Time is an Ocean

Time is an Ocean but it ends at the shore, you may not see me tomorrow...pieces of song lyrics are my unbidden companions now. They just pop up by themselves such as this one, also from Bob Dylan (Oh Sister)

 I am in London. Before leaving Bamako I visited Keita’s grave in the Hamdallaye cemetary. Women are not allowed at the funeral in the Muslim tradition, but we can visit the grave later. I thought that to bring flowers would be a little pointless since flowers definitely belong to the category of things –like sunsets- that are for toubabs as far as Keita was concerned.  So I brought him a little Malian flag:  for Keita the Patriot.

Grief is an unfamiliar land that I have not travelled through before. Oh, I smile and I even laugh and have dinner with friends and must seem to them perhaps like always; but the thing is, nothing is the same now.  

 

If it wasn’t so corny and it wouldn’t make me seem like such an attention grabbing drama queen I would have some genuine  claim to be suffering from  a Broken Heart. On the day of  Keita’s death  I developed a heart condition called Atrial Flutter for which I am now taken medicine.  

I will go back to Djenné and I will continue at the end of June like I always did. The projects at the Library are continuing until the autumn of 2017; the hotel is still there and has even had some visitors for the second part of the Crepissage.  Dembele is doing a Malimali sale in Bamako at the end of the week. Life goes on like an unstoppable steam train taking no notice of the fact that Keita is gone, just like it will one day  take no notice of the passing of me or of you when we are no longer here.