Expedition
heads to the Dogon Region
Drove to
Bandigara and then on to Sanga to begin our brief foray into Pays Dogon or Dogon
Country. The Dogon people are one
of the few indigenous peoples in the world whose life is has remained
essentially unchanged by Western culture, so visiting them is like going back to
1350AD (back then, though I’ll bet all the kids didn’t shout “cadeau, cadeau!” —
“gift, gift”). The Dogon are a
fascinating people who live in and around the Falaise de Bandigara (essentially
a canyon-like, cliffy-type thing) that stretches for 150km in central Mali. The Dogon people moved into the area
around the 14th century, booting out the Tellem people who were a
tribe of mysterious pygmy people that lived in the cliffs. The Dogon now use Tellem caves as burial
sites, employing ropes to hoist the bodies up to the holes in the rock. The white you see below some of the
holes in the pictures is the calcium that has eroded from the bones and become
part of the rock.
We
decided to hire a guide to show us the area, which turned out to be a good
move. We stumbled across a guide
named Boubacar Ouologuem who we later found out is the best English-speaking
guide in the whole region and a true expert on Dogon culture. His guidance was really incredible and
I’d encourage you to look him up in Bandigara if you decide to visit the
region. We also have his email
somewhere if anyone needs it. He
led us through the entire region with stops in two villages that we used as
“base camps” for two half-day hikes up into the mountains to visit remote
villages which are only accessible by climbing up log ladders, jumping from rock
to rock, and clinging on for dear life over 100 foot drops into gorges. How anyone decided to live up there is
way beyond me! It was really
incredible though.
In the
village of Banani Kokoro, half the group decided to truly experience a facet of
Dogon life and sleep on the roof of a Dogon home which overlooked the cow and
pig pen to one side and a huge cliff to the other side. It wasn’t the greatest sleep I’ve ever
had, but one of the neatest experiences of my life. We were awoken in the morning by the
sounds of copulating goats, a rooster that didn’t shut up all night, crying
babies, and the loudest gunshots I’ve ever heard in my life. Before you get worried, it turned out to
be only “ceremonial” gunshots fired by local Muslims celebrating Tabaski / El
Hadjj.
The Pays
Dogon was really incredible. When
we get home, I’ll try to write more about it, but for now, check out the
pictures which should give you a cool idea of the stuff we saw. Pays Dogon was definitely a highlight of
the trip and the team would definitely have liked to spend more time there. But for now, it’s on to
Timbuktu!
-Paul
Shumway