But you can help. Here is a link to take you to a page where you can donate — any amount will help.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=688-368

I have felt an incredible amount of support and love over the last year and a half, from friends, family, acquaintances and strangers. I have never asked for money before, and it’s not something that comes naturally to me. But I have been thinking about this project for a long time, and I strongly believe it is worth every cent. I wish you could all come to my village to know what I mean. Everyone has been so welcoming, kind, understanding, loving. They are hard-working, good-hearted and optimistic, despite the hard and unfair way their lives have been shaped.

So, if it is within your means, it would mean the world — to myself, to the people of my village — if you could spare some money to help repair the school.

Aw ni ce, aw ni baraji, ala k’aw sara.

Time is a complex concept. In medieval art, a whole life was represented in one frame, one canvas: the annunciation, the birth, death, and resurrection, all superimposed on top of one another. Native Americans count and name the moons. In the Judeo-Christian/Western calendar we assign days and dates to events, so Christmas is always the 25th of December, Memorial Day on the last Monday of May, but we let Easter and Hanukah float within a few weeks depending on the lunar calendar. The Muslim holidays of Ramadan and Eid, also based on the lunar calendar float even more. Every year they fall on different periods of time. (Hard for the card and gift-wrapping manufacturers to plan around that!)

Birthdays come once a year. That is a specific date you can depend on. On the game board of life, each year advances your marker one more year but you start over from “Go” on the game board of seasons and events.

So, time is both linear and cyclic. Currently I am struggling with adjusting back to Minnesota time. In Paris we were 7 hours advanced, and in Mali, 6. So, I get tired very early in the evening, but if I go to bed when I am tired, say 8:30, I wake at 3:30 or 4:30 after 7 or 8 hours of sleep, only to realize my internal clock is off and that I do NOT actually want to be up yet.

That is one adjustment. But there is a different time that needs acknowledgement. To travel to Mali was in many ways like traveling back in time – at the same time remaining in the present.

Arriving in Bamako via Air France, we were dropped off into a rabbit hole of time and cultural warps. First we walked across a cultural divide as we passed through the airport, and were greeted by a cacophony of brightly colored shirts, skirts, scarves and shouting taxi drivers. Outside in the warm dry air, we met our daughter Eliza, our amazing Bambara-speaking, Africanized host for our week in Mali. Tears were shed. Hugs all around.

It was night and the sights and smells of the country greeted us as we sped down the road crammed into a Malian taxi. (Oh my.) Occasional lights illuminated old tanker trucks and what looked like abandoned businesses along the route. Probably the businesses were viable, but the severe climate – the blowing dust of hot dry seasons followed by even hotter rainy seasons — left a patina of dust on everything. And in the city the dust was covered by the grime of belching exhaust of an over-aged fleet of vehicles. The cars may have been built in the 60’s or 70’s but the city has the feel of the beginning of the industrial revolution. There seemed to be no controls on pollution whether in the air, the water, or the land. The trash of modern convenience – especially plastic bags and discarded flipflops – lands where it lands, to be picked up by the wind if at all.

After two days in Bamako, we headed down the road for Kita, Eliza’s regional capital. Our fairly new (only 250,000+ miles) Toyota SUV sped past trucks, mobilis, vans loaded with passengers and their assorted possessions piled precariously on top, motorcycles, bicycles, donkey carts, men with pushcarts, women carrying bundles on their heads and babies on their backs. Small villages of mud homes lay along the route, some with cement schools with metal roofs. Kita is a market town, and at times walking through the crowded unmarked streets felt like traveling back to the middle ages. People carrying goods in carts or on their heads, gathered to sell their wares in the central market. Some sold only fish or vegetables, shoes, buckets or cloth. Other shops have specialized in soldering or tailoring.

Once again we entered the rabbit hole, our final time travel to Eliza’s village. The whole village came out to greet us. Really! What an amazing welcome. As we approached the village, we were met by people lining the road. We were instructed to get out and walk the last leg in. All the villagers were dressed up. Small children grabbed our hands and steered us into the village square. Adults greeted us warmly, joyously. Eliza (now Nagnouma Sidibe) was in her element and the people of the village welcomed us as we have never been welcomed before. I don’t think they would have been any more accommodating had we been Obama and Michelle – we were that honored by the village of Konofaye.

Soon we were sitting on the best chairs in the village and the elders took turns speaking, honoring Nagnouma and honoring us (her “old man and old woman”). Then there was the drumming, Griot singing and ladies dancing. The old hunters pulled Paul into a dance, holding his hands up to acknowledge him. Britta, Eliza and I joined in with the more staid older women.

We were showered with scarves, a sign of respect. Eliza even joined the younger fast dancers – though she probably needs to practice the footwork if she plans to stay. All the while Eliza was amazing us with her chatter in Bambara and a formal speech on our behalf to the community. Being able to speak the language is absolutely key to crossing the cultural divide. Eliza seems to have her feet firmly planted in two very different cultures.

After the welcoming ceremony, we gathered in the shade of Eliza’s compound and accepted waves of well-wishers. To honor the village and in keeping with tradition, we had purchased a cow to be shared by everyone in the village. Soon we were presented with a large bowl of cooked beef. We ate what we could, then sent the bowl on to her host family, knowing that nothing would go to waste. Then in honor of our visit, the old men of the village brought us a goat, men from a neighboring village offered a rooster, and another rooster was given by her women’s association. These are generous gifts from a people who are frequently hungry.

To me, it seemed as though life in Konofaye has barely changed since biblical times. The cycle of life is determined by the seasons, rainy or dry. Most water still comes from wells brought up in pails, fields are tilled by hand or cattle, crops are harvested manually. Each dawn starts like the last with the braying of donkeys and crows of roosters and the sound of women pounding grain for breakfast.

During the day, dogs and goats wander between the round mud huts, chickens peck and scratch, women wash piles of laundry and cook over open fires. Small babies ride in cloth slings tied to their mothers’ backs. Little girls tie sticks or cast-off dolls onto their backs for playing mommy and older children ride around on brakeless bikes. Young boys armed with sling shots go hunting for small animals. Some little ones drag empty sardine cans tied to cloth strings, their “cars.”

The neighbor kids showed me how to ride the sentry donkey tied at the entrance to the village. I tried to take pictures at sunset and was mobbed by children wanting their picture taken. Having seldom seen mirrors, my camera became the frame in which they saw themselves. Technology had opened a window into the timelessness of this village.

In the evenings families gather around fires to be warm and to tell stories, sing songs, laugh and be together. The men and women make tea over coil stoves of hot coals swept from the fires. When coals fall out, the women pick up glowing coals in their fingers to put them back on the stove. The first cups of tea are always shared with the elders. The night we joined Eliza’s neighbors around their fire, the first cups of tea went to us.

What amazed us most was the generosity and kindness of these people. It is clear to us that the village has come to love Eliza as we do and that her Malian mother, Fanta, is as proud of her as we are. Hopefully the work she is doing in village will make a real and lasting difference for these people, that they will have learned a few practices that will improve their crop yields, or they will be able to plant and nurture more fruit trees for better nutrition, or that their babies will have better health, that girls will get a better education… Small steps that will hopefully have lasting impact.

My husband and our younger daughter and I have now traveled back to linear time, to the “present” and “modern” society, but we will always be humbled by the gifts shared by the people of this far-away village. By our material standards, these people are among the poorest in the world. Yet in generosity of spirit they are far beyond anyone we know. We are honored that our best, our daughter and Britta’s sister, has chosen to share her time with the village of Konofaye.