Actually, two Christmases stand out in my mind. The first, without a doubt: the Christmas blizzard of '82. Snow covered the windows and we didn't dig out for a week. That prescient old Santa Claus delivered a toboggan on Christmas morning and my dad and I spent many hours discovering the best sledding runs. We risked life and limb on Deadman's Hill, the snow had thickly blanketed the rocks and cactus that could be found there during the thaw. It was heaven.
Second is my first Christmas in Mali.
I had been at my site maybe 6 weeks and I was nearly overwhelmed with lonliness. In my heart I was savoring the knowledge that I would be able to leave at Christmas to spend the holiday with other volunteers and then on to Bamako for a training. The town I was to call my home for two years, Diamou, was accessible only by train. I realized how much I was counting on it when the report came back about a week before Christmas that one of the overloaded merchandise trains had derailed up the line damaging the tracks badly. By the 23rd I realized that I would likely be spending Christmas in a hot, dusty village where no one had heard a Christmas carol, no one knew what snow was and no one knew the wonderful, awful commercial spectacle that is Christmas as I know and love it. I reacted in a logical manner and marched down to the post office with money I had left over from my living allowance and asked the telephone operator ring America. My $30 let me call my dad and immediately burst into tears. We talked for about five minutes until the money ran out. Prior to that call, I had never felt so alone in all my life. But my dad, quiet hero, assured me that he and my mom loved me, yes, and that what I was doing was hard, yes, and they were proud of what I was trying to accomplish. Afterwards, calmer, I went back to my house and saw the repair equipment on the track passing through the village on its way to the derailment. I went to work the next day, Christmas Eve, in a pagne and t-shirt, ready to spend it like any other day. As we sat in the shade drinking tea, gossiping (the nurse and midwives), and trying to understand what anyone was saying about anything (me), I thought I heard “tren be na bi,” the train is coming today. I asked if the track was repaired, and everyone thought it might be. On my way home for lunch, I stopped by the train station, a two room building with a radio, a bed and a desk where they sold tickets, and was told, oh, definitely, the train will be coming soon. I ran home and packed quickly and ran back up to the gare. No one was at the gare, no one passed through the market behind it. I sat in the shade of the building as the afternoon wore on and the temperature climbed higher. One of the nurses from the clinic, Assetou, passed by on her way home and asked incredulously “what are you doing?” I said with as much dignity as I could muster, "I’m waiting for the train, it’s coming soon.” Assetou laughed, she said, "yes, it’s coming soon, it’s coming tonight, you’d better come to my house to wait.” I spent the rest of the afternoon at her house, drinking sweet, strong tea in little glasses and playing cards under the neem trees in her yard. We ate dinner together as it grew dark and still no train whistle was heard to herald the arrival of a train, which I felt by this time to be entirely fictional. Finally she said, "go up and buy a ticket, I’ll meet you on the train." I dragged myself back to the gare to find it alive with activity in the darkness. Women set up stands to sell food, grilled meat, rice and sauce, spaghetti. People carried large sacks and bags towards the track. Children ran about, on errands or at random. I bought the one dollar ticket to Mahina, 70 km away and found a tree stump to sit on not far from the track. The darkness had an odd radiance from the dust kicked up in the air by people's feet. The single fluorescent light bulb strung across the door of the gare and the swinging flashlights of people walking by seemed to make little headway through the transluscent fog. A small old woman, swathed from her head to her flip flop sandals in sheer cotton fabric appeared out of the gloom and sat next to me on the tree stump. A young man set down a large bundle at her feet and went to find a ticket for her. I greeted her in Bambara and she replied and smiled at me. We waited together for a long time. The gare seemed to grow busier by the moment, people calling out and piling ever larger mounds of luggage next to the track, and still no hint of the train. Then a bright light pierced the gloom and grew larger and a horn blast signalled its arrival. The train’s headlight sent strange shadows to play along the walls of the station building and in the particle laden air itself. The air itself was solid enough to support angular shadows from the cargo waiting to be loaded and human figures were longly silhouetted against the chalky night. Anticipation dissolved in a rush to board the still moving train as the crowd surged towards the tracks. We were left in darkness again as the engine passed us by and ground to a halt. Assetou materialized at my side with a bag of her own and clamoured towards the steep ladder steps of the passenger car. She called out to me, "come on!" I climbed up awkwardly with a backpack and shoulder bag pulling me back toward the ground as a dozen people all attempted to climb through the same door at once, grappling for purchase on the same step and the handrail. Finally, hoisting myself up and over those already seated in the doorway with their tubs and luggage beside them, I found Assetou inside who had miraculously found a seat for us. As the train pulled away from the station, I fell back against the cracked plastic seat exhausted, and completely satisfied for about one minute, before realizing that the train would get in to Mahina about midnight and I could not get a ride to the volunteer house until morning. What in the world was I going to do?
Here’s what happened when we arrived in Mahina. Assetou took pity on me as she would do over and over again. We set off for her parent’s compound under starlight. The village of Mahina is bigger than Diamou, with wider streets more shops. We entered the yard and Assetou clapped to waken her parents. Her mother came out to greet us. She handed Assetou a sheet and lit a kerosene lantern. We slept in one of the small huts thatched in grass that made up their family compound. A straw stuffed mattress on a bed of stacked bamboo was the most comfortable bed I could have imagined that night. I lay awake briefly, my heart racing with exhilaration in the knowledge that I had no control over so many things. I felt that I had left a part of myself behind in Diamou – the sensible part that would never jump on a train in the middle of the night, because I liked to know what was happening next and why. I smiled in the dark as Assetou lay beside me with a cotton pagne pulled up over her face and the mosquitoes buzzed around our ears. The train engine continued to rumble long into the night.
The next morning, Christmas Day, I begged a ride to Manantali, 90 km away, in an NGO truck. I didn’t know where I was going when we arrived in the town and just figured it would work out. It did. I have the sweetest memory of walking into that volunteer house, Christmas carols playing on the dinky tape deck and people busy making cookies and mashed yams. Instead of feeling like the shy outsider I usually do, I felt right at home. I spent Christmas drinking beer in a hammock, watching monkeys play in the trees above and talking a bunch of English.
