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Published: February 17th 2011
Hello everyone, sorry for the delay in blogs but have been out of e-mail contact for last 3 weeks. In the last week of our travels in Ethiopia - lots to tell you all about but that will have to wait until we finish off Mali. Hope you are all well and safe. Regards, Roslyn.
Date: 29/12/2010
Lunch: Teli.....Evening: Ende
This morning we walked 4km from Kani Kombole to Teli - a reasonable sized village with Tellem dwellings. There is a well preserved Tellem village along the escarpment which is abandoned today but sometimes used for storage in the graneries and for burial sites.
The Tellem people eventually moved out of the escarpment village and down onto the plain, however, it was a great experience to climb around this village and learn about the lifestyle - including burial rituals, menstration houses, special places for the spiritual leaders, etc.
The graneries are one of the most prominent sites in each village. These mud pillboxes with thatched roofs like witches' hats are used to store millet and other wordly goods e.g. clothes, pottery, jewelery,food for the family - depending whether the granery belongs to a man or woman.
In Teli I was approached by one of the village women (several villages have formed a woman's co-op) and asked to contribute to their cause. At my request the women took me into the village proper and showed me how they raised their money. They buy cotton in the market place, then spin it into thread. The men then weave it into approx 4 inch wide fabric strips which are then returned to the women to decorate and make items - like blankets, scarves, etc.
All funds raised by the women goes to support the women of their village - if some one is hungry - the women have their own gainery which was full of millet, peanuts, etc. They also help to pay for medical assistance as required. Obviously I was happy to contribute to their cause and was grateful for the insight into their daily life.
Each village has an encampment which provides accommodation and meals to travellers. There encampments provide you some reprive from the kids and locals trying to sell you something but most encampments have their own "shop" and it appears some sellers have the right to get inside and hopefully make
Horticulture
Saw this tree and its fruit everywhere in Dogon. People throw their walking sticks up into the tree to get the fruit to fall to the ground......sometime takes a while to manage a direct hit.a sale.
You can sit out the heat of the day by resting/sleeping on a foam matress under a thatched roof on a rooftop; mix with other travellers and exchange tales; get to know the locals; or - as we found - there is always music in encampments and at Teli we had a ball - it is one of the most memorable lunch times that our group had.
At Teli we picked up another guide to walk with us and his younger brother (about 15). Typical teenager he had an MP3 player attached to battery operated speaker which continually played Malian music and hip hop. As he walked with us for the next couple of days he listened to my iPod continuously.
A couple of the local started playing music and some kids started to dance - the villagers poked their heads in to see what was going on - and before we knew it we had a whole village dance. David and I responded by dancing for everyone as well - which made the locals laugh - but we did our best. One older lady kept asking me to show the video over and over
again to her friends - I think I nearly ran out of battery showing that video.
Anyway it was time to leave - our cow, cart and bags were leaving - our young boy cranked up his music and we all followed him and our guide out of the encampment dancing and singing - much to amusement of everyone else - including many startled westeners. Our guide has been fantastic (Hamma Mossa - e-mail address is: hammamossa@yahoo.fr - mobile: 00 223 76441192) - he loves to sign and dance, he looks after us and he gets our sense of humour and we are all having a lot of fun with him. He even us has responding to a popular local song - when he sings Wella - we have to respond in the same tone as him and he tries to trick us every time. I think we are seen as the loud Aussies on this trek.
Anyway, we finally made it to Ende at about 4pm and found that the "mask dancers" were performing there. There were a lot of westerns already there but we managed to see the dancers for about another hour. There is an
annual Festival des Danses des Masques held each year around the end of December to beginning of January and there is usually stiff competition between the groups of dancers. There is a variety of costumes, masks and dances that contribute to the spectical of the performance.
Men only are instructed in the cult of the masks and a select few are chosen to be the keepers of the traditions of the masks. Masks represent different people (old men, young girls, hunters, blacksmiths and thieves); animals (including black-and-white monkeys, crocodiles and antelopes). We were also privileged to see the stilt dancers as well. All danced to the music provided by half a dozen musicians.
We stayed at a lovely motel-type encampment that night and invited all our helpers to share our meal...for a moment there I didn't think they would leave anything for us to eat at all.....but it was great company and, as we had a bottle of gin on the table, we attracted many more friends - including the musicians from the dancing earlier that day.
Needless to say the final few stayers finished off the bottle of gin on the roof top of our accommodation
taking in the African night sky.
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djibril
non-member comment
we miss you Rose and mick
Hi rose, I am happy to see that you are loving your hollydays. Your blog is verry imforming, thanks for sharing. I am curently in cobar without Rabiou and the rest. We miss you already. djibril