16 December 2005 - 10:17
It’s strange how some places on a completely different continent can feel like home, but Dogon Country did that for me. First, a little background…
The area which is now known as Dogon Country was once inhabited by Tellem people who built houses and storage spaces high up in the cliff faces along the ridge that is the backbone of Dogon Country. At that time, the Dogon lived in the southern part of what is now Mali. When Muslim invaders moved into the area and demanded conversion to Islam, the Dogon people decided to just move to the area that would come to be called Dogon Country instead. The fact that this area was already inhabited by the hunter/gatherer Tellem people didn’t bother them, and being farmers, they set up camp and started cutting down trees for farmland. Since the animals that the Tellem had formerly hunted now had nowhere to hide, they moved further south, soon followed by meat-loving Tellem, who eventually interbred with other people in their new land and faded into oblivion, survived only by their ancient mud cliff houses.
Which brings me to why I felt at home…the Tellem houses, nestled so high up in the cliffs that many of them were impossible to reach, looked a lot like the Anasazi cliff dwellings in Arizona. Some of them seemed impossible to reach – the Dogon tell stories of how the Tellem people had wings, but most people accept the theory that in greener times, vines grew all over the mountain, making the houses accessible but very secure (except in the rare occasion when monkeys with lions on their backs climbed the vines up to the houses, where the lions attacked the inhabitants, but I don’t think that happened very often). The rough, rugged mountain stretching out in front of me reminded me a lot of the Arizona landscape too. Then there were the pockets of millet, planted into every little crook and cranny with any small amount of dirt, all the way up the side of the mountain – the efficient use of space made me recall the fields of cotton back home, both making incredibly efficient use of scarce resources in a harsh climate. And finally, there were the Dogon rituals – dances, wooden masks, costumes, carved wooden statues and doors and ladders, and ceremonies of an animist people that had a striking resemblance to many Native American traditions.
Overall, Dogon Country was really beautiful, just like the guide book says. But being there reminded me of why I hate being a tourist – it’s too expensive. Each of the three people in my group shelled out over a hundred bucks (which was $100 more than I had planned to spend, and part of the reason I’m broke now) for a crappy guide that just walked around with us and didn’t even carry his own bag. Which brings me to…
“How Andrew Almost Died in Dogon.” Our guide was admittedly crappy. But he was also 6’4”, 300 lbs, and king in a country where we didn’t speak the local language, not to mention our ride back to civilization. He also wore a really big metal ring that looked like it could crack skulls. So when he gave us his comment book (not surprisingly filled with “wow! U R awesome, dude!”-type comments) to write in, and Andrew wrote “Hassimi did a mediocre job, and we didn’t really think he was that great of a guide for the price we paid,” that was a Bad Idea. Our ride home was a little chilly, despite the hot sun outside and lack of air conditioning in the car. Halfway there, just when we thought we might make it back without incident, Hassimi turned around (still going full speed on a twisting, winding road with no shoulder) with an evil glare that spelled DEATH. I pulled my turban over the exposed parts of my face, hoping that if I couldn’t see him, maybe he wouldn’t see me, and he’d kill me last. “WHY DID YOU WRITE HASSIMI MEDIOC (Hassimi speaks English, just not perfectly) IN MY GOOD BOOK?! YOU ARE UNGRATEFUL, BAD MAN, ANDREW!!” he roared. He continued on for several minutes, turning around in his seat again and again to keep yelling, but I was spared, for now. It became evident that Hassimi was just angry about (what he saw as) being publicly humiliated by Andrew’s comments in his precious book. Somewhere along the line, in Management class or maybe Cross-Culture PC training, I learned about helping people save face to diffuse situations, so I thought I’d give it a shot. “Hassimi, in English, ‘mediocre’ means OK, not bad. Andrew only wrote that because he was sad that you didn’t show us more of your beautiful country, but maybe that was because we only had four days here, huh?” It worked. Hassimi returned to his driving, and Andrew started breathing again. Ten minutes later, Hassimi was joking with us again in a manner that hinted at a little bit of schizophrenia. We made it home without further incident, and he even offered to drive us to Mopti, half an hour away, for free. Weird. Whatever. All I know is that I saved Andrew’s life, and so now he technically owes me his life and has to be my slave.
The next morning, the three of us packed up and headed to Djenne, which Andrew said was supposed to be cool. It was indeed cool, just not cool enough for the four-hour, 17-people-crammed-in-the-bed-of-a-tiny-pickup ride that we took out to see it. Djenne was supposed to be cool because it was Home of the World’s Biggest Mud Mosque, which was about as exciting as seeing the World’s Biggest Ball of String in Iowa or wherever – pretty interesting in a “wow – I wonder how they made (a mosque that big entirely out of mud/ a ball of string that big)” kind of way, but there wasn’t much else to see around there. And then there were the guides. This area of Mali is pretty touristy, as I imagine most “World’s Biggest _____” sites are, so the guides were horrendous. We finally paid a guy a few bucks to show us around, just to keep the other guides away. This guide sucked even worse than the Dogon guide, but we were smart this time – we chose a guy who we could beat up if it came down to it. We got into it with this guy too, ending with this exchange…
me: “Thanks, man. You were an awesome guide! I’m going to recommend you to all my friends!”
him: “How can you do this, telling your friends? You don’t even know my name!”
me: “Uh, yeah, I was going to tell them to look for the guy with the white shirt who is an awesome guide…”
him: “Ha! I do not wear this shirt every day! I am not poor! I have many shirts. I change them every day!”
me: “Cool, man. Maybe you should change your attitude too, jerk.”
Then we left.
We got the next car out of town (which means that we ended up spending more time getting there than we did staying at the place). Our luck changed back at the main road, and we managed to flag down a passing bus just after we finished the watermelon I had brought along for a late lunch and made it back to Bamako in record time, where we spent a few days. We were on the next train to Kayes, where we had planned to split up – I was going to stay overnight, and Rachel and Andrew were heading to Senegal, but I was ready to get home, so I just went to the garage and got a car out of town. Then I traveled through three countries and four border police points in three cars and a boat, all within seven hours. No problems, despite half of the border police trying to get a little bribe out of me…
“It costs 1000 (or 2000, or whatever random amount they think they can get out of me) CFA for the stamp.”
“A thousand CFA? That’s not true. Give me my passport, please.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
(training: give them a way to save face, remember?) “No, I think maybe you just forgot that Peace Corps volunteers don’t pay the stamp fee. Here’s my Peace Corps ID. I’m just a volunteer. We don’t ever pay.”
“Right, ok, take your passport.”
Then, finally, Mauritania.
