A Prayer for Mariame
by
KARI MASSON
As the sun’s rays woke
and stretched over the rainforest, another Sunday began as
usual. Six-year old Mariame and two of her brothers would soon
leave their mud brick home to walk the dusty road to my house, a
western-style concrete building with light bulbs and toilets.
Two more different little girls would have been hard to find.
Our lives crossed 20 years ago in the West African country of
Côte d’Ivoire, and I find them still crossing in my mind.
Mariame and I didn’t
notice the differences. We were both little girls, which
apparently was enough to make us friends. Our language barriers
were overcome thanks to dolls my parents had brought with us
from America. Naturally, I carried my baby in my arms and fed
her a bottle. Mariame tied hers onto her back with a piece of
cloth and walked around balancing a basket on her head.
 We
taught each other the hand-clapping games we knew. I repeated
the unfamiliar sounds Mariame sang, not sure where one word
ended and the next began, but learning exactly when to snap my
fingers or clap my chubby white hands against her thin brown
ones.
At lunch we sat on the
porch eating grilled cheese sandwiches and jell-O, washing it
all down with Kool-Aid. Mariame never cared much for the
brightly colored jiggly stuff, but fell in love with Kool-Aid.
We sat on the swing drinking from plastic cups, watching my
brother Chris and her brothers Dramane and Mamadou chase lizards
and build forts. If we were in the mood, we might grace them
with our presence as fortress princesses.
At the end of the day,
Mariame and her brothers would walk back home, crossing paths
with their father riding his bicycle to our house. Mariame’s
father, Zégué, was our night guard. He arrived at the same time
each evening, tuning his radio to the songs and voices I began
to associate with the sun setting. Armed with a flashlight
strapped to his head, knee-high rubber boots, and a long-bladed
machete, he was ready for the night. During the four years our
house was under Zégué’s watch, no one ever tried to rob us.
Things might have been different if they realized his machete
was more for killing snakes rather than fending off burglars.
The tally sheet my mother kept in the kitchen showed 38 marks,
one for each snake that had fallen victim to Zégué’s machete in
one year.
The early morning was
a changing of the guards of sorts. My father would wake up, make
his coffee, then go read and pray before the sun rose. When the
first pink rays appeared, my father came to wake us up as Zégué
rode his bicycle out through the gate and back to his home.
The route to Zégué’s
house was simple, if you knew the way. Take the long dirt road
out of town. Keep going until there are only tall, leafy trees
on either side. At the top of the hill is a small, barely
visible trail between the trees on your left. Follow the trail
into the darkness of the jungle canopy. Go past the cacao and
coffee fields. Push away the flapping banana leaves. The small
structure there in front of you, made of mud brick and woven
palm branches, is where you find Mariame, her twelve brothers
and sisters, and her 38-year old mother.
Mariame’s mother was
beautiful, to put it simply. Her dark brown skin was the color
of coffee beans drying in the sun. She wore small gold earrings
and outlined her eyes with a blue pencil. Only when you stood
next to her could you see the small lines woven around her eyes.
Her bright smile and rolling laugh welcomed you, even though you
didn’t share the same words. She spoke Maninka, a dialect from
the neighboring country of Burkina Faso.
Like many people in
Côte d’Ivoire, Zégué had immigrated years before, bringing his
young wife with him. While much of West Africa suffered from
poverty and wars, Côte d’Ivoire remained politically stable and
was the world’s leading cocoa producer. The soil was rich here,
the sun and rain plentiful. Zégué’s family of 15 grew their own
food and sold the cocoa and coffee beans for profit. During the
harvest season, Zégué would come through our gate with an
overstuffed bag strapped to the back of his bicycle. On the
porch he would unload gifts of yellow grapefruit that were so
big I needed two hands to hold them and ears of corn picked
early since he knew we liked it pale and sweet.
Far too often for my
taste, my mother would decide it was time to sort through our
toys and clothes and give away what we didn’t need or use. Of
course, my selfish little heart didn’t want to part with a
single toy, even the ones shoved in the back of my closet that
I’d forgotten. A shirt I never wore suddenly became my favorite
and I couldn’t bear to part with it. Even still, we’d collect a
few bags of things to give away. When Mariame would show up the
next Sunday, smiling in a dress I’d outgrown, I’d promise myself
that the next time I’d give more generously.
Five days a week I put
on my blue and white checkered uniform, slid into my backpack,
and hopped on my pink bike to go to the French Embassy School a
few blocks away. Six days a week Mariame tied a piece of fabric
around her waist as a skirt and worked in her family’s fields,
cared for her four younger siblings, and helped her mother cook
rice and sauce. Only on Sundays were our routines similar.
Now, twenty years
later, I wonder how long our friendship would have lasted had I
not moved from Côte d’Ivoire at 12 years old. As the years went
by, I often tried to imagine what Mariame’s life was like at
that time. In a culture where women marry in their early teens,
it would not have been long before Mariame had her own baby, not
a doll, tied to her back. Meanwhile, I was preparing for
homecomings, SATs, and dates on a Friday night.
On September 19, 2002,
I felt an earthquake, but few around me noticed. My world was
shaken as news came that a bloody rebellion had risen out of the
capital city of Côte d’Ivoire and was making its way north to
the Daloa region where my family had lived, and where Mariame
still lived as far as I knew. Reports over the next few months
described the intense fighting in the area, the heart of the
money-making cacao fields. In every emerging news article and
every video clip, I looked for her. Instead of seeing Mariame’s
face, I heard about the rebel forces killing immigrants and
anyone who didn’t have papers to prove their Ivorian
citizenship. I heard about the raping and maiming of women.
Two years ago I ran
into an Ivorian man who had been my father’s French teacher. As
we exchanged news, I learned that the house where we’d once
lived had been used by the Red Cross, until it was taken over by
rebel forces. I cautiously asked him about the people we knew in
Daloa, afraid of what he might tell me. Reading it from an AP or
BBC report had not prepared me for his answer. “C’était un
massacre, Kari,” he said quietly. They killed people
everywhere, he said. His calmness seemed to make it even more
painful, as if the killing had become a common part of life.
I still don’t know
where Mariame is, or what her life has been. Our paths uncrossed
years ago. Ironically, if I were to see her again, the only
thing I could say to her would be the words of the clapping-song
she taught me. But maybe as our hands clapped together, it would
be enough for her to know that I remember her friendship and
have not stopped praying for her.
© Kari Masson, 2007
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