Mali or Oregon Trail?

---

Whoever said roosters crow at the crack of dawn was a liar...they start cockadoodledooing around 4am and don't stop. After a breakfast of millet surprise, we repacked our bags and headed out of the campement. It turns out that it is tradition for people to sing upon leaving the campement in Ende, so we gamely started with "The Circle of Life" from Lion King (Disney was the only thing we all sort of agreed upon). Just outside the building, though, we ran into about half the village children waiting for us, so we got a bit flustered. We tried some Red Hot Chilli Peppers and showtunes while giving them high-fives and waving.

We were all prepared to trek the 8km to the next village before it got too hot, but Salif told us he had arranged transportation. We all raised an eyebrow because we hadn't seen a car in a few days and there weren't exactly roads nearby. Just then, two ox carts pulled up in front of us. We figured what the heck, stacked our bags, and jumped on. Turns out oxen are not the most efficient mode of transportation. It took us TWO HOURS to go 8km. Yes, that's right...a whopping 4km an hour. I could have cartwheeled to Begnimato faster than that! Ox carts are an interesting way of getting around though...I was able to fully appreciated all the millet fields we went through. The best part, hands down, was when we crossed the river. It was like one of our childhood dreams was coming true (for you adults out there who don't understand, in the computer game Oregon Trail, when you came to a river, you had to choose between floating the wagon across the river or fording it). And, in case fording one river wasn't good enough, we forded another one! It would have only been more authentic if we were wearing bonnets and long dresses...

Our oxen dropped us off at the foot of the escarpment, and we thought we were home free. Salif said 3km to the next village, but it turns out 2 of those kilometres was going up the cliff. The villagers have built a series of stairs out of rocks, but they were never ending. Looking up was the most disheartening thing ever because it was nearly noon, and the sun was beating down on us. After all the rocks and boulders, we walked through a few more millet fields and then reached the village.

I'm not sure who thought building a village on a giant sheet of rock was a good idea, but it seems to be working for them at Begnimato. They have three neighborhoods: Christian, Muslim, and animist (traditional beliefs). We wandered through the three quarters meeting various important villagers as we went along. At the very edge of the village, you get an amazing view of the plains. Had it been a bit clearer, we would have been able to see all the way to Burkina Faso, and there were huge sand dunes off to one side that are so big that 4x4 vehicles can't even handle them. All of a sudden, we heard drums, and as we made our way back through the center of the village, we saw dancers practicing a mask ceremony in preparation for tourist season. They were quite a ways away on another rock formation, but it was really interesting.

Getting to our Land Cruiser from Begnimato was easier said than done. We hiked back through the village, across the flat expanse of rock, and we started heading toward a cliff that would take us up to the very top of the escarpment. After another never-ending climb, we got to the top and the 4x4 was nowhere in sight (turns out the hike wasn't over!) Once we were safely stowed away inside our jeep, our driver tried to follow the "road." It would have been easier for him to just driver over rocks, bushes, and goats than try to follow the barely visible track of dirt that counted as a road. We eventually connected up with a relatively paved road, and we had a very interesting trip through central Mali as we made our way back to Sévaré. Sarah and I got really excited because we saw a sign for the village of Sokolo, which is the setting for a movie ("La Vie Sur Terre") we had both seen in Francophone culture classes at our universities. I'll have to email my professor and let her know...

We decided to eat dinner at our hotel instead of venturing out into the dark streets of Sévaré. I ordered an omelette and French fries (pretty standard "Western" food here in Africa) and was shocked when no one working at the hotel had ever heard of ketchup. In Senegal, they douse everything in ketchup, but the Malians had no clue what I was talking about. Weird. We had to flick the bugs off of our food because there were swarms out that night for some reason. We just chalked it up to extra protein, haha.

We slept in (7:15am!) the next morning before getting back into our trusty sept-place. We made the grueling 3 hour journey to Djenne, which is another UNESCO World Heritage site. I knew it was remote, but I was completely unaware that it would have been virtually impossible for us to get there without Salif having made plans for us. After turning off the main "highway" we drove 30km through desert on one side of the road and rice paddies on the other side. We got to a river and drove up onto the ferry, but we had to wait around for two more vehicles to come along and fill up the rest of the rickety ferry. We were basically stuck and prime targets for the women peddling their jewelry and bronze statues. It got so bad that Garret climbed up on top of the station wagon to avoid them, but even that didn't stop them!

After waiting for an eternity (okay, about 45 minutes), we crossed the river and made it into the town of Djenne. The town is famous for its mosque, which is the largest mud building in the world (yet another thing I can cross off my list of things to see before I die!). It's so big that it can hold 50,000 even though the town only has 16000 inhabitants! Each year, they have to redo the mud on the outside because the mixture of earth, millet, and water doesn't hold up very well. All the other buildings in town are made of the same material, and we were able to climb up on people's roofs and look out over the town. I felt like I was achieving yet another childhood dream (living in a real life sand castle). We saw "la tombe de la jeune fille" (tomb of the young girl), where several hundred years ago (no one seems to agree on a date), a girl was buried alive in order to rid the town of evil spirits. Apparently she chose to be sacrificed, and because of this fact, a man on the ferry told me I need to name my first daughter after her (though I think Tapana Dienepo is a bit of a mouthful). Other than that, there isn't all that much in the city, but we saw the chief's house, the Koranic school, and the marketplace (where they actually sell peanut butter!)

The ride back to Sévaré was pretty uneventful, other than meeting a bus full of German college students on the ferry. Salif took us out to dinner at a Senegalese restaurant (where they didn't even serve fish and rice...take about a fake!), and we washed the Djenne dirt off of us (you'll notice in the pictures that the sewers run right through the middle of the dirt roads...).

We were all dreading the nine hour bus ride back to Bamako, but it turns out that our guide was able to pull through for us once again. He found a 4x4 vehicle driving from Timbuktu to Bamako without any passengers, so we were able to pay the same fare as the bus and get a private vehicle instead! Our driver was so nice...he offered us coconut cookies, he stopped whenever we had to pee, and we drank tea with his family when we drove through his hometown. It totally beat Bani Voyage, hands down. We told him we'd come back and have him be our driver to Timbuktu (another life goal of mine...) So we got back to Bamako is record time (under nine hours!) and got dropped back off at our favorite Mission Catholique and were met again by the smiling face of our favorite nun.

---

Comments

[Katie]

I believe the options are to wait 3 days, ford the river, or caulk the wagon and float it. :P Friggen words cannot describe my intense jealousy.

[Chi]

Awww Mali !!!!. I have to travel West Africa soon! :)