Mali Travel Guide
Dogon Africa

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Dogon it

The five day hike in the Bandiagara region of Mali to see Africa's Dogon people was memorable for more than just the unique environment.
I'll never forget the amazing mud mosques, the wildly colourful women, the millet beer, the taxi wrecks, the cliff tombs, and the baobab trees scattered in the desert.
Less happily I will also remember the terrible heat, the dust, the Haagen-Daz daydreams, the accommodation nightmares and the guides; the money-hungry, ignorant guides that spoiled what should have been a brilliant experience.

I fired our first travel guide in a dark and dirty brothel in Mopti, a day away from my destination, when it became clear that he was not the son of a Dogon chief that he had claimed, and was more interested in enriching himself than educating us.
The brothel was the cheaper of the two 'hotels' in Mopti and served cold beer when the electricity was working, but was primitive, squalid, and full of noisy drunks - not the perfect place to have a confrontation with a villain at midnight by candlelight.
An hour later he was still shouting 'Give me all money, I kill you,' when the chief of police walked in and took him away.
The next day the Chief kindly accepted a contribution to the Mali Police Benevolent Fund.

The second guide I interviewed seemed pleasant and well-qualified but too expensive. Later I wished I had hired him, because the third one, Suleiman, - or Sillyman as myself and my partner prefer to remember him - calm, apparently knowledgeable and reasonable in the town, turned out to have a violent temper, little knowledge of Mali traditions, and a drink 'problem.'
Still, the hiking was never too hard - mainly because Sillyman was too drunk to travel far - and he did lead us to some spectacular sights.

Mali's Dogon culture first amazed the world in 1948 when a French anthropologist published details of long and complex Dogon myths, many based on the Sirius star cluster, at a time when most whites believed Africans to be capable of thinking about nothing more than sex or food.

The Dogon homeland is beside the 200 kilometre Bandiagara cliff that sticks up from the desert in the centre of the country.
The Dogon travelled to this hot, dusty, remote area in the 15th century when they were Animists - who believe that the sun, the wind, trees and other natural objects have souls- and were losing battles with the larger Muslim community. Islam, however, still found them and these days the 250,000 Dogon are mostly Muslim or Christian with only a few Animists remaining.

Although the area is infertile and inhospitable Mali's Dogon people have developed some of the best art in Africa and a unique system to water their vegetable fields. They also construct exceptional mud buildings, bury their dead in caves in the cliff, and perform traditional dances while wearing grotesque masks.

Woodcarving is the art form for which Mali's Dogon people are visibly famous. Small, curiously carved wooden doors, bowls, bizarre masks and strange statues are the outstanding traditional items that can be seen around Bandiagara and are sold to travellers all over West Africa.

Although in some cases women carry water from deep wells to their fields, a more unusual system is to carry fields to the water. Where rain or spring water is naturally trapped in pools in the cliffs, the Dogon carry earth up there and create fields - mostly of onions - among the barren rocks.

Dogon villages are supposedly constructed in the shape of a human, with the men's shelter as the head in the north, women's menstruation houses as hands, and village entrance as the genitals. Me, I spent days trying see a shape in the layout of the villages in which I stayed, but I failed. Sillyman was, as usual, useless as either informant or interpreter.

The buildings of mud and stone found in the villages are built co-operatively, with flat roofed rooms surrounding a courtyard. Small granaries nearby have carved wooden doors, conical straw roofs and goats trying to get in. Other favourite but forbidden feeding spots for the goats are the straw roofs of the togu-na shelters where men spend the hottest hours of the day.
Streets are narrow, sandy and, apart from the occasional traveller's 4WD, free from vehicles, but you could be run over by an ox cart if you had poor reaction times.

Scenically the best part of Mali's Bandiagara experience is the clusters of burial caves scattered in the vertical cliff face, way above granaries and houses on the lower slopes. Originally carved out by previous residents of the area, the Tellem people, some of the more accessible high-altitude tombs have now been taken over by the Dogon for their own burials.

Masks are the most important religious symbol for the Dogon. Huge, bizarre and made from wood, cloth and straw, they are worn by dancers on ceremonial occasions such as funerals, where the idea is to persuade the dead person's spirit to enter a mask, and not a neighbour. Another common mask protects members of a household from evil spirits.

Obviously Sillyman's home didn't have an effective mask as he seems to have been possessed by various evil and unpleasant spirits.
Ultimately I was protected by the good spirits that were stuffed in my wallet, but it was sad to leave Mali and the fascinating Dogon country with so few friends, so little money and such great relief.

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