“No, before marriage. Circumcision. They stay out of village one month. Do you want to see circumcision paintings?”
“Why?” I did not see the connection.
“They have a special home for these boys. To learn. For transfer to manhood.”
We slowed and Zak gave them money, a poor man helping poorer boys. “They make asking,” he said. “All who pass make a gift.”
“Marriage?” I was confused.
“They are not ready for marriage,” Zak said. “That, for me, may be early twenties; for women, late teens. Men, if in school, often wait. Women are needed at their homes for work.” That was the complete explanation.
Then we came to a stop at Djiguibombo, where an intrepid Zak, a reticent Nema, and an eager Rick would begin the long trek on foot. When Mamadou and his car disappeared in swirls of dust, we were on a rocky road that narrowed even more, discouraging use by other vehicles; it wanted to be left alone, as people on foot were more welcome in the Dogon. We hoisted our packs and walked through the village gate into a courtyard. It sprawled wide and was rimmed with stone buildings patched with mud. In the centre was a high structure of dead tree branches, open to the air, braced with twisted metal and loosely covered with thatch.
I found my pipe, tamped in some tobacco and lit it. I smoked in the hot shade, sitting on a chair of slivers smoothed by other bottoms, and spent the afternoon with the village men. A man next to me watched me puff. Then he lit a thin pipe of his own, tamped its small bowl, lit it again, and spoke to me in Bambara. We shook hands often. I nodded in concurrence with whatever he said, as it seemed the thing to do. There was no telling what views we shared or whether I had bought the village tart. He handed me a pinch of his tobacco. In trade, I gave him premium London cuts and got from him a mixture of harsh grinds that, when lit, almost yanked my tongue from my mouth.
The various generations of Malians grow old together, their gatherings synchronized by day and activity. A man of wizened hair and disposition cradled a young girl in a red garment that was laced with blue lines. Smoke curled from his pipe and above her head. His finger rings were silver, hers gold.
Half a dozen men, mostly older, lounged at a game of Wale — “Wally,” Zak called it — which was played by two men and directed by the rest. Stones in five divots beside a board were chosen from an initial handful of four gleaned from a wrapped cloth. The game resolved down to empty holes, and the first there was a victor. I could determine no more about the game. When I initially asked Zak in French to name it, he spelled out the village name. I knew then that I must work on my communications.
Nema removed a pouch and a can from Zak’s backpack and was gone. She returned with mangos, and demanded my knife, which, when offered, she instructed me to use as a peeler. When she was ready, which had no relationship to anyone’s timing but her own, she returned and spooned slippery penne pasta onto three plates. The sauce tasted buttery. She then brought a flat pan of steaming meat accented by a thick sauce made with bouillon cubes. Nema took my knife from my hand with a simple command: “Reek, give,” then sliced green mango atop the red sauce presentation. Before taking a bite, I mentally thanked Dennis for his recommendation of a cook and, as a backup, said a quick blessing for the health of the meal.
Into the courtyard stumbled a man wearing handcuffs. A metal bracelet shackled his left wrist. The other wrist was clamped, too, but with a slider along a half-metre-long metal rod. He scrounged a cigarette from Zak and talked his way past Nema. “They say he became mad,” Nema explained. I wondered whether the manacles were meant to protect him or others. He sat down beside me, and I lit his cigarette. He flicked a finger off his thumb and decapped the flaming match-head, then moved my plate of food and fork away from me and onto his lap. He reached over to scoop more sauce from the pan. Between mouthfuls of dripping pasta, he smoked in long, swallowing drags.
Stretching from an afternoon nap, I saw Zak staring with one eye, asleep with the other, and called his name twice to get his attention.
“I was just between thinks,” he said.
“Zak, let’s walk in the village.” He was more asleep than I had realized and took a while to answer.
Granaries are the most distinctive aspect of Dogon villages along the Bandiagara escarpment and are used to store all manner of things: jewellery, clothing and, of course, millet.
“You’ll see many Dogon villages — Kani-Kombolé, Teli, all smaller than this.”
I began to walk on my own; Zak relented and caught up.
There were paths, not streets, bordered by stacked rocks or a house wall to give the route definition. Zak and I walked in silence, each still waking to the afternoon, when he pointed to a lowroofed building without walls and called it the Togu-na.
“The elders meet there to talk of problems, and about fellow villagers. Gossip.” He smiled. “Every village has a Togu-na, it is social centre. Only men.” He explained the significance of the carved support posts that hold the roof. “In Dogon, we have ancestors, eight main, and that is why eight pillars.”
In most every yard, stone-based buildings were set apart, impracticably thin and characterized by peaks of thatch that married the design of European castles and African roofs. “Granaries,” Zak replied to my question. “Animals can’t get up the rocks to the millet. They are divided inside for different types of storage.”
“All grains?”
“Mostly. Each woman has her own and might put there what she wishes not to have in the house. Maybe jewellery.”
When I lifted my hat off, the air was cool on my sweaty head. I sat down on some rocks across from a round house. Zak called it by its French name, Maison des regles, which is where menstruating women retreat, receive health attention, and stay away from daily village life. “It is respect for their potential as mothers.”
“There is always a system to setting a village,” Zak said. He chose a thick stick and sketched a diagram in the ground saying, “A picture speaks paintings.”
I listened as he outlined in the dirt and then used his body as a village map. “Even when on a hill,” he said, touching his stomach, “the layout is like a body. This,” he said, pointing to the Maison des regles, “is a hand, and if two, they are west and east. The Togu-na for elders is here,” he tapped his head. “There is where we have an altar, where our forefathers are remembered. It is called ginna bana.” Zak breathed audibly, saying it reflected the founders, then put his hand to his chest, indicating where in the village this would be found. He called it “start of life.”
Time has worn a human path in the Dogon for nearly two millennia. My days there seemed the true goal of my sojourn, the pinnacle. Not the train, not Timbuktu, not the River Niger; for those I had expectations and ambitions. In Le Pays Dogon, I had none of those encumbrances.
On the dusty road, half a kilometre from Djiguibombo, a friend of Zak’s showed up on a motorbike. They talked; I listened. There was no hurry. Soon, the man left with Nema, whom he’d never met before but who clearly welcomed the longer, but less onerous moped route to that night’s camp. On the back of his departing Mobylette, next to Nema, rested the heavy sack of tinned peas and other bulky provisions. Zak and I, left with the hand-helds, strapped them together for our walk, hampered by my earlier decision to bring a large pack for the trip, one that housed all manner of goods but now proved too large for the Dogon trek, and I longed for a smaller, more practical pack.
We made a decision to pack our collective heaviest goods into Zak’s proper pack. We’d spell each other off, sharing the load and responsibility. I agreed to carry this large pack for the first few days of our trek in the desert, up and down the rocky terrain.
Dogon Country (or more commonly referenced in French as Le Pays Dogon) includes many villages on the plain or plateau along the two-hundred-kilometre escarpment that abuts the Gondo Plain.
The Bandiagara escarpment, two hundred kilometres long and three hundred and fifty metres high, is the much-appreciated sou
rce of shade, the territory of cliff dwellers, and the base of a sculpted sandstone plateau.
The trail, which was followed by nose rather than decipherable signs, slipped off the road. It was Zak’s land, and I followed him into the wilderness.
The plateau is exposed rock on high land and commanding in its seemingly endless expanse. Much of what we used for footholds on the kilometres-long descent into the canyon was large rock, boulder upon boulder, hewn by the elements, and scattered in a disarray that made sure footing a difficult task.
I had a happy sense of being, enjoying the open country, the ensuing days and nights, the strain of muscle and awkwardness of pain. In Dogon, I found much to please me.
Atop large sandstone rocks that had broken loose from the cliffside, I saw for the first time the Gondo Plain, an immense space of great intensity. It was my first long look at the escarpment’s expanse. “Rick,” Zak said tightly, then poetically, “le falaise.”
“Zak,” I said in a similar tone, “the what?”
“Is French word. You say you want learn French. Falaise.”
“It means?”
“Escarpment,” said Zak. “This Dogon Escarpment. Falaise.”
My clicking of film was, I knew, futile. Nothing would capture the grandeur that is that place. I framed one picture to show a rock formed like bread slices, half a loaf in volume, each ten metres tall and a metre thick. They fell open as they would on a serving plate.
I was glad for the pleasant fit of good boots. Their ankle bracing was crucial to a safe descent of the steep hill, and fundamental to my safety and comfort. They were just-right snug, soft in the toe, and I expected them to see me through many a climb and descent over the coming week.
Zak turned sharply on the trail and I followed. My right foot swung wide and stubbed hard against the cliff’s stone. It stung and I knew instantly that I’d split a toenail. Blood warmed the sock inside my boot. It took two hours of careful step upon hesitant foothold, handgrips when available — which was seldom — before we descended. The pain in my right foot meant that I tried to use its heel whenever I could, lessening the pressure on the ball of my boot to keep my cut toe from jamming.
The plain began where the canyon emptied out onto the rockstrewn trail. Furrows of thin earth breached the land we walked on. A bicycle bell rang behind me. A lad not more than nine years old was pushing hard on each pedal, grinding sand. His bike carried a heavy sack across a back wheel brace we called a “rat trap” when I was his age. Sand sucked his tires down, but he did not complain.
He passed us with determination, and the bike wavered. Five minutes later, we approached as he propped his fallen bicycle upright and then wrapped his thin arms around the giant sack that had slipped off the bike. It outweighed him, yet there was not a wink of resentment in that boy. It was his task and he would do it. He lifted his quarry and was laying it across the carrier as we neared him. The bike shifted and he stopped its tilting with his leg. The bag slipped but did not fall. I offered my leg as a fulcrum. He mounted the bike, grinned “Merci,” and successfully pumped the pedals to force the wheels to churn through the slippery sand.
The chattering of a nearby community greeted us near Kani-Kombolé, where we found a campement. Could one feel more welcome? I thought not. It was dark when we arrived and a fire backlit two men who were seated near the entrance of the camp. We were to meet Nema here, delivered from the backseat of the moped.
Flashlights revealed the warmth of lashed-wood chairs and blanket-covered tables. Toehold steps were carved in a log that leaned against the mud home and led to the roof above. There I would sleep in the open, beneath the stars.
Someone brought me a bottle of orange Fanta. It was decently cool, soothing the throbbing pain in my foot. My swollen, bleeding toe had started to outgrow the space available in my boot.
In the shadows, a young couple from France was silhouetted in the corner behind a table and on chairs they surely wished would be comfortable. Quiet, content with being together, they shared a dinner plate.
Suddenly, Nema appeared. She grabbed the collar of my outer shirt and the neck of my T-shirt. She tugged these two layers of clothes off my back. “Reek. I wash.” I relinquished them as ordered. There was a contented smile on her face; the motorcycle ride had been good for her. She stepped back into the night, black into black. She motioned for more clothes but I declined to strip bare. “Please.” She was demanding, “Ruin shorts,” she warned of another day’s wear. I gave in and handed them over, along with my bloodied sock. Nema was kind and efficient, and irreversibly straightforward. It seemed to me inappropriate to be buck naked before this beautiful woman in the camp’s candlelight. She took a swig from my Fanta bottle before she disappeared. I sat in the warm darkness, waiting in my underwear.
The bath was Dogon traditional, a large, mud-walled room without a roof. It was next to, and barely separate from, the toilet hole. The arch was low and the door was constructed of vertical sticks woven with rope. I picked it up, placed it across the doorway for privacy, and parked my boots. I knew this bathing ritual well from my travels in Japan, where you sit on a stool in front of a bucket of water before taking a dip in the hot springs. Here, only the bucket was provided, with a plastic cup floating in it. Bring your own soap, towel, patience, and dexterity, and a refreshing showerbath resulted. Leaning against the mud, I coated my washed toe with an antibiotic cream and slipped my feet into sandals, strapped them tight and realized that these would be my walking shoes for the next nine days.
When I left the bath, no one was visible. It was so dark, so quiet, you could hear your thoughts. My small flashlight, I now realized, was worth its weight in gold, as I wound back to my chair and rickety table by its amber help. A man who I’d not noticed previously placed an African lantern on my table and lit the wick with a match. Its glow was rich with shadow lines and stories. I listened to the snippets of conversation that began to emerge from the darkness.
It was as though I were listening to a radio program or sitting at the side of a stage, unnoticed. Rapidly, then more slowly, conversations erupted and subsided in Bambara. Here there was more laughter than in Mopti or Bamako or on the road. It was light and touching and genuine. These people liked one another, and my being there was cause for funny asides and politeness — but generally I was irrelevant.
A candle invites sitting. People brought chairs and set them around my lantern. They told stories none of us needed to know. Self-centred Western self-awareness was not even a curiosity to them. Nothing there was indifferent — not the multi-touch greetings, not the high-pulled pouring of tea, not one smile. These villagers meant to be doing what they were doing, and they were content. How often can a Westerner claim that?
I was raised in a family where you ate what was put in front of you. That training had prepared me for Nema. She waited at the end of the table where I was writing, holding a metal bowl covered with a plate. Both steamed. She ladled potatoes that had been lightly fried in lard from God-knows where. Over this she set two pieces of chicken cooked in a sauce of green herbs and tomatoes, which had flavoured, if not softened, the meat. She dribbled the sauce evenly over the chicken and spuds. Grease pooled to the side. She was as pleased as I was cautious. “Eat, Reek.”
Zak looked on as I finished Nema’s meal, pleased at the start of the trip. I belched. “Good groceries,” I said.
“Groceries?” Zak asked, the concept a Western conceit.
The tea ritual followed the meal. The tea was green in the lantern’s light and was served to me in a glass that had just been sipped from by a Malian nearby. “Tea.” I was motioned to accept the offering. It was a prescription, not a question. A man with seasoned hands and a liberal smile held a platter with three cups, into which he poured slowly. He stretched the pot from a low in-the-cup start to reach high — it seemed half a metre away — to release the flavour. It left a foamy head. He did not spill. They always got that right.
“Tart,” I muttered,
finishing. Zak was next. The tea was served in a sequence of three on the spot, as among the Tuareg, each serving with the long curled arch from the spout.
“In Dogon, the meaning is different than in the Sahara. Here, the first is bitter as death,” said Zak.
“I just tasted that,” I responded.
“The second is soft as life,” he said warmheartedly. Nothing is without reason. “The third is sweet as love.”
They left the pot after that. The longer it cooled, the sweeter it became. There was no reticence about having a fourth.
In the calm that followed, I opened my pocket knife and sharpened my pencil. The shavings floated to the ground. For nearly an hour I smoked my pipe and relished the soft orange glow of my African lantern. Peace of mind and contentment were my companions, I thought.
My bowels erupted. A gut-loosening sound broke the peace and wind. Was it the mangos? Dishwashing water? Had I been careless? But, in fact, the odds had simply caught up with me: two weeks into the trip — it was my turn to get sick.
In Africa, dehydration is always a risk. But here there was ample water, labelled engagingly as Tombouctou and sealed with plastic for reassurance. I downed one bottle, mindful that my evening’s sleeping quarters, should nature keep beckoning, meant a repeated acrobatic descent on a nearly invisible post angled in the darkness and notched with tiny footholds. The night resolved itself in my favour.
In Dogon, it is best to sleep on the roof of someone’s home. You are not in the way. I climbed the precarious steps. It was too warm to use the sleeping bag for anything other than a ground sheet. On the rooftop across the campement, the French couple settled in for their sleep.
Earlier, Zak had looked above us, and seeing no moon, said, “There is no sky tonight.” Now, as I settled atop the sleeping bag, a curved sliver showed low on the horizon. There was a sky after all.
The wind was up that night and with it came a cleanness in the air. A prolonged donkey whine, sounding as though it was thrown from behind his temples, woke me. The morning moon was a small crescent. A rooster’s cry and the trill of a bird harmonized, and more animals joined in the pocket symphony. It had been this way with the village voices late the night before — a pleasant buzz.
To Timbuktu for a Haircut Page 22