Mali: Redeemed by Dogons

Without a plan from Ghana I heard of a Burkina Faso film festival, from Burkina talk of Dogons in Mali, in Dogon Country I found myself a long way off track. I've been heading north and west when Cameroon, my exit from Africa, is east and south. I need a visa for Cameroon which I can get in Nigeria, a Nigerian from Niger and a Nigerian entry via Benin. Mali was a sound nomination for the worlds second most shithouse country until it was redeemed by gun-tooting animist Dogons in a funeral from another world. I left before the triennial circumcision festival started, where the boys line up to get chopped on the same rock, next to the sacred rock where the knife is sharpened and I was well gone before the foot race that determines their lives. First place receiving a plot of land, second place the most beautiful girl in the village, third place receiving three cows of which he would lose one to a sacrifice and last place banished from the village in shame.

I crossed into Mali, the most expensive poorest country in the world from Burkina with a case of giardia that I thought might be malaria. In a hospital of eighteen year old French speaking chain smoking doctors I was correctly diagnosed with the translated help of the stoned guy who had turned a squat into a hotel where I found myself staying. A course of antibiotics and I was ready for another hundred kilometre bus journey that would take ten hours. A stop every thirty minutes, the driver leaving to pay a bribe at the regular police checkpoints, another stop to talk to his mates, the bus breaks down, two hours to watch the sunset, a stop for prayer, a stop to eat, a toilet stop, an internal customs check, one passenger gets off, five get on, they argue with the conductor and are kicked off, three petrol stations we pull into to find the cheapest price and for the driver to have a chat, another without reason and another for good measure. Forty degrees outside, no aircon in an aircon bus where the windows are sealed shut, a bus soaked in sweat. The bus, car, minibus, converted truck invaded at every regular stop by a dozen women plying the aisles selling their wares all balanced on their heads, one with nuts, another frozen tap water tied in a plastic bag, a kid with bananas, bread, meat on sticks wrapped in a torn corner of a used cement bag, muffins, frozen juice, plantain and a dozen things I cant identify. Half of them are selling the same thing, they are screaming to be heard above each other until one finally gets a sale, muffins for fifty cents, she is handed the equivalent of five dollars and goes into spin, there is no change, there is never any change, she rejects the sale.

One currency for a dozen countries printed by a country in the midst of a civil war. I try and buy a drink in a store, I hand across two dollars for a one dollar drink, 'no' exact change only, change is too precious, she won't sell me the drink. She would rather lose business than their change. The capital city called Bamako has dirt roads, goats, American Peace Corp volunteers, women braiding their hair and music. I stayed in the house of a Ghanian car importer, two a month from Europe, a good business if government taxes are avoided. The batteries bought on the street are made in Mali, legally exported to Burkina Faso then smuggled back into Mali to avoid local taxes. He is the last of 37 children, his father was a local King who had seven wives. We went out to see excellent Malian live music one night and the other Malian reggae. Africans copying amaicans longing to be Africans. They sing about returning to Africa from Africa. The circle is complete, nothing exists, there are no roots, just confusion cloaked in 'Jah Rastarfari'. A bus terminal that is the worst in the world, more hustlers than customers, the whole country is feeding on itself, everyone screaming to sell nothing at the highest price possible. They would rather lose the business than accept anything below a first world price. The bus company will lose my business rather than have me pay the correct fare, they cannot believe a white man will not pay more, I am rich, white people give them things, this is a country of beggars that put the Indian beggars to shame. A bus should go around Mali collecting beggars, leave them at the border with the Ivory Coast, those who make it through the civil war alive can board a cargo ship bound for India where they can learn the proper respectful art of begging, the art of begging with shame. An old woman begs for candy, an old man begs for a pen, kids beg for the leftovers from my plate, a guy looking at another guy fixing a motor bike begs for a pen, a kid begs for a watch, an adult for my glasses, an old man can't understand why I won't give him my torch. This is beggar culture extraordinaire, the worlds greatest beggars, the most persistent, kids caked in mud, unwashed, unnamed ask for whatever they see.

There are two types of foreigners in the country the young white girls with no skills who want to help the poor black people and the package French tourists, they all hand out and the Malians can't understand why I don't. This is dependency at its most disgusting, all international aid to Mali should be scrapped, these are people without self-respect, they should stand on their own. They live in a desert and have a thousand children. It is time to be cruel, evolution has been distorted be guilt, the most fucked up societies are populating the planet, there is reward for the most failed strategies, Asia is rising and this place just goes backwards. The Niger river is perfectly West African, it starts near the sea, heads inland to be evaporated by the desert before crawling into Nigeria. So we are at the stage where Mali is in outright second place as the worlds second most shithouse country, I'ld been murdered by bus rides, giardia, first world prices, beggars, hustlers, unending heat, boring food, dehydration through sweat and diarrhea, people with the conversation skills of a parrot and a blankness that says vacant. Its still a long way off Guyana which is in outright first place.

I thought the place was without redemption, until an aid worker talked me into heading to Dogon country, then a Dutch guy who had settled in Mali, then I met an American traveller who spoke French and was on a mission to Dogon on the cheap. I headed off in a taxi with seven passengers, a driver and a Ghanian Christian on a mission to have the Bible dictated in the Dogon language, burnt to CD, posted to America, placed on an MP3 player, sealed so it can't be modified, deleted or have music added, powered by an inbuilt battery, recharged by the sun, three buttons, back a gospel, forward a gospel, play/pause, Christianity at its most scientific. The Dogons are sold as one of the last remaining Africans, unconverted animists, culturally intact, unruined by Muslims or Christians, a living, smiling, begging museum into another age. The Christian is on a mission to bring them civilisation, it is the only competition in the country, will they become Muslims and piss squatting, will they become Christians and piss standing or will they maintain their culture and piss wherever and in whatever direction they want. Dogon country is a really a massive scam, a cartel of highly priced guides who are sweet until they realise no money is heading their way, then threats follow. Against all advice we headed off without a guide, spending four days walking between villages, hiring local guides in the places we wanted to visit. Walking through one Dogon village a guy approached me and my French-American-Canadian travelling companion named Ted and asked if we wanted to stay at his hotel, we said no, he said he would call the police and get us locked up in the gaol unless we stayed at his hotel, we walked on. So you wondering when Mali's redemption will happen?

We slept the first night in Dogon country frozen on a roof then we went down the escarpment to a village called Banani. We were told there would be a funeral, the French tourists could not sleep the night before as the villagers let off their guns through the night. The woman had died a year previously, the funeral went for days, we witnessed one. They gathered in a circle, women on one side, men on the other, on a small plateau under the cliff slightly above the village. On a rock in the middle they placed some of the dead woman's possessions, the drums started, then the men came in blazing with ancient decorated guns, muskets from another age, half of which misfired. A single man or a group of three at a time would do a funeral dance around the dead woman's possessions, the singing would get louder with each pass until an equilibrium was reached, drums and voices in tune and then they would fire their guns into the rock to the howls of the women. Without a thought for gun safety, they loaded their guns, fired at the singing women to their screams, clouds of dust and gunpowder fusing in one of the wildest sights of my life. To finish the men leapt from rock to rock at the edge of the circle, each one sent off by the village Hogon, the priest, firing their guns off randomly into the air, at rocks, without aim. Later in the night, close to sleep drums started and we walked down to a friendly small scale dance contest, men beating upside down bowls and a few drums, a piece of cloth placed next to the drummers for entry, a one foot hop backwards, asses rhythmically punching backwards, a cloud of dust, one on one, women dancing with sleeping babies strapped to their backs, men drunk on millet beer falling over in laughter, the dancers feet and bums lit by flashlight in a village without electricity. We walked for a few days between villages, in searing heat that left me drinking six litres of liquid a day and too dehydrated to piss. This is the Sahel, the edge of the Sahara, it rains once a year, it is so dry that the sweat on my brow evaporates before I can wipe it off. On entering the edge of a village territory a dozen children would attach themselves, asking for candy, pens, gifts.

We slept on roofs, under the stars, a respite from the heat. The Dogons smoked too much one night, saw a snake and lit a bonfire to kill it searing one side of the house. Our last village was Dounan where we caught the market bus back to the main town that serves as an entry point to Dogon country. The market was full of colour, a topless woman with a baby sucking on each tit, goats and unimaginable food. Guideless, we paid our village tax, walked off from our place of rest to see the village. Weaving through alleys serving as main roads past mud brick houses, a turn every few metres in a village where a path never runs straight we found ourselves in an open rock area with a view, a moment to take a photo was interrupted by youths telling us off, we had walked onto a piece of land where only the initiated may enter. We were summoned before three sleeping village elders in a togu-na, the place to resolve disputes, nine rocks supporting a square roof made of a tightly crisscrossed pile of wood. The roof two feet high forcing everyone into a crouch, a dispute resolution mechanism, to get fired up, to stand up impossible, the layers of wood cooling the heat and tempers. For our trespass we paid a $2 fine for the purchase of a chicken to be sacrificed in order to appease the Gods. From Dogon country I headed east towards Gao, the last town before Niger, through endless quantities of sand and dust, bus break downs, five hours late into a town with streets of sand. A stamp from the police where they unsuccessfully tried to extract a bribe. We departed late afternoon, I sat with broken knees in a converted truck through a dirt road to a border post that was closed. We spent the night sleeping in the open on the ground, for the bus to leave Gao for the border early in the morning and pass through to Niger in one day unimaginable, only the most difficult will do, the most illogical, the most time consuming, the most inefficient. When the sun rose the border opened and we passed into Niger, from one desert country to another, from the fourth poorest country in the world to the poorest. My companion was a Bangladeshi, he had been working in Dubai for five years then had spent his savings on three unsuccessful attempts at getting into Spain. He had flown from Dubai to Libya, transited Niger, Mali then to Algeria where he had been caught by the police crossing into Morocco three times. They threw him back into the desert, each attempt had cost him five thousand dollars to smugglers. The last stamp in his passport was an exit stamp from Dubai. The Malian border officials were bemused by his lack of stamps, they asked for a two dollar bribe, after a year without a stamp he obtained an exit stamp from Mali. He entered Niger without a visa, not thinking he would need one, the police left him with only ten euros, a stamp into the country, I bought him lunch, changed his last money into the local currency, CFA. He had set out from one of the poorest countries in Asia to get to the wealth of Europe and now he found himself in the poorest country on earth with only ten euros to his name. He had heard that South Africa was rich, this had become his new dream, he wanted to know where it was, I showed him on the map, he sighed, a long way from West Africa. My opinion of West Africa is currently low, Mali is not the second most shithouse country in the world but I want to get out, its too hard on my head, India and Bangladesh are easy by comparison. The Dogons were a much needed highlight amongst a stampede of stupidity. I can't continue to talk to people and receive blank looks, its too depressing, a regional cerebral vacation has little touristic appeal. Mali was a freak show and it will become more amusing the further I get away from it. I've uploaded photos of Dogon country: http://wokling.com/v/Mali/

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