29
“In the pursuit of gold,” the serpent told them in the time between, “one may lose what is truly valuable.”
Mali, Africa
c. 1300 A.D.
“No, first you must say your verses,” my auntie tells me.
“But--” I start to say but she has fists on her ample hips, and I know argument will only gain me more practice.
“Your ta will know if you have not learned them most properly.”
I go back to reciting. Occasionally, Auntie corrects me. She is my mother’s sister and took on my care, they tell me, after my mother died birthing me, a son. Auntie, my uncle, his mother, their three children, and other family members live in a crowded house built of sun-dried mud bricks. In a similar house not far away, resides my father with the woman he took as wife after my mother died, and their extended family.
