Call me Djeneba

On my market van, a wreck of tin I head to village. As the square homes round out and there goes the tin roofs only straw now and too goes my ‘Dina ness.’ I become the Djeneba of non-eloquence, long-skirted and dirty feet. In Bambara/Arabic Dina means religion, and Djeneba eludes to the djenes, the spirits that haunt our mountains. So there I am, elusive as religion, concrete as the spirits and as strange as the two. My bachelors of science is not impressive compared with the matchless skill the women demonstrate sifting corn; seamless twists of their wrists effortlessly shower pounded corn powder. I sit feeling outcast in my cross-legged position, like the men; respond by leaning forward, legs apart, skirt fastidiously tucked between my thighs like these women of grace do. Still they somehow find me worthy of attention, even seek me out during the awful heat of the day when I am tempted to lay on my huge glorious foam bed splurging on the ipod battery to listen to a podcast ‘cause I’m always just tired.

But the morning drained me weighing babies; this one in the honey colored arms of the Fulani women, her skin and huge eyes tell of her Northern anscestors, long buried stories of the lost Israelite tribes. Her baby is terribly malnourished, marasmus, skin hanging off his arms face looks like a mushroom beginning to shrivel. He’s lost weight since last time but that was months ago when I did the porridge demonstrations, where has he been? She won’t go to the hospital so I give her bags of the enriched porridge we have from UNICEF – expired but still good soy/corn blend but still I’d rather them learn that they can do it all on their own they don’t need our handouts, its just a dead end. Cook with peanut oil and come back next week your baby is sick goddamnit please come back with your husband so we can do something just a woman alone is nothing here.

And off again next week on the 6am bush taxi to Kita, a woman gets on in the still dark morning; her baby looks asleep wrapped in a colorful sheet his legs are so limp. He’s sick - going to the hospital - and next to my sitemate an hour later the woman starts to moan as she lifts the covering, softly shaking the baby. We stop at the next village and my site mate looks at me – did that actually happen? the baby died by my side – we get out and pace as one of the passengers writes a notice of death to air on the radio tonight. The woman is lead away shaking her head, her pink headwrap has unraveled. The rest of the ride my sitemate and I can’t stand the men next to us who are joking that we should cook them rice, be their good wives while they smoke their cigarettes next to the now empty spot. We are in no mood for chauvinism as innocent as they think it is; even though it’s not their fault the baby wasn’t theirs still we both are boiling with anger – at who? Then we are in town, how is the sun so strong at 8AM? These people seem like actors to me, their dresses too colorful their gestures too dramatic the backdrop too sandy and all burnt sienna. "Tubab muso ni" I am known as now, ‘little white woman,’ anonymous for the moment, the nameless white void.

Off we go to the capital, and there we meet other volunteers and drink too much and have excited conversations about digging wells. So here again I’m Dina and I can make sounds that impress and my jeans feel strange against my thighs. Then we drink more and make messes of our reputations, but what can we do? As a friend wrote, “We’re a messy bunch. This is Africa.” Yes, we’re all a bundle of want and need and passion and grasping for respect. There’s so much sand in our 20-something lungs and we’re alone but not lonely but surely sexually frustrated in our villages; so we try to relate to our American peers as we sit in the outside bar that plays Phil Collins and Tracy Chapman and damn do we try hard.

But the morning comes and I’ve submitted my proposals and I ache to be back in village even if no one knows my ideas on cognitive psychology or the brilliance of Brian Eno. ‘Cause there I feel more Dina as Djeneba and maybe there’s something to this nameless name, its not so arbitrary after all and I miss the mysterious little world waiting for me inside that hut.