Day 4

I want to get this down while it’s fresh.  Today I started to fall in love with my village.  I mean, with the two kids in my family it was immediate. They’re two and four months.  Adorable!  But like everywhere, there are people here who are just lovely and kind, and some who… aren’t. Sometimes.  I went to a gathering of the women’s group yesterday, and got pretty frustrated.  I kept hearing people call me toubaab, the generic term for white people or outsiders, when they know my name is Rama Niang.  I also kept hearing people say things that sounded a lot like “she doesn’t understand anything” and “she’s not smart.” And otherwise there were so many people talking, I couldn’t really understand much.  Women here get loud. AAANYway… Today they gathered again. They just sit on mats, drink attaya, eat peanuts, and sort massive amounts of beans or do some other kind of group work.  I had to go again. Letting go of discouragement as much as I can.  So, I was sitting with some women who were talking really quickly, and I heard one say “She doesn’t understand anything.” Right Next to Me! So I said “Who doesn’t understand anything?” with just a hint of friendly indigence. This made all the other women laugh.  I finished with “I only understand a little, do I do not understand Nothing.” HAH! Small victory… As the meeting continued, I had to get up.  The woman on the other side of me was really nice, so it wasn’t that I had to get away from these people. It’s just that my back has been sore all day.  I’m not used to the amount of sitting on the floor, squatting to use the toilette, pulling water from the well, and Mostly, carrying it back home on my head that goes on here. Being lovely, they got me a chair, without even the slightest hint of condescension.  Here I must mention Ami Niang.  She is one of my new friends. She’s amazingly lovely, quick to defend me, and always trying to teach me new things and give me peanuts.  She made the chair bit happen.  So, as I sat there, listening, watching, as the sun set (it gets freakishly, fairy-land beautiful here at sunset), I was drawn into stillness.  Strangely enough it was the moment I noticed how loud everyone was getting that I was pulled into this awareness of deep quiet peaceful abundant-ness. And then everything was fresh. And I just felt this Love for the noises, the faces, everything. The air came alive.  This woman near me was talking very loudly and very intensely while waving her finger in another woman’s face, and it was beautiful! Yeah.  What else can I say? From there everything was beautiful. I chatted with a couple little girls, helped break up peanut cakes, and then we all went home!