Dogon Region
Thursday 19th January
Our guide Aumar, and his sister Amanata arrived at our hotel for breakfast and suggested driving to Tirelli to start our tour of the Dogon region. I recognized the name as
being the village that Michael Palin visited. It was pretty cool today, I’d been worried about walking in the Dogon region because it can get so hot, maybe 45-50 degrees in the middle of the day, but today I was wearing jeans and a wool jumper. We drove across the plateau passing many fields of onions and people tending the fields watering them with Calabashes. The onions could be smelt at times especially as women were grinding up some of the onions. We reached the Bandigara escarpment and stopped to take in the view before 
descending down to the plain. The escarpment is a long sandstone cliff which is the focus of many Dogon villages which sit at the base of it or climb up the sides. We suddenly arrived at Tirelli and got a lot more than we bargained for! The villagers were waiting for us and men were shooting old rifles which must have been as tall as me. The sound was very loud particularly as the noise rebounded of the cliffs and felt like we’d travelled back in time a few centuries looking at the age of the guns. There also seemed to be hundreds of kids running around many trying to grab your hand. We were escorted into the centre of the village where there was singing and the men were dancing a repetitive stomp around a circle which Kathy and I were invited to join in and I felt to polite to re
fuse. There was then a bit of a speech given by a very old looking man of the village – this was in the Dogon language so I didn’t understand a word of it. The man spoke very seriously, but for some reason the people burst out into fits of laughter which was quite bizarre. I wonder what they were saying about us. Steve tried a bit of French to say thank you for the welcome and we were led upstairs to a terrace above one of their square mud buildings for lunch. This had all been organized by the Joliba Trust charity who we’d raised money for. One of the Malian Directors of the charity was based in Tirelli. After lunch we were taken higher up the village to an area of open space where they performed the Dance des Masques. They men danced on stilts and three men had masks that extended a few metres above their head and they leaned forwards and back to the ground to represent sunrise and sunset. Other masques represented ploughing and animals such as rabbit, antelope and bulls. There were 20-30 men performing the dance dressed in bright pink and yellow costume accompanied by men playing music in the traditional indigo clothes. Each group of masks had their own solo spot. There were a few young kids copying the dance of the elders on a rock above the dancing area and they were 
doing pretty good impersonations. After the dance we were introduced to each of the dancers and then went back down to the centre of the village where they had a shop selling Dogon items. There has been a big problem with many old items from the Dogon region being sold to Europe and America, but here everything in the shop had been agreed by the village elders. John spent a long time looking at the masks before choosing one. I don’t really like masks myself so my shopping was over after a minutes browse. We went for a short walk outside the village, Kathy and Steve or rather Dillon and George had many followers. The kids showed us the fruit of the Baobab tree – of which there are many in the Dogon region. It is dry and like a fine honeycomb tasting like sherbert. They cooked us an evening meal of macaroni, mutton and sauce. By 9 the village was getting pretty quiet and we retired to bed. 
Friday 20th January
The previous nights food hadn’t sat to well in my stomach and we’d eaten quite a lot with both large dishes for lunch and dinner, resulting in me being sick in the night. We were given doughnuts and guava jam for breakfast – I passed on it. John and Steve got busy trying to learn the Dogon greeting. This is a long routine when one person asks how are you, your family, children and wife and then is repeated the other way round. Although it sounded like it would take a long time, our guide did not seem to break stride when going through the routine with people along the route, except when he knew them quite well, and as we woke up and the women and girls were carrying heavy buckets of water from the well up to the village, it sounded quite quick and almost sung – ago po, sao, We started walking north east at the bottom of the escarpment to other Dogon villages. The route had many baobab trees, donkeys, goat and cattle grazing and some bright blue birds. After a few kilometers we reached Amani which has a big pond full of sacred crocodiles – I didn’t get too close. We walked through the bottom of the village surrounded by lots of kids. Most of the villages had schools, mostly given through aid, so we wondered why the kids were not at school, but this was army day – a national holiday. I was feeling a bit feverish from being sick and didn’t have the energy for a big days walk, so Aumar arranged that I stay at the house of the school directors wife. I thought I’d rather lie under a tree between villages and hence not surrounded by kids, but after 10-15 minutes they’d calmed down and found something else to interest them. The school here had been funded by a Dutch guy, Joop van Stigt who following his travels and studies of the area had set up a charity and built a number of schools in the area. I lay down on a mat and enjoyed sleeping under a tree. At lunchtime a child of the school director, brought me out a bowl of rice, large cup of water and a bowl of green herbal looking sauce which looked like it would be good for my stomach so I tried some. Meanwhile the others walked on to the villages of Ireli and saw Tellem homes. The Tellem were in the region before the Dogon, were hunter gatherers and lived in tall houses on the cliff face. Each village has a togu-na, a rectangular building, not tall enough to stand up in where the men settle the issues of the village.
Back at Tirelli the place was busier with a number of Hungarians staying there. They’d completed a rally from Budapest to Bamako, like the Paris Dakar except the object was to spend as little on your vehicle as possible and also raise money for charity. They were struck by how poor the people were in Mauritania and how even in the Capital city, they struggled to find a garage to fix a car. When they saw I wasn’t well they prepared for me a natural remedy made from Papaya and limes – a green slime. This is used to combat malaria, although I was sure I just had a stomach upset. I tried a little bit of it, but it was very sour and I took a couple of imodium just in case!
Saturday 21st January
We set of south west, the other direction along the escarpment to visit the villages of Komokani and Nombori. As we left we were again surrounded by kids following us and 4 managed to hold on to George’s short lead in addition to Kathy. This certainly isn’t a place to come if you don’t like kids and the kids are quite used to tourists and asking for a whole range of cad
eau. John thought it would be an interesting challenge to set someone to walk through the Dogon region for a week, with a box of pens, large packet of sweets and walking a dog and managing to come back with everything you set out with. And after thinking of this he thought he could set many other challenges for West Africa – obtaining an Algerian visa from the Consulate in Agadez, clearing Tunisian customs within half an hour once you’ve admitted your carrying a CB and a GPS.
We walked up the side of the escarpment through the village of Komokani to see the sites before it got to hot. We saw the Togu-na and went up to the top of the village where the Hogon representative lived – a spiritual leader of the village. This one said he thought he was 90 years old. We gave him some kola nuts. We stopped for a welcome drink before continuing on to the village of Nombori. The route passed through many allotment type gardens full of onions, but also lettuces, aubergine and their tobacco plant. People were busy watering the plants from water filled Calabashes. We reached Nombori with just enough energy to struggle up the escarpment to the village restaurant and collapse for lunch. The cuisine is pretty much the same here for lunch and evening meal – rice, couscous or spaghetti with a sauce with vegetables, chicken or mutton. A greek salad would have been lovely in this temperature and it looked like they had all the ingredients. Restaurants here also serve as a siesta place which is a great way to get out of the heat. The guys went off to watch the blacksmith at work nearby, apparently taking orders to send to Europe. Aumar explained that most of the important old Dogon artifacts had left this village and been sold to Europe and America. We left at 3:30, had a quick walk around the village and
tackled the 8km back to Tirelli which was quite exhausting.
Sunday 22nd January
Today we were introduced to another employee of the Joliba trust to be shown a number of projects they were running in the area. We headed south across the plain at the bottom of the escarpment to stop at a village and see tree growing projects. Trees grow quite quickly here and a papaya tree is quite large six months after it has been planted. One of the wells in the village had only been completed in the last year. The water was over 40m below ground level and John looked quite exhausted helping to lift some up. Another well in the village was being drawn by a camel with a very young boy sitting on its back. We were given a large bowl of milk to share which brought back memories of school and being forced to drink cartons of milk, but it was cool and quite fresh and didn’t taste too bad. One of the elders of the village gave a speech in the Dogon language thanking us for our contribution to the Joliba Trust and our visit to the village. Steve returned a short speech in French to be translated by Aumar into the Dogon language. We continued on to another village where they were in the final stages of constructing the well. At the time they were dewatering it, but the do send men down the well to dig. With two engineers this visit took quite a while with many questions. We continued on to another village where we saw peanut butter being made from groundnuts, the village school and a number of fields with newly planted trees. We then headed back to the Bandigara escarpment and the village of Telli for a welcome late lunch and siesta. We decided we were to tired to start climbing up to the top of the village, but had enough energy to walk on the flat to the village of Ende. Ende is known as an artisan village and had many bogolons (batiks) handing up for sale. Kathy and I welcomed a drink at the end of the village, but to our surprise, Steve and John decided to walk around the market at the end of the village. They weren’t long as they said food and drink were being sold in very small quantities as no one really had any money to buy.
That evening football could be heard on the radio – the African cup in Egyp
t. Aumar said South Africa were playing Guinea. As we ate our evening meal Aumar couldn’t help but laugh as he said Guinea had beaten South Africa. Aumar admitted that he thought he’d only been going away to the Dogon Region for the day which is why he hadn’t brought any other clothes with him. It was now 4 days later. We spent the night sleeping on mattress on the roof, instead of a room which was much more pleasant in the cooler temperature.
Monday 23rd January
This morning we had enough energy for the climb to see the village of Telli where we’d stayed. The view of the mud built mosque looked quite stunning in the centre of the vill
age. We were to travel to Djenne today, with the largest mud built structure in the world, but the small intricate mud mosques in these small villages were really quite impressive. We stopped at Kani-Kombole, the last village at the base of the cliff to see the mosque, then drove the steep climb up the escarpment and back across the plateau to Bandigara, where we dropped off our guide Aumar at his house. Aumar lived at home with his family although he was engaged and had kids. The house was very small and basic and he must have had better paid work than many others when being a guide in the Dogon Region. He explained that he also worked in the field at other times of year, which sounded like a long day, preparing the fields in the heat prior to the rains.
Our guide Aumar, and his sister Amanata arrived at our hotel for breakfast and suggested driving to Tirelli to start our tour of the Dogon region. I recognized the name as
being the village that Michael Palin visited. It was pretty cool today, I’d been worried about walking in the Dogon region because it can get so hot, maybe 45-50 degrees in the middle of the day, but today I was wearing jeans and a wool jumper. We drove across the plateau passing many fields of onions and people tending the fields watering them with Calabashes. The onions could be smelt at times especially as women were grinding up some of the onions. We reached the Bandigara escarpment and stopped to take in the view before 
descending down to the plain. The escarpment is a long sandstone cliff which is the focus of many Dogon villages which sit at the base of it or climb up the sides. We suddenly arrived at Tirelli and got a lot more than we bargained for! The villagers were waiting for us and men were shooting old rifles which must have been as tall as me. The sound was very loud particularly as the noise rebounded of the cliffs and felt like we’d travelled back in time a few centuries looking at the age of the guns. There also seemed to be hundreds of kids running around many trying to grab your hand. We were escorted into the centre of the village where there was singing and the men were dancing a repetitive stomp around a circle which Kathy and I were invited to join in and I felt to polite to re
fuse. There was then a bit of a speech given by a very old looking man of the village – this was in the Dogon language so I didn’t understand a word of it. The man spoke very seriously, but for some reason the people burst out into fits of laughter which was quite bizarre. I wonder what they were saying about us. Steve tried a bit of French to say thank you for the welcome and we were led upstairs to a terrace above one of their square mud buildings for lunch. This had all been organized by the Joliba Trust charity who we’d raised money for. One of the Malian Directors of the charity was based in Tirelli. After lunch we were taken higher up the village to an area of open space where they performed the Dance des Masques. They men danced on stilts and three men had masks that extended a few metres above their head and they leaned forwards and back to the ground to represent sunrise and sunset. Other masques represented ploughing and animals such as rabbit, antelope and bulls. There were 20-30 men performing the dance dressed in bright pink and yellow costume accompanied by men playing music in the traditional indigo clothes. Each group of masks had their own solo spot. There were a few young kids copying the dance of the elders on a rock above the dancing area and they were 
doing pretty good impersonations. After the dance we were introduced to each of the dancers and then went back down to the centre of the village where they had a shop selling Dogon items. There has been a big problem with many old items from the Dogon region being sold to Europe and America, but here everything in the shop had been agreed by the village elders. John spent a long time looking at the masks before choosing one. I don’t really like masks myself so my shopping was over after a minutes browse. We went for a short walk outside the village, Kathy and Steve or rather Dillon and George had many followers. The kids showed us the fruit of the Baobab tree – of which there are many in the Dogon region. It is dry and like a fine honeycomb tasting like sherbert. They cooked us an evening meal of macaroni, mutton and sauce. By 9 the village was getting pretty quiet and we retired to bed. 
Friday 20th January
The previous nights food hadn’t sat to well in my stomach and we’d eaten quite a lot with both large dishes for lunch and dinner, resulting in me being sick in the night. We were given doughnuts and guava jam for breakfast – I passed on it. John and Steve got busy trying to learn the Dogon greeting. This is a long routine when one person asks how are you, your family, children and wife and then is repeated the other way round. Although it sounded like it would take a long time, our guide did not seem to break stride when going through the routine with people along the route, except when he knew them quite well, and as we woke up and the women and girls were carrying heavy buckets of water from the well up to the village, it sounded quite quick and almost sung – ago po, sao, We started walking north east at the bottom of the escarpment to other Dogon villages. The route had many baobab trees, donkeys, goat and cattle grazing and some bright blue birds. After a few kilometers we reached Amani which has a big pond full of sacred crocodiles – I didn’t get too close. We walked through the bottom of the village surrounded by lots of kids. Most of the villages had schools, mostly given through aid, so we wondered why the kids were not at school, but this was army day – a national holiday. I was feeling a bit feverish from being sick and didn’t have the energy for a big days walk, so Aumar arranged that I stay at the house of the school directors wife. I thought I’d rather lie under a tree between villages and hence not surrounded by kids, but after 10-15 minutes they’d calmed down and found something else to interest them. The school here had been funded by a Dutch guy, Joop van Stigt who following his travels and studies of the area had set up a charity and built a number of schools in the area. I lay down on a mat and enjoyed sleeping under a tree. At lunchtime a child of the school director, brought me out a bowl of rice, large cup of water and a bowl of green herbal looking sauce which looked like it would be good for my stomach so I tried some. Meanwhile the others walked on to the villages of Ireli and saw Tellem homes. The Tellem were in the region before the Dogon, were hunter gatherers and lived in tall houses on the cliff face. Each village has a togu-na, a rectangular building, not tall enough to stand up in where the men settle the issues of the village.
Back at Tirelli the place was busier with a number of Hungarians staying there. They’d completed a rally from Budapest to Bamako, like the Paris Dakar except the object was to spend as little on your vehicle as possible and also raise money for charity. They were struck by how poor the people were in Mauritania and how even in the Capital city, they struggled to find a garage to fix a car. When they saw I wasn’t well they prepared for me a natural remedy made from Papaya and limes – a green slime. This is used to combat malaria, although I was sure I just had a stomach upset. I tried a little bit of it, but it was very sour and I took a couple of imodium just in case!
Saturday 21st January
We set of south west, the other direction along the escarpment to visit the villages of Komokani and Nombori. As we left we were again surrounded by kids following us and 4 managed to hold on to George’s short lead in addition to Kathy. This certainly isn’t a place to come if you don’t like kids and the kids are quite used to tourists and asking for a whole range of cad
eau. John thought it would be an interesting challenge to set someone to walk through the Dogon region for a week, with a box of pens, large packet of sweets and walking a dog and managing to come back with everything you set out with. And after thinking of this he thought he could set many other challenges for West Africa – obtaining an Algerian visa from the Consulate in Agadez, clearing Tunisian customs within half an hour once you’ve admitted your carrying a CB and a GPS.We walked up the side of the escarpment through the village of Komokani to see the sites before it got to hot. We saw the Togu-na and went up to the top of the village where the Hogon representative lived – a spiritual leader of the village. This one said he thought he was 90 years old. We gave him some kola nuts. We stopped for a welcome drink before continuing on to the village of Nombori. The route passed through many allotment type gardens full of onions, but also lettuces, aubergine and their tobacco plant. People were busy watering the plants from water filled Calabashes. We reached Nombori with just enough energy to struggle up the escarpment to the village restaurant and collapse for lunch. The cuisine is pretty much the same here for lunch and evening meal – rice, couscous or spaghetti with a sauce with vegetables, chicken or mutton. A greek salad would have been lovely in this temperature and it looked like they had all the ingredients. Restaurants here also serve as a siesta place which is a great way to get out of the heat. The guys went off to watch the blacksmith at work nearby, apparently taking orders to send to Europe. Aumar explained that most of the important old Dogon artifacts had left this village and been sold to Europe and America. We left at 3:30, had a quick walk around the village and
tackled the 8km back to Tirelli which was quite exhausting.Sunday 22nd January
Today we were introduced to another employee of the Joliba trust to be shown a number of projects they were running in the area. We headed south across the plain at the bottom of the escarpment to stop at a village and see tree growing projects. Trees grow quite quickly here and a papaya tree is quite large six months after it has been planted. One of the wells in the village had only been completed in the last year. The water was over 40m below ground level and John looked quite exhausted helping to lift some up. Another well in the village was being drawn by a camel with a very young boy sitting on its back. We were given a large bowl of milk to share which brought back memories of school and being forced to drink cartons of milk, but it was cool and quite fresh and didn’t taste too bad. One of the elders of the village gave a speech in the Dogon language thanking us for our contribution to the Joliba Trust and our visit to the village. Steve returned a short speech in French to be translated by Aumar into the Dogon language. We continued on to another village where they were in the final stages of constructing the well. At the time they were dewatering it, but the do send men down the well to dig. With two engineers this visit took quite a while with many questions. We continued on to another village where we saw peanut butter being made from groundnuts, the village school and a number of fields with newly planted trees. We then headed back to the Bandigara escarpment and the village of Telli for a welcome late lunch and siesta. We decided we were to tired to start climbing up to the top of the village, but had enough energy to walk on the flat to the village of Ende. Ende is known as an artisan village and had many bogolons (batiks) handing up for sale. Kathy and I welcomed a drink at the end of the village, but to our surprise, Steve and John decided to walk around the market at the end of the village. They weren’t long as they said food and drink were being sold in very small quantities as no one really had any money to buy.
That evening football could be heard on the radio – the African cup in Egyp
t. Aumar said South Africa were playing Guinea. As we ate our evening meal Aumar couldn’t help but laugh as he said Guinea had beaten South Africa. Aumar admitted that he thought he’d only been going away to the Dogon Region for the day which is why he hadn’t brought any other clothes with him. It was now 4 days later. We spent the night sleeping on mattress on the roof, instead of a room which was much more pleasant in the cooler temperature.Monday 23rd January
This morning we had enough energy for the climb to see the village of Telli where we’d stayed. The view of the mud built mosque looked quite stunning in the centre of the vill
age. We were to travel to Djenne today, with the largest mud built structure in the world, but the small intricate mud mosques in these small villages were really quite impressive. We stopped at Kani-Kombole, the last village at the base of the cliff to see the mosque, then drove the steep climb up the escarpment and back across the plateau to Bandigara, where we dropped off our guide Aumar at his house. Aumar lived at home with his family although he was engaged and had kids. The house was very small and basic and he must have had better paid work than many others when being a guide in the Dogon Region. He explained that he also worked in the field at other times of year, which sounded like a long day, preparing the fields in the heat prior to the rains.
posted by Tanya at 2:41 pm
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kisses from mallorca!!!
lucas and barbara
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