We still have our Malian spice mix here in CanadaÂ
Every couple bites you can feel sand grind beneath your teeth
They go together, my memories of Mali and sandÂ
In the village at night we cook up liver and onions as a treatÂ
We eat couscous
Tomato based sauces
Chicken
For celebrations they will kill a sheep
Young boys chant outside our door as we eat
Singing for food
Garibu begging, it is just the way it is
Women chant in rhythm with the pounding of their poles as they beat millet
They carry water on their heads
A balancing act
Men sit in woven mats in our courtyard
Hot sweet tea forming a string between the cup and the pot
Always pouring back and forth
I drink from a plastic cup hanging from a large clay basin
With my allowance clutched tightly in my fist
My brother leads the way to two sticks of pink chewing gum
I savour the sweetness in my cheeks.
When the air stiffens and stills
My mother hastily removes the clothes from the line
The metal windows with flaking red paint are shut and bolted
We light a kerosene lamp and sit in the dark while a sand storm swells outside
I feel so very small
We bathe using a barrel
I am afraid of the mound with a hole
Terrified a cockroach will crawl out of it while I squat aboveÂ
On market day Dad comes back with fresh bread, tuna, mayonnaise
Laden with presentsÂ
A ring, a necklace with matching earrings
Market day is better then Christmas morning.
The doctor is far away
So villagers bring the sick to my father
Nature is cruel and only the strong survive
My chest aches and swells with my first taste of childish infatuation
A crush
The man is tall and dark and handsome and there are butterflies alive in my belly when he pushes me on the swing
One day he is gone for many weeks
When I see him again his leg is shrivelled up
He lives on a mat in a hut in the middle of the village
A snake.
He is not the same
Understanding begins to bloom
I am not the same either
My memories dance some more like the tendrils of flame from the fires we sat around for so many nights
I didn’t know how precious it all was
It was all I knew.