Mali Day 11 - Essakane to Bandiagara

After enjoying a few days in the sun relaxing, and enjoying a few tunes, it was time to join the mad rush of people leaving Essakane and start the long drive back to civilisation.

Unfortunately there's only one way out of Timbuktu, and that involves a ferry across the Niger just south of town. Luckily we managed to sneak our car onto the ferry so we only had to wait 15mins (while we had a coffee). We'd heard stories at the festival of people who drove to Timbuktu waiting for hours as literally hundreds of cars queued for the ferry that only takes fourteen at a time. Our car, being brand new (we literally put the first 6,000 km on it) decided that it didn't really like deserts so much, and after emptying a small bucket of sand from the air filter we were forced to drive at snail's pace as the fuel filter was blocked until we found a village with a mechanic. Half an hour later - while we had lunch at a small shack on the side of the road - we were back in business. I think I preferred it when the driver was forced to go slow...

The Timbuktu road
whilst only new, this dirt track through the desert doesn't
make it any easier to get to "the middle of nowhere"

A group of Bella (slaves of the touareg) transporting grain by mule towards Timbuktu

The Bandiagara Escarpment rises out of the desert from nowhere

Our hotel bar in Bandiagara - nice place after driving literally all day

Mali Days 12 to 13 - Dogon Country

Dogon Country (info here) or Pays Dogon as the locals call it, is one of the "must see" parts of Mali...

The Dogon were traditionally a cliff-dwelling people who live along a huge stretch of the Bandiagara Escarpment that juts out of the desert in the southern part of Mali, overlooking Burkina Faso. Tradition has it that the Dogon travelled to this part of West Africa sometime around the 15th century, fleeing their villages on the west bank of the Niger River whilst under invasion. Due to the lack of arable land (and for security) the set up lots of small family villages along the cliffs. Nowadays, for practical reasons, the villagers have mostly moved down on to the flats.

The Dogon are supposed to be fine mostly agriculturalists, having developed irrigation system in an area known to be infertile and inhospitable. Most villages are surrounded by crops of millet (though they'd all been harvested by the time we travelled trough so it was mostly sand again), while the wetter areas near creeks and waterholes are filled with onions that they mash up into balls and dry for later use.


The thing the Dogon are probably most famous for are their granaries. Made of mud, with strange "witches hat" thatched roofs, these granaries fill every village - some with elaborately carved doors. They are raised off the ground by rocks to protect the grain both from vermin and from water in the wet season. Many of the villages are built on the rock of the escarpment, so any rain that falls has nowhere to go but flow along the rock until it can be absorbed in the soil somewhere.

The houses themselves are built from stacked rocks on a timber frame

This is the centre of the village of Djiguibombo.

In the hut on the right, the elders meet and discuss the problems of the village. This is also where sacrifices are carried out (not human, just goats and chickens etc) - as most of the Dogon are still animists - and there's a large sign that (in french) says that women aren't allowed to walk there

The Dogon are also apparently famous for their carved doors. Whilst being quite fancy, it's pretty difficult to buy an authentic one these days, and the Dogon country sees so many tourists that the prices are way too high (these guys just don't like to haggle for some reason). Some guys will take you around the back of the village to show you an authentic door that their friend wants to sell off his house - though I'm quite sure that this guy goes through about four doors a week to tourists who want something "authentic" and will pay a little more for the privilege...

After wandering around Djiguibombo we went for a
walk down the escarpment to see the villages below

a donkey with his/her little friend...

women pounding beans and millet

Everything's mud brick in Mali. So at each village there's a large hole in the ground where water collects, makes mud, mud becomes bricks, hole gets bigger, water collects in hole and so on...

If the locals have enough cash, an ostrich egg is the preferred decoration for the minaret (spire?) of the mosque - it is supposed to symbolise fertility and purity.

The new town of teli, with the old town up on the cliffs



Up on the cliffs, granaries still hang on for dear life...

exploring the old town





enjoying a rest from the heat

At our super-fancy hotel (some blokes remodelled mud-brick house)
If you're ever in the village of Ende - look for Ali's Place!!

How's this for a view from the bathroom

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...