19.09.06 - 11:05

So, I've just come back from my goodbye trip to Kankossa. It was wonderful to see everyone again, but of course sad to leave for the last time. I wrote a group of memories/vignettes/images, which I thought I'd post, one by one. They are not polished whatsoever.

I am a little burnt out with all the preparations for my departure. Hours and hours spent in the offices of petty bureaucrats.

Anyway.

one. Walking home after dinner, I hear shouts of my name, a growing thunder of feet, and POW! I am caught in an amorphous mass of children, caught like the teeth of an octopus within its elastic body. The children grab my hands, the bottom of my shirt, anything they can hold on to, and propel me towardmy house, jostling each other for the most propitious position. Hirata's daughter Fatimata exclaimed several times, squeezing my left hand, "this is MY hand!!" Meanign no other child should try to hold it. My right hand was split among three children - thumb, pointer and middle, and ring and pinky.

But then suddenly, each child released me, shook my hand goodbye, and burst off in the other direction. Like pet dogs, they instinctively knew their boundaries. They knew when to turn home. (And, I guess, so do I?)

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