Mali

Part 1 - We arrive and begin our travels in Mali












We arrived in Bamako, Mali last week on the eve of the African-French Summit of 23 African Nations and Jacques Chirac, so we were greeted at the airport by newsmedia. Bamako was dressed up for the occasion. We're sure you read all about it in the NY Times and saw it on the TV news. No?. Ah, the American perspective. Our introduction to Mali has been characterized by a series of coincidences. We have always believed that coincidences are likely but the odds of some of them do seem long. Our friend Carol (an artist) and our friend Beth (in international business) separately urged us to contact another friend who was familiar with Mali. It took us far too long that they were talking about the same person who they each new independently from their different work. Andrea Snyder has been involved with buying art around the world, Mali in particular. We contacted her and she referred us to Elaine Belleza, an American living in Bamako. More of that later. Meanwhile, at the airport in Philadelphia, we bumped into Lois Fischbeck, a former neighbor who we had not seen in fifteen years. It turns out she had been to Mali on an NIH project a few years ago. So how many other people do you know who have been to Mali?
We spent a couple of days in Bamako where there is a lovely national museum of art and artifacts. We also connected with an American who lives here, Elaine Belleza who became a quick friend and helped us get oriented and may put us up at her home if she's there when we return to Bamako (Beth and Carol give our thanks to Andrea). We took the bus to Segou, a small city farther down the Niger River, where we stayed at pleasant little hotel for a couple of days, visited the market on Monday (gotta love those local markets) , a Bozo fishing village (the Bozo are a fishing tribe) and took a pirogue (motorized canoe) with Selif, our piroguier, for an hour or so on the Niger to a small pottery making village. The village, like many in Mali, is composed of mud contructed houses. It is strewn with workshops - no wheels - the pots are pounded over molds, dried, decorated with simple tools and fired on an open fireplace in the middle of town every Saturday and Sunday for the Monday Market in Segou. We returned just in time for sunset and then dinner with our new friend Elaine who had come for business.
After another travel day we arrived a few hundred km east of Bamako in Sevare' to begin our trip to Pays Dogon (Dogon Country). On the bus to Sevare' we met a couple of Dutch travelers and made plans to share a guide for our trek. After an hour or so in a 4x4 (quatre-quatre) going south, and another hour off road we arrived in Dourou, a Dogon village on the plateau above the Bandiagara escarpment, the 150 mile long cliff which is the home to the Dogon people in southern Mali. After an arduous climb down the escarpment we encountered a landscape reminiscent of the southwest, especially southern Utah and northern Arizona. As we approached each village we had the sense we were seeing life as it might have been lived hundreds of years ago by the Anasazi, the cliff dwellers in the southwest. We stayed each night in a Dogon village, sleeping on the roof to stay cool, and trekking each day between several villages encountering farms (onions, tomatoes, and especially millet which is grown in the rainy season which ended a couple of months ago), a small village market and the people.
The Dogon have a very stylized greeting which they recite each time they meet someone they have not yet seen that day. It's almost like a written dialog saying "hello, how are you, how's the family, how's your wife, how's your mother, how are your children..." and so on. Then it's repeated in the other direction. The recitation is always the same, almost sung and is often done as they pass on the road without stopping. Very charming. After climbing back up the escarpment, we returned today to Mopti near Sevare' to make plans for Timbuktu.
posted by Lynne and Joss at 9:11 AM 0 comments

December 10, 2005


Part 2 - Mopti and on to Djenne

We returned from Pays Dogon to Mopti, an active port on the inland delta of the Niger River. Wandering along the waterfront, lined with pirogues and pinasses (somewhat larger river boats) filled with people or laden with cargo bound to or from Tombouctou (Timbuktu in Malian), we were greeted serially by adolescent boys offering to guide us through town. We were struck by the relaxed, pleasant demeanor of these youngsters mirroring the laid-back and accomodating tone of people in general here. We enjoyed the services of one boy, Ousman, who led us past the salt market. The salt was in blocks roughly the size of a hardbound book, stacked on tables for sale. The salt had arrived from Taoudenni 700 km north of Timbuktu, in the Sahara, by caravan to Timbuktu and shipped downstream to the Mopti market. We walked past the mosque into the town passing mud construction, people at work and a Muslim school for small children reciting Koran. We have also seen several churches and Catholic missions and animist villages but Islam is the predominant religion having been active in West Africa for over 1000 years. We visited the Marché de Femmes, the Women's Market - an apt description of possibly the most crowded local market we've seen; Not very large but bustling and colorful.
Along the way we added another young guide, 9 year old Miriam. The two children kept us out of trouble, were good companions for the morning and protected us from touts (the most polite, cheerful and agreeable we have encountered anywhere in the world - typical Malian; They take "No" for an answer with a smile and are not at all pushy). It occurred to us that allowing your children to go off with strangers is much more common, not to mention safer, in Mali than we believe it would be at home; Certainly the children, for better or worse, receive less parental attention and are more independent. And there are LOTS of children around. After a stop for drinks for Ousman and Miriam, we said goodbye and returned to the hotel.
We left Mopti toward Djenné by car with our driver Mahmadou, who speaks only French and Peul, his traditional language. Mahmadou was a very friendly gentleman, eager to keep us informed as he pointed out sites along the road. His patience made up for Joss' meager French. We stopped at a village,were swarmed by children but it was good to see life away from the usual tourist stops.Djenné is a small but important town on an island in the inland delta. It required a river crossing on a small ferry with a couple of cars, dozens of people, mostly women and their babies bound on the women's backs, and five or six horse carts, horses and all.
Then into Djenné, the site of the largest mud building in the world, the Grand Mosque. The town is a UNESCO world heritage site because of the substantially unchanged typical Subsaharan mud architecture somewhat reminiscent of Tattooine ( yes, the one from the original Star Wars) or the winding streets of Jaiselmer in Rajasthan (see our India Blog http://lynneandjoss.blogspot.com/) . We wandered in and claimed a room, there being no one at the reception desk. Then headed off into own.Djenné is pretty much empty most of the week until the Monday market, reputedly the most colorful in Mali or even all of West Africa.
Ibrahim, our English speaking guide, pointed out the details of mud construction - rice grains mixed in with the river mud of the building walls. You use the materials you have. He showed us the various architecture styles - Morrocan, Sudanese and local styles. We were introduced to the chef du village, the village chief, sitting in front of his grand house greeting passers-by. A typical family man, the chief has four wives. Polygamy appears to be fairly standard here. The wives tend to be substantially younger than their husbands. Also, if a wife leaves her husband, the children remain with him or with his family if the husband dies. Either way, the wife is on her own unless she agrees to marry the husband's younger brother (this includes any young man from the husband's village) . On the other hand, if a wife dies, the husband cannot marry again for at least a year or more. This sounds to us like incentive to have multiple wives.....and then there is the possibility of a mistress on the side. Who can keep up with all that? T here is a bit of disbelief that monogamy is our standard. Anyway, tomorrow the Grand Marché de Lundi en Djenné.
But before that.....Ladeeeez and gentleman, in the center ring, right here in downtown Djenné, for the first timz ever, West African wrestling with your guest host referee, the Malian champion himself. OK so it wasn' t quite like that but we happened to be here in Djenné for the event the night before the market. There's always a surprise. Set up in the plaza in front of the post office was a dirt floor open air wrestling space. A crowd of a thousand or more circled the plaza - a very calm, peaceful and civil crowd from whom our own stadium mobs could learn a little. To the sound of African drums and flutes, the retinue of wrestlers, twenty or so, danced their way into the ring. The scene was festive and good-natured from start to finish. The music played to a crescendo as the musicians circled the wrestlers in each of numerous matches which ebbed and flowed in and out of the dancing, each match ending within a minute or so when one of the wrestlers was taken to the ground. The proceedings were occasionally interrupted by the wrestlers all rising in a celebratory dance. It was all a humbling display of good sportsmanship that continued long into the night.
The Market on Monday began somewhat quietly with activity buiding throughout the day as more and more venders and traders (and remarkably few tourists) continued to arrive on foot and on ox-cart. By midday, the market was in full swing in front of the grand mosque of Djenné. The market was loosely organized into a fruit and vegetable market, rice market, housewares, bread, dried fish, clothing, bouillion and an animal market - mostly sheep trading, the only part exclusively for men it appeared. We spent the afternoon in a fruitless search for internet access. There appears to be none in Djenné, a traditional old town in many ways - no TV, no paved roads, narrow alleys, mud architecture - very few signs of modern life.
Mahmadou, our delightful Malian driver, came for us at eight for dinner at Chez Baba, one of possibly three restaurants manageable for tourists in Djenné. Expecting just dinner from the limited menu, the possble combinations of fish, chicken, potatoes and couscous, we sat in Baba's courtyard eating and being entertained by Malian drums and dancing done in a variety of modern or traditional dress, mostly by young people. They were enjoying themselves at least as much as we were.In the morning, Mahmadou drove us a short way off road to two small villages. Sinossa is a village of the Peul (or Fulani) people who are mostly a cattle raising people. They were very welcoming. Lynne had good fun photographing three women and their children, clearly wives of a single husband. They enjoyed seeing their photos, a great benefit of digital cameras. We were welcomed by the very friendly chief of the village, provided a little basic medical attention to an old man and briefly got lost in the maze of the village. Tomorrow, we begin our three day cruise on the Niger to Timbuktu.

December 14, 2005


Part 3 - The Niger - On to Timbuktu

We said goodbye to the deskman at the hotel in Mopti, named Dolo but he looked like Morgan Freeman so we referred to him as Morgan. On Thursday evening we boarded the river boat, a combination cargo and passenger vessel, for an 8 PM departure. After a 5 hour delay, unloading 1400 tons of rice and milk powder (donated to Mali by Spain, it was caught up in legal wrangling over which company had the shipping rights) we set off downstream from Mopti toward Timbuktu. Awakening just before sunrise, we saw a vast grassy plain on either side of the meandering river, passing an occasional small isolated village along the banks. Bozo fisherman on their pirogues were casting their nets and had been for hours by then. Smaller settlements of grass huts and tents appeared on the banks - nomadic settlements we believe.As the full moon set facing the rising sun on the opposite horizon, there were sudden swarms of birds like swirls of smoke as they ebbed and flowed filling the morning sky. The whole scene evolved as the light of the sun changed through the course of the day, the villages more sparse, our boat criss-crossing the river to stay in the deep channel through the expanse of floodplain that surrounded us. As noon approached a small fleet of square rigged sailing pirogues took advantage of the upstream wind, carrying their passengers to and from small villages on the river. The slow steady progress on the Niger worked its magic on us as we relaxed into the slow pace from the first into the second day of our first river cruise - a new way for us to travel now and in the future.
During the second day we enjoyed the company of our fellow travelers as much as the changing scene on the river. Our "chief steward" Sulayman (he resembled Cuba Gooding) rang the bell for each meal, passable food for our journey. We spotted two or three hippopotamus snouts as they surfaced for breath near the banks of the river. After one stop at a river town, Diré, where we delivered a ferry we had had in tow, we proceeded on to Timbuktu, arriving around 8 in the evening for a welcome sleep in a real hotel. The next morning, on our way out of the hotel, we saw another filmstar lookalike at the reception desk, this time resembling, to an astonishing likeness, Danny Glover. It wasn't until we saw the initials "D G" on the luggage that we realized it actually was Danny Glover visiting Mali to participate in a film by his Malian filmmaker friend. We said hello and he was very gracious as we chatted briefly about home and traveling in Mali and visiting Timbuktu.
Timbuktu is a different place. As we approached the edge of town, as the streets ended there was only Sahara sand dunes and dome-like Tuareg tents at their desert encampments. The people here look different, a transition from subsaharan Africa to the desert and North Africa - especially in their modes of dress, with flowing robes and loosely bound turbans to guard against the dust of the desert; and their crafts and artisanal objects - more leather work, silver, knives and spears. The streets of Timbuktu have been taken over by the desert as well, lined with drifting sand, not merely unpaved but part of the desert itself. We'll be here for a day or two more to explore.

December 18, 2005


Part 4 - Timbuktu and Back

Timbuktu really does have the feel of the last place, the end of civilization. At the end of one city street there is a hotel, the Sahara Passion, and a restaurant. Beyond are sand dunes, a small Tuareg camp and their camels. One evening we walked around the corner from our hotel and into the desert where we went for a short camel ride at sunset. In every direction, the city ends into vast open space. There is no paved road to Timbuktu from anywhere. The closest road is a five hour drive by 4x4 through the desert sand. One hears that if you go to Timbuktu, be sure you know how you are getting out. With that in mind, we reserved a flight back to Bamako. The Mali Air Express office in Tibuktu is a small old table in the corner of a ramshackle hardware store on a dusty back street. The airline "desk" is covered with scraps of paper stuffed into a notebook with scattered lists of names from bookings called in from all over Mali. No computer, just a guy and a phone. It's amazing that the system works.
Along with Danny Glover at the hotel, we met a Belgian couple there. We accompanied them the following day in their Toyota Land Cruiser with their driver, Amadou, who they met in Ougadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso (........no kidding, it's a real place). Within minutes of passing through the gates of Timbuktu, we were off road in the open desert heading for the river to follow its course throught he pale sand, past the blue water and an occasional patch of green. All belied the starkness of the desert as we followed a track for 50 or so km, passing a few fishing villages and a deserted market (it was not market day). We stopped at a small magasin (store) where we found Morrocan sardines and some crackers for a sumptuous lunch in the shade of a lone tree. And so we returned to Timbuktu and prepared for our flight (which was fine by the way) back to the capital, Bamako, for a little R and R before leaving Mali. On our first arrival in Bamako nearly three weeks ago, the city was small, not much going on; On returning, it is now a big bustling, noisy city which had not changed a bit. Mali had grown into us, the slow pace of life, the timelessness of many places becoming our new frame of reference. Home will be a culture shock.


Addendum - Fellow travelers

As in many places we've been, the other people we've met are experienced travelers: French, Canadian, Dutch, British, Belgian, German, Italian, Australian, New Zealander, Chinese, Japanese, Slovenian, Portuguese, Argentinian, a man from Sierra Leone, and the odd American - some travelling for brief visits and some for months at a time. Despite our different origins, we all have travel stories in common to tell each other; Listening to all the stories, even considering our own travels, there's still a lot to learn about where to go and how to do it. It's all relative.

December 21, 2005