Today was Katie and my second-ever screw “Screw Sikoroni Day” and we had a great time. We did some work in the morning renumbering participants’ houses, nothing too strenuous, then basically had the day off. We decided to go see another free movie at the French Cultural Center (again, toubabou central, but that’s not always a bad thing). They were playing L’Auberge Espagnol, which as a fun distraction in the A/C for two hours. Though perhaps a better highlight was the taxi ride over, which we got from a man who claimed he was the only unimportant member of his family, but that shouldn’t lead us to believe that taxi drivers are stupid. All of this came out totally unprovoked and he basically proceeded to brag about his family and his intelligence for 15 minutes in between leaning out of the window to yell at “bad” drivers that happened to always be swerving around us… When he started playing with the brakes, we realized we were in a bit of a predicament. Luckily we arrived in one piece and he even gave us back the change from our bill, which he informed us that we actually owed him, but because we were intelligent like him, he would give us a treat. What a sweetheart.
The strangeness of the night only arrived once we left, though. Remember Youssouf, the overzealous Malian man who asked me to translate letters to his friends for him? Well guess whose crazy eyes were fixed dead on me as soon as we got out of the theater? Youssouf just happened to be there watching the movie and as soon as he saw me, he pounced. He told me he had tried calling me over and over again (I could never understand him when he did, so I just stopped answering), which made me feel relatively awkward to see him in person again. Then he told me that he had really tried to make good on his offer to invite me over to his family’s house for dinner by just preparing a big meal and calling me multiple times. As you probably guessed, he just figured I would be able to decipher his messages and agree to attend, so they all thought I was coming but when they all sat down for the big meal, I wasn’t there! At this point I am feeling extremely awkward and sheepish.
Until Katie walks out of the bathroom and I realize that Youssouf is actually grabbing my shoulders and his eyes are bloodshot as all hell and for all intents and purposes, he looks like a crack-smoking crazy man. And then I start to realize I need to leave. Pronto. So I explain we have an obligation and have to leave, but I accidentally let it slip earlier in the conversation that we found out the movies are free on Tuesday, so he told me he’d see me next week (yikes!). Furthermore, he tried to catch up with us and explain that he has a friend in Boston who needs to send him a Japanese book and if we could kindly find his address when we return to send it to Mali, that would be a huge help. Now life is officially strange.
No, the strangeness transcended into hilarity when we leave the CCF and a young Rasta man comes over to ask me about my kippah. I explain that I’m Jewish and he tells me he’s heard about my kind before, seen us in movies and stuff, but that I’m the first Jew he’s ever met. He thinks I’m super cool and wants to be friendly with me and I’m all into the cross-cultural exchange… until Katie coolly informs me that he’s probably super high and doesn’t seem to get the message that we were in the middle of a conversation. When I try to explain that we’re in a rush, he thought I was sketched out. And I was, only because I was beoming cognizant of the fact that we were two white people with computers in our backpacks walking down a busy street late at night alone… and we suck at speaking Bambara (let alone French).
We ended up getting away and Katie decided to perk up the evening by taking me to a nice little pizzeria she found in Lost Planet that was only a few blocks away. That having been said, being toubabous in the dark in Bamako, it took us an hour and a half to find it. But let me tell you, when we did, it was SOOOO nice to sit down to this super-hole in the wall gourmet restaurant with gruyere thin-crust pizza and a breadbasket. The whole meal cost less than going to Applebee’s, but it was such a delicacy. Wow. What a nice treat. I had no qualms about spending that money, not that day.
Katie and I also had a great conversation about our expectations of the summer and what we were hoping to learn. We both arrived at the conclusion that we were getting much more than we bargained for and that we had a lot to consider after this experience in terms of career choices and options. In conjunction with some good advice and kind words from family members recently, this is just one of many conversations that have helped in alleviating some brooding stress I’ve had around professional aspirations in the last year. It’s nice to let some pressure out of that dialogue and start reassessing. That having been said, I have no new ideas what I want to do and I don’t even know that it’s not this, but it’s definitely been helpful to step back and realize that there’s more than one way to evaluate my options. ☺
X Adama X
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