Where I find myself

I told my friend Ramale that on Saturday I would come out to her village and visit her before I leave for the United States. Dvante is really far from Oussouye and there are students who walk every single day all the way to the highschool, home for lunch and back to school six days a week.

I took my bicycle through the villages so I could pray on my way to Dvante. (I have a great bike for the dusty, rocky pathways through the villages) I had to ask directions a couple of times becuase in the bowels of these villages its easy to get lost. I headed towards Kahinda instead of going straight and that was a mistake too, I was twisting and turning through the pathways, around trees and fetish sites. I would turn a corner and there was an alter with a little creature made from wood and bone staring at me. Another corner and the side of a house is covered with bones. At one point I rounded a corner of this big fetish site there, where people go if they have killed someone or taken innocent blood, and I am face to face with this very very old lady. I greet her in Jola and she greets me and touches me and stares at me. All the words in Jola I know are now finished so I just say au revoir and take off.

Someone I knew there spotted me and sent the word out to the girls house I was going to that I was arriving, so her sister starts chasing my bike to greet me and shouting.."Ramale Kristina has come she has come." Hugs and tickels for the children, photos to make them happy and Ramale says she is heading out to the fields to pick the rice.

We start walking and walking and walking. And finally I am face to face with a massive field of rice. Its bizaar when you wake up on Saturday morning and by 9:30 am you are face to face with something you have never seen before, EvER, never done before.....thinking to yourself, I love my life. I absolutely love the total randomness of what happens to me every day. So I spent an hour in the rice taking pictures and talking to the kids working there. I wanted to take some pictures of an old lady but she wanted money, but the children were more than willing.
A day in the life of me.