Travel: Dogon Country/Mopti

After 6 months here, Jim and I finally did something touristy :) We just got back from a quick trip to Dogon Country and then over to Mopti, the port city along the Niger and Bani rivers.

To give you a bit of background, Dogon Country consists of a series of villages located along the base and plateau of cliffs which look out onto the savannah. Oral tradition says that the area was once occupied by the Tellem people (supposedly tiny and magical –  Malian leprechauns if you will), and their tiny houses can still be seen today. The Dogon people moved in a few centuries later and have been there ever since. The architecture, language, food, and culture is all very different from the south of Mali. Therefore, beautiful views of landscape combined with interesting culture = one of Mali’s tourist hotspots.

We hired a Dogon guide who also happens to be the counterpart to a fellow PCV and headed off.  Our general schedule was to wake up at  6am, hike until noon, stop at a village for lunch, wander around the shops and winding little streets, before continuing on our way to the village where we would eat dinner and spend the night. Most Dogon villages have “campments”   which are basically hotels/hostels built of mud and wood where tourists and guides can camp out on the mud roof, eat traditional food, and listen to traditional music. Its simple accommodations (no hot showers or toilet paper) but sleeping under the stars and waking up to the sun hitting those cliffs was breathtaking.

 

After our hike, we headed over to Mopti for a night. This bustling city sits right where Niger and Bani Rivers converge so you can visit boat-building sheds, fishing villages, and the markets full of items being shipped to and from Timbuktu…literally. Malians will try to sell it to you as “The Venice of Mali,” because you can hire something pretty similar to a gondola and have a guide take you around the shores. We ate fresh fish at a restaurant overlooking the harbor, walked around the harbor, hired out a personal Malian gondola for 2 hours and explored the nearby fishing villages as the sun set, and finished with French-style pizza.

So now its back to village we go. Lined up for the next month are community meetings in order to come to a final consensus/action plan on some of our projects. We also hope to start some smaller things like hand washing activities, a bimonthly radio show, and a tree nursery. It can be a little overwhelming at times because it seems that everywhere you look, people need help and there are possible projects there. But the hard part comes in finalizing what resources you have to get the more effective and sustainable projects completed.  So please continually keep us in your prayers. Have a wonderful January!

 

~Joye (and Jim)