Holidayin' in Dogon Country

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Well, this is my third day back in Bamako, and though I have felt compelled to write since I’ve been back, it’s been a bit of whirlwind. First things first, though.

On December 23rd I took the bus to Sevare, which is a small city next to Mopti and is the main starting point for Dogon country expeditions. The day started out smoothly. My taxi driver arrived on time (6 am). The bus left only 15 minutes late (7:15 am), and it was a new bus company that only admits passengers from planned stops, meaning that we would not be stopping repeatedly by the side of the road throughout the trip and that the bus would not be ridiculously crowded with people sitting and standing in the aisle. Nevertheless, I had a particularly gassy seatmate, and nothing really good can be said about a 12-hour bus ride.

Nora left Tominian the same day but caught an earlier bus and so arrived in Mopti two hours before I did. After all kinds of confusion at the hotel, I was finally shown to our room, where Nora was waiting for me. It was great to see her after our week of separation, but the fatigue of traveling knocked me out in no time. The next day we hung out in Mopti until noon. It was very much the tourist trap, and we were pestered by tour guides and street vendors at every step. In light of this, we were anxious to catch a bus up to Hombori, where would meet our friends Abdul and Amelia, who were en route from Bamako. So, at midday we called up Baba, our friend Sara’s husband, and we hung out with him at his crafts store in Sevare until our bus was scheduled to leave.

After a two-hour delay and a reneged promise to receive seats near the front of the bus, we were finally on our way. We ended up waiting another 30 minutes by the side of the road just a kilometer away from the bus station, which would not have been so bad except that we now had the sun hitting the side of the bus, and things quickly got very uncomfortable. We had stopped to admit more passengers from the side of the road, which is illegal but practiced by all of the bus lines except for Sonef, which is relatively new and still has some integrity. By the time that the bus employees had packed people into the aisles like sardines, which made the bus even hotter, a riot nearly ensued. Sweat was pouring off of the people who were by the windows through which the sun was streaming (fortunately not us), and people were yelling at the driver to go. A guide seated near us was particularly animated. He yelled for pretty much the entirety of the stop in Bambara, French, and English, “You are killing people! This company will fail because you’re killing people!” and so on. When we called Abdul and Amelia to let them know where we were (they had started out 9 hours behind us, coming directly from Bamako), they half-joked that they would beat us to Hombori. They were on a Sonef bus. That said, avoid Dembele buses at all costs.

After a ridiculous ride, in which we stopped for nearly every Musa, Mamadou, and Bakary by the side of the road, we made it to our stop in Hombori. It was 9:30 pm when we arrived, and fortunately Abdul’s house was a very short walk from the road. His older sisters were waiting for us when we arrived and they kindly fed us and gave us water to bathe. We promptly went to sleep and stirred only a little when Abdul and Amelia finally arrived at 4 am. The next morning, Abdul and his sisters were already up when we emerged from our rooms. Being further north in more desertous terrain, the morning air was quite cool, maybe in the mid-50s. Even though the air was hazy with the harmattan dust, the view from Abdul’s house was quite lovely. His house was situated on a broad flat plane. Directly facing the door was a gigantic mountain. To the north was a hill with the older section of Hombori built upon it, and on the other side of that was another large stone mountain, which dominated the landscape. There were few trees in sight to break the hardpan, and these were quite small.

We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and caught up with Abdul and Amelia, who were managing courageously on very little sleep. At mid-morning, we headed for the hill to see Abdul’s family. The hill was less than a half-mile off, but it took us some time to wind our way up to where the houses were. At the foot of the hill, women and children were busy filling their buckets at the well to carry up the hill to the water tower there. They had recently constructed a pipeline to the top but apparently had yet to install a pump, thus necessitating the nearly constant drawing and transporting of water. Midway up the hill, the road became a winding pathway between stone walls. Pathways intersected, and passages through small doorways or tunneled passages led to small compounds. As small as this section of the village was (one could easily circle the hill dwellings in about 15 minutes), the intricacy and irregularity of the walled compounds made the hilltop village a veritable maze.

We met a number of Abdul’s relatives that day, including his parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. All were very kind but were unfortunately still occupied with the recent death of one of Abdul’s older brothers. Abdul told us later that he had hoped that his visit would not be viewed as on occasion to dwell on that more, but that was unavoidable nonetheless.

We descended the hill late in the afternoon and returned to Abdul’s house by early evening. After bathing and eating a large meal prepared by one of Abdul’s sisters, we stayed up talking and were surprised to find that it was nearly 2 in the morning. Although it was easy to forget that it was Christmas Day, we couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend the holiday in Mali.

We spent the next day in much the same fashion, returning to the hilltop village and visiting Abdul’s family. Early in the afternoon, we went to the house of one a Abdul’s cousins, and Amelia, Nora, and I spent the remainder of the day hanging out there. Abdul’s sisters and some of the village kids dropped by intermittently to bring us food and hang out. We ventured out with Abdul once more but returned in the evening to spend the night at the hilltop house of his cousin. Again we were up late talking, lying on a mattress in the small compound and watching the stars, but fatigue and the cold air eventually drove us into the house.

The next morning, we were treated with the first clear glimpse of the mountains around us as the air had cleared of dust overnight. We took a few photos, which I have posted here. After saying goodbye to Abdul’s family, we headed back down to his house, packed our bags, and headed to the gendarmerie station near Abdul’s house, where the bus would pick us up. Our original plan was to go to the small village where Amelia had been a Peace Corps volunteer a year and a half before, but Nora and I decided that we stay in Douenza just beyond that before heading to Tominian. Nora’s was still tired quite tired from all of interviewing and felt like she needed some unmitigated quiet time. After an hour or so of waiting, Abdul’s older brother showed up with an unregistered vehicle and a driver. We went as far as Amelia’s sister village, where her neighboring Peace Corps volunteer had been stationed, and caught a bush taxi to cover the remaining 15 km to Douenza.

At Douenza, we got a campsite at a campground run by a French man, where we alternated between napping and reading. In the evening, we walked along the streets, but Douenza being a major crossroad for tourists, we were hit with innumerable requests for money and gifts by the village children. We went to sleep early, and the next morning we set out for the market. Our plan was to meet Abdul and Amelia there to see some of the more interesting sights, such as the camel traders, but we were told that we’d have to be at the bus station by 10 am, so alas we did not get to meet up with them. Our bus didn’t come until 11, but it was a Sonef, so it was relatively comfortable.

A couple of hours later, we reached Tion (pronounced Chön), the village next to Tominian. Nora’s assistant, Nicholas, promptly came in his uncle’s car to take us to the house where Nora was staying. The house was situated in a large compound with many small trees and unfortunately a lot of leaves and grass, which meant the possibility of snakes. Nora had actually seen a snake there the week before, and her subsequent conversations about them, particularly the many venomous ones, had not allayed her fears. Although the house belonging to the other family in the compound was tidy as were the grounds around it, the same could not be said for Nora’s. A Peace Corps volunteer had graciously lent Nora the house, but the grounds were littered with trash and leaves, and the house was full of dust. Although there was electricity, there was no running water. Instead, there was a well in the compound that was full of mosquito larvae.

The next day, Nora headed off to a village to interview. I spent the morning cleaning around the front, side, and rear of the house, where the latrine was and the snake had been seen. Although there was not a lot of ground to cover, there were masses of dead branches and leaves, and my only tool was a bundle of palm fronds tied together to form a small handheld broom. The effort was worth it though, as the previously cluttered ground made it impossible to see anything (i.e., snakes) on the ground.

I spent the next day and half reading and doing just a little bit of work on Nora’s computer. Although I did not get much work done on my vacation (which was a big accomplishment for me), I did reach what felt to be a significant point in my research career. For the past 8 months I had been contemplating one particular idea for my dissertation. I won’t bore you with the details, but the idea was rooted in a very abstract, albeit theoretically interesting phenomenon. My main hang-up with that idea though was that it did not have any real world application. Anyway, I was working on writing up rationale for the project, and in reviewing my notes I realized that the project as I had conceived it would not work. Ultimately, I found that I could change the aims and procedures of the study to answer a question different from my original one, but by then I had lost heart. To be honest, it almost felt like a relief to find that I could not really carry out that study. Now I feel more motivated to pursue work that is more closely aligned to what I am doing here (studying how beliefs about child development inform childrearing, education, etc.) which may be less intellectually stimulating (because it does not deal with so many abstract concepts) but in many ways is more rewarding.

Anyway, Nora did not work on the 31st or the 1st, but we did not do much to commemorate the new year. We did get to spend a lot of time together, though, which was really nice. It was hard to leave her on the 2nd—the desolation of Tominian was getting her down a little, but I really had remarkably little to do there, and so even when I offered to stay longer she insisted that I return to Bamako. So, on the 2nd, we got up early, Nora to prepare for the day’s interviews, and me to ride with Nicholas to Tion. He was supposed to show up at 6:30 am, but he did not arrive until 7. Go figure. I reached Tion by 7:30 and set up by the side of the road along with about a dozen other people who had gathered to make food for the passengers of stopping buses or to catch buses themselves. A few buses came around 9:30, but these were full. Then there was a long lull. I finally got on a bus at 12:30 pm. It was not a particularly good bus, and we made a lot of stops. I even saw a friend from Bamako, who was on her way to the north country with her visiting parents, at one such stop. We finally got into Bamako around 10:30 pm, which put me back at the house around 11. At least I got to do a lot of leisure reading. I also made a couple of phone calls to friends in the area who would be helping me with data collection.

In fact, one of these friends showed up the next day to collect questionnaires to distribute to his fellow university students. I unloaded 60 on him for one study and promised him another 100 for another study. Later on in the day, another friend showed up to handle the distribution of 150 questionnaires. Given my poor ability to communicate in French and Bambara, I could not get through to him that I wanted him to take the questionnaires and distribute them for me, for which I would pay him. Instead I conceded to leaving right then and there with him to go to the university, where students were taking final exams. So with a box full of survey packets we parked ourselves in front of the law school, where he is a student, and in short time we had a throng of people crowded around us. It took us about an hour and a half to distribute all of the questionnaires and collect phone numbers for the subsequent collection. Even though this wasn’t my original plan, I was more than happy to achieve so much in so little time.

The next morning, my first friend showed up unannounced. Apparently he had succeeded in distributing all 60 of the questionnaires from the first study and was ready to distribute the 100 questionnaires from the second study. That meant that I would spend my morning and afternoon printing off another 1,500 pages of questionnaires and stapling packets. The tedium of the work could not dull my excitement over the progress that I was making. By the evening I was exhausted from all of the running around and preparation. Not even the live music party down the street could draw me out, although that the singer was a griot (hence, singing that sounds like caterwauling) helped to inform that decision.

The work won’t really stop today, but it does slow down. I’m running errands for Nora, who won’t be back until around the 12th. Given that I may go back to Niono with her on the 10th, I also have deadlines of my own that I must meet. Anyway, Happy New Year to all, and enjoy the photos!

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Photos

Hombori
Me, Abdul, & Amelia on the hilltop section of Hombori

The haughty twins of Hombori
seriously, they are renowned for their haughtiness