Mali - Pays Dogon, Yenndouma. Youga Mountain, Douentza, Timbuktu

Mali 31st - 9th April 2008

Touring Mali (continued...)
Pays Dogon. The following morning, Monday 31 of March, we set off for the Pays Dogon, the 200km Falaise Bandiagara and the dramatic Dogon cliff face villages. Jutta had kindly given us detail of the trip to the area that she had completed a few days earlier with her twin sons who were visiting from Germany. The Dogon people were, and many still are, animist and so attribute a living soul to natural objects. The master of the Dogon world is called Amma and his (just to confuse you, Rebecca!) creation of the Dogon universe and their subsequent history is all based on oral tradition. Their predecessors on the cliff face were the Tellem, a mysterious pygmy race of people who buried their dead in caves above their small houses and made some of the earliest cloth and wooden objects found in Northern Africa. The Dogon people have long fascinated anthropologists and have become linked to some oddball ‘aliens have landed’ theories. Particularly when it was discovered that for centuries the Dogon have been aware that the Dog Star (Sirius) was not one but three stars, despite the fact that the two smaller stars are invisible to the naked eye and their existence not finally confirmed by astronomers until the 1920’s!

 

We travelled east from Sevare to the plateau around Bandiagara, the Dogon ‘capital’, where we picked up a rocky piste that took us North West through a pretty, but rugged, landscape dotted with a scattering of Dogon villages amongst the sandstone outcrops. Within these villages and particularly in the small fields around them, we saw many examples of the communal activity that has been a major strength of the Dogon culture and a reason for its survival. At one place we stopped to watch about twenty villagers on a large flat slab of stone pounding onions with large 4’ wooden pestles and doing it in a shuffling dance formation, singing, ululating and wiping away their tears as they went. It was fascinating to watch. The onions are crushed to a paste, rolled into balls then dried in the sun and used as currency!
Yenndouma. We reached the pretty Dogon village of Yenndouma late in the day and set up camp under the cliff in the large open courtyard of an auberge. The north Dogon region is less frequently visited by tourists and our arrival attracted a great deal of attention; the crowd grew as word spread about the tent on top of Boris and they watched with amazement accompanied by a chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ as the tent popped up. That wasn’t the end of it either. They stayed on; watching while Liz cooked dinner, cue more amazement! and then watched us get ready for bed. It wasn’t until we disappeared up the ladder and had zipped up the tent that the crowed began to disperse. The evening’s entertainment was over!

We spent the following day with two different guides, visiting the villages and areas they came from and in the process learning so much about the culture of these fascinating people. In the last 30 years or so, as the villages have grown, most have inexorably moved down to the plain at the base of the Falaise where water is more easily obtained and crops cultivated. However, Daniel our first guide and a wood carver by trade, took us up to the old cliff face part of Yenndouma. We climbed up the narrow, rocky streets passing the distinctive Dogon houses and granaries on the way. The Dogon granary is rather like mud pillbox with a thatched roof that resembles a witch’s hat; they are used to store millet, sorghum and the owners more valuable worldly possessions, such as clothing, pottery or jewellery.

 

We were then taken to the highest point in the village where a thatched open sided shelter stood. Called a togu na, this is common to all of the Dogon villages and is where the village elders (all men) hold meetings and councils and pronounce judgement on disputes- their word being final. It is also the place from which they can observe and comment on all that is going on in the village spread out below them. Here we gave out some of the Kola nuts we had brought with us; these nuts, which have long been used as a form of currency, come from the tropical forests of West Africa and are much prized by the old men as a source of rejuvenating all parts of the body! We bought some lovely cloth from one mud hut where we were shown how the village women dyed the cloth a dark indigo colour, whilst retaining white motifs on the material and, of course, we also had to buy a couple of Daniel’s small wood carvings!

 

Youga Mountain. We left Yenndouma and drove along a sandy piste towards the most sacred area of the Pays Dogon, a solitary mountain known as Youga and the heart of the Dogon culture. We stopped for a picnic lunch at a campement at the base of the mountain. The patron was a local man called Antonion; he explained the significance of the mountain and offered to guide us to the most sacred of the three villages on the mountainside. He was a gem and, as we would be walking up the mountain in the hottest part of a very hot day, arranged for Liz to be escorted by two young boys who would act as her helpers and porters. We slowly climbed and at times scrambled, up the steep path; stopping every so often in the shade of a Baobab tree and after about an hour reached the small isolated village of Youga Dogorou. Crammed into a small, high sided, rocky natural bowl and surrounding a Baobab tree in a small open sandy square, the village is where the Sigi, the most important of all the Dogon rituals takes place every 60 years. The ancient ceremony is linked to the cycle of the star Sirius B; invisible to the naked eye, it was not until 1970 that the existence of this star was confirmed by astronomers .. yes, very spooooky!! Leaving the village behind, we slowly made our way up to the plateau at the summit of the mountain; below us was spread out a yellow and brown table cloth of a vast Sahel plain that stretched away as far as the eye could see. As we slowly and cautiously descended the difficult mountain path, groups of women and young girls, with bare feet or tatty flip flops were passing us at speed and as sure footed as a mountain goat; that was amazing enough, even more so was that balanced on their heads were huge containers that would be filled with water from the well near the campement at the base of the mountain some 1000’ below; and then, before we had reached the bottom ourselves, they would begin the return journey with a ramrod straight back and the same speed and balance .. we never saw a drop spilt! This extraordinary journey is carried out three times a day and while the women congregate at the well awaiting their turn to fill their container, becomes a major, regular social event. Sleeping close to the well we discovered that the first descent is made in the dark; an hour before dawn we were woken by the excited chatter of women waiting for the well to be unlocked.

 

As the sun began to shimmer on the horizon, we were alerted to the descent from Youga Dogorou of a line of about 20 men, the leader beating time with a small drum. We watched as they passed the campement on their way to Sanga, another village about four hours walk away to perform the Dama or mask dance, the final part of the 5 year sequence of three death rituals; the dance ensures that the soul leaves the village for good and only these men, and only men from the sacred village of Youga Dogorou could perform the Dama. The deceased was obviously important enough for the sacred masks to be carried, covered from view in sacks, to Sanga.
Douentza. Our route along the piste at the base of the Falaise led in the opposite direction, north to Douentza, a small town on the Mopti to Gao road. We stayed the night here in the Campement Hogon which was run in a very ‘African’ way; nothing quite worked as it should! There was air conditioning, but no electricity; there was a shower, but no water; and a meal for ordered for 7pm made it to the table over an hour later, breakfast for 7am, only to find we were the only people up and about! It sounds really awful, but in the end everything worked, the food was good and the apologies were accompanied by the brightest of African smiles! Peter was also thoroughly impressed by the way that the patron encouraged all sorts of wildlife into a well watered, green and flower filled courtyard. As we ate our supper we noticed the silhouettes of small children, known to us as the ‘bucket boys’, standing in the dark street by the gates to the campement, they were the homeless orphans who wander the streets most everywhere, small bucket in hand, begging for food. Feeling uncomfortable that we were eating in full view, and even more so that we had massively over ordered on ‘frites’, we followed the Islamic custom and asked that the children were brought in by the patron to fill their buckets with the copious remains of our meal.
Timbuktu. Next morning we filled up with ‘gasoil’, bought some provisions and made sure we had plenty of water before we set off on the long dusty piste to Timbuktu, over 250 kms away. Coming to Mali, we felt that we just had to visit this legendary city on the edge of the Sahara desert, however we had been warned by some people, some on the advice of their embassy, not to go this far north because of the problems with a nomadic tribe known as the Tuaregs. Their tribal area covers a large part of the Sahara, encompassing parts of 3 different countries and has on its periphery Timbuktu; like the Kurds, they have for many years been seeking a Tuareg nation state. Every so often this erupts into terrorism and violence and the Tuareg had been holding two Austrian overlanders hostage since February; they were supposedly being held in Kidal, a town not so very far away from Timbuktu. Our feeling that people were over reacting was reinforced by the fact that Jutta had visited Timbuktu a few days previously with her sons; so we had made the decision to go and rattled and shook all the way for over five hours of driving on the most awful corrugation we have ever encountered. Poor Boris and actually poor us, it was ghastly!

 

When we reached the River Niger we were told that, unless we wanted to pay for the complete ferry ourselves, we would have to wait for at least one other vehicle to arrive, so the cost could be shared and we could then be taken across. This time was spent sipping luke warm ‘coca’ in a large palm hut; surprisingly cool and providing excellent shelter from the wind and sand, with Liz doing her nursy bit, rendering first aid to an elderly sword carrying man who clearly had a nasty eye infection. On several occasions we have been approached by people with their various ailments and asked for a magic cure, but in most cases we can do nothing more than give advice. In this case Liz gave the old man some saline eye drops and wanted to ensure he would use them properly. What a palaver! The old man spoke no French or English and began to give a very good impression of not only being a bit deaf but also a little gaga! The instructions had first to be given to Peter, who translated them into French, they were then given to the ferryman, who in turn translated them into Arabic and shouted them at the old man, who clearly was getting very muddled! So the whole process was repeated with the addition of a mime back up, depicting the various stages of the sun, getting up, going to sleep, how to open the sachets and that he was NOT to drink the contents!!. At the third attempt the penny dropped, the old man smiled and seemed delighted; so much so that he allowed us to take a photo of him adorned with dark nomadic robes and his sword flung over one shoulder. A second car eventually arrived, the ferry started up, we drove on and, after a short crossing and a wave to the old man, we headed to Timbuktu on a tarred road! We arrived in time to settle ourselves into the Jutta’s recommended guest house, a really stylish Auberge, the Caravan Serail owned by a Frenchman called Christian. We had decided that sleeping under the stars on the roof would be fitting for Timbuktu and this we did, but not before a good meal accompanied by some singing from a young Dogon man, who strummed and tapped away at his ngoni, a lute like musical instrument. He was brilliant, he laughed and danced as he sang and we enjoyed every minute of this impromptu entertainment.

We were pleasantly surprised by Timbuktu, it wasn’t just a sand blown, dirty, sad, little collection of hovels which we had been given to believe. It certainly was sandy, but can be best described as a town that was on the ’Up’, with improvements being made to the roads, whilst the famous Mosque and other old buildings were being sympathetically restored. We enjoyed the atmosphere as we walked the streets, turning down the odd offer of a tour in the desert on a camel and duly followed boutique owners, who wanted us to buy their souvenirs, into the Marche Artisanal. We did buy a few bits of Tuareg silver jewellery as pressies for some of you lucky people back home! Something that did intrigue us were the round mud ovens that stood on almost every street corner. The bread from these was flat and round and quite delicious, but just a little .. well .. sandy! We drove out of Timbuktu, feeling chuffed with ourselves, that we had made the effort and that it was more than just a place that had to be ‘ticked off’. We also had our night under the stars .. great stuff!
Looking For Elephants. The next two days were spent driving east along the south side of the river and bush camping as we went. The weather was glorious, not too hot and even better, at 16 deg C, cool at night. We reached a town called Gourma-Rharous on April 4 and then came away from the river, now going south and passing through the Reserve de Douentza, which for several months of the year is the stomping ground for hundreds of members of the largest elephant species in the world. Driving through this grassy Sahel area, which to us really resembled a Savannah, we could imagine the elephants chomping their way through the undergrowth and stopping at the numerous waterholes as they went. Knowing that the elephants were here at this time of year, having come all the way from Burkino Faso as part of their annual 3000 km migratory cycle, we had our binos at the ready, just in case, but in vain. It wasn’t until a day later, when we had left the reserve and got back to the main road to Douentza and were refuelling at Hombori, that we were approached by a young man on a moped, who asked us if we had seen any elephants. No, we replied. But you must, he said and told us there were hundreds to be seen near a village under an hour away and using a really easy piste to take us back into the reserve. Oh dear, here we go again being talked into something on the spur of the moment and that we were not really sure we wanted to do. But the sales pitch, satellite tracking et al, was too good, we left to see the elephants anyway! It took us forever to find the village, one hour on an easy piste becoming over two on a really bad piste. Here we were to find a friend of Mr Moped, who would lead us within minutes to these huge beasts. The so called guide was the village butcher! We called him ‘Butch’ and unfortunately the smelly, blood stained Butch ( whom we had to squeeze into the car and spent most of the time sitting practically on top of Liz, Yuck! ) was not able to come up with a single elephant for us during a day spent driving around inspecting large mounds of elephant poo! However, as the sun was setting and before completely giving up, we went back to the village and then went on foot to an area in amongst the trees around the nearby village water hole. After a lot of difficult walking over marshy ground, we suddenly had a very excited Butch in front of us pointing out the dark mass of elephants in the trees and heading our way. It was at this point that he told us to run like hell and get back to the car! Well, you can imagine the panic, with Liz trying to run on uneven ground and Peter, always the gentleman, looking back at her,yelling, ‘for God’s sake get a move on!’ And that we have to say was the extent of our search. Exhausting! By now the sun had set and our only option for an overnight stay was outside Butch’s hut and on the little patch in the sand enclosed with sticks. How poor these people are, malnourished children with extended bellies that have no clothes or shoes and sleep on mats outside. We camped amongst them feeling so inadequate especially when cooking our evening meal. Liz found it so distressing to hear then cough all night and in the morning handed out strepsils to them all. Not sure that it did much good for the recipient, but the donor enjoyed the warming glow of their smile.
Bull Elephant. We left at the crack of dawn on April 6th, paid Butch for his services and waved goodbye to all, then looked for a quiet spot to attend to our morning ablutions in peace and a bit of privacy. What an incredible experience this had been, despite the disappointment of not really seeing an elephant let alone photographing one. It was while we were looking for a suitable spot to stop and not far out of the village that Peter screamed out, ‘******* ‘ell, get the camera, get the bloody camera!’ There, unbelievably, in front of our very eyes was the hugest lone bull Elephant, on the edge of a thicket of thorn trees and tucking into them for his breakfast. We screeched to a halt and observed this giant from a good distance, snapping away with the camera and not believing our luck. After a while we began to feel braver and decided to get just a little bit closer for some better photos. This we did, but our elephant was having none of this and turned towards us full on with ears out and began to charge, yes, charge!! Never before had Peter got Boris into gear so quickly and we shot off in a cloud of dust. Marvellous...we came, we saw and we snapped that prize photo. Note the ready to charge ellie in the photo gallery. The rest of the day was spent driving back to Sevare and returning to the comfort of a few more nights in Manke-Te with Jutta. It was just like coming home.

 

Towards Burkina Faso. With filthy clothes washed and Boris given a good dusting over we left Jutta on April 9 and set off in the direction of Burkina Faso. We had to go back through the land of the Dogon again, but at the south western end of the escarpment this time; passing little villages and stopping briefly in one to see its Tellem houses and small but magnificent mud mosque.

 

We left this fascinating part of Mali with some sadness, but we had to move on and reached the border after a night camping in Bankass. We crossed into Burkina Faso in good time, enabling us to reach Ouagadougou the capital and (eventually!) find the Hotel Ricardo. So it is here we are enjoying a few days of swimming in the pool, drinking the odd beer and getting in touch with the outside world again.

Next internet connection will be in Ghana and so, probably in about two weeks or so, we’ll be in touch again.