The Heart of Shrinky

One of my first village friends was a 1 1/2 year old named Basolo. We met when he tottered away from his concession to the center of town and was crying. I hadn't yet become acquainted with which children belonged to which house, so we walked around for a while hand in hand until he pointed me to his mom. He wore a red sweater with a picture of a mouse and the subtitle "the Heart of Shrinky". Now, I've seen strange t-shirts here (San Diego zoo, Jesus loves me more than you, etc), but that one stuck with me.

After that initial meeting, I came to appreciate the children that lived at that concession. They were always quick to greet me politely and with a big smile, not asking for anything except a smile in return. This concession's children were the ones I could tolerate the best, most likely because of their relatively small number. When I got tired of the chaos of my host family or homologue's house, I would make my way to sit in the Heart of Shrinky's concession to read, write or play.

Just this last week, I think I was the most scared that I've been since arriving in Mali. After returning from our shea butter sale in Bamako on Tuesday afternoon, I was informed that Basolo and his older sibling, Safi, had gone missing since around noon that day. Their parents and other villagers had been keeping their eyes out since then, hoping this 2 1/2 year old and 3 1/2 year old would wander back, but now the sun was about to set and they were still no where to be found. They say that children often get lost this time of year and during rainy season when the grass is high and the crops like corn and millet are not yet harvested. But never before was it children this young. Before the village was called to safo prayer (around 7:30pm), the village chief made an announcement over the mosque's loud speaker, "The children are yet to be seen."

Who had been the last to see them? When? Where? The thought was that they had left to try to find their family working far out in the fields. Usually the village keeps good track of its children, but Basolo and Safi must have slipped away. How, when people had been going back and forth between the village and fields all afternoon? Even I had ridden my bike on the main path that afternoon- others had walked from Keleya and even other had left village to go to Keleya and yet no one had seen them. Well, perhaps they hadn't taken that path.

Flashlights came out in numbers; our neighboring community, Folona's hunters joined our villagers with their rifles for an attempt to search the vast forests surrounding our town, Bassa. The village women searched every inch of town, looking behind doors, under grain storage untis and in Basolo and Safi's favorite places to play. Some people thought of the worst and checked the uncovered wells and ditches where the children could have fallen, also in the bog and fishing hole still filled with water. Not to mention the possibility of injury or the threat of scary forest-living animals. By 10 pm, cold had set in- probably the mid-60s, but that's freezing in comparison to the day high of 95. And we're nearing the new moon, meaning pitch dark until the early hours of the morning. Without extra clothing, dinner, any kind of light, Basolo and Safi were in the Malian wilderness alone. I wrapped my shawl tighter around my shoulders as we sat on watch at the entrance to town.

About midnight, some of the villagers had returned to their houses for a few uncomfortable hours of shut eye. Others stayed up through the night with the hope that the hunters would come back with the children in hand. Others said the children were in Allah's hands. Early the next morning, the message from the mosque was the same- still not found.

While someone called the radio stations in the area, the rest of the village split off to search the forests once again, this time in light. Many people said that even if the hunters had passed them last night it was quite possible they didn't see them considering that they might have been asleep on the forest floor. I went with my host mom, Babintou, and the children's grandmother to search the fields south of town. Two hours, three hours passed that way.

It was lunch time when a motorcyclist entered town with Basolo and Safi behind-- and a village parade behind it. We all streamed out from our respective concessions where we had been taking a break in order to then congregate at their family's concession. Many people cried with joy as the mosque announced their return. 24 hours had elapsed from the last time they'd been seen, with a good portion of that time in darkness. I get frightened sometimes, just walking to the edge of town at night. These two toddlers walked over 6 km to spend the night alone in the woods. They were found on a road that runs from another brousse town at an angle 45 degrees from ours. There are no direct paths that connect these road except when passing through other villages. Some villagers are sure that a spirit must have taken them at least part of the way- because 6 km for a 3 year old is a marathon. I, myself, am not yet convinced, but it's hard to believe that they crossed paths with no one that afternoon or evening.

Regardless of how they got there, they have come back and with that relief, I swear the entirety of Bassa went inside for a long and restful midday nap.