Mali Part 2

The first stop on our Mali trip was Segou. About an hour's boat ride up the Niger from Segou is a pottery village. It was our first taste of just how touristy Mali is. It was a weird feeling after Guinea, where the most touristy spots are simply occupied by a couple rich Guineans, missionaries, and ex-pats.

The village is known for its pottery, or else its known for letting tourists in to see all levels of the manufacture of their pottery. Bambara is a Manding dialect as is Maninka, so we were able to talk with the people on a level similar to that of French speaking Africans communicating with the French. So we got to play around a bit, too. After I took this picture, the woman handed me the pot to put in line with a bunch of others. She didn't tell me not to grab the lip, because obviously you don't grab the lip - it's still wet. So I grabbed the lip and she had to redo it.

By luck we arrived on the weekend, which is when they burn/bake the pots. They pile up an enormous mound of dried grasses and bury the sun-dried pots in it. As the pots get fired, they are removed with hooks on very long poles and taken to be dipped in a glaze.

This woman is carrying a pot to a drying area after having taken it out of the glaze dip.

And the benefit of speaking butchered Maninka/Bambara is that they'll let you glaze a pot while your friend takes a photo. They got a kick out of it and got some free entertainment because I had a very hard time getting all the glaze out of the pot.

When the finished products have cooled, they are boated back down to Segou from whence they're shipped all over the place.