Biking to the Water Pump in Gossi

Biking to the Water Pump in Gossi

People are different here in Mali… I still find myself surprised by the way people respond to various happenings…. Once… three boys (around age 10) were with me in my concession… they were play-fighting but some of their punches were pretty hard… to join in on the game… I started throwing some of my own punches (not too hard of course), the children responded by picking up sticks… after a while of fighting with sick weapons… I decided it was a good time to Show Off my Big Dagger from the United States… when I came out of my mud house with the Dagger… the three boys… whom I know better than most people in Gossi – ran away in complete FEAR. I really didn’t do anything threatening with the Dagger… I just thought that since they liked to fight… why not check out my weapon… so anyway… on one of the last days in Gossi… before Bess and I left for IST (end of December) their were children accumulating outside our concession door because… well… they really like Bess and I… and because these children can be very overwhelming at times… we usually try to keep them out of our concession as much as possible… which was also the case on this particular afternoon… but low and behold I had to make a trip to the water pump to get some water… which means riding my bike with two plastic water-jugs, waiting in a tedious line for the jugs to get filled, and then shuttling the jugs one-at-a-time, back to the house… when I was saddling up on my bike… the children gathered around me and grabbed the back-bike-rack (a common occurrence for me in Gossi). You see… the children like to hold on to the back-rack of the bike and run behind the bike as I peddle… which is often annoying because I can’t go very fast this way… and if I do… the children may take a face-plant – which has happened before… so on this particular day… the entire metal rack was covered with the little fingers of say eight children… while other children were grabbing the backs and shirts of these elite eight… I tried asking them to let go… but they just would not… so I took a deep breath and began peddling slowly… and a funny thing happened… they started pushing me along so that I has doing no work… I was surprised because some of them were four-years-old and with so many in such tight awkward quarters it’s surprising they didn’t trample each other… and once we really go going… all the children began screaming, laughing, chanting, and suddenly a larger mob of children formed behind the bike… Boy Oh Boy did we become a scene… conservative Muslim men stood and started in shock as I was pushed down the road on my bike… children Screaming!!!! Any Malian man would have just beat the child if they didn’t let go of the bike… and the woman accumulated at the well… also stood and stared in shock as the mob of children approached… while waiting at the well for my jugs to fill… a 12 year-old-boy asked me if I knew Karati (Martial Arts)… I said yes… even though I’ve never officially taken a class… only seen a lot of movies of this kind…. The boy then asked me to demonstrate a move… so I asked him to gently lift his foot up to his need to form the figure four possition… upon doing so… I kicked my foot through his figure four and wrapped my ankle around his…. He then fell into the Indian Death Lock… a very painful move whereby the victim lies back-of-the-shoulders-on-the-ground, tided up by his own feet around one of my legs (Yeah- you must see it to believe it) – it works. Anyway… the boy, usually cocky as ALL-that, begins fighting within himself to hide his pain… I then asked him politely, slowly, if wanted to take my Bike for ride (because this particularly cocky boy always harassed me at the pump wanting to take my Bike for a ride), and he says gasping “No”, when I asked him a second time… he screamed “No!!! No, No No…” which quickly evolved into absolute begging for Mercy…. After I released the boy, lifted him to his feet, and said a prayer in Tamashek, he lifted his foot back to the figure four position and started at me wondering how I did what I did… by this time the children were flocked around my bike… maybe 12 children total… all with vise-like little hand grips on my bike… just waiting in the ready position so when I returned home… they would have the honor of being one of the lucky Hands-On screaming children… my problem was… I couldn’t ride with a full water jug and so many children… so I figured I might as well work on Ditching the kids as I waited for my jugs to get their turn… so I walked up to my bike… told all the kids to let go for a second… when they did… I ran with bike… jumped on… and road off… with a herd of children screaming and following… this immediately evolved into a game… Chase the White-Guy on the Mountain Bike… so I would go slow… let them catch up… then loose them… after breaking up the mob of them… they dispersed so that about four children existed on each street… now Gossi is a maze of sandy streets and mud houses… and there I was riding circles around the pump, turning through various street allies but never getting a break because there was always at least one child spotting me, screaming at me, and sounding the alarm for the others to follow… it was like run from the street gang of children game… eventually I weaved through a group of five children and did a quick drive up pick up of the first water jug… I rode it back home and then had to peel fingers off my bike as I gained momentum to go back for the second, by the time I got back to the pump the children were waiting and screaming on my return…. The scene got so loud I began to get worried about being disrespectful, you know… because Muslims in Gossi never cause this type of childish commotion… at least I’d never seen it… so I rode up to the pump trying to be serious and ordering the children the quite… but the mob didn’t obey… I threatened to squash their fingers with the water-jug and when they let go I was off peddling again… but wasn’t headed in the direction of home… so I took a round-about way and, UNEXPETEDLY, I turned down an alley where a wedding ceremony was going on… so the wedding was going on… and suddenly this white guy comes flying around the corner on a Mountain Bike balancing a water-jug with one hand as it rested on the back-rack of the bike… and then a mob of fifteen screaming children came running around the corner chasing the guy on the Bike - screaming… Keep in mind that the roads in Gossi are sandy, riding with one-hand carrying a water jug is very difficult… I am sure my facial expression was one of true fear… I was afraid one of the older boys would actually catch up, or maybe I would wipe out… but anyway… I am so embarrassed for disrupting the adults of the town, especially during the wedding ceremony… when I finally got back to the house… I didn’t even have time to put my bike away before the mob busted through our concession door… now there were at least 20 children in my concession… still screaming and chanting… I was happy to see that some of the Blind children had made their way in… so with encouragement I began feeding their energy by picking them up one by one… throwing them up into the air… then catching them on their way down… Once I began feeding their energy things got completely out of control and one of the younger children (2 years old) got trampled… this was when I knew I needed to do something to STOP the commotion and break up the mob… so… what did I do… I ran into the mud hut… and came back out holding my Dagger in one hand and my Machete in the other… I held the blades high above my head, waved them around, and yelled in my best Tamashek “Finished, Go Home Now, Thanks” and suddenly, miraculously, the mob of screaming children stopped, and fled… I have never seen the faces of children switch from crazed happiness to absolute fear as quickly as this… many of them started balling and whaling… It was terrible on my part… but you know what… life is too crazy here in Mali for me to pass any judgment… I can never decide who’s scale to use, a Malian scale, or an American scale… both produce very different results… I guess I will not be too hard on myself for this… I once saw a Toureg man grab the wrist of a small street child… the Toureg put the wrist of the boy on the wooden meat table in the Market… the Toureg then pulled out his Sword and threatened to chop off the kid’s hand… the Boy was full of Absolute Fear… but nothing happened… fortunately… for me… when it comes to children in Mali… they are so innocent… they see a white person and immediate great them in their local language… or French if they are educated… the children in Mali will often run up to you and hold out their hands, stretching them outward, beckoning you to just hold on for a second, for at least a brief moment of contact, sometimes they sneak up behind you and just take your hand in theirs, if you actually embrace these little filthy hands… you can easily watch what seems to me to be the most magical experience in Mali… the face of a small child as it lights up during a moment of mutual embrace.