Trip Report
Mali memories, an African experience
End November 2010 we – a small group of five – visited Mali.
We flew from Aus via Bangkok, Addis Ababa to Bamako, capital of the Western African country.
35 hours all in all. We were joined in Addis Ababa by Muslim Africans returning from the Haj …
The pilgrims equipped with golden bottles containing holy water, dressed in all white clothes with Saudi headdress were so elated by their pilgrimage experience that they found it difficult to settle into the normal routine of a flight. They argued, chatted, laughed, just sat down anywhere….
Our first African experience – THEY have the time, WE have the watches……
The plane departed Addis with quite a delay… .
Arriving in Bamako we were met by our guide ALY in his eye catching white Mali gown– it was his Friday garment. First day in Bamako we spent time visiting the new National Museum with excellent display and explanation of the making of Bogodan cloth (the local art of painting on cloth – mudcloth). and spent time in the tumultuous bazaar, loud, hot, colourful and very crowded.
The Niger River is the lifeline of Malians; they work with it, they wash in it, they live beside it, they boat it, they commute on this river…
On Sunday night ‘all ways lead to’ Djenne, place of the largest mudbrick mosque in the world.At its feet every Monday morning a huge market unfolds attracting people from hundreds of kilometres away. Djenne is a busy, colourful, smelly, and breathtakingly hot and crowded place. Our campement hotel in Djenne is close to the market and our group meets at sunrise, to see the mosque, a remarkable building of Sudanese Architecture in the rosy-red hue of the early morning light before the market officially opens. When we return to the market after our breakfast around 10 am masses of people, young and old, traders, animal keepers, jewellers, cloth merchants etc. etc. all have assembled their market stalls and try to make a little money, shouting, bargaining. After the market closes and the dealers return home on their donkey charts, by camel, by pinasse, piroge, or taxi brusse, Djenne returns to be a small quiet country town, peaceful and pleasant for another week.
We walk around the town and come across a school. The teacher a young man has 142 six year olds in ONE class room. They sing and sit down and get up and do all the disciplines for us… The sound of 142 little voices singing for us is like a flock of birds chirping when they gather to migrate. The photo I am taking can only show half of the class…. My lens is not wide enough!
Songho is a little place on the top of the Bandiagara escarpment, access point to the villages lying below or along the escarpment in the Dogon country. Our first night is spent on top of the roof of the ‘campement’ on mattresses and first class mosquito nets… In this remote and hot area sleeping inside a hotel room without air conditioning or fan is unpleasantly hot and sticky. Our camp open to the stars in the African night sky is cool and pleasant and being woken by a call of prayer, donkeys, roosters and – on Sundays by Church bells – is much more inviting than sleeping inside .
Some of our group choose to drive down the escarpment; they miss out on sweeping views into the savannah, the eye can follow a ‘snake’ of winding green shrubs along the yellow sandy dunes til the horizon. Our track down the escarpment into the valley takes about 2 hours, it is hot, steamy and tiring, but I would not have liked to miss it. The views over the savannah and the little villages with their granaries, cone shaped roofs and the mud brick houses laden with orderly stored millet and sorghum are splendid.
We walk in the Dogon country for two or three days,each day for just as long as we like. Our itinerary is flexible. The time stands still. It is inhabited by small communities of Animists, Christians and Muslims living happily together, in a quite inhospitable and hard country. They carry their daily water, have no farming machinery, only manually do they harvest their crop of millet and sorghum. They live this life in the Dogon country unchanged since they escaped from the Islamic invasion in the 15th C. when they fled from the south into the safety and remoteness of the escarpment, maintaining their lifestyle, their religion, their animist beliefs and laws.
Leaving the Dogon country behind, we drive east to search for desert elephants. The elephants were elusive, however, the landscape is breathtaking with the Hombori mountains rising vertically out of the savannah. A well known area for serious rock-climbers .
A day-long, nail biting trip (the speed with which our driver pushes through the sandy tracks is quite remarkable) – brings us north to the ferry across the Niger just short of Timbuktoo. Surprisingly Timbuktoo is only 8 km north of the River Niger whereas 1 km north of Timbuktoo is the start of the Sahara, sand dunes for thousands of kilometres.
Timbuktoo – once the African centre of Islam, is now a faint copy of its former self, but still lives on its reputation as centre of the African Islamic world, and the now rare salt caravans crossing the Sahara desert. Today it is a quiet little town with Tuaregs in colourful dresses and indigo turbans, trying to settle from nomadic to urban life as traders, selling jewellery, leatherwork and organising camel rides for very few tourists. We stayed in Timbuktoo for 2 days enjoying the hospitality of our guide, a hotel with excellent swimming pool, the overnight camp under the stars with the Tuaregs and lots of their special Tuareg tea.
We left Timbuktoo by pinasse, a long, narrow boat for only our group to travel up the Niger River towards south (yes, the Niger flows from South to North and then East) to Mopti. For three relaxing days we motor gently past Bozo fishing villages, hippopotamus, small towns with impressive mosques and other communities whose whole life evolves around the River Niger. While we are aboard the pinasse during day time, we camp the nights on the banks of the Niger River, have fires, enjoy beautiful sunsets and even better sunrises.
Mopti is a busy cross point along the Niger River. The river is the absolute centre of the Mopti life; In the port they build the pinasse, in the market they sell the fish and along the banks normal life goes on with washing the children, washing the dishes and the clothes, washing the cars, making good use of the plentiful water this year….
We return to Bamako. We are full of exciting experiences, surprised by the vivacious colours, delighted by the hospitality, impressed by the unbiased and calm attitude and simple happiness of the Black Africans.
I think we have all taken back very happy memories of an interesting trip into a little known country.
And as my agent says…Africa seriously harms your desire to go home….