Pays Dogon. Dogon Country. Beautiful. Spectacular. Surprising. Our trek into the Dogon Country started early from Bandiagara with a drive to Djiguibombo (delightfully pronounced Jiggy-boom-bo). After a brief tour of the town we started our walk to the edge of the Falaise de Bandiagara (Bandiagara Escarpment) and then down the escarpment to the plains below. Our group of two had grown to four with the addition of Yo and Mama. Yo is from France and Mama is from Burkina Faso. They speak almost no English and we speak spotty French. Our guide, Lac, helps us to translate sometimes, but for the [View Full Entry]

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Sorry about the lack of bicycle story from the last blog, we were encountering computer difficulties and in the mad dash to finish before our time ran out, I totally forgot about the cycling adventure. On our last day in Segou we hired bikes and imagined a full day of exploring the area on bikes - mountain bikes, as the roads are almost all sand. Once again, we forgot we were in Africa. The bikes arrive, and one is not bad at first glance, thick tires, sturdy frame, 21 gears. The second bike - for the girl - is straight out [View Full Entry]

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by Armando S. Sarlat On January 3, my mother and I embarked on what would be the greatest journey of both our lives - a trip to Mali in West Africa. There we would attend the wedding of our friends Miah and Boubacar. I would also have the opportunity to promote the business of iTravel with a local travel company there. To complete the vacation, we planned two days in Morocco in Northern Africa, and three days in Barcelona, Spain. Before I get into the wonderful aspects of this trip, let’s start with the not so good stuff - the actual [View Full Entry]

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The plan was to take the train from Tamba to Bamako. But you know what they say about plans ... We wanted to take the train because we were ready for a different sort of transportation, besides the bone jarring, jam-packed, dusty, sweaty minibus travel we have been doing for so long. After inquiring several times at the Tamba train station, and having our hotel call the station, we found out that the scheduled Saturday train may come on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or ... Once we were sure that it would not be arriving on Saturday or Sunday, we [View Full Entry]

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March 6, 2008 We finished up our African Trip on February 26th, and I haven’t had a chance to write about our last day there (we arrived home on February 27th and left for Toronto on February 29th and have been there all week at the PDAC conference - heard there were 20,000 - 25,000 people attending the conference this year, it was a busy and successful conference for us). Last Day in Africa Our last day in Bamako, Mali was quite laid back. Pierre sent over the bag we had left while we traveled to Niger and we re-packed our [View Full Entry]

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As the Francophones say, Joyeux Noel and Bonne Annee toute le monde! Please forgive my long absence on the blog, however being on holidays is the best excuse I know for going AWAL, and what a holiday it was. Then to make the delay even longer, the internet at my office has been down for the last week! So grab something to sip on, sit back and relax because this is going to be a long one… Over the last three weeks I had the good fortune of being able to travel to two other West African countries - Burkina Faso [View Full Entry]

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It's important for me to praise the master drummers who taught me so generously in Bamako at the Djembe Hotel, and to tell aspiring djembe players in America about the value of going to Mali and learning from masters like Sega Cisse and Matche Traore. It's hard to put into words how grateful I am to the drummers I played with and learned from in Mali. I got to have an excellent first time experience in playing djembe in its natural environment with the help of Jeremy Chevrier at the Djembe hotel--he's connected to some of the best drummers in Bamako, [View Full Entry]

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So… here it goes and continues… about a month later! Sorry.. I’m trying to catch up on the lack of communication here! So.. after the whole Dogon Country thing.. we decided to take a relaxing day off in Bandiagara at a hotel a bit out of town. We had the biggest pile of laundry ever to wash! Good thing for us.. we met a Ghanian Burkinabe woman.. who was all excited to meet us and did it for us! Hurray! The room was nice.. and the meals were good. That night.. we had African tea with the manager of the hotel [View Full Entry]

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Hi Folks, What Kevin forgot to mention last night is that I am being treated for Malaria and not dying, really! Thanks for all the love and support. I generally feel a bit better in the morning, and I think maybe the drugs are working (fingers crossed) so I'm up now writing in a slightly dizzy going-back-to-bed-soon state. Kevin and others here at the Djembe Hotel are taking fabulous care of me. Despite fraility of body, the trip up to the desert and back was an incredible experience. The Tuereg people are so so beautiful, in dress, in music, in culture. [View Full Entry]

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