Mali Day 13 - more Dogon Country...

After a nice night at Ali's Place, it was time to keep wandering through the Pays Dogon...

More Cool stuff at Ali's place

Without the millet and sorghum crops, this place is pretty empty.
All the creek beds near the escarpment were dry, but you could tell the place would take off after the next rainy season (still 3 or 4 months away)

As we hiked up into the escarpment through a narrow gully, we stumbled upon this little area with a natural spring stuck in a gorge no more than 50m wide, but full of vegetables. Onions seemed to be the crop of the season and they were everywhere

Just above the small productive valley is the town of Begnimato - one of the way points on the route through dogon country. You can walk for ten days up and down the escarpment staying at various villages - as we were out of time, we only managed the three day version. The town is peculiar as it has split along religious lines (without conflict). Up on the rock plain there are three distinct groups of houses separated from each other - the Muslim, Christian and Animist groups. Each group of families stay in their own little mini-village, go out into the field and work during the day, then return to their part of town. No one seems to mind the others and everyone gets on quite well.

Women returning home at the end of the day

One of the many small "new" villages built on the plane adjacent to
an older cliff village. Beyond the escarpment is a whole lot of nothing

George and I atop the cliffs - an awesome view that goes on for miles into the harmattan dust

Another crowded clifftop village a short walk from Begnimato looking back over the rocky plain

In the old days, when a visitor came to a village it was customary to stop in at the chief's (or king) house and be welcomed in to the village. This was often accompanied by a meal and sometimes accommodation. As the numbers of visitors (read: tourists) increased, the chief's started to welcome everyone, and for a small fee you could stay. These days (a few years on) in every village you go through there are "encampments" which is basically the chief's (or some other wealthy guy) compound where you can eat, rest or even stay. As space is generally limited in these small villages, and the weather's good during tourist season, most of the compounds offer sleeping on the roof. In Begnimato, when had the pleasure of meeting the local chief - nice bloke - and sleeping on his roof. In a place where the closest mains power is miles away, it gets dark quick and you can relax in bed and stare at the stars all night - perfect.

Mali Day 14 - Back to Bamako

After two weeks of driving , boating and walking around Mali, our time was up. Well, almost, we just had a little thing called the 12hr drive back to Bamako to finish off.

We'd stayed our last night in Dogon country up on top of the escarpment in a small village and had got up early and walked back down to the bottom to find our car. By now the amount of crap in the car has tripled as we'd pretty much bought everything that wasn't bolted down between the three of us. We figured we wouldn't be back for a while, so it was well worth doing a little extra purchasing.

We left the quite villages of Dogon Country and hit the road - which I must say is quite fun in this part of the world as you get to see a whole bunch of interesting stuff very quickly.

The roads are always full of people trying to get from point A to B anyway possible

Thus there's always a little extra traffic on the roads during the day.
Luckily no-one's dumb enough to do it at night.

Every village you pass through is always alive with trade,
making the idea of a highway a little more laid back as you have to slow every few kms

One thing that surprised us was all the fancy ladies on bikes.
In Nigeria no-one owns their own bike, you just jump on one of the commercial ones.
And even if you do own a bike, you won't be a woman and you wouldn't ride by yourself.
Hoorah Mali - very impressed


A quick stop for some lunch on the road...
(not the pink stuff, ours was actually cooked, and very good)
Unlike the suya in Nigeria, where you get a free coating of sand on your meat,
these guys had mustard!! I sh!t you not (awesome...)

But as the day wore on, people started to head home

life in Mali kept on going

and we flew home to sunny Lagos...

Happy New Year!!!

Although most folk usually decide to make a run for it over Christmas and New Years, the old faithful stuck around lagos for the festive season. It was all a bit too much to organise visas to get back over to benin again like last year as everyone's passports were in a number of different places getting other stamps put on them...

Anyway, the old favourite - Ishahayi Beach - provided the perfect answer to all our questions. Ben and his boys had managed to rig up some lights out at the mobil hut, so we hooked up a couple of boats, bought way too many fireworks, and spent the night out at the beach!!

Hats are never optional...

A BIG LAMBY HAPPY NEW YEAR GOES OUT TO EVERYONE

(with a big we miss you to Mas as well. mmm... lamb...)

They sell a lot, and I mean A LOT, of fireworks around here this time of year and due to a happy miscommunication between Rob and I, we managed to be slightly over supplied with bangy-shiney fun. A warning to the kiddies out there to not try this at home, but it was great night and the local village kids had a great time watching from the beach. As one said " Mr John, you have much banger!"

We politely declined an offer from the villagers to attend their all night vigil at church and went to bed at a farely civilised time. Unfortunately forgot to set up the mozzie nets though so got bitten a bit - well quite a bit- noone got malaria, though...

Singapore - We came, we saw.... we ate?

Rather than sitting on a plane for 14hrs from Melbourne back to Dubai on the way home to lagos, we figured we'd mix it up a bit and catch up with one of our favourite ex-lagosians (now singaporean) - Maslina!!!

I think the title says it all. We were only in town for a weekend, but what a weekend it was!! Basically we spent the whole time bussing and walking around checking all the awesome food that Singapore has to offer. I'd never thought of having roti with egg for breakfast, but I would definatley recommend it to anyone (particulalry if you're feeling a little sorry for yourself).

Mas was the perfect tour guide, sharing our love of chinese, indian and malay food so we had a lot of fun exploring the shops and markets in the various quarters of the city.

Mas and I out the front of the tourist office where some of Mas' people were working
George and Mas and a fancy church
The night market in China Town
What's left of a few plates of peppered crab and seafood bits at the hawker market in china town
A much needed morroccan mint tea in the malay quarter on a hot, wet morning...

There's a few pics on Mas's blog here too for those interested.

Back in Oz for a bit...

Novemeber saw our annual migration back to the land of oz to get our yearly fix of the little things... you know, being able to walk down the street, actual coffee, drinkable water and fruit and veg that doesn't have to be soaked in bleach so you can eat it - the little things.

This year saw a few big things as well! Unfortunately we weren't able to make it back for for Mikey and Jo's nuptials - congratulations Mr & Mrs Smith!!! But we did bring some good weather back for Pen and Scoob to get hitched on the 24th. Whilst the signs of Mo-vember were still clearly visible (ranging from the iraqi fighter pilot mostache to the less prominent "baby with some fuzz stuck to it's face") it was great to see a whole lot of folk all dresses up - many of which neither of us had seen for a long time - including a couple of babies (seemes to be a new trend at the moment... congratulations to Hugh and Roz on the birth of their second daughter who shall be nicknamed "Gary Nathan Ablett Jimmy Bartell Junior The Third" to commemorate the cats fortune in the Grand Final, also to Jen and Tim on their little nugget, and to Luce and Simo for their little man)

Anyway, here's a few of our pics on the big day...

All dressed up and somewhere to go...

Mrs Whitehead, George, Mrs Smith and Dean

Mr and Mrs Whitehead enjoy an amusing speach about something or other...

The rest of our all to brief time was taken up touring the countryside saying a quick hello to all an sundry. It was great to see everyone, and I know we missed a few folk and ran out of time at the end so didn't quite get to say good bye... apologies. We were quite amazed how much things change these days, everyone's got new houses, kids, dogs, jobs you name it!! That, combined with a little culture shock - yes you heard me right, culture shock - why the fact that everything works and things are actually easy to do would be shocking is quite strange really, but we haven't left africa for just over a year, so it was all rather surprising.

Apologies must go out to anyone who saw us in the first week back (that would be everyone at Bonnie's party!) for our continual exclamations of "Jesus it's #$%^#& cold in this country!!" In my defence, it was actually cold - to the point where I bought a beanie and a jumper...

Anyway, here's a bunch of pics in no particular order

You forget that kids growing up means that they get bigger and smarter.
Ruby will be telling us how things work next time I come back...

The rest of the Holloway Clan down in sorrento (healesville won't be the same withou you all...)
Lucy, young Poppy, the latest Tom (congrats to dad, now you have someone one your team), and Simo

We managed to get to Albury for a weekend while Jane and Russell weren't working and have a great weekend checking out local vineyards, shops and just generally relaxing. Thank you both for looking after us - we had an awesome time!!

Jane and Russell in the new shed just outside albury

'twas a fine day so we thought we'd do a little "tubing" down the Murray for a few hours
- best fun you can have sitting around!!

George and Jane
(after an awesome lunch in a tine shed at some little vineyard)

The vineyard had a great view of the Keiwa Valley back up to Falls Creek

We also managed to get up to Mount Hotham and see a little nauture, breath in some clean air and just generally relax. Believe it or not, even hiking was involved (including getting soaked in a rain storm.. oh well) The one thing that stood out was the number of flys - those things were EVERYWHERE

Finally, I also managed to get up to Sydney and see the family. It had been a very long time, so I managed to fly up for a few days and head down to Bowral and see Sal and Buff and the girls. It was quite a shock to see the girls have grown in to little women - all in the blink of a eye. The weather was great, so I took the opportunity to take granny for a ride in a wheelchair aroung the streets near the nursing home she's in - 98 and going strong, amazing. It's funny how you can spend your whole life moving all over the place for work and family, yet at the end you invariably wind up in the same place - Gran showed me one of their first houses where dad grew up not 50m from the place she is staying in now. Well, it's bee knocked down and turned in to a block of flats like everything else in inner Sydney, but a few other houses were still there.
Heather, Pam and I also managed to get over to Bondi to see the sculpture exhibition they do every year where they put works out on the rocks along the cliff walk from Bondi heading south. Amazing stuff but very busy...