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Out the backof Timbuktu

MaskedDogon dancerin Tireli, Mali.Below,Nomborivillage andtheBandiagaraescarpmentat sunset.Pictures:Anthony Ham

Anthony Ham provides an intimate portrait of the Dogon people of Mali, inWest Africa. It’s a country where Indiana Jones would feel right at home.

‘The Dogon woman in her 50shas two tourist suitcasesbalanced on her head, a childtied to her back and a bucket ineach hand. She offers to carryme on top.’

THE sounds of villageAfrica rise from theboulder-strewn land-scape and announcethat we have leftbehind the noise andclamour of the city.

All across the village of Dourou,high atop an escarpment, the ‘‘toc-toc, toctoc’’ of women poundingmillet echoes off the rocks like anensemble of African drums.

The children who surround ussqueal and giggle and play. Then,just beyond the village outskirts,the last child of Dourou is calledhome by his mother and we areleft with the silence of the greatmonoliths of stone.

‘‘Are you ready?’’ asks HamadouOuologuem, my Dogon guide. Iam ready. We descend intoanother kingdom.

Down through the narrow can-yons we climb, clambering onramshackle wooden ladders,searching for footholds and for ourfirst glimpse of a world that forcenturies lay hidden from out-siders.

High above us in the sheer rockwalls of the escarpment, smallcocoon-like caves are all thatremain of the Tellem, the Peopleof the Cliffs, who once inhabitedthe land. No one knows where theTellem came from, or whatbecame of them. They live on onlyin the tales told by the Dogon.

According to the Dogon, theTellem were a small, red-skinnedpeople who made their homes,sheltered from their enemies,along the rocky perches and cavesof the escarpment wall. Theyhunted atop the plateau, encirclingtheir prey before driving themdown off the cliffs.

At the end of the day, the Tel-lem returned home by scaling thevertiginous walls using vines andcreepers, although the Dogon areso in awe of Tellem agility thatthey ascribe to them magicalpowers, including the ability to fly.

As my eyes pan down from theTellem caves, a landscape of cine-matic beauty sweeps into view.The cliffs, hundreds of metres highand turned amber by the settingsun, yield to villages that grow outinto the valley floor like an exten-sion of the escarpment. A scarcelyperceptible mist — perhaps it issmoke from the cooking fires ofNombori — hangs above thebroad, sere river valley thatstretches out to the east. The hor-izon lies somewhere out beyondthe ridge of sand dunes that closeoff this Dogon world from theplains extending deep into theheart of Africa.

I grasp for the nearest boulderto steady myself.

After a careful, halting descentto the valley floor, we find our-selves among a small forest ofbaobab trees, well known innorthern Australia. So improbableis their appearance that some cul-tures, the Dogon among them,have it that the tree once soangered the gods that it was rip-ped from the ground andreplanted upside down as eternalpunishment.

As for other peoples, the hollowtrunks serve as reservoirs of waterin times of drought and the podscan be used to fashion bowls or tomake slow-burning fires for smok-ing fish. Baobab leaves are alsoused in traditional medicines.

Pendulous fruits — knownamong the Dogon as monkeybread — hang like teardrops fromthe gnarled branches. Perhapswith dinner on his mind,Hamadou eyes the fruit withenthusiasm and tells how hismother used to crush the leavesand seeds into a fine powder,which she used in sauces or tomake juice.

Nombori is preparing for night-fall as we arrive and begin toclimb its stone paths. We pass thewell where women gather. ToHamadou’s called greetings, thewomen reply in unison‘‘Se-oSe-oSe-o’’ (‘‘fine, fine,fine’’), which rises up from theearth.

As we near the summit ofNombori, which now seemsdwarfed by the looming darknessof the cliffs, we find a sinewy,friendly Dogon woman in her 50s.She has two tourist suitcases bal-anced on her head, a child tied toher back and a bucket in eachhand. She offers to carry me ontop, but instead settles for aDogon dance.

And then darkness is upon us,a night black as black in this vil-lage without electricity in this landwithout roads. While we rest, ayoung Dogon man named Antoinedraws close, eager to practise hisEnglish. Every day, he tells us, heleaves home at 6am and climbs fortwo hours up the path to the

school in Dourou, driven by thehope that he will one day becomea guide like Hamadou.

Unable to sleep, I am captivatedby the stars that fill the sky abovewhere we lie on the roof of thechief’s compound. I search in vainfor Sirius, which the Dogon callthe Dog Star. It is easy to considertraditional villages such as these tobe simple or naive. But the Dogonhave always believed that Siriusconsisted of three stars, longbefore a powerful radio telescopediscovered the third star in 1995and gave such knowledge to oursupposedly more sophisticatedworld.

Silence descends as the villagefalls softly to sleep. In the morningwe are woken before sunrise by agoat symphony and by the brayingof donkeys, a cacophony that ech-oes off the escarpment. As I rise,Antoine calls my name from farout across the village, wishing mea fine journey as he begins hisdaily trek to school. I am struck,not for the first time, by theinnocent goodwill andgenerosity of spirit that comeso easily to the Dogon. Icannot help but concludethat these villagers, whoshower such gentle kind-ness upon the travellers intheir midst, possess all theopen-hearted grace andcivility that we have lostfrom our own world.

It is not long, however, beforeour path along the base of theescarpment and away fromNombori brings the first sense ofdiscord to our day. Childrenscramble towards us, forsaking shysmiles for shouted demands forgifts. Small piles of tourists’ rub-bish litter the path. Hamadoushakes his head, saddened that wehave left behind the unsulliedcharms of Nombori.

‘‘I see too many changes sincetourists started coming here,’’ hesays. ‘‘Dogon people no longerwear traditional clothes, they askmoney for photos and the childrenall ask for something. Before, the

Dogon people were nicer. Theywere very friendly. Now everyoneis asking for money and no onewants to work.’’

But this thoughtful Dogon manknows that preserving the old waysis complicated. ‘‘If I go to a villageand say, ‘You must keep the trad-itional customs,’ they say to me,‘‘If the village is better, why doyou live in the city?’’ When theysay that, I cannot say anythingbecause I love my village, but Ialso do not know if I could nowlive without electricity, cars, tele-vision, internet and cinema.

Perhaps these villagers should alsohave that right.’’

The deeper we venture into theDogon Country, the moreHamadou lapses into silence. Allalong the valley floor, a new gen-eration of Dogon is coming downthe mountain, abandoning thehouses that cling to the lowerledges of the escarpment and leav-ing half-empty villages in theirwake. In Komokan, where thephenomenon is particularly pro-nounced, Hamadou sighs withdespair. ‘‘All of these villages, theyare nearly empty. One day, no one

will live here. The life, it is easieron the plains.’’

There is still magic at everyturn, to be sure. There are sacredcrocodiles lounging by the water inAmani. Enchanted, conical mud-and-millet granary stores stand sil-houetted against the cliffs. Villageseverywhere contain a secret andsacred gathering of shrines and fet-ishes with signs and symbolsknown only to the Dogon.

In Tireli, masked dancers re-enact the ceremonies that call onthe dead to cease their wanderingamong the world of the spirits andtake refuge in the masks. Old menin indigo cloth beat out rhythmson ancient drums, while dancerscircle with mock menace in maskssuch as the kanaga (a bird-likemask that protects against ven-geance) or the house-like sirige,which symbolises the place wheretraditions are passed on to theyounger generation.

But these ceremonies — intri-cate, self-assured and rich insymbolism — are now performedlargely for tourists. There are somevillages where the inhabitants —recently converted adherents toIslam or Christianity — no longerknow what the dances mean, let

alone how to perform them.Momentarily uplifted by the spiritof the dance, Hamadou watches, atonce proud of his people and nos-talgic at the thought that we arewitnessing a world that may soondisappear.

By the time we reach Ireli,spectacularly beautiful and alivewith activity, we have made ourpeace with the world. Great bao-bab trees encircle ponds offlowering lilies.

A young boy astride a bullockpulls alongside us, studies us for amoment, and then continues onhis way, clearly having decided thathe has more important things todo. The elders of Ireli sit beneaththe toguna and regard us with theimpenetrable gaze of the ancients,all the while initiating a handful ofyoung men into the stories ofDogon history.

High above the village, I cansee the path that weaves upthrough the escarpment and intoan altogether more clamorousworld.

Tomorrow we shall take thatpath and leave behind, perhapsforever, the wonder at large in thisendangered but resilient outpost oftradition, this world apart.

Fast facts

400KM0▲N

MAURITANIA

NIGERIA

GUINEA

GHANA

BENIN

CÔTE D’IVOIRE

ALGERIA

NIGER

MALI

LIBERIA

Volta

Niger

Tropic of Cancer

Bamako

Timbuktu(Tombouctou)

Ireli

Gulf of Guinea

S A H A R A

BURKINA FASO

Mopti Dourou

AFRICAGetting there: There are nodirect flights from Australiato Mali but Point-Afrique(www.point-afrique.com)flies from Paris andMarseilles to Mopti for$366 (one-way, plus taxes)a couple of times a week.There is regular transportfrom Mopti to Bandiagara(80 km), one of the gate-way towns to the Dogoncountry, from where taxis toDourou can be arranged.

Staying and eating: Whilein some villages it is poss-ible to sleep on the roof ofthe chief’s compound, mostDogon villages have a‘‘campement’’ where mat-tresses ($2) and meals($2.50-$4.50) are avail-able. Guide costs start from $15 a day.Most villages charge a $1 tourist tax.

Local myth: In Dogon cosmology, theearth is an oval which is encircled by asnake with its tail in its mouth, therebyprotecting the earth from the ocean. TheDogon believe that if they don’t makean annual sacrifice to the snake’s spirit,the snake will uncoil and allow theoceans in to destroy the world. For threemonths every year, the snake releases

its tail a little to allow the rains of therainy season.

Further reading: Dogon — Africa’sPeople of the Cliffs, by Stephanie Holly-man and Walter van Beek, is a stunnin-gly photographed coffee table book.Lonely Planet’s guide to West Africacontains extensive coverage of Mali’sDogon country. (Anthony Ham’s contri-butions to the forthcoming sixth editioninclude the Mali chapter).