Dogon Country, Part II

March 14: Tireli & Yaye

It was really hot.

Also, no more bread for breakfast.  Instead, we ate a sort of pancake made from millet flour that has been mixed with water and sugar, than fried.  We still have coffee and toppings, though, which helps out with the pancake’s flavor.  It is better to eat them quickly and drink some coffee because they’re a little sour.

The walk to Tireli was though deep sand that made our calves burn…and did I mention it was hot?

There’s nothing special to say about Tireli, but we ate lunch there at left at about 4pm to begin the 5km walk to Yaye.  It was still really, punishingly hot but, thankfully, there was less deep sand.  Erin got tired of dumping sand out of her shoes so she switched to her sandals.

We passed through the village of Amani where there is a sacred crocodile pond.  The villagers there make sure the crocodiles’ pond never goes dry and keep them fed.  Crocodiles, snakes, and lizards are all sacred in Dogon animist beliefs.



This photo was free

After the village of Amani, we walked through 1 or 2 kilometers of empty Sahel with no one around, just us and the bush and baobabs as far as we could see, but always with the escarpment to our left.  We randomly came upon a pair of dromedary camels just hanging out in the shade and got some pictures.

Heather (l) and Erin (r) under a massive baobab

We were greeted at the edge of the town of Yaye by one of the guys from our hotel, and he took Oumar’s pack and walked us the final 5-10 minutes to the hotel.  Yaye is one of the very few villages whose inhabitants have not yet moved off the escarpment.  The area below the village is still relatively forested, not like the mostly deforested Endé where we stayed the first night.  On the other side of the forest is the Sahara, so there is no other space that is available because the riverbed fills up in the wet season.  Thus, the villagers live in similar houses to the ones that were first built in the 14^th or 15^th century, and since not much expansion is possible along the cliff face (because of a large outcrop of boulders on either side), the population stays steadily small. 



Carved wooden drainage pipe at our hotel in Yaye

We ate some rockin’ barbeque chicken with our cous cous and sauce.  Probably the best chicken that I’ve had since we left Americaland.  Heather, Erin and I played some cards and we gave Erin her birthday present (chocolate candy) then went to bed for our 5:45am wakeup call so we could have breakfast and leave by 6:30am to get to Sanga early to catch public transportation back to Bandiagara.

March 15: To Sanga and Mopti

I slept alone on the roof last night, and it was the best nights’ sleep that I had in Dogon.  It was warm with a warm breeze, and the ¾ moon finally came out around midnight.  I woke up a few times and got cold at 4am and went downstairs to find a blanket but there were none to be found, so I just grabbed my scarf and used it as a makeshift blanket and hunkered down until 5:45am came around.

Last picture of some traditional graneries before leaving Dogon Country

We got up and had breakfast and left Yaye by 6:45am.  We hiked through the village and up through a cleft in the escarpment, climbing over and around rocks that would make a really cool waterfall in the wet season.  At the top of the escarpment we continued through the rocky plain to Sanga (sometimes spelled “Sangha”), the largest of Dogon villages that is really a small city, by 7:30am.



Panoramic picture of Tellem caves on the escarpment

Oumar had told us that there would be public transport available there back to Sevare.  Well, there definitely is…usually.  Lonely Planet West Africa 2006 says that public transport is available only on market day, which was the previous day.  So we sat and waited for 3 hours while Oumar called a friend of his to come and get us.  We had to rent out the entire car, but, to Oumar’s credit, we only paid what we would have paid for the public transport option and he covered the rest.

The hilly, rocky road from Sanga to Bandiagara was pretty terrible and it took what seemed like forever to traverse the 35km between the two cities.  Our car overheated at one point and we were stuck next to a random house in the middle of nowhere, but the people living there brought out a bucket of cloudy, muddy water that the driver poured into the radiator, which had just finished depositing all of its water beneath the car.  We were only stuck for about 10 minutes and then we could continue on. 

Dogon herder with some of his flock

When we got to Bandiagara, Oumar bought us lunch at a restaurant and we paid him for the rest of the his fees that we owed him, took us to get a taxi, and we said good-bye.  The taxi stand/lean-to next to the road had a few people already there and the chef told us that a taxi would be there really soon. 

When the taxi showed up, the driver tried to charge us an extra 500 cfa for our big backpacks, so we refused and argued with him and ended with Erin and Heather clutching their bags in the backseat, refusing to cooperate.  In the end we won (!) and didn’t have to pay any extra.  We were determined not to pay and everyone else was determined to leave, so everyone just piled in and we took off.  The driver stopped a few times on the side of the road to buy wood (which is why he wanted us to pay for our bags—to subsidize his firewood!—and we finally got to Mopti, bought some bananas and water, and headed to our hotel.

Our hotel, Ya Pas De Problem, was an oasis at this point.  We stayed in a dorm room by ourselves with two ceiling fans and comfy beds.  The real toilets had real seats (and they flushed!) and the hotel had wi-fi (which, it turns out, only worked for 2 hours of the 3 days we stayed there) and a pool.  Basically heaven for us, and we could charge up our electronics and shower!  I don’t know how volunteers live in the bush with no running water and electricity.  We are so thankful for our nice house in our big city.



We made lots of friends!