I stood at the top of the stairs
after more than 20 years of longing
I saw the land and the trees,
felt the sun and the wind,
smelled the wood smoke,
but that’s not why I cried.

Actually I cried three times while I was in Mali
The second time was on my way to be introduced into the pottery village
riding on the back of a motor scooter on the other side of the river from Segou.
And the third was much later in the village itself.

All three times, it was gentle and spontaneous
It wasn’t the color of the earth
or the bright warm sunshine
or the smell of earth mixed with wood smoke
or the people around me
It was more like a sign
a welcome
some sort of passage
it wasn’t about blood, or poverty, or even knowledge
it was about spirit

You don’t see it,
you feel it
or you don’t

I told you, 1973 was a bad year.
Drought in the Sahel; very resistant type of virus.
You should have visited for the first time in 1976.
Lots of rain. Soft type of virus.
Then, it would have vanished once you were back in the US!

I love this explanation although I don’t totally understand, of course.
Perhaps I caught it when the truck was broken down in Nocara for those three days.
Maybe it was in the milk I was so afraid of drinking
Or maybe it was in the griot’s songs outside the village
where the camels were going in the wrong direction!