One Man, Multiple Disasters

We've had a bit of a shake up in town the past few days, and it's affected my local shop keeper (Madu) most of all.

The first unfortunate event involved Madu's prize winning ram (male sheep) and a 100 kg sack of millet. Apparently one afternoon the ram decided he'd take a little stroll across the street and have a mid-afternoon snack from one of the millet sacks in a storage shed. Sadly, the ram knew not his own hunger and fell over dead the next morning. Apparently if sheep or goats eat too much millet it can kill them. This is a well understood phenomenon here. The thing that makes this a big deal is that rams are really valuable here. And big ones are really, really valuable. Madu's ram was one of these. Apparently it was worth at least 50,000 CFA, which is enough to buy a donkey cart. In village terms, this was a serious investment that went totally bad.

The second thing worth noting happened the day after the death of the sheep and involved quite a few more people and created a much bigger scene. I was sitting under the big tree next to the boutique like I do most afternoons, and had oddly enough chosen this particular day to try to put together a photo montage of the "running of the bas". I was sitting in a chair next to the road with a few other people when a passing cow cart decided to break up the general tempo of the day. As it was passing me, the driver decided to whip one of the cows, who chose to suddenly veer right towards me. Since the cart was moving somewhat quickly, the cows couldn't stop when they realized they were heading straight for a wall, several people, some chairs, a sack of sugar, and a motorcycle. The cart ended up doing a 180 degree turn, running over a chair and the motorcycle in the process. I had to get up and jump over the wall the avoid an intimate situation involving cow horns that I wasn't keen on experiencing.

When I got up from toppling over the wall there was a chair and motorcycle under the cart, people were gathering around and yelling (of course), and the driver of the cart was about 100 feet down the road, laying on the ground... either examining several people's flip flops or getting kicked. It was hard to tell. There was a lot of dust.

The motorcycle and chair belonged to Madu and were severely damaged. Apparently he was fortunate enough to also get to pay for their repairs... not the cow cart driver. Madu's salidaga (water pitcher thing) was also done-zo. I mentioned to someone next to me that I thought cows were bad and pointed out that the salidaga had "died". People thought this was hilarious, so now every time people see me at the boutique they tell me cows are bad. I respond by asking for a knife so I can go cut cow throats. Best joke in town right now.

I also happened to be feeling somewhat ill during the timeframe of these events. I guess they say bad things come in threes... (I feel better now, btw).

I blame this stuff on the fact that the dugutigi (chief) was out of town at the time. He was in Bamako, seeing someone off on their pilgrimage to Mecca I believe. It just goes to show - when the dugutigi isn't around to run his village, everything goes to hell.