Magical Bullets

I just finished a really good book called the ‘glass palace’. Among other things, it is about the way countries under colonial rule were used by the ruling country during international conflicts. In this story, the British used Burmese and Indian men as ‘bat men’, what I think is similar to a servant to a man in combat. Gets bullets, retrieves the man if he is wounded; puts his own life on the line for his master. So I asked Fode if Mali played a role in WW2. He said that France had come here to collect men to go to battle. Village by village, they would collect ten or so from each one. Fode said that few wanted to go, and the women were always left crying and screaming. All the men from my village came back alive though, some missing limbs but they all made it back. They are all dead now but Fode said h used to go to talk to them a lot about stories from their time abroad. He says that the men all survived because they were all blessed by the village witch doctor before going, which made them indestructible. Bullets could not penetrate their skin. Bombs wouldn’t throw them to the ground. This is why men lived. I said well actually that may not be the case Fode, many men did die and bullets can always pierce a man. But Fodes belief in witch magic, his and every other person in my village it seems, attribute their home coming to the magic of the witch doctor. It’s funny how different his version of history is from that of a child educated in the United States. I can’t remember the details now but the reasons behind WW2, according to Fode, are pretty funny. The death of the 6 million Jewish people made Fode pretty upset, as if he were hearing it for the first time. It reminds me of the Peace Corps volunteer who told his friend about September 11th, and the Malian cried.