I'll Be Right Back and We'll Breathe More, OK?

8/21

This is the emerald city.. er.. village. It is a village of corn. Corn yards, corn avenues, corn in the bathrooms, corn obscuring huts, cows, people, and of course corn in every bowl. The kids call out, work blurring with play. Are they chasing each other through vibrant green rows or shouting goats and baboons off our crops? Children of the corn as well. I remember last year at this time, that thought actually spooked me. The obscure shadows rustling in the night... Now I'm thankful for the visual feast of green, and for the buffer layers of privacy keeping the eyeballs of kids from the gaps in my fence. It's almost like privacy...
The picture of pastoral perfection, as well. Rising high into stormy skies or painted sunsets, the stalks might seem dignified themselves if not for their ridiculous firework crowns and crazy-haired infants they cradle. Their leaf appendages rustle fabrics as they shake each other's hands and scratch their own mosquito bites. They make the village smell like life again.
Other than corn, you may recall, we grow cotton and peanuts. There exist also the odd rice or funio field too, but I've sadly yet to taste the delicious fruits (or grains) of those labors. Since the fasting of Ramadan begins tomorrow, we've been having work parties to get the work done while people have some energy. This is when farmers bribe their friends to work in their fields for the day in exchange for lunch and company.
Over the river and through the woods... and over another river and some fences, up and down some hills, through the mountains in the mud, and over 3 more rivers... to the fields of Guinea we go! (so stop bitching about your commute.) Lunch is brought in huge bowls on women's heads, along with their laundry. The work parties are surprisingly upbeat occasions. Hard, painful, with sweat literally raining on the earth below you (watering: check!), but people are glad to be in each other's company. I'm usually just relieved for an excuse to zone out and apply focus. So I zoom along, not noticing blisters, and basking in all of the, "Wow, Hadiatou can actually farm!"'s. There's something also deeply humanly anciently satisfying about communal subsistence work, under the sun, feet bare in the worm-filled soil. But I must admit that after a while, I do recognize the blisters and the aches in my back and the shaking of sore legs... and I have no problem playing the toubab card and going to the river for the rest of the day.
At the river, women beat rocks with colorful cloths, turning the water to a river of grey bubble bath. Washing clothes in rivers is even better than wiggling your toes next to other in corn fields. Everything but underwear, if I'm with others. How strange to be embarrassed for actually wearing underwear!
And in another anciently-pleasing renaissance painting scene, the women bathe in the river. I'm always so shocked to see their butts that I have to laugh for not even noticing anymore whether or not their topless. What is it about communal female bathing that makes it seem like it's just as a male might imagine it? Laughing, splashing, scrubbing each other... I'll stop there. Anyway, I have yet to fully join in. It looks so fun and greek mythic! But there's the wretched weight of being the only toubab and object of everyone's curiosity. The woman who tells men what to do, the strangest creature in anyone's life.. I just don't want to have to face peepers or further curiosity. Oh, the pressures that prevent my fairy bath time!
So while the women scrub each other's backs, I impress them with my swimming, showing off like a child. Despite the abundance of rivers and children falling into wells, no one can swim here. So I find myself in undeserving authority, very much similar to how I give cooking/nutrition classes. I am not a swimmer. I was never on the swim team and my "freestyle" is a sloppy pantomime of what it looks like to me. Ridiculous. So now I'm teaching swimming classes.
Mamajan is my main student. He visibly basks in my attention. As well as kids seem to turn out with the heavy-hands-on only parenting here, I think some kids still just really need the positive reinforcement and gentle instruction they crave. He worships me. I was showing him a few things: breathing in the water, kicking while holding a rock, and how to use your arms as paddles. He in his Senegal-acclimated body was quickly freezing. His entire body seemed to be overtaken with goosebumps, and he shook violently. Also, learning how to swim sucks, right? You can't do anything, you choke on water, and you're overtaken by all these brief bouts of "Oh I might actually die right this second." So I kept offering him outs, "Great work! How 'bout we go in now?" He shook his head passionately until finally his mother shrieked for him to get his baby sister or she'd beat the pee out of him. Grinning at me and stumbling backwards over rocks, he said, "Hadiatou, I'll be right back and we'll breathe more, OK? We'll keep breathing!" Hahahaha, that was during the breathing-above-water, blowing-below lesson, when I kept instructing poignantly, "Breathe now!"
Ahhh, rainy, corny, rivery breathing season.