Koutiala, Mali - The D train is great for the ride home in the evening. It rides over the Manhattan Bridge and you can see both Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges from south and north. The lulling of the train as it goes over the bridge and the archetypal views of the bridges send my thoughts to reflection and to far away places. Tonight the place is Koutiala (Mali) and the person I remember is Cate.
Cate was a woman of 40 or so. I was a man of 30 or so. We shared a house in Koutiala given to us by the organization that employed us. Cate advised local villagers on sustainable building projects where she worked. I advised others on preventing malaria and nutrition where I worked. We both escaped to Koutiala periodically when we couldn’t bear the scrutiny of living as near celebrities in our own villages.
We found each other’s company. And we grated on each other’s nerves. Cate, before this job, was an artist who saw beauty everywhere even in found objects like rusted metal. She was tirelessly optimistic. I, before this job, was a community educator who had perhaps attended too many trainings on ‘isms’: racism, sexism, classism, etc----I thought I heard it all. I was a pragmatist.
We clashed on so many things. There were at least two occasions: She didn’t believe in the notion of “falling in love” because corollary to that was “falling out of love”. She just loves and continues to love all her former partners even now, she says. She also didn’t believe in the value of consistency. I managed the house’s money matters and made sure the guardian of the house was paid on time—not after and not before. Cate was fine with giving him an advance even if we both agreed not to do it as a matter of policy. Sometimes our differences bordered the ideological.
Fast forward many years later after our work ended in Mali and after our return to the States and you’ll find me a little humbled for my black-and-white thinking and the many hard-lines and positions I took. Cate was a traditional knowledge kind of person; she was a free-spirit. I was a stick-by-the-book kind of person; I believed in rules. For the space of two years, we worked through our differences. I now miss her firebrand optimism. Then, we were archetypes to each other. Now, time has blurred lines and definitions.
Link to internet photos of Koutiala
Posts
