The 45th president never met her, never set foot in her village. If he had, maybe he wouldn’t have slandered them so.
I had the good fortune of knowing her. Through no intention of hers, Sanata Coulibaly changed me. Forever changed how I look at life, how I see my country.
Sanata’s but a memory now. She was my next-door neighbor more than 30 years ago, when my wife and I lived in the West African country of Mali for two years. Beautiful woman, inside and out. Quite possibly the most cheerful person I’ve ever known. She had this laugh that bubbled up from deep inside her belly, ending with a little whoop that I can still hear like she’s with me now.
I’m hardly the first to observe that if wealth and hard work truly went hand in hand, every African woman would be a millionaire. Sanata was no exception. Every day, she worked from before the sun rose to well after it set. She worked the fields, planting, weeding and harvesting. She pounded grain into flour, fetched water, gathered wood for t…
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