Just when I thought I'd seen it all...

I swear I can't go a day in Mali , even after having been here for an entire year, without seeing something new. Last week I attended a naming ceremony for the newborn son of my coworker Chacka Jakite. Naming ceremonies for the Bambara people are usually held a week or two after a baby is born. First thing after breakfast, dressed in their colorful Malian best, everyone gathers at the house bringing gifts of soap or fabric or a little money. In return, we're given sweet, sticky balls of millet. Delicious is probably too strong of a word for them. The men all sit together in one area and the women crowd into another. Then the baby's name is announced (Moussa Jakite) and everyone goes home to do their daily work.

We come back at lunch time and this is when crazy things start happening. First of all, a good number of people are no longer wearing their formal outfits, but some women are dressed as hunters or beggers and some men are dressed as women. And we all dance to the balafone music: clapping, waving our arms, comically acting out scenes from the lives of Moussa's ancestors, yelling "show! show!" and generally making fools out of ourselves. Just when I thought I'd seen it all, five of the more important and gregarious women of the village began their ritual for fertility for the other women. The young women I was sitting next to was suddenly wisked off the bench by them. She was dragged, struggling and screaming and half laughing, to the cooking area where she was smothered head to toe in cooked beans and oil. In the hair, on the face, under the clothes, everywhere. This was repeated for a couple of the women who haven't had kids lately, or at all. Reflecting on this, and on the constant questions I recieve from them about why I'm not married and why I don't have kids at the ripe old age of 23, I admit I started sweating a bit. I'm happy to report that I came out of the ceremony clean.

Finally, the family serves a big lunch of fried rice, complete with the luxuries of meat and sweet potatos, then we all drink a few rounds of sweet, minty Malian green tea. This has been a successful naming ceremony for little Moussa.