The Weirdness of the Dogon

“If you are lucky, you may see a human sacrifice.” An unusual introduction to an area, sure. But then the Dogon people of Eastern Mali are a pretty unusual bunch. Seeing the colour drain from our pinkish faces, our guide continued “But don’t worry – it is the sacred fish that decides who will be killed. And he doesn’t like foreigners.” The ambiguity of the comment was not lost on us. Nor the fact that a persons well-being may be left to the whim of a whiskery catfish.

It all began just over a thousand years ago when pygmies decided that the best way to tone their genetically enormous posteriors was to scale sheer cliff faces each day just to get in and out of the home. This is good for both cardio and muscle-toning. The Dogon, on the run from spread of Islam, found this escarpment and decided that the pygmies there freaked them out. Rightfully so – they are scary little bastards. Feet like hoofs. The Dogon chased them out all the way to Cameroon and Uganda where they can still be found behind the cashiers desks in supermarkets. It has become our mission to photograph one. So with these strange little creatures out of the picture, the tenacious Dogon decided to build their villages on the cliff face rather – like every other civilisation in history – than at the foot of it. There are many theories as to why they did this but the prevailing one is that they were morons. And there they remained for the better part of a thousand years before finally coming to their senses and moving down to flat ground in the twentieth century, lured by the heady prospect of sleeping on a level gradient.

Their weirdness doesn’t just stop at their choice of real estate. Their spiritual leader washes with a snake and eats with a tortoise, their women are banished to a ‘menstruation hut’ for five days over their periods and the men munch hallucinogenic kola nuts like Smarties. Some of their practises are admirable – like the emphasis on gender equality, religious tolerance, conflict resolution and their insistence that all doors have naked people on them. Other practises are pretty deplorable like female circumcision and asking every foreigner that passes through for a soccer ball. But most just sit in the realm of the bizarre – like their elaborate day-long mask dances, their ability to tell the future based on the footprints of foxes who come to eat their peanuts (our guide shrugged and stated matter-of-factly “Foxes love peanuts”) and their advanced knowledge of certain aspects of astronomy. Then, of course, there’s the small matter of the megalomaniacal catfish and his rampant bloodlust for human souls. We never fully established if human sacrifices were, infact, still practised. We never got close enough to a pool to ask.

A Tale of Two Cities

 

It was the best of Mali, it was the worst of Mali. Segou and Djenne - both steeped in centuries of West African history, both enjoy the lifeblood of the river Niger, both highlighting clearly the highs and lows of the peculiar nation of Mali, both home to an impressive array of hats.

Almost all of Malis turbulent history seems to be condensed in Segou. The centuries-old pirogues; mud-walled houses and wide-brimmed red hats (like something Noddy would wear on safari) all hark back to the great Bambara empire that rose there and reached its zenith around the 17th century. Its decline began only after it fell at the hands of an Islamic zealot named El-Hadj Omar Tall who had launched a jihad across the whole region to try get the local animists to discard their wooden dolls and late morning lie-ins in favour of Islam. It is not known if El-Hadj Omar was, infact, tall. But given that the name was self-anointed and that he went about subjugating millions of West Africans, scholars maintain that he may have been compensating for something. The effect of this crusade was felt by myself and Tough Guy every morning at 4am. Then there were the fading colonial buildings, baguettes and statues of men with twirly moustaches which reveal the period of French colonisation at the beginning of the 20th century. And, of course, the post-independence period as visible by the large numbers of homeless children asking for "cadeau" and the army uniforms asking for "passport"

Djenne, only 400kms to the north, ran a different course. It voluntarily converted to Islam in the 13th century and, together with Timbuktu, was seen as Africas greatest outpost of Islamic scholarship and fashionable skullcaps. It was also a major trade hub where slaves and gold from the south were traded for - believe it - salt from the north. It is only after you have eaten Malis cuisine that you realise that you too would likely auction off your family heirlooms for a sachet of Cerebos to try alter the flavour. Alas it began its decline around the same time as the Bambaras as a result of invasion, and subsequent neglect, by the Moroccans who, no doubt, rode in with their rotten grins and promises of a good deal. Just for them. One time offer.

An unfortunate off-shoot of these centuries of Islamic tutelage is the encouraged practise of child begging. Children would be sent from distant countries to Djenne to learn the Koran and part of the deal is that they had to fend for themselves by begging. This practise continues today in Djenne where half the children can be seen pouring over their wooden tablets trying to cling to passages of scripture while the other half are pouring over your pockets trying to cling to your wallet. Throw in the mighty tourist attraction of the Great Mosque there and it doesn't make for a quiet stay as a tourist.

So, history aside, the main differences between the two places is that Segou is pure magic while Djenne is quite annoying. So while afternoons in Segou were widdled away watching pirogues laze up and down the Niger and locals casually watering their veggie gardens; in Djenne they were spent swatting away children in a feeding frenzy for gifts or photographs. So it seems, unfortunately, that this new era - the tourism dynasty - is leaving as indelible a footprint on the area as any of the previous epochs have. I just pray it doesn't affect their choice of headwear.

Coup d'Archie

 

Black smoke billowed up in the distance. The sound of gunfire ringing out intermittently. Pitch black all around except for an orange glow on the horizon. The border guards, jittery and trigger-happy at their posts survey the landscape through their Kalashinikov sites. Two South African figures leopard-crawling through no-mans land escape their vision. Hearts pounding in their ears, the two protagonists edge slowly through the darkness, aware that every movement may be their last. After what seems like an eternity they see it:  the Burkinabe flag. They have made it. They have crossed the border.

This is not at all what happened to us.

We were sleeping on the roof of our room rather than in it. Which is normal in Mali. We were woken by a beat-boxing imam at 04h30. Which is normal in Mali. We were greeted in the morning with “the president has been kidnapped”. This is uncommon in Mali. Even more uncommon was the sight of men gathered round radios rather than making tea. The only channel available was a French station – the military had ceased all the local ones. Needless to say the combination of ghetto-blasters still packing cassette-decks and a signal transmitted from nearly 6000kms away does not make for coherence. No one knew what was going on but no one seemed particularly edgey either. “Yes, but not such a big problem. These things happen” he continued. Malians are not prone to hyperbole.

All through Mali we had heard murmurings of discontent with the current government. The people were angry that president Toure, rather than fighting the Tuaregs in the north, was continually giving them money. An unusual military strategy, sure. And no one seemed to believe that any future president would do any better. Infact, given that the election was scheduled for next month we hadn’t seen a single election poster in over two weeks. So I suppose it was in the midst of all this that some cheeky generals saw a half-gap and decided that the general populace of Mali were just too chilled out to mount any kind of real defence. They were right. They mostly just drank tea.

These were the thoughts largely going through my head as we trundled along in a bush-taxi for the border. I was covered in a diffuse smattering of cow shit from when our previous mode of transport decided to have explosive diarrhoea all over me and, in a panic, our cart driver had attempted to physically plug the torrent with the animals tail. Anyone who has ever watered a garden with a hose pipe knows how that story ended. So it was on the back of this, with the closing of borders looming and the prospect of our entire trip ending in the inauspiciously named town of ‘Bankass’ that we found ourselves in one of the most frustrating taxis in Mali. A tyre puncture, three breakdowns and – the coup de grace – running out of petrol 8kms from our destination stretched a one hour trip into a five hour ordeal. And each time we broke down, an old toothless man would slowly trundle past us on his donkey cart and eventually disappear into the distance. The problem would be fixed, we would take off, smugly pass the bastard only to breakdown and, once more, suffer the ignominy of watching him slowly mosey on past us once again.

Against all the odds – and with the infuriating knowledge that the donkey man had arrived in town before us – we got the last two seats of the last bus through the border. We thought this was very lucky until we found we were sharing it with three American Peace Corp volunteers. Apart from telling us that they ‘Import American culture’ to Burkina Faso, they spent the entire journey yelling into their phones to the phantasmagoric presence of their supervisor on the other end, who – in turn – kept phoning ahead to all the ‘authorities’ to tell them that three Americans were on the road, teeming with US dollars and government-backing, and were coming their way. Considering we were still in Malis terrorist ‘red-zone’ this seemed to me to be a particularly stupid thing to do. Probably on par with plying northern insurgents with money instead of bombs.

The borders had been officially closed when we eventually got there but it seems this group hadn’t got the memo so they gamely let us through. It was only once we arrived in Ouagadougou that the extent of the coup became apparent. So, while we were extremely lucky to get out in the nick of time, our story is less like a John le Carre novella and, alas, more like an Archie comic.

*   *   *

The coup aside we had a pretty awesome time in Mali. Ill stick up some posts on it as soon as Ive got some time. But in the meantime let me leave you with this…

War in Mali

Transport in Mali has lain siege to me. Like the Tuaregs in the north they seem to have mobilised and launched a well-coordinated and vicious guerrilla strike on our touring party. Hitting us where it hurts most: in our morale and in our stomachs. It all began not long after we entered Malian territory – incognito and savage as it was. The tar road quickly degenerated and soon everyone was being hurled around the bus looking like the possessed child in The Exorcist. So our crafty slave-driver of a captain decided the best road to travel was the road never travelled. He veered off the designated route to try his hand at rally-driving. This was of debateable success. Tough Guy and myself had secured seats right at the back of the bus meaning all the dust kicked up by the front wheels billowed in from the broken rear doors and coated us in a fine layer of Malian off-road sand to accompany our whiplash and impending sense of doom.

Respite came but was fleeting. At last, after ten hours without a break, we pulled up to a road-side bus stop for some food and a good dusting. After literally scrumming our way through hoards of rabid cassava sellers and children who slap you in the face with packets of E.Coli-laden water, we settled in a cheap and cheerful roadside restaurant named Chez Ali. My contentment was short-lived, however, as the wrenching sensation of guts outgunned by local organisms was matched only by the sheer panic of knowing that this particular bus-driver was a) not the next Sebastian Vettel and b) not known for his frequent pit-stops. We stopped briefly to drop off a patron by the side of the road and I made my move. I set off in a wild, gut-twisting panic into the countryside. It was the flattest, most open piece of land in all of Africa, of this I’m sure. Then, an oasis. Donkey stables. Even the donkeys themselves – known to tolerate the most savage of lashings without batting an eyelid – were unprepared for what followed and violently tried in vain to escape the enclosure. You would be forgiven for thinking the place was an abbatoir. It was around then that I noticed the bus pull off. Slowly at first and then picking up a good head of steam until it disappeared into the horizon. I had no toilet paper. And the only leaves for kilometres were those of acacias. So after a particularly degrading wipe with an empty cigarette carton found trampled into the dirt, I began the very ignominious hobble up the road to try and catch-up to the bus. When it finally stopped and I climbed on board the conductor simply shook his head and said “Chez Ali?”. I nodded. “No good” he said. This intel was infuriatingly belated and woefully understated.

So it was with some trepidation that I climbed aboard our next Malian bus a few days later to set off from the Libyan hotels and dried monkey-heads of Bamako to the pirogues and veggie gardens of Segou. The fact that our bus seemed to have lowered suspension and half of the side-panels were made of wood instead of metal didn’t help matters. When our initial take-off required half the passengers to get off and try push-start an eighty-seater bus, we should have fled. But like a deer in headlights we remained. It wasn’t long after that, at the hearty speed of 100kms/hour that one of the wooden side panels suddenly – and rather unsurprisingly – came free. The woman sitting adjacent to it began screaming, wind began billowing in, a carpet fell on Tough Guys head and generally all hell broke loose. The driver was refusing to stop incase the vehicle wouldn’t start again so his conductor, after a brief attempt at carpentry suspended above the whirring asphalt, was resigned to simply holding the panel closed for the remainder of the trip.

Fortunately for him, this was not long. The inevitable happened and with the changing of a gear, the whole engine cut out and the bus slowly drew to an undramatic halt. It was around then that we realised that the one constant through all of the misdemeanors of the morning was a particularly distressed “Blaaaaah!” coming from within. On investigation, it was revealed that someone had checked in a goat as his luggage. This creature was having the journey of its life being thrown around the buses hold, periodically nibbling on our backpacks. The drivers were unperturbed by this and proceeded to open up the buses engine to gaze at it. Why this was done no one could understand as no attempt was made to repair anything. They just sat and looked. All the while to the soundtrack of “Blaaaaah! Blaaah! BlaaaaAAAAeeerr!”

Eventually we managed to jump on a truck that essentially ferried people like cattle into Dogon Country. I had two buckets of fish at my feet and the little baby next to me was wearing a nappy soiled so many times over she looked like she had been wading through mud. But we were unperturbed and, unlike the Malian army, persisted in the face of the onslaught. We came out the other side wounded and with many casualties. My dignity, for example. But on this day, ultimate victory was ours. There are, however, many more skirmishes lying ahead.

 Yes, it seems this war has only just begun.

Mauritania and Senegal Roundup

Now that we have crossed our third African frontier heres a little roundup of the goodies we’ver enjoyed over the last four weeks.

Looking back,  the two things that stand out most for me were the tranquillity of Mauritania and the colour of Senegal. Very contrasting places in so many ways – where the Mauritanias were more reserved, the Senegalese have been boisterous; the subtle colour changes of the desert in Mauritania vs. the onslaught of brightness in Senegal; the traditional call to prayer from the imams in Mauritania, the bizarre attempts at acapella by those in Senegal.  Both sounding like a camel in a headlock. The sense of Mauritania sitting halfway between the Arabic north and sub-Saharan south where Senegal feels far more like the Africa I’m familiar with. More children with flies on their faces, for example. And, of course, the fact that our time in Mauritania was dominated by the desert with a paucity of life while Senegal was dominated by the river where all forms of life abounded.

Very different places. Both very cool. Both with off-key imams.

Here are some trip stats:

Borders crossed: 3

Days on the road: 56

4am rousings by imams: 56:

Mileage: 6 519km

Monies raised to date: R13 150

Modes of transport used: 6 (camel, horse-carriage, donkey-cart, pirogue, sept-place taxi, bus)

Combined percentage of bodies burned: 196%

Childrens’ hands shaken: 346

Number of different bacteria on average child’s hand: 13

No. carrots eaten: 2

No. carrots seen after food poisoning: 3 (?)

No. tins of sardines consumed: 33

No. Islamic Holy Cities visited: 2

Lashes received in town square: 0

Check out this video Tough Guy has thrown together (and more juicey tidbits in our footage section) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=BYQCzaDwvCs&context=C4ef979dADvjVQa1PpcFP6sI22Z5lVO4jMBMwKCrG24U-XDwjJyh8=