On top of the cliff was a campement, owned by Zak’s uncle. In the middle of this sun-baked, desolate nowhere was a tworoom shack. Zak’s grandparents were in the next village. His little brother, Étienne, arrived as we rested under his uncle’s wooden lean-to.
With Étienne in the lead, we walked over the hot escarpment, dipping periodically into paths formed by centuries of water flow. We stepped across wide fissures that dropped thirty metres into an abyss and were bridged with a single large stone, precariously wedged. Earlier bridges were clearly visible below, where they’d tumbled.
One eroded path led to the hollow of a valley and stepped down and along for half a kilometre of rock pathway. A village was at the end of the path, where it climbed back up the sandstone shore of a gully. Children gawked at me and did not laugh. They let me pass, their eyes fixed on each stride I made, each footprint I left. They were fearful of the unknown; they did not often greet trekkers. None reached out to me until I stopped and opened the palm of my hand to them.
“It’s okay,” I said, hoping my soft tone conveyed my meaning, since my English words surely would not. A toddler ran up and touched my hand with a finger that I gently cupped. We smiled at one another. My right hand was tugged by another child, and these two children led me into the village. Zak and Étienne were nowhere to be seen.
Entering the ageless village required the children and me to climb over large rocks. Their tiny feet often gave me the right of way, as though they were unsure of my ability to cope with something they accomplished daily. I looked at some older kids, and they looked away. Eventually we made eye contact, which I took as a mark of acceptance.
Zak reappeared from a doorway. Ten kids and I reached the threshold of this wood stave house, and I entered it to be greeted by an old man’s hand and a Dogon phrase I did not understand, except for its ending in a smile that bade me enter farther. The man made as if to rise from his chair, but clearly had no intention of doing so. His hair was metal-grey and his goatee hung in strands, a growth of many years on his weathered face. His wife stood at the height of my chest and held my arms, one in each of her strong hands, pressing them to my side and speaking into my eyes. She clutched each arm, back and forth, in grasps that meant acceptance. I was Zak’s friend.
She sat.
“This the grandfather,” said Zak. “This the grandmother.” He smiled as a grandson would.
I sat next to his grandfather, one whom the French would call pampaloom — the “sweet grandpa.” He smiled, spoke of something in a different Dogon dialect than did Zak, who smirked with all his teeth. It was about me, and I was not supposed to know.
Zak’s grandmother twisted a stick of raw cotton, pulling it into useable thread around a wood holder; this activity predates the cotton gin by centuries. She tugged it tight to make it true, and her lips all the while curved in a grin. She stared.
Zak said, as though he needed to be sure I realized this: “We live not only this century, Rick, like you. We live last. Even one before. All at once.”
Ten children had come into the house and stayed on the grandmother’s side of the room. The girls sat on a bed next to her, and the boys leaned on posts. The expectation was that I’d sit, be observed and talked about. Nothing else need be done. The child who had first taken my hand looked timidly at me. I opened my hand his way again. He moved closer and I gently lifted him to my knee. His head slipped against my chest. He rested, eyes open, in confidence that this was safe. I just sat there, feeling pleased.
When we took our leave, I held Zak’s grandfather’s hands and caught the flickering of his eyes. We both knew we’d meet only this once, never again. Grandma stretched from where she sat, clasping my forearms, and when my hug did not embrace her enough, she rose to hold me, smiled, and held me more.
Out of Africa has come the theory that your heart is the size of the village you were born in, and I left Zak’s village knowing it was the largest.
Zak had become as much my sidekick as my guide. We returned to Tireli for lunch, from where we’d later depart for a long afternoon walk. Nearing our campement, I spotted a village sign that said poubelles. Later, we arrived at a stone box with the same word on it.
“What is a poubelle?” I asked Zak in French.
“A dustbin,” he replied in English.
“Zak, the whole country is a dustbin.”
He was right, though. It was a garbage receptacle, the first I’d seen in nearly a month. It seemed redundant.
It was Zak’s day to carry the heavy pack.
“I think we should get a porter,” he announced.
“A porter?”
“Yes. The way is rough tomorrow.”
I said, “This is today.”
“A porter will be good. I arrange here.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Is my solution,” Zak said. “I take care of it.”
Fifteen minutes later I looked over my shoulder to see Oumar on the road, coming from the village, with the tightly tied pack balanced on his head. The pack’s bulk was not at all out of proportion to his gratitude for the job.
I walked all afternoon through a landscape I had only imagined while reading books about this continent: tall grasses, sand dunes, and stony paths with occasional trees and random people. This part of Africa has little wildlife to fear, and that knowledge made my hiking alone, nearly a kilometre ahead of my guide, feel comfortable and safe.
So the crocodile was a surprise.
It waited on the shore of a large pond, beside the trail, a little too close for comfort. There, too, were its crocodile friends, fellow caimans — small crocodiles, about two metres in length. Nearby, two men sat behind a souvenir table offering: “Observation 500, Photographs 1,000.”
I continued my walk and waved to them as they moved to recapture the escapee. An hour later, when we were back together, Zak explained that there are hundreds of caimans in the pond, revered by the locals and hedged behind a stake fence on the perimeter. Once a week a trekker actually paid to take a picture, so it was worth the men’s patient wait. The caiman that had surprised me was a rogue; it would be taken care of. Not to worry.
“Well fed?” I asked, having seen valuable goats within range.
“Yes. Food in the water. Sometimes they eat their young.”
“It caught me unprepared,” I said. “I should have known better.”
Then came another of Zak’s eternal truths. He said, “Only travellers in danger those who think they experienced.”
Feeling nauseous at the end of the day’s walk, I shivered in the cool evening. I’d worn no protection against the sun that afternoon, so it was likely my carelessness that was at fault. But many children’s hands had held mine — where had those little hands been before? This was not the flu, but it felt like it. I swallowed a muscle relaxant, as my day pack had been tight and tingly on my hands for the last six kilometres. Maybe using a plastic coffee mug washed in local water had been the cause? I considered the Gravol in my pack, but the label warned users to avoid alcohol, and I craved one of their cool beers if I could find one. I showered, washed my scraped feet, and put antibiotic salve on them, especially on my right centre toe, which was still blood-encrusted with sand. My throat was a bit sore. I set aside a packet of Neo-Citran and an eight-hour Tylenol to put me to sleep.
Nema strode toward me and said, “Reek, couscous. Chicken.” This was a relief; I’d been expecting caiman stew. I’d come to realize that if you wished to have chicken, it was killed for you to ensure freshness (if not tenderness). If you wanted beef or other meat from a large animal, you would get it only if your timing matched the needs of the village. Often I missed variety by a day or two. Now that I knew what was being prepared for dinner, I asked that the chicken be cooked over an open fire. “Barbecue,” I said as a stupid Westerner.
“Onion?” Nema retorted.
We were among chickens, tiny and noisy. A larger one squawked and was taken to serve Nema’s latest epicu
rean twist. Plucked and washed, it was set in a pot to boil. Salad leaves arrived in a sack and were soaked in water, plucked in their own fashion and readied for consumption.
Nema cooked over the wood fire and, following my request, removed the chicken from the pot and placed it on the grill. She tossed in a bit too much piment, reddening the water. Into this she put potatoes. She’d arranged to receive fresh bread from the campement’s brick stove. She boiled a green pepper whole, then tossed it in a pan to sauté. The concoction was enriched with ash. Nema defined close-to-the-earth cooking. She’d also found something called l’aid (a term I’d never heard and have not heard since), which Zak said was like onion but wasn’t. The brat.
I found a not-too-warm Flag beer offered by a helping African hand. With it, the young man brought an African lantern, unsolicited, as he had noticed my note-taking. The lamp’s chimney was grey-brown with use, the mantle hesitated. Then wind got beneath the air vent and the flame glowed, but never brightly.
A youngster watched my scribbling. He peered close to the smoke from my pipe and pinched his nose and spoke. Zak, nearby, guffawed. “Smelly stick,” he translated.
Orona is what the family called their home, my campement for this night. It was owned by the local doctor. Dusk descended on the open courtyard in its nightly ritual. Tamarind wood fed our fire; this was not always so, as some in Dogon view it as a sacred wood. Its smell drew me and I stood nearby and watched Nema at work, flashlight clenched in her lips, bent over to tend both fire and food. She was young, sensuous, and talented, and her life would only get harder.
The wind was up, sending dust flying. The lanterns and the cooking fire gave a soft glow to the campement. I couldn’t shake the thought that Mexican-American cowboy towns were more like this than like the Disneyfied versions portrayed in the movies. Two green-leafed trees separated the bare courtyard into thirds. Fields surrounded the walls with crops and animals. A farm cart wheeled by, and I could hear the donkey’s wheeze. A mother and child came and sat close to me, readying their dinner in an aluminum pot. The woman joined a group of other women, who prepared dinner while I made light talk with their men. My lantern flickered. Tea was served in long draws.
I was the lone traveller in the village of Ireli, where Orona was located, and I liked the feeling.
Zak asked if my trip was what I had wanted. I was trying to find a way to say yes when he said: “You ask life, it give.”
The wind bristled the air and began to howl. It was a wilder wind than I’d known in the Dogon. Zak was cold and suggested that I sleep inside the house. He and Nema would bunk down on the earthen floor, sheltered by walls and a door. The roof above them was where I’d earlier laid out my sleeping bag, which now ruffled in the wind. There was a slight buffer in their house design that left a low rim half a foot above the roof’s surface. It furled rather than deflected the wind. I did not give in to the temptation to sleep indoors.
Zak corrected my mistakes several times on the next morning’s trail, shouting when he saw me meander down the wrong fork. He might yell from far behind; or, if it suited his pace, he’d wait and when I turned to look at him he pointed wildly, trusting that I saw him, and indicating that I must trudge across the plain to regain the proper trail. Extra paces in the hot sun. Then he’d shout to suggest a rest that he felt I needed. He knew that travellers need to pause most when they know it least.
Travel in Dogon was, for me, often about detours. I was singing to myself, happy with my pace for over an hour, when a small boy ran up shouting, “Sir, sir, la geed.La geed.” (That is how I heard it.) It was a new phrase to me, and I struggled to interpret its meaning. He motioned back along the path I’d come from and repeated the term “Geed.”That would be “the guide,” Zak by most definitions, but there was no one to be seen. The lad tugged at my T-shirt, and I had enough sense to follow. Thirty minutes later, he’d retraced my walk to where Zak rested and offered trenchant advice: “Rick, time. Stop. You too far.” That’s all there was to know.
It was later explained to me that in remote parts of Africa they have a perspective about travel based on reliance upon one another and safety. When you leave a village on a journey, you have a choice. If you wish to go fast, then go alone; if you wish to go far, then go together.
A trekker from Germany walked by in a Dogon hat, a bonnet of sorts that drooped on either side, tassels hanging. It was incongruous. Few things reminded me more of our shrinking and distorted world than a Malian in a Chicago Bulls T-shirt or a waif drawing well water while wearing a Manchester United jersey as a smock. I had brought with me a handful of ballpoint pens from a stash at home, their designations Ritz, Fairmont, Four Seasons, and, as I handed them out on this trip, their names had become as insignificant here as the third-hand branded clothes the Malian shepherds wore in the desert: Nike, New York Yankees, Marlboro. At first those reminders of home seemed like an intrusion, until I learned that such attire made its way there through American and European donations, from when we clean out our closets of no longer wanted clothing.
A woman pounding millet, or goats grazing, are ubiquitous scenes in the farming economy of Dogon Country.
You do not drink in Dogon just because you are thirsty. Water must last the journey. You do not whistle, do not make idle chatter, because it dries the throat — a discovery I would take home with me. From the water bottle, you at best get a wilting quench. I learned the difference between warm water and warm water — my standards shifted like the sands. Water was always a serious issue in Dogon; little of it fell to the ground without further use. Where I encountered people at wells, I passed my hat to them as they pumped and cupped it back over my head in a spill they approved of, but only once. More was too much.
And the breeze was never benign. As it cooled the walker, it blew sand against the gardener. Although people built slatted fences to thwart this, the fences functioned more to sift the sand. They were only ramparts, a temporary, permeable barrier to the ever-patient sand battalions. Agriculture is at the heart of Dogon’s subsistence economy — those who can grow, do so and put their products into the cycle of trading food for rope, car parts, utensils, or labour. What cannot be sold for cash is bartered.
That day at noon we passed at least three hours in the shade, sleeping or sitting silently — the need for midday conversation evaporated. Zak called this nitege, which might be Dogon for siesta. The temperature was thirty-five degrees, ten more than it was comfortable to move in, however, Nema made a fire, cooked spaghetti, and served it with a thin gravy. She prepared a leafy salad, high on the warning list for travellers to avoid: breeding ground for bacteria, washed in local water. The dressing was onion juice with herbs.
Zak showed his proficiency in languages when we stopped among his kinfolk or other travellers, transferring from one language or dialect to another with the turn of his head. He had been true to his word that we’d talk in French while in Dogon, though my linguistic laziness in the heat made me less diligent than I’d intended. Our food talk and planning for the afternoon had been in French for the past half hour, and I was the oft-corrected student. We did not misunderstand each other because our respective home countries’ French accents were different. Rather, I misused words, made up words, and bracketed French terms with English explanations.
Zak was a patient man; only when he tired of my predatory approach to language did he interrupt as I attempted to speak in French. Zak sighed at my fractured phrases. “Rick, I have broken English,” he said. “You have unfixable French.”
As we left the outskirts of a village we saw four low buildings, each with two rooms. “Rick, is the school,” Zak announced. One structure had a third room attached; as we walked toward it Zak said, “You must meet my teacher.” And so it was that I met the teacher of my teacher.
A strapping, handsome man, perhaps thirty-five years old, smiled at Zak. His hand reached far into the space between them. The man’s look of inquiry was no doubt related to the question of whethe
r I was visiting out of genuine interest or happenstance.
“The headmaster wants show you students,” Zak said as we crossed the schoolyard to one of the classrooms.
I ducked into the dim room, its windows open to the air. Facing the blackboard at the front, sixty-nine students suddenly went quiet (I counted them before I left). Their teacher was pleased to see me, a welcome diversion that sparked attention. I was welcomed in French and replied in kind. It was clear that he wished me to speak to the class.
“I am from Canada,” I said in French, and there were nods. “Canada is a very fine country. Mali is a very fine country.” They smiled as a class often does, together. “Mali and Canada are friends.” The students liked that.
“Let me take you to the English class,” the headmaster said. He led me past another classroom window, into which I peeked as we walked by, causing laughter. Many of the students rose from their desks to see me better. The gentle reprimand of their teacher drifted out the window, and they sat back down. There was a wall and another window, so again I poked my white face in, just because I could, and again a disruption resulted and the teacher quelled the disturbance I had caused.
There was no recess here. The children were not at play; it was serious study. “Many of them walk nine kilometres every school day,” said the headmaster. “Difficult.”
“I understand, given how difficult the sand is,” I observed, citing my own weakness (and not understanding at all).
“It is not that. It is that most have no lunch to bring. No food,” he said. “That is difficult. No one learns when their stomach is noisy.”
Zak elaborated on what I had not grasped: “Nine kilometres walk home again, before they eat.”
In the English class there was more for me to say, as they were eager to hear a native speaker of that tongue. Rummaging through my pack, I found maple leaf stickers and a few iron-on flags, which I gave to the teacher. Spoiling all sense of propriety, I gave one each to three girls in the front row and walked down an aisle to share stickers at random.
To Timbuktu for a Haircut Page 25