freefalling

 
Here the old women are the best – toothless and with breasts like empty plastic bags almost touching their belly buttons; their breasts speak of endless babies fed and calmed, babies that crawled all over them as they sat and made soap and stirred iron pots of sauce, gossiping with their co-wives. The wander around quickly now, with careless energy – finally free agents, they seem younger than the women my age, who are slow and heavy with their husbands and children. They are the real liberated demographic here, the shackles thrown away.

I remember the funeral we went to last month – it was three days long, from morning to night. I went two of the nights. Under a hangnail of a moon we sat with the women, our backs pressed against each other in little groups around the wood benches, with the men across from us. The old women greet me with big eyes and hand me a coffee flavored candy, and joke about me carrying babies on my back. Earnestly they ask if I can take their son or daughter with me to America; I smile and say something funny and feel uncomfortable like I do every time. Its all a big joke, but I think sometimes they really do want to come, and it makes me sad. Then out of the darkness one woman begins to sing, a song for the old man who died. She sings a few lines of repeated phrases in a cracked piercing voice that seems to grab at the eardrums and throat, the beginning of a wail that just swells in song and subsides. The crowd of women respond in unison, again repeating a phrase or sound over and over again – la laa allah la – ending in echoes of the reverberating voices. After a moment of silence another woman is moved to sing, and she sounds even more broken, more beautiful.

And today, as I came to Founebas house for our evening talk, Assitan and Salifou, two of her children grabbed my hand and took me off to their grandmother, Magkara. As we sat down she ran in to get me some peanuts, and Fanta, who is about 80 comes bopping in with her one tooth, grabbing my hand earnestly – “Ca va?? Ca va?? Tres bien??” I don! (you dance!) she declares, and starts singing in the middle of a growing circle of children. The usual “lets all look at the Tubab” dance party ensued, while I tried to follow her moves. She looks like shes about to fall and catches herself, arms akimbo and then falls again, and I see she is strangely in control as she sings in this strange dance. I try and it feels great, but I am still awkward. We throw ourselves like ragdolls to the voices of the crowd. Then she does the shoulder dance, as if she’s moving through a crowd, all power and strength. We do the stool shuffle dance together, picking up our wood stools in rhythms. Its the silliest thing I've done in awhile. But I don’t feel like a silly Tubab anymore, with Fanta, and at 80 years old she might just be my favorite person here.