Where the Hell Are We? Part II, March 11-15: Dogon Country

March 11: Powana! Oumar, Teli & Endé

We met our guide, Oumar, at our hotel at 7:30am, after 18 hours of travel and about 3 hours of sleep.  We had planned on the 4-day Dogon trek (4d/3n) but after realizing that our roundtrip travel to Mopti was not covered, we decided to do the 5-day, 4-night trek instead, because onward travel from the end point of the 5-day trek was significantly cheaper  to the point where it would not cost much more to do an extra day. 



On our way to Dogon from Bandiagara!





We took a short taxi (10 km) to Sevare, where we then piled into a tro-tro to Bandiagara and rented a vehicle to go the 30 km to the first Dogon village, Teli, where we had lunch, cous cous with vegetable sauce and chicken.  Awesome!

After lunch we took a nap for about 2 hours and set out at 2:50pm to hike up to the escarpment to check out the old Dogon houses on the cliff face, and where Oumar gave us some background information about the Dogon people:

The Dogon originated near Bamako, but were chased out to the east in the 13^th or 14^th century to the rocky escarpment where they now live, which was formerly inhabited by the Tellem people since at least the 7^th century.  Both the Dogon and Tellem were peaceful farmers and herders, and when the Dogon arrived, the Tellem decided to move further east into the Sahel rather than stay and share space with the Dogon.  The land now is all Sahel but was formerly forest—thus, the Dogon built mud houses on and into the rocky escarpment/cliff face to protect themselves from enemies and animals lurking in the forest, where they lived until as recently as 50 years ago (when they moved down from the cliff).

Big baobab by the trail

All of the Dogon from the bottom of the cliff face now live, farm, and herd animals at the bottom of the escarpment by the river, but those at the top still live as they originally have for centuries, in their rock-and-mud houses.  You can still see most of the original Dogon mud houses below the Tellem “houses” that once held jewelry and other random stuff.

After we checked out the “old” village of Teli, we hiked 5 km to Oumar’s hometown of Endé.  It was market day in Endé so we put our stuff down at our hotel, ran by Oumar’s brother Mikey, and took off with Mikey to see the small market and various artisan’s houses to see locally-made jewelry, indigo-dyed fabrics, masks, and wood carvings.

Heather and her new friends

When we got back to Mikey’s house, we showered and had dinner, rice with vegetable sauce, and contemplated sleeping on the roof under the stars, but later decided to cram into a room.  Oumar spent the first night at his house with his family and met us the next morning at 7:30am for breakfast. 

Mud mosque in Ende

March 12: Yaba-Talu, Doundouru/Ndeli, Begnimato

We got up early and met Oumar at 7:30am for breakfast.  We had bread and Nutella/Vache Qui Rit/Guava jam and tea/coffee.  After breakfast, we met the rest of Oumar’s family at his house, then took a horse cart to Yaba-Talu for lunch.  We passed a lot of people herding goats/sheep/cattle and people working gardens, growing tomatoes, lettuce, eggplant, and lots of dry rows ready to grow millet and sorghum when the rains are due to start around June.

We arrived in Yaba-Talu around 10:30am and walked to the escarpment to watch and learn from two elderly Dogon men who were weaving traditional baskets.  Yaba-Talu is known as the place to get baskets. They’re made from sorghum stalks, baobab bark and palm fronds, and are lightweight and very sturdy.

Lunch was macaroni with vegetable sauce and chicken, but Oumar opted for the more traditional pâte made from millet with a sauce. 

After lunch we napped through the hottest part of the day and then left for Ndeli, located high atop the escarpment.  We hiked past the basket-weaving men and up a path through a large crack in the escarpment to get to the top.  We had to zig-zag and climb two traditional ladders to get to the top, which took about 30 minutes, from which we could see the village of Doundouru below.
 

Dogon ladder

We hiked through the village of Ndeli and saw some traditional blacksmiths working away at the bellows.  The views of the Sahel below were amazing and the rock formations at the top were breathtaking.  We ended the day at the village of Begnimato.  To get there, we hiked through a narrow channel that opened up to a vast plateau.  We could see a well next to a school where a mass of girls were busy pulling water.  From there we hiked about 10 minutes up a gently-sloping rock face to our hotel, in which the mud-and-brick buildings and village were perched on top of a gigantic, sprawling, terraced rock face.  Definitely the coolest and most beautiful village that we saw on our trip.



Heather showing off just outside Begnimato



As we entered the village we were met with swarms of children who took our hands and asked, “Ça va?  Comment tu t’appelle?” and giggled as they tried to repeat our names back to us.

Heather with her new friends in Begnimato

It was dark by the time we all showered and laundered a few items, and Oumar invited us to check out a local celebration and drink tchouk (home-brewed millet beer) with the locals who were celebrating a baptism, before dinner was served.  Everyone was really nice and welcoming and Erin, Heather, and I shared a gigantic calabash of tchouk before going back to the hotel to eat.  After dinner we slept on the roof, but it was really cold and windy so Heather escaped to the warm room at about 2am and finished the night out there.


Craig and his big bowl of tchouk



 March 13: Konsogou, Gourou (aka “shit village”), and Nombori

Another 7:30am breakfast of bread and tea/coffee, then we visited the village of Begnimato before departing.  We walked to a rocky outcrop near the edge of the cliff to a sacred spot where traditional masks are stored for celebrations and visited a local hunter’s compound that he decorated with skins of animals that he has shot and killed: monkeys, snakes, and lynx-like cats that live on the rocky escarpment.

We left town and passed through the village of Konsogou, so small that it isn’t even on the map of Dogon country.  We stopped to fill up our water bottles (it was HOT) and sit in the shade for a minute before continuing on.  The path was lines with plot after plot of dried rows ready to be planted in the upcoming rainy season, and sometimes we would stumble upon a fertile garden with a well in the middle or just off to the side, the gardener busy watering his/her crops.

We had lunch in Gourou, aka “shit village” (because there were lots of flies).  Oumar explained that there were lots of flies because there were only a few latrines for the few thousand people who lived there and people just pooped wherever there was space available, so the place smelled like pee and poop.  Our lunch of cous cous and sauce wasn’t that great but we ate it really fast and napped straight away.  We were not too sad to leave after our naps were finished and it was time to go. 

As we walked out of town, we could see another neighborhood of the town on the other side of a mini canyon, and Oumar explained that the animists, Muslims, and Christians all live together in this village, unlike in the others that we had visited where each religion had segregated themselves in different quartiers.  Either way, the place smelled like shit.  On to Nombori!

Resting on the trail

To get to Nombori from shit village, we had to cross a vast expanse of the rocky escarpment plateau—deep sand littered with large rocky outcroppings—to a large cleft in the rock face that the rainy season’s river has carved out for us, to traverse down to the Sahel below.  When we finally made it to the bottom of the canyon, we were astonished to be gazing at a sort of garden of Eden that the Dogon has somehow eked out of the Sahel, meandering between baobab trees and in spite of the encroaching Sahara Desert.


The encroaching Sahara, no doubt hastened by massive deforestation



Just before descending to Nombori, in the background

Nombori is situated on the escarpment side of the river that resurrects itself every rainy season but now lies dry and dormant.  Nombori offered great sunset and sunrise views of the cliffs and clever silhouettes of Dogon granaries and leafless baobabs.  Showers were warmish and we got to bed late—about 10:30pm.

Sunset in Nombori

Granery silhouetted by the sunrise