Dogon and Djenne

I just had a super great trip to Northern Mali.  I really wish internet was fast enough to do pictures because I got some good ones, and since a picture is worth a thousand words I'm gonna have to do a lot of writing to make up for the lack of pictures. I'm gonna paint YOU'RE MINDS!!!

First though, a brief update on my site.  Things are great!! Before I left (2 weeks ago) I taught my villagers how to make a mosquito repellant and a pesticide using the leaves of a local tree.  They were really into it, especially the repellant.  Also, I started building a little garden in my yard.  I'm making raised beds using rocks and filling it with good dirt, it is very time consuming since I have very few implements, (ie. a short handled hoe and a bowl).  I also designed a thing for drying veggies, fruits, and edible leaves that I can hang from the ceiling of my house since I don't have that much floor space.  Hopefully, tomorrow I can buy the wood...and a hammer.

So, two weeks ago I hitched to Bamako for a meeting and also to see the newest stage get sworn in.  I got a ride with some folks from the local government here in Sikasso.  It took a long time to get to Bamako because we had to stop in Bougouni for many hours to get some paperwork from the President of the Commune of Bougouni.  I told the president about the mosquito repellant and he told me to come back and teach him... That won't happen. We eventually made it Bamako without incident though we did pass an unfortunate car/motorcycle head-on.  Guess which one won?  Also, as a side note, for those of you who may be out of touch with the Muslim world Ramadan started at the beginning of August, so most folks are fasting (no food or water sunrise to sunset), which makes them grumpy and also dangerous drivers.  If you catch a ride early in the morning you're better off as far as having good company for a while.

Bamako was good, I had a beautiful run one of the days.  It was my long run for the week (still training for the marathon in Ghana next month), and I ran out of the city up through the cliffs behind the city and up on top of a nice grassy plateau where amazingly there were really no people and no farm fields and I could see all of Bamako and the Niger River below me.  It was so pretty!!

I left Bamako on a Peace Corps shuttle which was not comfortable.  I got to the departure point a bit late in the morning, so I got stuck in the very back of the land cruiser where there are seats that run parallel to the car so you sit sideways, and they cram 4 people in the backend.  The seats are short so your knees are just always up by your ears, and it's a 9 hour drive so it was not that awesome.  We got into Sevare in the evening, met some friends who live up there, and then caught a Bashi (remember those?) to a city called Bandjiagara.  There is a Peace Corps house there with no admin so they don't charge you to stay.  The purpose of this trip was two fold: It was two of my friends' birthdays in early August AND I wanted to see more of Mali.  There was a fun party and one of the days we took a tour to Dogon Country.  We went into the cliff country and it was so so so beautiful! It reminded me a lot of the desert southwest in the US.  We went to a little village and had lunch at this "encampment" which is a little tourist hotel/hostel thing in the middle of this Dogon village.  (Dogon is an ethnic group in Mali).  Then we hiked up into a cliff village.  It was so much like Mesa Verde, but only abandoned 20 years ago!  It was really cool to see, and while we were there we saw a storm on the horizon, and it looked like we were going to get some rain, 15 minutes later a few miles out there was a wall of sand towering out of the desert blowing our way.  We could see all the farmers running out of their fields for the town at the base of the cliffs, and we started hustling, but it moved fast.  In under 2 minutes it was almost dark and we were in the middle of this huge sandstorm.  Luckily it preceded a big rain storm, so it wasn't too bad, but it was really wild.  The others loaded up the van to get outta dodge before the roads became impassable, but myself and two friends decided to stay behind to do some more exploring.  We sat for a while in the little "encampment' while we waited for the rain to pass and I had the following interesting conversation (Rated PG-13):

Hotel Worker: So you guys are gonna stay here tonight?

Me: Not sure yet. I think we'll sleep out in the bush.

HW: You can't do that.

Me: Why?

HW: There are good people and bad people.

Me: Hm...Okay. (Not a very convincing argument).

HW: So, old man, is one of these women your wife? (People here think I'm old because I have a beard, only old men have beards in this country also the two friends who stayed behind were women).

Me: Nope, I'm not married.

HW: What?!!!  Do you have kids?

Me: Nope.

HW: But you're old.

Me: I'm not old, I'm only 24.

HW: That's pretty old, you have to find a woman soon.  Before you are 28.

Me: Why?

HW: Because now you are strong.

Me: True, but I'll be strong when I'm 28.

HW: Maybe, but your penis won't work anymore.

Me: (Silence, did I just hear that correctly?)

HW: Yeah, you won't be able to get it up when you turn 28. (Complete with gestures near inner thigh so there could be no mistaking what he was talking about).

Me: (Lots of laughter, then): Okay, I doubt it.

HW: It's true.

Me: Oh yeah, how old are you.

HW: 27

Me: (Lots of laughter). You don't have long then.

HW: Where are you going? (We are leaving).

Me: To the bush to stay the night.

HW: This is bad, I'll come with you.  One man cannot go with two women.

Me: That's not true, and you are staying here.  Bye.

HW: Bad!! bye.

So we wandered off and discovered that where a little waterfall was falling off the cliffs before now had a roaring waterfall shooting off the cliffs.  It had created a nice flood across the road, and some good pictures.  We asked some local kids where it was safe to cross and they showed us, and I put my backpack on my head and waded across.  It was just under waist deep and the current wasn't too bad.  We walked for a ways until I saw where the cliffs were a little broken up and we might find a sheltered place to spend the night since I wasn't sure if was going to rain more.  We hiked up and took a break and I went off exploring for a campsite as I had done this sort of thing before so I knew what to look for... or so I convinced my compatriots.  I ended up finding a crack in the rock that was almost a cave, and had a bunch of dry wood scattered around it.  So we made a fire after gathering wood and cooked up some dinner.  The cave had the advantage of being hidden from view of the villages down along the cliff base so we didn't have to worry about the "good people or bad people."  After dinner I tried to gain access to the clip top but the move to get up to the very top seemed a bit sketchy in the dark and I wasn't sure if I could my friends up or down it safely.  So we set up our mosquito nets outside the cave, and in the morning we all made it up to the cliff top for some pictures (I was right, that move would have been bad chi in the dark as it was pretty exposed...meaning lots of air below before you hit the ground should a fall occur).  This day was the actual birthday of one of my companions (though the party had been a few days earlier), so we hiked back to the village of the day before and tried to acquire some camels to go check out the beginning of sand dune country.  They only had one, so we walked out.  It was pretty cool, and I had arranged for a woman in the village to make cake for us which we enjoyed after our lunch upon our return from the pre-dunes.

We hiked out to the main-ish road in the afternoon and were told that there were no more cars going into Bandjiagara for the evening.  We made the decision to camp again, so I sat by the road in the off chance a car came by, and my friends went into the nearby village for some supplies.  Well, I am a lucky traveler, and a car came by that said they could take us in to Bandjiagara.  So my friends came by, and off we went.

The next day we went to Sevare and spent the night, and the next day I went to the site of one of my friends who did the trek with me.  I helped her start her garden (though we'll see because my garden is not doing great so I may not have been the best person to help), and start a Moringa tree nursery.  After a few days we went to Djenne.  Since her site is near a river we tried to hire a boat to take us, but they wanted too much money, so we hitched.  Djenne is a little city on an island, and is the home to the largest and oldest mud structure in the world which is the Djenne mosque.  Along the way we rode with a few people including a dumptruck that had a chinese man in it and in the back of an ambulance.  My friend was stoked about the Chinese man as she can speak Chinese pretty well and so got to chat with him.

We got to Djenne in time to see the sunset on the mosque, and grab some pictures and then found a hotel that was cheap, had great food, and had really nice staff.  The next day we met up with some other Peace Corps Volunteers from our stage who came to see the city as well as the brother of one of our language teachers who lives in Djenne.  We saw the city, some women doing mud-dying of cloth (called Bogolan), and had a good time.  Since it is a pretty touristy city, you get mobbed by beggars if you are white, so that got a little old after a while.  That afternoon my friend and I left Djenne and made it to the ferry, but were unable to get a ride with anyone to the main road, so we scrounged some food out of our packs, made a picknick next to the river and then walked to the nearest hotel/resort where we had earlier haggled a "non-tourist" price with the owner who happened to be at the ferry before dinner.

The next morning we got a ride with an interesting group of individuals.  This land cruiser pulled up and a guy got out and I asked him if we could ride with him.  He said he'd ask. He motioned me over, and I greeted the teens in the back in the local language.  They just sort of looked at me. The man told me they could speak English this usually means halting English, so I said very slowly, "Oh neat, you can speak English?"  The kid said, "Yeah man, we from Houston!"  Double take.  So we got a ride with them, and they informed us they were here to see the "motherland" with their dad who was in the front seat. The teens were interested in what we were doing here, and were very nice, but interesting.  They were covered in tatoos, had very inner city accents, and the kid next to me spent my portion of the ride with them rolling a joint and complaining about how crappy the weed is in Mali, but how it gives you a more spiritual high.  I left the car at the intersection with the main road, and my friends continued back to her site with them since they were going in the same direction.  I caught a bunch of rides and did a lot of walking and eventually made it to a town called Koutiala where I spent the night at a Peace Corps house.     Then this morning I walked out of Koutiala a caught a ride in the back of a pharmaceuticals van to Sikasso.  All in all, a great trip, and I think of anything else I'll add it, but for now this is long enough.  My feet smell, so I'm going to go shower.