Bambara Braids, Babies and (green)Beans

July 1 2011 Yesterday Ray had his “7/20 Prayer for our Valley” tee shirt on, and one of the boys wanted to know about it. We were able to read it in English, “7pm ('that's tan ni kononton,) Ju-ly--don't have that one down yet --twenty('mugan') to 7am-('wolonfila'). A b-i-g gathering('bon', 'many people'--with arms spread wide). All churches, prayer for our valley, (our 'Yirimadio',) in America” and make enough of an interpretation that they understood what it was about—I think :)) Then I reminded them that it was much like the prayer and worship event that most of them had attended about 3 weeks ago here in Bamako, on the International Day of Prayer. And since Paul walked in at that point he was able to translate for me, so I'm pretty sure they got that part. We are beginning to be able to really communicate. We get our little notebooks out and try to say it in Bambara; they smile and nod, and rattle off a response that we try to decipher. We have learned that just because someone smiles and says 'yes', there is absolutely no assurance that they really have understood you at all! They are being polite according to their cultural guidelines, to make you happy, and however frustrating that may be to us, we have to understand and try to honor that cultural difference. We feel we are really lucky if someone will be bold enough to make the correction to our halting question or statement, and say it back to us in a full sentence so that we can learn more about the Bambara grammar pieces that don't match up to our American English. Any of you who have tried to learn another language will understand that part, I am sure. Several of our close circle have learned to do that service for us. Ray told us where Eva Durst, the young Austrian who is here with us for the summer, had gone to have her hair done, so Julie and I went with our cameras to chronicle the event. There Eva was in the courtyard, sitting on a rug on the hard packed ground, while our neighbor was tightly braiding each section into neat 'corn-rows'. They asked Julie when she is going to get her hair done, and she is considering it, tho' Eva says (in English, to us) that it HURTS!! A LOT!!. But she does look adorable, and she won't have to mess with her hair for a couple of weeks if she chooses to let the braids in that long. Makes for a simple shampooing job! When we were leaving our base to go find Eva, another neighbor called hello, so I thought that I would walk back that way and greet them. I was immediately handed the roly-poly little baby, Adama, who delighted us all by laughing and cooing as I held him. What a great ice breaker God has provided us when He made babies and mothers. Everybody can speak that language! I must go and talk to them again-- and soon.