them, people stand on balconies in buildings close to the mosque.
And yet, life continues as usual. Markets and kiosks are still in business, the top floor of the Grand Marché whirs with Singer sewing machines turning yards of cloth into boubous, sheep carcasses still hang off nails at the open-air butcheries ready to be sold off piece by piece, and the fetish market across the road is still trading dead pythons and monkey skulls.
Before Mali, I only know Islam as one of many religions; and even worse, through my Christian socialisation, with some charismatic pastors often mocking prayer times as the law of an insecure and repressive God who doesn’t allow His people the freedom Christianity provides. Ramadan becomes my teacher; my naturally restless spirit finds calm and the silence of the season quietens some of the storms in my head and heart.
I stop eating during fasting hours so that I too celebrate iftar with my housemates, when we break the fast. Dinner is usually a bean stew and baguette. It becomes a feast during Ramadan, with kebabs, grilled fish, fried chicken, couscous, green salad and alloko.
It’s the rainy reason. Astou invites me to sleep in her bedroom, making me part of her morning prayers, even if it’s only by observation. I have never seen prayers as dignified as hers, when her lips move quietly as tears stream down her face – this is the grace that draws me to Islam.
I’m usually happy to move to my next destination but the thought of leaving Bamako for good fills me with profound sadness. I will no longer zoot across town to see Habib Koité and his band Bamada on stage nor will I be a few minutes away from his house, where we spend a long afternoon, drinking tea while he translates some of the songs for me. I will no longer cook with Astou or brew bissap and nyamaku for Moussa and Mbaye; there will be no rooftop bonding sessions with Jilly at dawn, when we drink café touba – coffee that’s flavoured with cloves and Selim pepper – while I crochet his locks. I will no longer storm into Astou’s tailor’s shop with yards of pagne and bazin to turn into boubous. Ousman and his son will no longer wave hands blackened by the coal they sell at the market. I will no longer hear nteri, friend, when I walk around Djicoroni Para.
On my last night, Astou digs through her suitcases for my farewell present: A photograph of a much younger Habib Koité taken in a private moment. I give her a necklace from Timbuktu. We hug and cry and sit in an awkward silence for some time until I feel brave enough to ask her a question I’ve had since we met.
‘What’s it like to not have a clitoris? Because honey, mine is begging for attention and it’s a problem.’ I haven’t had sex in months and, frankly, I need a shag. But instead of looking for flings and one-night stands, I think about how problematic my clitoris is now. Female genital mutilation is still rife in Mali.
Astou laughs, confessing that she’s been dying to find out what sex feels like with a clitoris.
She tells me that her friends have started breaking with tradition, refusing to mutilate their daughters. I guess not all revolutions are loud; it doesn’t make them any less powerful.
Astou’s not the only one with tears falling down her face when she makes her first prayer of the day, Fajr. It’s the morning of my last day in Mali. Sitting at the back of a cab on my way to the bus station, Djicoroni Para is no longer the scrapyard I label it on my first day here. It’s home, where I learn French and lose my morbid obesity. It’s where I find my sense of belonging.
One of the things I used to feel and think about a lot when I lived in Mali is that all I have known about it, besides Timbuktu and Bamako being the capital city where most of my favourite artists reside, was that Mali is a poor country. Everything I read about Mali, from travelogues to news features, always finds space in the word count to mention that Mali is one of the poorest places in the world. Yet, where others only see misery and despair, I find family, unconditional love and belonging. In Mali, I’m not ‘moody’ or ‘difficult’ and I don’t have ‘an attitude’. I’m understood as someone who needs her solitude and time alone to replenish daily. Just as Adama the drummer was introduced to others with the declaration that he is a joker, I am accepted as someone who loves to withdraw into her own world and that I should not be disturbed when I’m in this space.
Malians love differently, with tenderness and the utmost care of the other person’s heart. To be held with love, as Malians do, is a gift for the soul.
XI
LEAVING WEST AFRICA
September 2009
THE TRIP FROM BAMAKO TO Accra is drama free at all borders. In Koloko, between Mali and Burkina Faso, a Burkinabe uniform buys me a sweet cup of mint tea while he searches my bags. In Paga, between Burkina Faso and Ghana, the chief uniform gives me a multiple-entry visa at the cost of a single-entry visa after I put on a Nollywood-worthy performance to beg for a discount. My return coincides with a series of events celebrating the centenary of Kwame Nkrumah’s birth. Rita Marley, who has a home in Ghana, is a speaker at one of them. The main celebration is held at the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park. It’s also attended by diplomats and royalty. The royals are dressed in volumes of kente togas. Their necks, wrists and heads are weighed down by gold and beads; their umbrella handlers are on hand to keep the harsh sun from touching them.
I’m in Ghana for a short stop before going to Togo and Benin. I leave for Cotonou on my birthday, using the occasion to get taxi drivers to pool their money together as a present. I flirt with a uniform at the Aflao border in Togo to get out of paying for a transit visa. I walk into the immigration office cleavage-first with a shiny red pout and a hand that never leaves my chest when the uniform talks to me; after all, I’m a woman travelling alone in a region manned by some of the most lascivious men in Africa. South Africans don’t need a visa to be in Benin. Still, the two female uniforms at the revolving gate we walk through want some francs in their hands; I pay.
Cotonou announces itself with smoke that tears through my lungs when I take a breath. The fumes sting my eyes until they well with tears. The revving of thousands of public motorcycles called zémidjan fills the air. Streets whir with tailors turning yards of bazin and pagne into boubous and fanciful ensembles. From my window on the fourth floor of my hotel, the city looks like it’s rotting. A cloud of smog hovers over it.
I celebrate my day with a tequila-soaked party at a club called Soweto. I’m with Diana, who I meet at my hotel. We’re banging shot glasses on the counter when she recalls a conversation from earlier about men, and how she keeps several of them.
‘What I mean is that, for the right price, I will leave a club with any man who asks; and it�
��s not always with a condom.’ Her frankness forces me to own up to sex with Kevin and his sneaky removal of the condom. It’s time for the HIV test I’ve been too scared to take.
I take it a week later, and wait two days for the results. I call my uncle’s wife, mmaMalome Matheko. I want to tell her how stupid I’ve been and how disappointed in myself I am. Instead, I tell her about the empty pool at El Dorado Beach Club and the fishermen mending their nets and boats at the beach. I spend the afternoon fighting tears and chain-smoking.
I sweep my anxiety to the back of my mind again and almost feel like myself when I get in trouble with a spirit I photograph when I walk into a parade of masked spirits. The spirit runs after me with a whip in his hand. I get on a zémidjan and tell the driver to take me to the hotel. He refuses, saying the spirit will catch us and beat him as well. I raise my hands to show surrender while deleting the pictures of the parade. The spirit grabs my camera to go through my pictures. He wields the whip in front of my face before rejoining the parade.
I almost run after them to ask him to whip me; maybe physical pain will take my attention away from the torment of my guilt.
Monday, 12 October 2009 will not be the day I discover that I’m HIV positive; it will be the day I go to the biggest fetish market in Africa. I collect the envelope with my test results and get a zémidjan to Dantokpa market. My curiosity and inability to wait make me open the envelope, and while the zémidjan rattles over potholes, I let out a beastly grunt. My tears soak the driver’s back.
My test is negative, but there’s still a lot of reckoning to be done. Love and lust in the time of HIV call for more than merely using a condom. I failed myself in the worst possible way. My actions did not match my words. I’m so obsessed with keeping my life in order, no unwanted pregnancies or sacrificing myself at the altar of patriarchy, only to make a mistake that reduces me to just another girl with a disastrous relationship with her reproductive health.
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