The Art of Relaxation

The hot season is now officially in full swing, and while I couldn’t say that the oppressive heat has dampened my love affair with this country, it has certainly slowed down–sometimes even stopped–my usual movement around village. The very early mornings, until maybe an hour or two after sunrise, are still bearable, but by 9 or 10am, the sun is blazing overhead. Between the hours of noon and 3 or 4 pm, the air seems to literally shimmer with heat emanating from the earth–you can practically see waves of it. Or maybe that’s just the mental confusion caused by being under the blazing sun for anything more than 10 minutes. No matter. Either way, your body is telling you one thing and one thing only: you have entered the inferno. Retreat to the shade and comfort of your hangar before you pass out or make your irritability known to the next sweet, unsuspecting village child who tries to grab your hand.

And retreat is exactly what people in Marena do, so much so that between noon until 4 or 5pm the area around the village mosque and meeting tree–which is normally a hub of people crisscrossing the village doing various tasks–is completely deserted. The noon and 2pm prayer still rings from the mosque, but except for Friday prayers the one-room structure rarely fills. Things are eerily quiet–even women tend to save their millet pounding for marginally cooler times of the day. Men sit under their hangars, brewing tea and talking amongst themselves; women, too, sit in the shade,  braiding hair, shelling peanuts or nursing their babies while lying on beds of bamboo. A few hardy children can still be found running around playing tag, but even the usually lively kids in my host family are prone to lying down on plastic mats and taking a proper afternoon nap. This stage of utter relaxation will last until the sun finally begins to lose some of it’s scorching heat, sometime after 4pm.

All of this means that I am often one of the very few braving the sun in the midday hours. W hen I cross the village to my host family’s house for lunch between 1:30 and 2pm, my host dad, looking cool and relaxed having just ridden his moto back from work,  sympathetically eyes my reddened cheeks and forehead dripping with sweat (and probably takes note of the general aura of irritability I imagine I must occasionally give off), and says with a knowing smile, Awa, funteri nana. The heat came.

Owo, a nana. That it did. My solitary reply.

I think my dad feels bad about the fact that I’m crossing the village to come eat when it’s still so hot, because the other day, he suggested I start riding my bicycle over to the house instead of walking,  and has even brought up having food brought to me. But that just seems silly. My host moms go to the pump to get water several times throughout the day, and that’s almost as far as my house. I may not be Malian, and I may not be used to this, but I’m not a complete and total princess. I can handle this, I psych myself into thinking.

Then again, the advent of this totally unfamiliar heat (I came to Mali, after all, when the last hot season had already ended) has required some attitude adjustments on my part. As a person who has always been particularly bad at relaxing and taking quality down time, I have had a real reality check, and my usual afternoon routine of stopping by my to see my homologue and various villagers has had to change. One of my teacher neighbors noticed my acute state of heat-induced fatigue one afternoon as I plunked down on his bamboo bench after attempting my usual afternoon rounds, grumbling about how work utterly stops in the afternoons, just when I’m looking for more activities to supplement what I’m already doing at the health center. He listened politely, but finally called me out on my defiantly American behavior. Awa, you have to relax. It’s not America, it’s Mali. And it’s hot. Don’t you see us all relaxing?

Yes, I see all of you relaxing, I just can’t, is all I can think. And then, why? I guess a combination of factors contributes to my general difficulty in laying down under my hangar with a good book and cold (ha!) glass of water in the afternoon. My perfectionistic tendencies. My habituation to American work environments, where even the most “sweltering” 90-degree days (forget Mali’s 110 degrees!) are spent in air conditioned spaces. My desire to make myself as productive a volunteer as possible, and the nagging feeling I sometimes get when I’m reading a book or just hanging out on my own that I could, should be doing…..something.

But, my villagers clearly know something I don’t.  After all, I’m a mere visitor, here for two years, while their ancestors have endured thousands upon thousands of hot seasons, each one, I’m sure, equally as irritating and endless as the last. And they’re still here, and (for the most part) in decent humor. The key, I’ve learned, is mastering something I’m still just trying to grasp: the art of relaxation. Not like the  two-week-vacation, take-off-work -and -cut- off- the- world type of relaxation, but the kind of little daily retreat that recharges one’s batteries and restores sanity. And during hot season, it’s sort of a necessity–the heat taxes the body in a way that makes much of the villager’s strenuous physical labor difficult or impossible. But more than the physical necessity, Malians seem to understand the inherent value in moments and hours spent drinking tea and chatting with friends, in going nowhere, in enjoying the loveliness of doing nothing-in-particular. And I have to admit, it’s growing on me.

In some important ways I am constantly reminded just how American/Western I am, and always will be. I’ll always find some level of satisfaction in putting in my a “solid” work day, in working within deadlines and yes, under some degree of stress. It’s tied to my sense of achievement and thus, the value of my work. But Mali is, in small ways, changing this in me. There IS something to be said for the Malian (and, from my experience, African ) way. It works here, where even the most meticulously planned for events here can go ridiculously awry. Because the bachee broke down (again). Because Allah was not in favor of this particular thing occurring. Because it’s 110 degrees in the shade, for Christ sake. A million reasons. A million African reasons.

Let it be. What will be will be, so let’s just sit down and have some tea and chat in the meantime.

It’s not a bad way, I think, to live. Sometimes. At least the people in my village seem as happy as they always are, which is to say, very happy. Cheerful. Enjoying life.

So, the day after my neighbor’s friendly reminder that I’m in Mali, not America, I go back to my house after lunch, sprawl out on my yoga mat, and have the most glorious afternoon of reading and mango-eating. And don’t feel, altogether, too bad about it. I wander to my neighbor’s for tea, feeling refreshed and energized. This is definitely the way to be.

After all….it’s hot.