Garibou assillaaaaaama!

I often write about the concept of solidarity. But there is one aspect of Malian culture that’s not so “solid.” Talibizey as they are called in Gao, are garibou, or young students of the Koran who study under a Maribou. To learn humility and to gain their daily bread, they are forced to beg door to door for either a portion of cooked food, some grain or a few coins. Whatever they earn they are instructed to bring back and share with all the other garibous and of course so that the Maribou can take his share. Certain harsher Maribou will chain hands or feet of garibou who ate from their bowl before returning to the house, which makes it all the more difficult for them to beg the next day. They are often filthy, and I was particulalry appalled once when, for lack of a hand washing bowl, a group of men filled a garibou’s bowl with water, rinsed their hands, and began to eat.

Garibou literally means “foreigner” in Arabic. In Islamic teachings, Muslims are to feed, house, and clothe any “strangers” who come by. Though, it is understood that if you stay longer than three days, you are considered to no longer be a foreigner.

The problem in Mali, aside from harsh treatment of legitimate garibou, is that there are many children (almost all boys) who are sent away (or who run away) who know nothing of the Koran yet beg just like the garibou do. This is why often Aliou would demand the garibou to recite the Koran before giving anything. Non-garibou would then be comically teased until Aliou thought they had earned their dinner. For example, Aliou would ask Dave if this was the little punk who threw the rock at him today (untrue of course) and Dave would exclaim, “Yeah, yeah that’s the one, get him!” The garibou would promptly run out of the courtyard. Similarly, if Aliou would call to Zubbu to bring a nice, sharp knife, for garibou liver is what would cure his child’s sickness, the garibou would also run (screaming sometimes) from the courtyard. Because, even in Ansongo, most of the garibou were originally from Gao gourma (the villages on the right bank of the river or as it flows between Gao and Ansongo, the West bank), Aliou would quiz them on exactly where they were from or who their father’s father is. Once, a garibou thoroughly confused by the barrage of questions, ended up telling us he was from both the West and East banks of the river. Right. Once, Aliou found a garibou from his village of Boya (commune of Gabero in the gourma), and began to feed him well. He was surprisingly a legitimate talibize.

When I was at restaurant recently in Douentza, coming back from Timbuktu with CARE, ATN Plus, and Nouveaux Horizons staff, we were appalled by the behavior of the town’s garibou. These were surely not students of the Koran. When one table had finished their bbq’d meat, the server held up the pile bones on a platter to keep it from the groping hands of almost 20 garibou. Almost each one got a bone that they started to happily gnaw on. Mahamane turns to me and says what a tragedy these garibou/beggars are. Why can’t an NGO (or the government) build centers to house and feed them and teach them a skill. Another colleague commented that if the system continues, these beggars, once adults, would also send their children out to beg. I understand certain families cannot afford to take care of all of their children, or in the case of an orphaned child, take him or her in because their parents were relatives. It is the norm, but it is not easy. Therefore, though to most Malians it is culturally appalling, I find it necessary to started building orphanages/vocational training centers for these unwanted kids. In the case of the talibizey who are trying to learn the Koran, there needs to be a system of community involvement to support the Maribou in taking care of his students. Buddhism also promotes begging and a simple life in order to learn humility; nevertheless, in learning this lesson, these children shouldn’t have to act like dogs. 

At peace in my skin

One of the most important things my fiancé has helped me to understand is why people call me anasara or tubob. Greetings are incredibly important here. So important, if you don’t greet someone, they think you are mad at them, not just that you forgot to greet them or didn’t notice them passing by. Even before buying something you have to go through the greetings—from their spouse and children to the state of their cows. Additionally, ethnic identity is still very strong here—and relatedly, family names carry much more significance than they do elsewhere. Often when greeting, people address each other by their family name. If they don’t know the person’s name, they’ll address them by the name the most common to the ethnic group (Bambara = Coulibaly, Peuhl = Diallo, Songhoy = Maïga). If a person greets someone not from their ethnic group, they will call out the name of the ethnicity. Therefore, Diallo is often greeted as fula ce ! (among Bambaras) and fulan aru ! (among Songhoy). And I am greeted equivalently as tubob or anasara. It’s not meant to be a slur because I’m white, but merely a way to classify and greet me. 

During the lunch break of the training I was in Monday and Tuesday, one of the trainers asked me if I get bother by people refering to me as anasara (just before my colleague had told the server the anasara doesn’t eat that much, so don’t fill her plate). I said it used to bother me but no longer does because I’ve come to realize that everybody uses certain terms to identify and refer to people here. I think it only becomes a problem when people use the terms to generalize about certain ethnicities and do so out of the context of joking cousins (for example, the artisan who made our wedding rings is a Peuhl of the blacksmith class of forgerons who joke with Peuhls, so he joked about the significance of my fiancé’s small fingers and the fact that all Diallo’s are traitors). Sadly, two groups excluded from the joking cousins/ethnicities (Diarra’s joke with Traoré’s, all Dogon joke will Songhoy, etc) are the Touaregs and the Bella. These are the only two groups I’ve heard being seriously slurred against here in the North. And they are the ones you hear about most on RFI. 

West African French, quoi

The more time I spend around French people (or other Europeans who speak French) the more I realize I speak very West African French. And evidently the mélange with local languages is even more noticeable in Côte d'Ivoire. 

On est ensemble, the subject of my last entry, is a quintessential West African French phrase having largely to do with the fact that it represents the Neighborhood Watch aspect to the culture here. It’s not really used in France in this sense, probably because the system of solidarity isn’t as strong in the West (I know, I know, France is in fact north northeast of Mali).

Présentement  is widely used to say "currently" but French people find it awkward. Maybe this too is a result of me using the equivalent to "presently". Usually, when searching for a word I don’t know, I say the english word with French pronunciation (especially if the word is more than 3 syllables long) and it works. In this case, it doesn’t.

On est où là ? Literally meaning "One is where ?", has become a greeting or a way to warm up a crowd. It doesn’t really mean anything. But it became popular in the West African hour of guests and music on RFI at 21H10 because the Sénégalese host uses it profusely. 

Peinturer  in West African French means "to paint". However, they took the actual verb peindre and made it into an easy to congugate regular –er verb. So instead of being lazy and saying Le nouveau maire a coupé tous les arbres dans la cour de la mairie et peinturé le batiment conformément à son hôtel (true story), you should say Le maire a peint la mairie desagréablement.

Often, to designate an event or action that has not happened yet but is expected to happen, West Africans say, Je n’ai pas fini à préparer d’abord. I thought this was perfectly acceptable French. It is not. I have now learned that the construction comes from Bambara (or the more widely spoken sister language of Dioula), in which for an action that has not yet occured you simply tack on folo to the end of the sentence. Folo translates best to d’abord. But, a proper French housewife would use encore to say she has not yet finished cooking : Je n’ai pas encore fini à préparer. 

Quoi is added at the end of phrases so often it's become a habit, quoi. Similar to "like" in English. While watching Bienvenue Chez les Chtis, I found that it is also used in this north northwestern French dialect. To the point where a southerner gets quite confused and the two actors get into a loop much like a "Who's on First?" bit. Quoi literally means "what" and therefore, with the intonation of the Chtis, it is as if you are always asking a question rather than confirming a statement. Here, there is no confusion over intonation, so it becomes an extraneous word at the end of phrases, as in, Je vais terminer ici, quoi. 

On est ensemble

On est Ensemble is a West-African French phrase which literally means « We’re together » but more figuratively speaks to the system of solidarity that is deeply imbedded in the culture.

For example, when I forgot to grab money out of my safe for the week, I found myself broke, 4km away from home, and with a blazing sun outside. Lunch costs 500F ($1,20). But I didn’t even have a 5F piece on me. So when I went to our usual restaurant, I asked the lady if I could pay tomorrow. She gave me a heaping plate of rice and red-fish sauce and said, On est ensemble. You don’t let your neighbor go hungry here. It’s one of the aspects I like most about Malian culture—even if it may cause a certain level of indolence.

 

 

Human Universals

First rain in Gao and I discovered another human universal: kids love to puddle stomp. 

In the Road

Though it is tiring to be going around town on a bike—from my house along the river to work one way is over 4km—I enjoy how it allows me to observe and interact with people, especially the kids:

"Ni go foonda ra !" I said to a toddler IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD, he looks up at me and starts to bawl. A young woman comes over and says his mother was out and there was no one looking after him.

"Nice rhythm" I shout over to a kid, who, surely sent by his mother to get water, was sounding out beats on the 4 over turned 20L water jugs strapped over his shoulders. I sure hope he wouldn’t be the only one carrying that load back…

One toddler pulling another out ofthe way of a speeding moto by the back of his oversized shirt.

Pays Dogon

The Dogon are a people unique to Mali. It is said they sought refuge from wild beasties in the cliffs of the Bandiagara Escarpement when it was still a forested region. Now, you can see the desert approaching once you descend the fallaise into the plain where dunes encroach from the northeast. The Dogon chased out the Pygmies (who liked the forest and therefore ran off to the Congo River basin) and settled in villages along the 200km escarpement. With the Peuhls to their west, on the top of the ridge and in the plains beyond, the Dogon were introduced to Islam but have generally held fast to their animist beliefs. Many villages still retain their traditional religious chiefs who are in contact with the Creator, Ogon (all this I learned from our guide and from what my fiancé had learned in school, so forgive me if there are errors) ; though, in nearly every village we visited there was a Catholic mission and often schools supported by the Church. Still, we chanced upon a traditional mask ceremony for two funerals. 

When there is work to be done in the fields, people who pass away are burried but there is no passing ceremony to recognize their accomplishements. These two elders were very accomplished and therefore merited an elaborate ceremony. Women born during the Dogon fête of the year become the master of the ceremony. They hold large, decorated calabashes (gourd spoons) and are the only ones allowed to dance along with the masked men. Each mask represents either fertility (these male dancers are equiped with breasts), rain, hyenas, lions, hunters, and life (the tallest of them all…this dancer must have an amazingly strong neck to raise and lower the tree-trunk of a mask attached to his head). The men drink millet beer before starting the ceremony and a few dancers had to be removed from the circle for drunkeness. I was amused by certain more modern decorations on the masks : colored plastic mirrors, « Nihe » sneakers, and other « chinoiseries ». The rest was made from Baobab and monkey-fruit wood, grass and natural dyes. 

The Baobabs of Pays Dogon are huge and numerous. You can see the scars from where bark was harvested for masks and uses in the home (rope or baskets). The trees really do resemble a tree pulled up roots and all and planted upside down. One of my favorite quotes from the trip was to Diallo as he sat under the shade of a Baobab : « Hey, does this thing that resembles a Peuhl speak Fulfulde? » (a Poullo woman passing by selling milk). He responded in Fulfulde, of course, and we decided to buy some milk. From then on we refered to him as « this thing here ». It was interesting to see him playing tourist in his own region. He had never visited Dogon Country before and enjoyed himself. 

The hiking wasn’t so rigourous, but on the way back you end up scalling the escarpement quite quickly (it’s no more than a 1km climb) so a few in our group got vertigo. The force of the wind made some passes precarious, particularly how it has over the years carved rocks down to perfectly round boulders wedged into crevasses just waiting to fall on the innocent passerby…we had difficulty imagining how the Dogon lived in the cliffs (the oldest villages were literally caverns dug out from the cliff face)—how would they have transported water ? How did they use the toilet ? We joked how the sleep walkers of the tribe most certainly had been selected out. Our guide explained the Dogon knew how to fly and therefore the height of the cliff posed no problem. That was how they beat the former Pygmy dwellers of the region. To us, it was certainly a task to climb through the villages to reach areas reserved for the religious chiefs. Each village has a meeting shelter/hangar (still used today) to settle disputes and discuss village matters. The roof is so low no one can get angry and abruptly stand up to intimidate others. Plus, most of these structures were carefully constructed along cliff edges to be more visible to passerby ; therefore, making a ruckous would also result in a tumble. I was amused by a c.1904 French oil canister turned into a drum. There were often signs explaining local laws such as « No widowers allowed for three years » and you have to wonder what dispute that sign settled. We also noticed the Dogon sensibly had houses for the women to retreat to each month. I wonder what has changed in society that women no longer get 5 days to themselves each month?? 

The populations were very accostommed to tourists. Especially the children. We were left alone for the most part, though were still asked to buy things or to give them things. Craig enjoyed beat-boxing with the kids, leading them in rhythms and songs as we hiked along the base of the plateau to our campement. We asked a few students to show us their notebooks. A 4th grader couldn’t answer simple questions in French nor write clearly. It seems they focus on local language and teach it orally reminding me if Mali wants to truly be independent of aide they need to improve basic education first. We especially enjoyed observing the daily work : drying and pounding onions into balls to store them all year (a Frenchman introduced this type of onion to the area and it grows in abundance); watering of gardens with gourds ; pounding millet ; cloth dying (I bought some indigo) and guiding. We ran into many other tourist groups with their guides. I hope to go back and hike for more than two days, possibly towards Sangha and the north part of the escarpement. There is certainly more to discover, particularly about the regions geology. The guide explained it was underwater, then a forest, and now it is slowly being turned into desert. But much of the rock and its coloring led us to believe there was volcanic activity. Pumice and other igneous rock doesn’t just fall from the sky. But, to support the guide, there was a lot of evidently sedimentary stone with bits of shell and evidence of sealife petrifed. I can believe why Pays Dogon is the most visited area of Mali : beautiful terrain, interesting culture and great trails. The people for one, yeech ! A bunch of donkeys ! 

I’m sorry, as a koyraboro, in the name of joking cousins, I just had to. 

Hamiisa go no wala?

How would you determine a child’s age who has neither a birth certificate nor a vaccination record and how the father (who was probably off in Ghana trying to make a living during the birth), the grandmother, the mother and the neighbor remember the period of the birth are all different ?? You count their teeth, have them fold their left arm over their head and reach for their ear, or try to coax the information out of the family using local events (had Abdoulsalaam gotten married yet ?) and seasonal calendars (was the tabacco flowering ? Had the river dried up ? Where were the cows at the time ?) You check for contradictions (the local names of the moons change from zone to zone) and hope you’ve made a good approximation. Because when calulating various forms of malnutrition (acute/starvation, chronic/stunting and ponderal insufficience) you need height, weight AND age. Our team of surveyors, doctors and sociologues became well versed in the science of age-determination by the end of the two-week CAP (connaissances, attitudes, pratiques) survey. The « training » we had in Gao was somewhat worthless, but did give me a good refresher on college statistics…random sampling, determining sample size, bell curves…etc etc. The problem with the methodology was that the southerners (we had hired the government’s public health consultants) are used to villages that get built up around a central point. In the communes of Bamba and Téméra, the villages are split up into « neighborhoods » of 100-200 residents stretched along the river. Each village is only a few huts up from the banks, but a few kilometers long. So, the method of random sampling to which they were accostommed of finding the central point of the village, throwing a pen in the air, walking to the periphery of the village in the direction of the pen’s cap and numbering the houses as you go, drawing a number from the range of houses numerated and starting from there…wasn’t gonna fly. From the first house on, you continue to the nearest house to the right. But that too posed a problem—the « houses » (which we begun to label « economic units » because there are multiple huts/tents/structures to one family) are not in a compact area. Even near water points there aren’t really conglomerations. The river is their livelihood : rice paddy, fishing, water for cooking, cleaning, bathing, drinking. You have to live near the river. Period. « Fractions » of villages off in the dunes and pastures (herdsmen and Tamacheqs) weren’t surveyed due to their distances. We had a difficult enough time finding sleeping arrangements and clean drinking water in the more established villages ; I couldn’t imagine treking out to campements where they live off milk and pond water (if that). A pastoral/livelihoods Oxfam staff member told me he was out in the fractions during the drought of the 2004-05 season and asked for water. Among all the campement residents, they couldn’t find enough water to fill his 4L jug. The average daily need for water (and what most « Access to Water » projects target) is 15L per person. An entire village couldn’t come up with 4L !

In two weeks, we visited 26 villages, measured over 600 children under five and surveyed their mothers. The most interesting part other than testing my limits in supporting the broussey-life was investigating food security indicators (this experience has reinforced my desire to pursue a specialisation/masters in foodsec). I’d always try and get the chance to chat with some of the mothers after the survey about their livelihood, well, if they didn’t run away from me! We had a few women who had probably never seen a foreigner let alone one who speaks their language. These informal discussions allowed me to learn that, for example, the sheep get woozy when they eat the tobacco. Bamba is the largest tobacco producing region of Mali—a cash crop for the families and one of the few agricultural jobs sonrai women manage entirely from planting the seedlings in the rich mud along the bank of the river to de-flowering, harvesting, drying and pounding the leaves. I found that there is no lack of protein in the diets due to a constant supply of fish and therefore it is a poor indicator of a good or bad year (the question posed was how many days of the week the “economic unit” eats meat or fish). Most of the families rely on wild crops—barley, bourgho grass and its grain, water lillies (flower, stalk, root and grain found in the bulb are all consumed), and burrs. When the birds eat the rice seedlings, the population will still eat the paddy (what’s left of the grain). One mother told me, Zankey ma duu ka dungay. She looks to keep her children quiet with what they can find and nothing more. The state food-sec annual analysis found both Bamba and Téméra as food secure— with Bamba fairing slightly better. The problems we found weren’t directly related to quantity, quality or frequency. No, they were structural problems such as dikes that break every year leading to flooding of the traditional paddies, a lack of irrigation (they just wait for the river water to flow into the paddy after planting in October), and grain storage. Even when it’s a good year, said one woman, they’ll just eat more. There is no sense of saving up for next year in case of a bad harvest. One of the better indicators of a good or bad year we found was the selling of animals. The sonrai only sell animals as a last resort. Their herds are their pension plan. So in a sense, they do have savings, it just moos and has four legs and can die if there’s not enough pasture or water.

Once again, I found that Mariama Cissé, the white woman who speaks koyraboro senni, is very well known from Titilane to Gareygoungo (villages along a 45km stretch of the Niger). In Zamane, women from the village came to dance and play the nzarka for me. After having introduced the methods of the survey and the Oxfam project on the radio in Téméra (the commune next door to Bamba) with the help of the mayor, we could say that stretch has now expanded to 75km. I was impressed with Téméra : nearly all of the villages were informed of our schedule and many women had their child’s birth certificate and vaccination information in hand upon our arrival. And this was without the aide of our trained village health workers ! People say it is a less politicized commune and people are more open to helping us help them.

All the surveyors and I got along well—always joking and telling stories as we travelled from village to village. Crossing into the gourma (always the territory up from the right bank of the river as it flows) of Hamgoundji, the chief arranged a canoe for us. As the river water is drying up, our larger pinasses have to fandi farther and farther from the villages. Our canoe, though a long-boat with a shallow hull, got stuck in the mud and bourgho roots. So we had one of the larger surveyors get out. On the way back, he insisted on helping the child pole the canoe along. Of course he got off balance and fell in. We couldn’t help but laugh at him, a chain smoker, throw one-by-one, his soaked cigarettes into the chanel. Walking back from the second chanel to the island where we had lunch cooking, I got covered in mud up to the knee provoking various comments of how Mariam is getting broken in (as if I hadn’t already lived here for 2 ½ years). « Baa ni ga jiiri fo teeeeee haro raaaaa, ni si ni darbaway naaaaang jeso gaaaaaa » was their taunt that they’d continuously sing for the rest of the survey : « Even if you keep swimming in the water for a year, you don’t forget your clothes on the shore when you get out. » That is to say, even if I’m well-adjusted, speak koyraboro senni, accept to eat greasy rice-shuck (not the grain, but what’s left of the grain after pounding it to open the husk), and bathe in the river, I’m still an anasara and I can always go back to the Good Life.

Finding our lunches and dinners was always interesting. The question « Hamiisa go no wala ? » became somewhat of a greeting for us : as soon as we anchoered at a village, we’d yell out to see if there was fish to be had. On market day, we ordered a sheep by phone. In the middle of the Niger, I placed the call back to our driver in Téméra. Often, the villagers would make us labbadja, one of my favorite sonraï meals, consisting of rice piled high with roasted sheep or goat and smothered in fresh cow butter. Though most of the time for lunch, in the name of finishing off a « grappe » (the sample of kids necessary for that village), we’d just get tomatoes from a nearby garden—in one village there were tomatoes the size of softballs—and make cold porridge from dried manioc powder.

The southerners were used to families serving as one grappe. But here the norm is less of polygamous marriages, and women often only have 1 to 2 children. Though that isn’t to say she hasn’t tried for more. Even with most of the women answering they had been pregnant 5-7 times (the average in Mali), the majority only had 2 living children. We did come upon one island near Téméra of fishermen which was two brothers, their wives and all their children and grandchildren, coming to a total of 83 people. The two brothers had originally come up from Ségou (5 hrs from Bamako). We quickly finished our grappe that day.

Since the survey, the temps we hired from Gao still greet me in town and typically yell out « Wa’dungay ! Dungay ! » Because while out in the boat on a particularly blustery day I was nervous of capsizing and was calling out to the pinassier to determine whether or not we should keep going but couldn’t hear, so I was yelling at the team for silence. They’ll never let it go. One said to me he had never seen an Anasara so afraid before. Especially an anasara who knows how to swim traveling by a pinasse conducted by a descendent of the sorkos who traditionally are friends of the water spirit, talk to the hippos and know how control the currents of the river.

Those currents will soon change with the construction of a dam between Bourem (the circle seat) and Téméra. The water level behind the dam will rise, consumming all the islands of Bamba and Téméra and most of the houses along the banks. Meaning the large portion of the population will be forced to relocate up into the dunes. Though the dam will bring irrigated fields, eventually, the livelihoods of these people are entirely dependent on what they grow in the flood plain and the islands. Can the sandy soil of where they’ll relocate to produce enough ? Will the state actually pay for new homes ? When asked what they think of the changes to come, most of the villagers replied, « God will help us».

Irkoy m’ir kul faaba indeed…

The Things They Carried

I do believe the number of motos in the capital has increased noticeably since I've been here. Especially the Chinese made "Jakarta" motos. I can't imagine what it would be like to a Malian, like the one who I met in CDG, who had left for France in 1988 and hasn't been back until now. What amuses me are the items one frequently sees being carried/dragged with a moto:

- The family (Mommy, Daddy, and three kids)

- A sappling

- Meters and meters of rebar, dragging behind, sending up sparks

- A HUGE mess of bean leaves

- A sheep

- Crate of bread

- 4 chickens

- A 4m plank of wood

Aw bissimilah!

From the moment I heard the loud Ivorian music and Bambara, I knew I was already almost home. And this was only in the CDG gate for the flight to Bamako.

There's the good: Lebanese falafel and silly Bambara women amused with me for trying to speak their language while buying bananas (100F for 3!!) or flip flops, warm sunshine (not too hot yet!) and cute babies...and the Bad: open sewage, mosquitoes, scary taxi drivers (um, **thanks** for the statistic on car accident related fatalities abroad, Kev) and barely breathable air...but at least most of those things I only have to deal with here in the capital.

Thanks to both the Malians and the dear citizens of Awesomeland for sharing me!!

Awesomeland

Have you ever been in McDonald's and at a loss for what to order?

Been startled at the automatic toilet flushing as you stand up?

Paid $5 for a chocolat chaud and realized you could have lived a couple days off that?

Been wide-eyed in a shopping mall?

Been appalled at the size of portions and then making 3 meals of it?

Thought how delicious some people would find that nice, fat cat who was voguing on the sidewalk?

Been amazed at the choices of wild rice in the supermarket?

Giggled at the cowboys stepping out of their truck in button-up shirts, jeans and boots when you are FREEZING pumping the gas in 3 layers, a hat, mittens and a turban in Somwhere Off of I94, MT?

Been unable to pick first which margarita (out of 8 flavors), then what kind of salsa (at least 20 options from mild to spicy, fruity or sour), then what kind of meat (ground beef, chicken, pulled pork, vegetarian, or spicy marinated beef), what kind of beans (black or pinto) and finally, unable to say if you were ready to pay the bill or not?

Pausing, then realizing that it was the number of white people on the bus with you that was different?

Forgetting to close cupboards and to turn off the oven?

Using the affirmative "ayyo" to agree with someone or say "diplôme" for diploma and ONG for NGO?

If you have had these feelings, don't hesitate to talk to your doctor today. These are signs of the common syndrome known as readjustment. Call today about readjustment and how we can help...umm...I believe I have watched too much tee-vee lately...

It has been an interesting month experiencing the US on home leave--most accented by realising the vast amount of choice one has in the states.

Time with family and friends has been so incredibly wonderful. I've realized me and my friends have grown up a bit in the last 3 years and yet it seems as if it was just yesterday I flew off to Mali. And the parents...well, they've adopted certain habits I find quaint. Like watching the News Hour with Jim Lehrer during dinner, facebooking, and rotating who does the daily Sudoku Calendar page. Above all, the scrabbling, the laughing, the church-going, the eating of ice cream, the joys in playing "I opened my grandmother's trunk..." and "Hide n' Seek" with young cousins, and the hugging have given me the strength and love I need to keep going. Thanks!