one week after this homecoming, i took a fall skiing and blew my ACL, PCL, and meniscus. huh. slow down, be quiet, and heal. i will have surgery on march 2, and till then will have much time to contemplate. i am immobilized in a town where people sit still only when they have to. so many of us have been hurt doing the sports we love. i figure it is just my time. not pleased about it, but able to see the bigger picture.
my bigger picture has the most lovely details. graceful old women carefully maneuvering the trail down the cliffs, teems of children playing in the stream, reminders of ancient settlements high in the cliffs and stories of its people who many believe had the power of flight. there is a rich source of imagery bubbling from mind and little of it is self-created. my mental files overflow with information about the world. i may not be able to walk very well right now, no matter. there are many places i can go.
our friends at Dje Yamen had planned an excursion to take us for a day trip to visit Tireli, home to one of Tandana's school garden projects. we traveled by car that morning to the edge of the escarpment and got our first breathtaking views of the cliffs and the plain below. we followed an old trail down the cliff. to be out moving around in this beautiful place was just what i needed. we seemed to move slowly through the cliffs, limited only by the desire to savor every angle, every perspective of the view before us. cameras were clicking away with each turn in the trail, knowing all the time that these photographs would be unable to capture the sense of expansiveness of the sub-saharan landscape.
we entered Tireli from the cliffs and made our way down the meandering paths of the village itself until we arrived at the campement where Isaac had arranged for us to lunch. after lunch, we had the unexpected opportunity to engage the village chief and several other elders in conversation that ranged from regional politics and education to organized religion and traditional animist practices. i appreciate those moments when beliefs i hold onto get turned upside down.
afterward, we strolled over to the school garden where Isaac explained the project's goals and what they are doing to achieve them. with each discussion of local problems and their potential solutions, i have a growing awareness of the centrality of local insights to create enduring, positive change. Isaac and his cohorts are intimately connected with their environments and have well-informed, progressive ways of understanding the challenges before them.
we spent the rest of the afternoon visiting with the children. surely they must have been wondering what the heck we were doing there. still, they were polite, gracious hosts.
later that evening, as we toured through the countryside on our ride back to Bandiagara, the cliff settlements of the ancient Tellem people loomed overhead. i considered Isaac's comments from earlier in the day, that the Tellem had recently returned to their villages in the cover of night and flown up to their former dwellings to perform their ancestral ceremonies. when asked how he knew they had come even though no one had seen them, Isaac considered the question as though it was nonsense. he said, "well, we just know that we know." that made perfect sense to me.
this intellectual dilemma asks us to believe in multiple, contradictory things at the same time. i have no doubt that these ancient ones can fly and i know that the human capacity for flight is dependent on certain technologies. it is perfectly acceptable to take both of these notions into my belief system. the power of contradictory, opposing forces dissipates. instead of hanging my hat on this notion or that, i simply get to acquire more hats.
how divine.
2 comments:
Isaac is a wise man
I love this! I'm waiting for the report on Kansongho--is that still coming up?
Post a Comment