The Brusse Romance Letters

You send me letters to the Malian post office. But the real Malian postal system is “en brouse”. If you have an important message and you happen to be literate, all you must do is find someone going in the direction of your letter’s destination, and instruct them to pass it on. In a country of low development and infrastructure, it actually works quite well. So, when spending the night in Kati, I learned of a romance or sorts budding between two of my teammates. The girl entrusted Hunter (my teammate in Kati) and I to try and send a letter to the guy via brusse post. Excited to be playing cupid, Hunter and I hopped on our bikes upon my departure for site, and arrived at a sort of bus/ taxi station just outside of Kati. We approached the area where the vehicles were loading up passangers and announced in the middle of the chaos: “Who is going to Falaje?” We found a group of young men, and also a crowd of very curious on lookers as we took the letter out of our bags.
“You are going to Falaje”
“Yes”
“You know ----name----? He’s a white guy, you can’t miss him.”
“Yes, I have seen him. He works in the mayor’s office”
“Yes! Can you bring this letter to the mayor’s office? It is very important!”
Now there is a social rule in Mali that if someone of a higher age or status tells you to do something, you must do it. No questions or complaints. Malians are happy to serve their elders. I am even sent to the local store for Irene every now and again, being her minor. And I send Shaka to climb up the maringa tree and gather leaves for my dinners all the time. So the young teenager was more than willing, even somewhat frightened to be entrusted with this ever so important task.
We rode our bikes away, giggling with delight. A few days later, we discovered that the guy had successfully sent a letter and a small package of Oreos through the 60 kilometers to her site. An African” Message-in-a-bottle”. I love it.