Cultural Immersion: A Soft Term with a Lot Of Muscle

A travel tale featuring Mali, West Africa

A woman and child in a market in Bamako, the capital of Mali. Photo by Thomas Dutour/Shutterstock.

I awake in a small village in Mali, West Africa and pull water from the well in my enclosed yard. After carrying it to my roofless outhouse, I pour cups of lukewarm water — the perfect temperature on this hot day — over my hair in the shade of a thousand-year-old baobab tree. I cook oatmeal on my…