Light of Heart (LGBT+) ✔

You Can Do Anything

Ever since Fatoumata was little, she's loved the days when the whole village repairs and reinforces the houses and buildings to be ready for the rainy season. Everyone helps, and they are sticky with mud and when each house has gotten a new layer and glistens in the sunlight, she feels reborn.

The first light peeps over the horizon and Fatoumata blinks when she steps outside. She turns back to the door. Inside, her niblings are laughing. Grandfather Demba stands in the doorway with his cane, but with a straight back. The russet skin of his forehead gleams in the little light.

"It'll be a good day," he says. "You'll have enough time. The young Sira and Soma already have some experience."

"I know," Fatoumata replies. "I'm not afraid we won't finish or that it won't go well. But the old Awa needs help." And not only she does. There's so much that can go wrong.

"The neighbours will help her too." Demba is silent, but she senses he has more to say. "You're a good engineer, Fatou. You were good enough for Gao, you're good enough for your own village." Fatoumata inclines her head. She knows she's good enough. She went to the city last year because she'd managed to repair a wall nobody else had been able to. But what if she can't do it again? What if she disappoints? "You will do well, girl. The old Awa won't get wet during the rainy season. Come and eat before you start fetching water and mixing mud."

They don't touch, but his words feel like a hand on her shoulder. Her eyes are damp and she can't look at him. "Thank you, grandfather. I'm coming."

Demba shuffles inside and in the muted light of the central lamp, she sees him sit down next to mother around the bowl with barley porridge. The sky is still dark and empty, and the other houses are covered in each other's shadows. Because of the thick walls of mud, sand and clay, silence still fills the streets where soon everyone will run and laugh. Blood is rushing in her veins and she wants to run to the river, feel the cool mud under her feet and let out a cry that causes the waterfowl to fly up and the children to cheer. It'll be a good day.

***

"Catch me if you can!"

"Noooo! Help!"

The small children are running around and splashing each other on the river's edge. Some children help out by mixing the mud or carrying the water, but the youngest ones play, with open mouths and mud in their short frizzy hair and lots of cheering. On the low fishing boats that have been drawn onto the bank, some village elders are talking, but their gazes rest on the children.

Fatoumata bends and fills her big jar. No time to dawdle; they're far from done. On her way back to the village, she crosses the train tracks that weren't there yet last year. The rails meander in the area between the villages and the water as a second, iron river and each day, a train passes that rides between the big trade cities. In Gao, they let her help with the building of a station, and in long breaks, she asked endless questions about the tracks and the trains. Since she's been home again, only a few days, she has looked every day at the train that thundered past the village and it always fills her with awe.

In the village, Fatoumata pours part of her water into the large bowl in which they mix the mud. Kadidia and Soma are already busy. She crouches and puts her hands in the mud, which contrasts sharply with her umber skin.

"How was the city? Did you have to mix mud there too?" Fatoumata looks up. It's Soma who asked the question. He's Kadidia's oldest son, and she keeps wondering how big and young at the same time her nephew is now. She scrapes her hand along the bottom of the bowl and when she takes out her arm, the mud is dripping. Too runny. She adds sand, and Soma and Kadidia mix. "Fatou?"

"I also mixed mud in the city, but it was different." She moves her fingers through the mud and the consistency is more solid now. Soma has stopped mixing. "They had a big machine in Gao. We had to put water and sand and loam in it and then the machine mixed everything until it was good mud for building." They didn't even have to carry water from the river because there were pipes.