Mali Part I

The main purpose of our trip was to go hiking in Dogon, so we headed there after Segou and got going right away in spite of worries about how things would fare in Guinea with the president's death and the speculation about where the power would fall.

The first village we stayed in was swimming in baobobs. Then I realized everywhere in Mali is swimming in baobobs - there aren't really that many trees that grow there. We travelled light and yet I still feel I was travelling heavy. Next time I'm only bringing one pair of pants.

Our guide Ibrahima was very entertaining - mainly because he was in a rush to get to his village for Xmas and we weren't the best hikers in the world. He ended up paying a couple other people to carry a bunch of our bags just to make sure we could keep a decent pace up. We even got to ditch the path a few times and light out through the bush to cut time from our trip and make it to the next town by dark.

A traditional meeting place.

Astrid looks back at Adam and Ciara, who were slowing her down.

We slept on the roofs of Malian huts that mostly have flat roofs. It's a good place to crash - it actually gets cold and you can get a good night's sleep.

If termites ever move up to the plateau, their bridges are toast.

I had to climb up higher than the rim to make a call to check on the situation in Guinea. Everyone else just hung out on the lip of the valley.

There were a couple of traditional ladders to go down. Luckily they put up branches in case you fall: you won't fall down to the next level, too. Their ladders are tree trunks with notches cut in them.

Jess goes down the ladder.

And this is the chasm those branches keep you out of.

Adam wasn't happy with our lunch schedule and got hungry early.

It's hot and dusty in Mali. We tried to avoid the midday sun at all costs, but it inevitably caught us out a few times.

I had to invent a sun shade to keep it off, but the fact is it hindered circulation, which more than made up for the added shade.

We were down at the end of most days, but the area was still beautiful. Dogon doors take a ton of work to make, but they're gorgeous.

We made sure our daily portion of millet beer was included in the terms of our travel contract.

Sunrise over the baobobs.

And the day after Xmas, we woke in Ibrahima's village.

The Dogon is full of these piles of something that people dry. I believe it's cow fodder, but I'm not sure.

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.

Mali Part 1

Last December I went to Mali with Adam, Astrid, Ciara, Jess, and Kim. We hiked around for a bit, got to be outside of Guinea when the president died, and had a good Xmas holiday celebration atop the roof of a Malian mud hut, overlooking the rim of Dogon Country's valley.

First stop on the way was to pick up Ciara. She painted the inside of her hut white, which makes it so bright. Nonetheless, I wasn't inspired to do the same.

Decked out to go swimming in the Niger.


Gathered around the communal dinner bowl. Not enough spoons to go around. Jess's new cat, Jufanin refused to eat; he was upset some kids had broken his leg. He's fine now.

Finally in Mali, we passed this bus that had had to stop to rearrange its luggage. Things had apparently been hanging over the edge of the roof and getting in people's view of the scenery.

Dawn and Dusk

The regional driver, Conde, packing the Kankan car for a trip across the country. If we don't leave around dawn, we can't make it home by dark. A very long trip.

Evening from my back yard. The end of the rainy season brought some beautiful clouds and wonderful storms. I lament the newly arrived dry season - now I can't just get my bath water by putting buckets under my family's roof. And I have to water my nursery every day, too. Life is so much easier when water just falls from the sky.

The Mud Stove, with Steph's help

I finally got tired of trying to convince women they should do a small amount of work to save themselves time and work later on by turning their three-rock cooking system into a fuel-efficient stove. So I decided to build my own so I can cook with wood, in public, and demonstrate how, why, and what.

The nice thing is, I can't work alone, ever. There are always children with nothing else to do. So even though I'm not working with the target audience at first, I still end up teaching the inevitable crowd of children how to build a stove, why build a stove, and later they'll cook with me.

At the end, I had a lot of extra mud so I smoothed out the walls perfectly with a wide apron and then built myself a chair in front of the stove so I can sit down in comfort molded to me as I stir my pots of rice and sauce. The stove will be in use about three weeks after construction so it has time to adequately dry (otherwise it will crack severely with the first few cook fires.

First Visitor: Stephanie

I tried to keep her work load to a minimum - because she was on vacation and because it's better for my work if I can talk to people about why as a man I, too, can haul my own water, wash my own clothes, cook my own meals, and do all that for her as well. Nonetheless, it's fun to pump water.

One of the first days at site we went to the field with my family and helped them stamp on their rice to shake the grain loose from the straw. My sisters kept asking me how many bundles of rice I'd done so far; I kept replying I hadn't finished my first one. They have to make it a competition to entertain themselves and I didn't know we were counting until they asked...

I made Stephanie bike the 35 kilometers between my site and my regional capital, four times. She would get tired, obviously, so I would nap while she recovered.

Stephanie integrated so well, you wouldn't even be able to pick her out of this photo if you hadn't already seen her in a photo pumping water. My family loved her - they even gave her a gift when she left.

I eat moni for breakfast every morning. The first morning I brought it home in a giant bowl. To cool it off, you have to pour it from a large gourd spoon over and over.

Steph didn't like moni that much and had to look for alternative food sources.

On the way to the field to stamp on rice I took a side trip to photograph my number one enemy: the bush fire. People set them to avoid them later when hunters set the bush on fire to scare out their dinner. It's a nasty cycle that creates large swaths of rock from formerly lush forest.

Like I said, I took advantage of Steph's presence to show people that men work even when they are living with their "wife." Yeah, Steph was my fake wife for a her visit - to avoid people always asking to buy her from me.

Again, doing women's work is a good way to show men they are capable of more than sitting in the shade all day.

At the same time, my work is to share American culture. Granted the kids still haven't gotten the hang of not showing everyone their hand, but what are you going to do?

And I sing for them. When they're good. It's a good way to entertain people with activities they don't consider insane. That said, it's hard to sing and play and say hi to every single person who comes up to watch and listen.

After three weeks, Steph had had enough and we headed back to Conakry to drop her off for her flight home to blessedly cold Belgium, land of chocolate, beer, fries, and waffles.

Photos

My village has a huge hill that plummets to a seasonal stream and then climbs up a bit more. This is about half way up the larger hill looking over the village. Unfortunately I don't have a good filter to bring out just how beautiful this cloud was; a giant storm racing over the mountain.

My buddy Musa showed me a nice swimming hole. I'm teaching him to swim. I took a photo of him trying, but I can't publish it because it sort of looks like he's drowning. And he wasn't.

Look at the corn stalks. The tree branches don't quite do justice to the strength of the wind in this gust front. It flattened half the corn fields in the village.

I work with Sidiki to reforest. This is his rice field.

And this is what's behind his rice field. Gorgeous.

This car is loaded down with fire wood. This is a small load compared to what a lot of cars carry. I just happened to have only taken this photo.

Remember that photo of the gust front and the corn? Nyari hid under a chair in my hut.

Cat prison: a rope tied to a zip line. Why? The neighbors want his blood because he's a dirty, rotten thief. Stole chicken eggs, fish, meat... At least the other half of the neighbors liked him because he ate their mice. Nonetheless, he's in prison now. There was an unrelated incident where some kid told me he was going to eat my cat. He backed off when I told him I would eat his legs and arms, one per week until he ran out. You never know what a crazy American is liable to do.

A while back I went down to Gbangbadou to help Jess set up a Moringa plantation at her health center. This is what it looked like the next time I passed through: the start of success.

This is a view from a bush trail. The rainy season is so much better than the dry season. Everything's alive, including the cows.

The evening few from my bathroom. Ah the rainy season is heaven.