You can convince yourself that you're all grown up, you can travel the world for months and months by yourself, but sometimes it's just really good to see your mom and dad.

I should explain, to those among you who've preemptively banned me from ever planning a group trip for fears we'd end up on Spring Break Somalia, that I didn't play any part in bringing my parents to Mali specifically. They missed me, they wanted to see me, and my mom's high school's vacation happened to coincide with my time in Mali. In any case, my parents were very eager to visit an African country for the first time, and particularly enthusiastic about Mali-- both because my mom teaches French, and because Bamako, the capital city, is renowned for having some of the best live music in the world. So Mali it was.

My first few days with them reminded me of how much traveling in various parts of Africa has taught me to ignore things that would (and to be fair, probably should) bother most Americans. My parents are hardly princesses, so they should be excused for needing a couple of days to learn that when you travel in Africa, just because there's a light switch, it doesn't mean there's going to be light; that just because there's a faucet, it doesn't mean there's going to be any water coming out of it; that just because you're handed a menu with over twenty dishes on it and the waiter asks you what you'd like, it doesn't mean the restaurant can actually prepare more than two or three of them; that just because you book a room at a nice hotel, it doesn't mean you won't be lulled into gentle sleep (?) to the sound of rats scampering over the roof. These are the things you quickly learn to ignore when you travel in Africa, because there's not much anyone can do to change them anyway-- and even if there were, chances are still pretty good that it still wouldn't happen.

Before I booked my plane ticket to Mali, a land-locked country that includes large bands of the Sahel and the Sahara, I didn´t bother finding out when the dry season is. Turns out it´s in March and April. The temperature regularly climbed to 115 degrees, and on some days it was undoubtedly higher, although when it´s that hot it´s just really fucking hot and no one´s going to be any happier knowing just precisely how really fucking hot it is.

We spent our first several days in the capital looking around and allowing my parents to adjust to the culture and climate. Bamako is sometimes described as "one big village." There are only a handful of multi-story buildings, only the major roads are paved and women do laundry bare breasted in the Niger River alongside fishermen in pirogues (small wooden fishing boats). The open sewers, over-crowded houses, streets brimming with pedestrians, mule-drawn carts, scooters and honking cars and the air heavily polluted by charcoal stoves make it clear that for better, and certainly for worse, Bamako is a real city.

After hearing so much about the quality of live music in Bamako, we soon realized that it´s rather hard to find. The restaurant that was supposed to have kora music nightly was inexplicably closed, and the two clubs that locals swore to us again and again would have traditional music were quiet and entirely empty. It seemed like bad luck, but we knew that Amadou and Mariam (who recorded the really fantastic, Manu Chao-produced "Dimanche à Bamako") were sponsoring a music festival the following weekend and we´d be back in Bamako to see that if nothing else.

In the meantime we set off with a driver and guide for the Falaise de Bandiagara, a stunning, 70 mile long cliff face the rises above the southern Malian plains. The Dogon people who live there now were preceded by the Tellem, who built their mud houses and granaries directly into the cliff, out of reach of the slave catchers from rival tribes who had been decimating their population. The Tellem are gone now, and no one is entirely sure what happened to them. While many Dogon believe that the Tellem reached their houses by flying, others maintain that they climbed strong vines that once scaled the steep cliffs rising hundreds of meters high. Today both on the Falaise itslef and along its base, the Dogon have taken over the land where the Tellem once lived, and have built smooth-walled mud houses and mosques with rounded minarets studded by wood beams.

My parents and I trekked along the Falaise for several days passing groves of trees, small villages, children pushing along old bicycle tires with sticks, women hauling jugs of water on their heads, and just once, a small patch of onions growing brilliant turquoise alongside a small river in the midst of so much Sahel, the searing heat. Around a bend in the path: a group of newly-circumcised young boys in loose indigo robes, shaking rattles and chanting, asking anyone who passed for money or small gifts. In the shadow of the Falaise as the sun set: a man facing Mecca, touching his forehead to the sand in prayer while his donkey looked on beside him.

As we passed each village, groups of little kids came running up to us screaming toubab! (white person) and then collapsing in giggles. The braver ones walked along with us to ask for bonbons or pens for school, but most often just our empty plastic water bottles. At one point a group of three eight-year-old boys smiled at me and then trailed a few feet behind me for a long ways, whispering heatedly to each other back and forth in Dogon ("whisper whisper tu?? whisper whisper whisper tu, tu"). Fifteen minutes later, in very nervous French syncopated by laughter: "Comment t'appelles-tu?"

At night my parents and I slept on the roofs of the mud houses, opening our eyes in the early morning to the towering Falaise at our feet, the sounds of the village slowly awakening-- the call to prayer followed by hours of religious chanting, joined by roosters crowing and donkeys braying, women talking as they set off for the well, talking when they returned, then the dull thuds of millet pounded with over sized pestles. For his part, my dad entertained himself by asking the village goats "what kind of daughter is Maura?" (The concensus, sadly, was "baaaaaadd.")

For all of Senegal's poverty, which is considerable and cruel in its own right, Mali is the fourth poorest country in the world, and the material conditions of life there are noticeably worse. Before I left Senegal, my friends in Guédiawaye had told me that the Dogon live "à la vrai africaine." When I asked what it meant to live "like a real African," they smiled and said that the Dogon live how most white people who´ve never been to Africa, but who watch a lot of The Discovery Channel, assume that the whole continent lives.

When I got to the Falaise, I understood what they meant. Most Dogon houses don´t have any electricity, and in one village the courtyard of the hunter´s compound was decorated with stuffed rodents, snakes, and small mammals he had killed, the skulls of larger beasts plastered into the mud walls. In Dogon villages children of both sexes are circumcised, and by age 15 most girls have had at least one child by husbands their parents have chosen for them. The Dogon are renowned for their beautiful wood masks, and while they only take place every 70 years or so, some Dogon ceremonies include human sacrifices. The hogon (spiritual leader) of each Dogon village lives alone is his compound, except for a young virgin girl to prepare his meals and a tortoise to test them for poison; hogons are forbidden from ever bathing. They are considered to know everything, have the ability to read the stars, and are so powerful that while Dogon villagers will consult them, they will never look them directly in the eye. So after a few days in Dogon Country I understood that "à la vrai africaine" was a way of describing what we might think of, though rather crudely, as "primitive."

This probably isn't fair. Master G. will be glad to know that I won´t be plastering animal skulls to my bedroom walls next year, but I should point out that the boys´ rooms in L-Dub freshman year were considerably more barbarous than any Dogon house I saw. While I instinctively find the idea of female circumcision abhorrent, in a country as desperately poor as Mali, where community bonds are the only thing keeping people fed (just enough) to survive (barely), I´m hesitant to condemn absolutely any practice that serves to police and perpetuate these bonds. The hogons who read the stars may live in near animal-like states, but for years and years they maintained that Sirius is not two, but in fact three separate stars--a fact that Western astronomers only realized fours years ago, and certainly not with their naked, "primitive" eyes. (I got nothing on human sacrifices-- that´s just fucked up.)

On our last day in Dogon Country, we hiked out early to the small compound nearby where our driver had left the car that would take us back to Bamako for the weekend. When we showed up the car already had a flat, but that´s another thing you learn not to let bother you too much when you travel in Africa. Twenty minutes later we were on the potholed dirt road again, and within ten minutes we had another flat. We walked to the nearest village and waited for an hour while our guide came to get us in another car to take us to a nearby town. Another hour later our first car was "fixed" and we headed off towards Bamako once again. Fifteen minutes later we had our third flat tire, and our guide started screaming at our driver in Bambara, leaving him on the side of the road, and shoving us onto a passing bus that he had flagged down on the highway.

There are a lot of things you learn to ignore when you travel in Africa, but try as you might some things just can´t be ignored (the packed bus, the seat that wasn´t quite securely bolted to the floor, the afternoon heat so intense that I started to hallucinate, the moment after nightfall when the bus swerved and ran off the road, the other hour lost to engine failure, the six hour trip back to Bamako that ended up taking twelve and Amadou and Mariam´s music festival that we were too late, filthy and delirious to attend). And even after twelve hours spent wishing I was dead, even after several seconds when we ran off the road and I realized that I really wanted to live after all, there were incongruously wonderful moments that I could not ignore either: the Big Dipper and Orion's Belt against the night sky rising above the plains outside the bus window; a group of girls in one village selling sesame cakes and fresh carrots singing a song with the same notes, my mom realized, as "Amazing Grace."

The next day was Easter, though next to our safe return from the Dogon Country, Jesus´s ascension to heaven seemed like the less miraculous journey of the two. It was my mom's last night in Mali so we decided to make one last attempt to see live music in Bamako. Each time we'd asked locals about where to see shows, the Casino de l'Amitié was always among the names mentioned. Up to that point we´d stayed away because we´re just not accustomed to making family trips to the casino, even if it was said to have live music every night. We were desperate and thought it was a pretty safe bet, so we decided to finally give it a try. Just to be sure, we stopped by early in the afternoon to talk to a waitress. Is there live music tonight? She said yes, but looked at us a little funny, as if the answer should have been obvious: there´s always live music here.

We came back when she'd told us to, and there was no live music to speak of. The first waitress wasn't there anymore, but another led us to our table for dinner. We asked her if there was live music that night, and after a little hesitation she said no, then gave us a funny look as if the answer should have been obvious: there's never live music here. My parents and I did at least eat before we left, and while I can't say it was the best Easter dinner I've ever had, the upmarket Malian prostitutes in mini-skirts clinging to Western, Asian and Arab businessmen sitting at slot machines and the dread locked d.j. in the corner playing the Bee Gees and Abba all night certainly made it one of the more memorable.

My mom flew home to California to start teaching again, but my dad and I had several days left in Mali so we decided to head to Ségou, a town three hours away from Bamako along the banks of the Niger. After our adventure getting back from Dogon Country, we had spent an hour writing a formal contract in French for the new driver to sign before we set out, just to be sure. The driver, Ibrahima, was in his late twenties and nice enough, although it soon became clear that his driving left a lot to be desired. He would periodically turn his head around to the backseat to ask my dad "Ça va?" Each time he did this the car started to veer into the opposite lane, which for me, anyway, answered his question (negatively).

After awhile on the road Ibrahima asked me if I smoke cigarettes, and I told him I didn't. He didn't that much either, he told me, mostly just weed. (Luckily my dad doesn't speak much French.) Later Ibrahima explained, unprovoked, his philosophy on life: "moi, je m'en fou si je vis ou je meurs" (I could give a fuck if I live or die). "Oh," I replied. "Um ... Ibrahima would you mind not saying that so long as we're paying you to be our driver?"

Ségou was lovely and relatively relaxing after the chaos of Bamako. My dad and I spent one morning on a several hour pirogue trip down the Niger to a village where we watched a woman paint beautiful patterns onto strips of white cloth with an enviably steady hand-- particularly considering that she was working with a toothbrush and holding a squirming toddler in her lap while she worked.

The night before we´d agreed to meet Ibrahima to drive back to Bamako so that my dad could catch his flight, Ibrahima showed up unannounced at the restaurant where we were eating dinner. He confirmed, somewhat unnecessarily, that he'd be there the following morning to drive us back. He shifted from side to side, looked a little dazed, smiled a bit too long and then said goodbye.

"Did he look high?" my dad asked me. "Big time." I went to call Ibrahima and tell him that if he showed up high or hadn't slept enough the following morning that I'd find another driver, but there really wasn't much I could do except threaten.

The next morning before we left I pulled Ibrahima aside and reminded him that we'd hired him for the whole day and that my dad's flight wasn't until late that evening. There's no rush, just go slowly and safely, okay? "Okay, calm down, don't worry so much." I glared at him and we set off, almost rear-ending a woman on a moto before we'd even left the Ségou town limits. The beginning of the trip went reasonably well, though only because I refused to respond to any of Ibrahima's conversation starters with anything more than yes or no, so he had to watch the road.

After about an hour we came to a village where it was market day and crowds of people were milling around the streets. Ibrahima decelerated slightly, though not enough, and turned his head to watch something going on in the market. As he did so, our car veered into the opposite lane, heading straight towards an old man riding his bicycle along the opposite shoulder. "What the fuck are you doing?!" I yelled, and Ibrahima swerved back, but not before we felt a sickening bump against our car.

At dinner a couple of nights before, my dad had mentioned offhandedly that he'd once read an informational brochure for Westerners living in the developing world that instructed you never to stop in the event of a traffic accident. Instead, you were to drive to the nearest police station to report it there, because rural villagers sometimes take it upon themselves to punish traffic offenders on the spot. Not knowing if we'd killed the man on the bike, it was a bit disconcerting to find our car immediately surrounded by a huge crowd of marketgoers peering into the car at us inside. At the time I could have cared less if they were about to kill Ibrahima, since he had shown absolutely no concern for the man we'd hit (and I was about ready to kill Ibrahima myself if the crowd didn't first). But I wasn't entirely confident that a mob jury would recognize my dad and my innocence in the face of our driver's clear culpability.

Luckily the old man had survived (though with a nasty gash down his leg), and my fears proved to be mere paranoia (too much Discovery Channel). We were escorted to the nearest police station, where I informed Ibrahima that there was no way in hell we were going to continue on to Bamako with him. He demanded to be paid for the rest of the journey and I refused, leading to a screaming fight which was eventually adjudicated by a local gendarme, guided by the contract I´d handwritten on lined binder paper. He explained apologetically that since Ibrahima could still theoretically get us to Bamako, he hadn't technically broken the contract-- even if he had almost killed a man. Isn't it an implicit condition of the contract that he be able to get us to Bamako alive? "Well, no." The policeman asked me if I knew how to read, and since I haven't been asked that since I was four years old, reflexively I laughed. "Sign here." We payed Ibrahima the balance, got on a passing bus (only three hours this time around), and got over it. My dad flew home that night and I caught a plane back to Guédiawaye (en route to Europe) the following evening.

Mali was a beautiful, interesting, complex and absolutely exhausting place to feel obliged to lead my parents out of alive. The day after he´d arrived home to California my dad sent me an e-mail in which he wrote that "seeing Americans on the plane from Paris to SF was troubling ... overweight, self-absorbed, wasteful." Which I'd like to think was, whether he realized it or not, his first attempt at articulating that he was glad to have come.

Anyone who has travelled in Africa knows that most African "vacations" are best appreciated retrospectively. My parents are some of the best people I know, but they will be incalculably better for having come here. It is good to read about poverty, but another thing altogether to see it first hand. If you have the resources to do it, no matter where it is (Africa, Latin America, Asia or two blocks down the street in New Haven), please just go. It is hard to come away from a country like Mali without feeling outraged-- and we could all use being a bit more outraged, because the way the majority of the world has to live is nothing less than outrageous.

We will be better for having gone. We will be better for spending Easter dinner watching foreign businessmen gamble and buy sex in a country where 90% of the population lives on under $2 a day. We will be better for playing with wonderful children during the day, then lying awake at night thinking about the fact that a quarter of them will die before they turn five. We will be better for realizing that it was unpardonably obnoxious to laugh when the policeman asked me if I could read and write in a country where the adult literacy rate is just 19%.

African "vacations" are best appreciated retrospectively, and in retrospect I can even forgive Ibrahima for not giving a fuck about his life or anyone else's-- after all, most of the time the world doesn't seem to give a fuck about his. Consider that if my parents were Malian, not only would they never have had the resources to make this trip, but in a country where the life expectancy is 48, they could well have been dead a decade ago.

I miss you guys more and more and more. Good luck on finals.

Love,

Fitz