Mali Day 3 - Djenne to Mopti

The town of Djenne (pron: Jenny) has been around for quite a while, and from walking around the place, it looks as if little has changed. Set on an island in a flat swampy inland delta of a tributary of the Niger, Djenne is one of the major draw cards for Mali - the UNESCO listed Djenne Mosque (info here and here) is apparently the largest mud brick structure in existence. It certainly looks impressive.

Some of the locals making mud bricks on the dry swamps outside Djenne with the Mosque dominating the skyline. In the wet season most of this low land is inundated.

Children play in the sandy square out the front of the Mosque - once a week there's a large market here where traders can bring much needed supplies from out of town. Each stall is defined by four rocks where they'll set up their make-shift stalls (you can see a couple in the foreground) same family at the same place every week - nice and easy to remember

Almost all the buildings in Djenne are built in the traditional mud brick style of the Sahel-Sudan. These fancy windows are one of the interesting influences received from thousands of years trading with Moroccans

on the streets of Djenne....
Despite having no sewers or any drainage system, this place was amazingly clean
(much better than anything similar in our neck of the woods)

Most of the kids are usually in Koranic school during the day (like Timbuktu, Djenne is considered a centre of Islamic learning in Mali) - some kids just like to play.

If you're going to market to sell your wares, you'll need to bring your own chair as well...

or you could get your kids to do it for you....

Millet is one of the staples around here and, unfortunately like most things in this part of the world, seems to take an inordinate amount of time and manpower to make it useful to people. In every town on the outskirts you'll see women pounding millet and using the breeze to filter the cracked husks from the goodness inside. The they have to grind it down to make flour.

Just to make things a little more difficult. Pretty much all the vegetation surrounding these villages has been cut down for firewood - leaving nothing but arid land. Thus dung is dried and used as firewood by the villagers

After walking around Djenne and some surrounding villages, we jumped back in the car and drove up to Mopti to begin the exciting part of our trip - a three day boat journey up the Niger River to Timbuktu !!

Mopti (info here) is a major trading post on The Niger (where the Bani - which goes down to Djenne - branches off) Here people board pinasses (small river boats) and pirogues (canoes), for either transportation or fishing.

Banks of the Niger - Mopti

The bigger boats are so full of people and stuff that the driver has to sit at the front and steer via a fairly flimsy looking cable system to the rudder at the back (where another guy tinkers with an old diesel engine)

The busy market-port of Mopti (mosque in the background) was quite amazing with the amount of stuff being moved. Salt from the mines north of Timbuktu is boated down and traded for various things. Fish are sold everywhere as are all manner of bits a pieces as usual...

A lazy day in the pirouge

Mali Days 4-6 - Pinasse on the Niger River to Timbuktu

Unloading the car in Mopti and taking one the the hundreds of pinasses up the river. We somehow managed to pick the coldest, windiest day on record to set sail (even the locals complained about the cold) So we all hunkered down under layers of clothes and sleeping bags and slept on the deck of the boat safely out of the wind.

What's a pinasse you ask? That's a pinasse. Toilet and out board at the back, kitchen table in the middle, a couple of couches, and the fuel tank at the front (optional sunbed on roof). Able to travel at walking pace for long periods of time. The driver and his first mate slept of the boat, but we pitched tents on the banks.

Enjoying a cup of tea

All meals were on the pinasse, so all you had to do was flag down a local fisherman, buy some of their latest catch, avoid being over-run by his children, and voi-la - dinner!!

The boys did amazingly well with just a little charcoal burner to come up with beautiful fish stews with rice or couscous. after a while you get sick of the Malian tourist staple of rice or couscous so we rebelled when we stopped at a small port town for supplies and got some plantains and goat meat (a more Nigerian diet). I think even the boat guys were happy with the change. The river fish was excellent, but there's only so many ways you can cook fish for lunch and dinner on a small canoe....

George and Todd enjoying the sunset (and the cold) - We actually purchased a couple of beanies in Mopti as it was so cold. In Nigeria one doesn't tend to keep any clothes that would make you warm (unless you're going somewhere where the air con's on full-bore...)

As you approach the vast inland delta of Lake Debo, your surrounded by miles of shallow reeds and the river narrows from the massive up to 1km wide beast into a hundred little streams just wide enough to turn a canoe. Luckily the boat driver seemed to know where he was going.

As well as fish, the locals here survive on the lucrative flocks of small birds that live in the swamps and rice paddies that the villagers have planted (you can see the cut rice and thatched huts in the background). So as the sun goes down and flocks of birds fly about the locals put up fishing nets to catch them - yes the black things in the net are birds. Not much to them, but apparently tastes like chicken...

Harmattan always makes for a good sunrise
(the rest of the day is dusty and cold, but sunrises are always pretty)

When your way is blocked by a river than can be over 1km wide, everyone and everything has to cross by canoe. That includes motorbikes, goats, donkeys and people...

This place is so flat you can travel for miles with the right transportation

Unfortunately, as it's so flat (and the river wide) it can get really windy and quite choppy

A slow boat heading towards Timbuktu with bags of rice



Each night we set up camp on the banks of the river.
As most of our crap was still on the boat, it was actually quite easy each day.

Our guide, Mamadou (or Mama-don't as he's affectionately known) relaxing under the cover of the kitchen table out of the cold.

One of the many bozo villages lining the river

Even though the river is so large, vegetation does spread far from it's banks into the desert so local herders tend to stay close

Mali Day 7 - Timbuktu

As per my rambling at the start of this blog, Timbuktu [Timbuctoo, Tumbuto, Tombouctou, Tumbyktu, or Tembuch (like I said it doesn't seem to matter how you spell it)] has been the stuff of myth for hundreds of years, an rich oasis surrounded by the ever moving sands of the Sahara.

Many adventurous folk have perished trying to make it across the Sahara from the north, or up the Niger (as we did) had they known the truth back then that the city is little more than a conglomeration of mud brick buildings intersected by narrow winding streets that reach 50 degrees C in the hot season, they might not have bothered... Even now, there's only a few white folk living in town (the largest foreign contingent apart from the nomadic touareg seems to be Libyan..) It's still 99.9% Muslim, but apparently there's three Mormons in town on their mission that have set up a church. These days no one will kill you for doing such a thing, but I'm not sure how big their congregation will be....

You spend a lot of time in Africa wondering about when places had their hey day, as it is usually not immediately apparent while you wander around dilapidated buildings and streets. Timbuktu, unfortunately is no exception. Once a huge scholarly centre, there used to be great libraries and centres of Koranic learning attached to the mosques here, but despite the desert conditions offering some protection, these have long ago fallen by the wayside. Today a few scrolls remain on display and the EU is helping rebuild the main mosque, while a South African firm is building an Islamic university (the first here for hundreds of years).

Locals in Timbuktu greet you by saying "welcome to the middle of nowhere" - mostly as a joke, but in reality, it really is in the middle of bloody nowhere (and you can only get there by camel, 4WD or canoe... there is supposed to be an airstrip here, but I never saw it)

Though it's population is only just 30,000 Timbuktu is quite a lively place and we just happened to be there on the busiest weekend of the year as 5,000 travellers and all the associate support people prepared to descend on Essakane (a few hours north) for the festival of the desert, pretty much doubling the towns population for a week.



This (apparently) is the original well after which timbuktu is named. "tim" being 'well' and "buktu" being the name of the woman who looked after the well

Timbuktu streets. The timber sticking out of the walls is part of the structure and is used as scaffolding each year when new mud is applied after the rainy season (not that Timbuktu gets much rain)

Timbuktu was the meeting place for tradesmen who would travel across Africa from the North, East and South, to barter their goods with the West Africans, who came from...well, West Africa. These days the markets seem to exist for their own sake, collecting the salt (still mined by hand and brought in by camel 40 days to the north) and rice grown locally near the river, and trading these for everything else one might need from Mopti and Segou further upstream. Because it's so remote, desolate, and incredibly difficult to get to (not just because of the terrain and heat there's also plenty of the bandits who roam the desert and rob everyone travelling past) prices are a little higher than usual but it's still bustling with plenty of good stuff.

This guy is selling herbs, teas, salt and various dried nuts and chillies etc.

Foosball - even in Timbuktu the kids love it...

Not quite the stuff of legend, Timbuktu streets aren't any different to any other Sahel town

Outside town in the dunes

Whilst it may look touristy and kinda stupid - these turbans (or shesh) are really comfortable and keep the sand and dust out very well. In the end, everyone was wearing one (you get sick of putting sunscreen on three hundred times a day and still getting burnt...

Enjoying a quite beer on the hotel roof watching the locals play football in the distance.

Luckily we'd filled the car up with crates of beer and water in Mopti before the pinasse trip and he met us in Timbuktu. With the influx of everyone for the festival, the Town quickly ran out of everything.

Mali Days 8 to 10 - Festival of the Desert, Essakane

The "festival au désert" started back in January 2001, and is held every year in Essakane which is about two hours of Timbuktu.

The idea for the festival apparently originated in the traditional local Touareg festivities of Takoubelt in Kidal and Temakannit in Timbuktu, which represented for long time a place for decision making and exchange of information among the different communities - with lots of singing, dancing, camel racing etc. Nowadays it's a great excuse for anyone who can get there to wrap something up in a handkerchief and try and sell it to a toubaab (whitey) - seriously, as Todd said, you'd be sitting in the chair at your local touareg dentist and the guy would sidle up with a handkerchief and ask "do you mind if I show you something from my village...?"

Today, the Festival is open to the rest of the world and welcomes artists from other Malian regions, around west Africa and also from Europe (why they bothered I'm not sure though. At one point a confused local touareg boy turned to me and asked "is this good?" as he had no idea what was going on - my answer was an embarrassed "no, it's not, not at all... ever" During three days there's apparently around 30 groups invited from all over the place. It's hard to tell though whether the music was the center point or the make shift market and the dozens of beer and food tents, or the camel rides or just lazing around in the sun... anyway a good time was had by all.

The road to Essakane - more accurately the start of trans Saharan route that goes up to morocco via Mauritania which you have to turn off and then bush bash over dunes to get to Essakane. If you're the first person through - good luck. Once a few people have been through then you can follow their tracks (assuming they didn't get lost). After a few days, however, there's a bunch of different tracks over a mile wide - when in doubt drive down the middle I guess...

The campsite at Essakane literally spread over many acres of fine Sahel sand

The usual desert deal - bloody cold at night and stinkin hot during the day
head gear and sunglasses were the fashion of choice

Touareg men lined up on the dunes at the start of the festival
You actually get a really good view from up on a camel - these guys have the right idea

The view's not so good where you're stuck at the back

Our little campsite under a few thorny Acadia trees.

We were apparently supposed to be camping on the other side of the festival near a large food tent. Unfortunately (or fortunately as it turned out) we got there early and just drove around and found a flat spot with some shade away from most things. Being used to the way you can do things on this continent, we saw no need to tramp all the way across the dunes to the other side for each meal like all the other touristas, so we got Mamadou to got to the locals and purchase some plates and bowls, a water drum, small charcoal fire etc, arrange for some firewood etc and we had ourselves a proper campsite. A small chat to the bloke running the food tent got us food delivery from across the festival each meal. Thus we could enjoy our food in peace without joining large queues in the sun (plus he always gave us extra so we ended up getting extra food). Quite handy when we needed to help out our ad-hoc security guard that had been sitting around at an adjacent camp and had agreed to watch our stuff while we were away in exchange for food, fire and a little medical attention on a cut on his foot... all worked out rather perfectly actually.... well almost. As we weren't quite playing by their rules (ie joined with a large tour group) the local "security" boys decided that we should pay some extra fee for our tents (quite a large fee, like 40 euro each or something) - unfortunately for the boys, despite their dogged determination, they had yet to master the art of the shake down. After an hour of patiently smiling at them and ignoring them reading our books, they got bored and left with their pockets empty. I'm sure they made money elsewhere that morning from some poor unsuspecting folk who didn't realise that they hadn't paid one fee or another...

Sundown over the touareg tents set up for various tour folk to camp in

Night concert form the comfort of the dunes - a great way to watch music (cold though)

The breakfast of champions

There were probably more camels than people at the festival

the local touareg women sit around the head bloke and wave and sing a traditional ballad

sunset on the dunes

sometimes you just get tired of it all....

After seeing various folk wandering through the desert for a couple of days, we just had to try it. So yes, George, Todd and I rode ourselves some camels.
Well, ride is a fairly loose term. George did pretty well. Todd had a camel that liked growling and making strange noises all the time and would throw him back and forth every time he stood up (I'll save Todd the embarrassment of putting up the video i took of him on a camel - funny stuff). Me on the other hand, being the light, agile camel riding kinda guy that I am, managed to somehow slip forward in the saddle and be thrown over the front when my camel sat down, breaking the front of the saddle. As our guide only spoke a little french, and I only spoke the parts of french that he didn't understand, we had a little communication problem (and he looked a little sad). Anyway, we managed to strap a blanket to the back of the camel and I got to ride it cowboy style (actually more fun in my humble opinion). We also bought a few trinkets off the bloke to make him feel better (and me less guilty)

Good times on the camel train

Going for a walk in the dunes at sunset
(before our touareg friend pulls out his handkerchief of wares for sale)

Watching the concert from afar on a dune near our campsite