During orientation she had warned about the water and the food, but she also warned us about the men. A lot of them will want to marry you, or sleep with you, she said. A lot of them will make themselves your boyfriend. They won’t leave you alone unless you make it very clear that you don’t want them. Any excuse will do, she said. You don’t like their glasses, they have a funny nose, you don’t like their hair. But don’t tell them to their face. Everything must be relayed through a third person. Her advice was put to the test when I met Jean.

Jean was a very short, very loud student of engineering. He set his sights on me the first night we met at a welcome party in Baco Djikoroni, the neighborhood where most of the host families lived. From then on, he would come over to talk to me when I ran into him while visiting friends. He worked for Lanceni, Cherif's brother and Micah's host father, and gave Micah messages for me every day. It all came to a head one night as I was riding with Lanceni, a friend of Jean's, and Micah back to Lanceni's house. Jean appeared on his white Yamaha motorbike, bouncing over potholes and escorting us back to the house.

Micah: Eh, regard Ana, c’est ton chevalier blanc! (Look Hannah, it’s your white knight in shining armor!)
Me: Merde. Il me suit partout. J’en ai marre. Il est trop petit pour moi. (Shit. He follows me everywhere. I’m sick of it. He’s too short for me.)
Abdul: Alors qu’est-ce qui tu aime comme homme? (So what kind of man do you like?)
Me: Moi je prefere les hommes grands. (I like tall men.)
Abdul: Comme moi alors! (Like me!)
Me: Bon… Jean est trop petit, il est vraiment trop petit. Je ne veux pas que mes enfants soit trop petits aussi! (Well…Jean is too short, he’s really just too short. I don’t want my kids to be short too!)

It did the trick. He stopped asking about me, and he no longer bothered me when I saw him around. However, the incident did lead Abdul to think that I was interested in him, which I rectified by snubbing him at a dance club later on. Tact has its place, but Malians like to speak freely.

A young woman and her child got on the sotrama one day – he was four or five, and I could see all the veins in his face and arms. All his bones showing. He was bald: a blond down, a quarter inch long, grew on his skull. When he cried, I could see his skin pulling over his jaw and cheek bones. The whole sotrama, led by an older guy in a copper boubou and glasses, erupted at her. Vitamine, dominike, muso (Vitamins, eat, woman) were all I gathered from the bambara, and it wasn’t nasty or mean – but it was forceful. They all told her what was wrong with the child, what he needed. After a while the guy who started in on her made a joke and people laughed (so did she, weakly); the chastisement continued for a few more minutes and then that was it. The child was so sick that I couldn’t have much hope for him. It struck me – knowing he would die before too long. Kids aren’t private property here – you can’t go around coddling them or maltreating them without people telling you how to raise them. Everyone’s a parent, all the kids have multiple fathers and mothers. No one stands idly by while a child starves – at least not on the sotrama. Maybe it’s just advice or criticism they can give but there’s no hesitation in giving it. Everyone takes an interest in the children.

I got on a sotrama to go home one afternoon and sat down next to a woman with an albino baby on her lap. His skin was milky pale and seemed to glow, literally radiating light out from his body. His troubled eyes wavered as he looked around and blinked even in the dim of the bus, and his blond hair would catch the light that came through the heart-shaped windows. Albinos were fairly common in the city, and in the villages too; I would see one almost every day, mostly men, sometimes with large dark splotches on their arms and faces. They wore long sleeves and hats to protect themselves from the sun, but didn’t seem to be as stigmatized as Cherif had described them to be.

Albinos were (and still are) thought of as powerful beings, people with a strong connection to the invisible world. They have a lot of nyama, or power, much as a particular wild animal, or fetish, can hold power. They were on the fringes of society, not only because of their perceived magical powers, but also because their poor eyesight and fair skin prevented them from doing work in the fields, and thus being useful to the community. Sometimes they were used as human sacrifices, so that magicians could access their nyama and use it to protect themselves, or do harm to others. In other communities they were almost worshipped, treated as powerful magicians in their own right, who could unleash forces at their whim. Still, because they looked different, they always had a difficult time integrating themselves into the community, even if they were not persecuted, and the stigma exists to this day. Salif Keita, the singer, is albino, and has done much to overcome not only his family lineage (he is not from a griot family, and thus should not be a musician) but his skin color as well. Indeed, because of his success, albinos are treated with more respect/compassion than they once were.