12-year-old Tula lives in the remote yet bustling village of Gao, a sprawling pile of mud houses banked along the glittering blue waters of the Niger River in Mali's western lunar landscape. She's one of 7 children living in this busy, little-known port town with their mother, grandmother, two uncles and occasional visiting cats bootstrapping from the street corner trash piles and local benevolence. Tula's days are simple and routine. She wakes at dawn, starts a fire for the morning's meal, feeds the family goat, and proceeds to a full day of doing what most Malian women spend their entire lives at -- preparing and cooking meals. After a daily breakfast of rice and meat in onion or groundnut (peanut) sauce, Tula will sit for most of the day with her brothers and sisters inside a tent of woven straw mats, escaping the brutal heat of the sun to sort stones from sacks of rice, pound millet and de-pod herbs, and gossip about family affairs. In the afternoon, while her dad and uncle lounge inside their larger, mud house next door, smoking cigarettes, drinking tea, and listening to scratchy African reggae tapes, Tula will ride the neighboor's donkey to town to
fetch dinner supplies from the market -- dried fish, boullion cubes, a few potatoes. She returns straightaway to start dinner for the evening, which is served first to the men who sit in plastic chairs, then later to the women who sit separately on a mat near the cooking fire. She's in bed by 10 o'clock after finishing the day's wash and sweeping the dirt floors clean of insects and stray debris to spread out a large plastic mat, which will be her and her siblings' bed for the night. This is all she knows and all she'll ever know; this is Tula's life, until she is married through prearranged terms, at which point she'll move to her husband's compound and resume many of the same duties, her own children taking on the more menial tasks.
If the monotonous, unescapable life of chores is difficult for Tula, it's impossible to tell. Tula is the happiest, most sprightly pre-teen I have ever encountered. Clad in bright African prints, hair braided on one side and bushy on the other, puffing out into a kind of side pony Afro, Tula flutters around the compound like a chickadee, grinning at everything, chirping "Ca
Va!" everytime a tourist or neighboor passes by, bursting spontaneouly into cartwheels, handstands, and when her school friends drop by for a visit, into Africa's version of pattycake. Thinking of my mopey, skulking teenage years -- I was a faux pink fur rebel and total spoiled brat without a cause -- I'm completely fascinated by Tula's ineffable and indefatigueable smile and harmonious attitude toward her assigned social role that would have many a Western woman burning her aprons and bras alike. Tula's seeming nonchalance at going about her daily tasks, however opressive and partriachal they may be by the modern book, is more or less reflective of most African women I've met to date; they are poor, work extremely hard, live hand-to-mouth, and appear to be as happy as the Dalai Llama himself.
Yet even Tula has it relatively well off, compared to her neighboors who pile into makeshift huts of rice sacks and reed mats throughout the spacious, littered streets of Gao and its tiny surrounding villages. Her uncle Camille, a trilingual and independent tour guide, is able to afford the family such luxuries as battery-powered lamps, a radio, two mopeds, and a small house consisting of two
rooms and about 1,000 mud/dung bricks, costing $.80 each. Compared to the hand-to-mouth majority of Malians who bring in, on average, a whopping $400 per capita each year, Tula's family stands among the tiny minority of a "middle class" in one of the world's poorest countries. The secret to their success? Mali's booming tourist industry, now complete with charter flights directly from Paris or Marseilles to more popular destinations like Tombouctou, Dogon Country, and even the lesser known Gao. Camille works only during the busy season -- as most guides do -- hanging around the busy central hub of Mopti from November to February, hawking for tourists. I met Camille in Tombouctou following the Festival Au Desert. After a few colorful descriptions of his "laid back, non-touristy" hometown, he had us packed into an SUV with him that very day, headed toward Gao with a French social worker who brought troubled teens on nomadic excursions in Mali, a Russian and a German tourist, and a turban-clad Tuareg who would drive us there by sunset.
Sunset arrived and found us an hour from Tombouctou -- we had crawled a mere 1/8 of our journey after breaking down for a few
hours and stopping for lunch. Over the next two days, we descended slowly into the dune swept interior, dried and distilled by an encroaching Sahara, void of all life signs save a few goat pellets and thorny trees. (My partner later pointed out that even in the most inhospitable of places, domesticated animal droppings stamped out man's presence on every square inch of this territorialized planet). The stars etched dizzying patterns into a new moon sky; we slept without tents on the cold sand and awoke each morning with dawn, usually surrounded by a host of kids from a neighboring village who gaped and giggled at us for hours without a word. We survived on (or rather guzzled) fresh Niger perch and rice, which we would cook in large pots over a campfire each night after dusk. Impeccably idyllic, the journey that was supposed to take eight hours but ended a good 56 hours later left me feeling like a nomad travelling first-class; each hour we slid deeper into a world cut off from all the hullabaloo so familiar to us at home, guided only by the footsteps of the Niger and fleeting tracks in the sand. But instead of
camels, we rode a Toyota and drank champagne to celebrate my partner's birthday.
On the third day, we arrived at our final destination, a quiet and restless town once home to the powerful Songhaï Empire that stretched from modern day Benin to central Mali. Gao sits at an otherwise nondescript section of the Niger, announced to water babies by an immense pink sand dune, "La Dune Rose," once a meeting point for spiritual leaders of surrounding tribes. As we passed the tenuous, glowing mountain, our Russian companion looked over at us and grinned, "you don't even
need pyschodellics here!" Gliding into the small port, we deboarded to the smell of fried fish and donkeys and the quiet but busy rumble of traders. We had chosen this Eastern route in hopes of a few suprises beyond what the more common tourist circuit of Bamako-Mopti-Timbouctou-Dogon could offer. By nightfall, the towns eerily silent buzz of activity and our host family's ground nut stew were enough to satisfy my expectations for an off-the-beaten-path experience. But the best was yet to come.
As it turns out, Gao's tourism bureau recently underwent a major facelift, sacking the once chaotic milieu of tourist hawkers
for an association of legitimate guides ruled by a set tarif schedule for any major tourist activity (the association is still in the works, which unfortunately causes a bit of variance in what each "Mr. Good Price" will give you as his best offer). But despite its overtly African pace of getting it together, Gao has more than I expected to entice every type of traveler, from the large tour groups to barefoot hippies and fanny pack-clad European suburbanites. Tourists can hire a pinasse for the day to check out "La Dune Rose" or scout for hippos in the Niger ($70-120 for a private boat for the day), visit the local mosque or the Tomb of Askia, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and watch futbol matches over beer in one of the town's dumpy but cheerful bars; basically anything the Lonley Planet would recommend. But, deciding we had had enough of Lonely Planet deciding for us, we skipped out on all the recommended activities (which left our guide, who always takes a cut, sorely disappointed with us). Early one morning, we hopped on a local pinasse, stuffed to the brim with raw rice sacks and baretoed locals, heading for the
town of Asongo, about 100 km downstream. What we would discover 20 km and several hours later somehow escaped the major guide books; two villages desparate for and deserving of tourism. They sat only a few kilometers apart but centuries of tourist development lodged themselves between the bustling ecovillage of Tchintchinomé, which had saved itself from drought and deforestation through community-based agricultural projects, and Haussa Fulani, an all-Muslim village populated mainly with fishermen and shepards.
Tchintchinomé; Eco Tourism at its Best
We were greeted in Tchintchinomé by Abrahim, the head of the town's community organization
Zankai Aljana, (which means, appropriately, Children's Paradise in Songhai), who immediately led us along tree-lined paths to the village tourist campament. We were welcomed with lemongrass tea and large platters of roasted eggplant, rarities in this dry country, but well in stock in the town's huge garden. As we ate, Abrahim and two cheif agricultural technicians, enrobed by the quieting presence of hard earned wisdom and graceful patience at our poor French, eagerly explained the history of their (quite literally) blossoming little town. The Tchintchinomé we saw today -- an unlikely oasis of greenery set along marshy, water lilied banks of the Niger --
hadn't always been such an Eden. Sweeping his hands towards the distant scraped and rocky landscape that echoed warnings of impending desertification, Abrahim indicated Tchintchinomé's not-so lush past was the razed desert sitting today on its doorstep. In the late 80's, widespread drought led to rampant deforestation; as crops wilted, farmers were forced to cut down whatever would burn to sell as firewood. The village barely hung on as the Niger shriveled taking its stock of fish with it, and surrounding flora all but disappeared, leaving little for local animal herds to graze on.
The paradise was restored in the early 90's when community initiatives to replant much of the decimated forests were boosted by the arrival of a French visitor, armed with agricultural knowledge of -- of all things -- spirulina. Before he parted, he had taught some of the villagers to grow and harvest the highly nutritional algae from large covered ponds. Today, while the cheif technician tends to the spirulina ponds, the community garden buzzes with village workers who have banded together under a female-led cooperative. Supported by artificial microclimates (varying brick structures that surround vegetation and manipulate the amount of sunlight and wind allowed in),
the garden boasts a horde of vegetables impossible to find elsewhere in much of Mali: red lettuce, guava and mango trees, grenadine, eggplant, grapefruit, lemongrass, and aloe vera. Everything harvested is shared among the people of Tchintchinomé. The spirulina is also sold to passing tourists or pregnant and nursing mothers in surrounding villages as a vital nutritional supplement. Profits from sales go to support a thriving women's literacy center in the middle of town, powered by -- get this -- solar panels.
Tchintchinomé is a bewildering haven for tourists who have any interest in eco tourism, community-based development, or just plain good food. As we toured the highly organized and robust village gardens, we munched on token local delicacies straight from the tree, including an apple-like fruit that tasted like blue cheese and pears. With a bit of extra time, we could have helped to plant a tree from the village nursery for $1, which would buy metal fencing to protect the sapling from hungry goat herds, or work in the gardens alongside the locals. For a $12, Zankai Aljana would supply us with three meals, an overnight stay, an evening hike to astounding rock formations nearby, and a
hippo-sighting trip on a pinasse. And 100% of the money collected from tourists goes to -- you guessed it -- supporting further development of this promising little Children's Paradise.
Hausa Fulani: As African as it Gets
Still buzzing from the do-gooder atmosphere of our unexpected retreat with Zankai Aljana and our first dose of veggie vitamins in weeks, we moved on to the village next door, Hausa Fulani, hoping to find another well-kept secret. Deboarding the local pinasse, we dragged our sunbaked bodies up the sandy hill towards a group of stout and serious teenage boys and inquired as to where we might find the tourist campament. They look confused, rattled off something in a language we didn't understand, and pointed up the hill toward a tall, stately man who was arranging bundles of brush into a makeshift wall. He greeted us in halting French and we explained that we were tourists looking for a place to stay for the evening. He gave us a puzzled look but answered that yes, in fact, we could stay for the night; at the house of the village chief.
We followed the tall, slightly enigmatic man, Sedou, who, as we
later found out, was the son of the village chief, but governing head by default; the actual chief was over 90 years old, diabetic, and going blind. He led us to his large mud brick house, home to his three wives and so many kids mixed with neighbours dropping in that the actual count was never clear. As we settled in for afternoon tea -- a regular ritual of welcome -- Sedou settled back on dusty, wrinkled palms and studied us curiously. The first question he posed was to the point and unexpected; "why are you here?" A little flabbergasted and slightly embarassed, my partner and I looked at each other, fishing for an answer in each other's eyes that would make sense. We had already explained that we were tourists from America. Wasn't that enough?
As it turns out, Hausa Fulani had seen tourists only once before in a contemporary history during which you could call visitors "tourists". That was in 2004. So you can reasonably understand why Sedou was, to say the least, a bit confused about the unannounced arrival of two Americans who couldn't really speak French (thank god he had actually heard of America). And,
observing his genuine surprise, we started to wonder ourselves just what exactly we were doing here. There was no tourist agenda. The town's only market was held just once a week. And we weren't even allowed to walk around town without the default chief.
Fortunately for our adventuring but slightly unsensible selves, our stay at Hausa Fulani turned out to be as genuinely African as experiences can get -- at least from what my imagination could sum up. And it was a pleasant one at that. We slept on woven straw mats in tiny domed bungalows and ate bowls of rice with our fingers. I hung out with the women while they gutted carp and pounded onions, babies screaming and crawling on the hut's dirt floor. Extended family members stopped by to greet us, and local kids showed us the way to the market. We took long strolls with Sedou, accompanying him on his evening rounds to check on the villagers before turning in for the night. This was my favorite time -- we discussed everything from village politics to how American and Malian prices compare, learned the Songhai name for Orion's constellation (Hoday), and debated the best way
to bring more tourists to the town. In the end, Sedou was sad to see us go. He sent us off with his phone number and an open invitation to return any time. We left him with one of our headlamps, a pair of goggles for nasty dust storms, a good chunk of money to support the village, and a promise to send some medicine for his ailing father when we returned to Gao. It was a haphazard contribution to community development, a stark contrast to the highly efficient pot of village money in Tchintchinomé. But with no tourist infrastructure and a highly fragile fishing economy that swelled and thinned with the seasons, Hausa Fulani needed our support probably even more desperately than its well fed neighboor.
In the end, we weren't sure if shiny western appliances and hunks of undesignated money were the best long-term solution for a village like Hausa Fulani; in fact, they most surely aren't, and this is why NGO representatives and savy locals warn tourists from doling out too many
cadeaus (gifts). Too many material gifts keep the children on the streets begging instead of in school, which annoys the tourists, sours the relationship
with the locals, and, if it's candy the tourists are giving, causes innumerable dental problems that parents simply can't afford to fix. While I kept my candy to myself, I couldn't help but want to offer Sedou and his village's constant flirtation with famine all the help I could. We weren't in Hausa Fulani for long anyway, so if we couldn't take part in a long-term solution, then wasn't a little something better than nothing at all? I don't know the answers to these questions. But I do know that many people in the world don't worry about the future (maybe this is the secret to Tula's happiness) because it's just hard enough to get through the day. So I gave a little something for today, made a few unexpected friends in the process, and hoped to god that climate change leaves this beautiful little town alone for a while, at least until news and knowledge of microclimates and spirulina spreads a little further downstream.
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