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Mali Trip: Deadly Vipers; Living Grace

This morning I woke up to a bowl of cinnamon apple porridge and instant coffee (I will certainly have to find a way to do drip, brewed coffee here!). Douda and one of the Salifous (two young men who I have grown close too. They are the ones that took me to play basketball, but they didn’t have basketball shoes, so Leon wouldn’t let them play.) arrived and we set out on our bikes to the field. Douda carried Salifou on the back of his bike and I struggled to follow behind. I haven’t ridden a bike in almost 5 if not 7 years. Plus I had to borrow Laura’s bike that was like a kid bike to my height. So, there were several laughs as I clumsily rode by on my awkwardly small bike, not to mention a white man riding a bicycle (which is very uncommon). We rode several kilometers to Douda’s village, stopping to say hi to family members and to announce that a white man was going to work in his field. Then we rode farther into the forest that eventually broke into a clearing covered in fields. Douda handed me a small handled hoe with a simple metal head on top. The style of the tool looked as if they haven’t changed in centuries of farming. I asked Laura about them having new tools that don’t force you to bend over and new crops but, 1) you can’t just give tools away (you can’t create a dependency on the missionary, plus you would have to give the same tool to everyone who has a field in the village because of their strong sense of community) and 2) the people are very cautious to the point of fear to try new things because if the new tool or crop fails… your family starves to death. To gamble on a new crop or tool would be to gamble with the lives of your family. Therefore, they do what they have always done for centuries with the tools that have provided in the past.

Douda, Salifou, and I set out to weeding the rows of millet that Daouda was growing. At first I didn’t see any reason for the weeds we were pulling and the, what looked like, “weeds” we left, but after a row of weeding I caught on. The weeds and the millet look almost identical, except the weeds have a maroonish tint at the base. Also, after a row or two, you start to see the millet rows and the order that eluded me at first. We weeded about 5 or 6 rows, killed a poisonous viper, and set out on our way.

I didn’t even see the serpent and almost grabbed it, but Salifou held my arm and said, “Serpent!” There in the weeds I was about to pull, was a smallish diamond patterned viper, coiled up and ready to strike. He was brown and black, with a white underbelly and a typical viper shaped broad head. We stared at him smelling the air with his forked black tongue, until Douda bashed its head in with the short handled hoe. For good measure, Salifou hit it a few more times, carried the limp body to the edge of the garden, and hit it again.

Douda proclaimed, “We are finish,” and we set off on…

{To Be Continued} Don’t you hate it when this happens! The story gets exciting; you’re sucked into it, and then come up short. Who does this!