Category: photo

Food in West Africa

We really didn’t know what to expect, for food, when coming to West Africa. We had never heard of Senegalese or Malian or Mauritanian food, and had no idea what they were like. We also knew from prior experience that, particularly in poorer countries, there can be a pretty big gap between the best of local cuisine (elaborate and delicious, but prepared only in private homes or for special occasions) and what is available for tourists (crude, dumbed down version of local cuisine or faux-western dishes), and feared that we would be reduced to eating plate after plate of quasi-French (bad steak frites) or spaghetti. One thing we definitely did not expect was a great cuisine–we figured that if there were something all that great, we would have heard of it by now, and seen restaurants serving it in the U.S.

Well, were we wrong. Mali and Mauritania don’t really have much of a cuisine of their own to speak of, but Senegalese food can be phenomenal, and I would rank at least a couple of Senegalese dishes among the tastiest in the world. Not only are restaurants great in the Senegalese capital of Dakar, but well-prepared Senegalese food can be found all over West Africa, in recognition of its place as the region’s finest cuisine. Revealing my ignorance, I learned that Senegalese food is also available in other parts of the world, particularly in France but also in American cities such as New York and Chicago. And so, at least when he’s lucky, the tourist in Senegal, Mali and Mauritania gets to eat good Senegalese food, and that is the main focus of this post, although I include below some non-Senegalese dishes as well.

The queen of Senegalese food, and one of the greatest dishes in the world, as far as I’m concerned, is tieboudienne.

Tieboudienne is the French transliteration of the Wolof (the majority language in Senegal) name for the dish, which simply means rice with fish. But the dish is much more complicated.

First, the rice.

The rice, as you can see, is highly seasoned, and simply delicious to eat alone. Perhaps peculiarly, the Senegalese use broken rice, and cook it quite al dente, so that the rice has an almost couscous texture to it, quite pleasing in the mouth.

Then, the fish (and vegetables).

Fish is caught in plenty in Senegal, and that shows in the generous portion of delicious meaty flesh that usually comes with your tieboudienne. In addition to the fish is an assortment of vegetables, including usually carrot, potato or cassava, cabbage and eggplant. My favorite way of eating tieboudienne is to eat, with knife and fork, amounts of fish and vegetables in proportion to the rice I eat, alternating the vegetables such that, with my five last forkfuls of rice I have one small piece of each vegetable remaining. What fun in resource management!

A fancy tieboudienne, at a top Dakar restaurant

Perhaps the best thing about tieboudienne is not how tasty it is, which is of course true, but that it is considered the most basic Senegalese dish and therefore always available, even at the eateries. I can think of few places where the most basic item on a menu is so flavorful, complex and worthy of repeat eating. We never had a bad tieboudienne in Senegal (or Mali or Mauritania), no matter where we ate it, and since it’s considered a sort of common dish, it is also very cheap–as cheap as USD 1 or 2 in Senegal, Mauritania or Bamako (sadly, good Senegalese restaurants are harder to find in Mali outside of Bamako).

The second greatest dish of Senegalese cuisine is yassa. You can get yassa with chicken, or fish, or anything else I suppose, but the most common is chicken.

Yassa is basically a very heavy oniony sauce, almost akin to French Onion Soup (is it possible that there is a relationship between the two?), and sometimes a little sour, as if the sauce is allowed to ferment, ever so slightly. Like tieboudienne, we never had a bad yassa, although the variation in quality was somewhat greater (tieboudienne is always delicious, yassa sometimes just so-so).

Yassa poisson–sorry for the messy plate!

A rather poor yassa, served with pasta in Djenne. Note how scrawny the chicken is! This plate cost USD 4.

A third Senegalese specialty, although one which it has to share with the rest of the region: mafe. Also known as sauce arachide, or peanut sauce, mafe is meat, often beef or mutton, in a rich peanut-based sauce. When done properly, or at least according to the style that i found myself preferring, the flavor is much darker and richer than the peanut sauce that is served in Southeast Asia to be eaten with your satay.

Also common, though less appealing, is soupe kandja. Kandja, strictly speaking, is not a soup at all, but a sauce to be eaten with rice, like mafe. It is primarily made, it seems, with okra or some other kind of starchy, slimy green. For people turned off by okra (which includes me), kandja is somewhat offensive, due purely to texture.

Served onboard our ship to Timbuktu

As I’ve said before, much of a traveler’s time in West Africa is spent on the road, in share taxis or buses, and with the long rides at least some of your meals will be taken on the road as well. A few pictures showing the kinds of meals one is likely to have while traveling on the West African road.

One of the most basic roadside foods, which could almost be described as primitive, is roasted sheep. Roasted sheep is common in Senegal, Mali and Mauritania; the quality was clearly the best in Mauritania, but in Senegal the meat came with spices (cumin). Super greasy.

Breakfast usually means coffee and eggs at a roadside stand. The simplest way to eat the eggs, for a traveler, is a sandwich to go. A basic omelette, perhaps with onions, inside a baguette–not a bad way to start the day.

The selections that might be available at a basic eatery that a luckier traveler’s bus might stop at. Nothing to complain about, in quality.

Eating more local.

One big and very welcome surprise in Timbuktu was that the food was among the best we’d had in West Africa outside of Dakar. While our hosts at Sahara Passion fed us well and included meals with the family in the reasonable cost of the room, a couple of restaurants in town are definitely worth noting and visiting.

As a sign that you are approaching North Africa, couscous and brochettes appeared on more menus. Here, couscous with vegetables and brochettes with sweet potato fries, at the excellent–food well exceeding the deceptively simple setup, to be sure–Amanar, near the Flamme de la Paix.

Even more impressive than Amanar was the Poulet d’Or, located inside Timbuktu’s Marche Artisanal. The food took a while to arrive, but it was all excellent, including th
is presentation of a local specialty, toukassou. The big loaf in the middle surrounded by a meaty stew is a huge round spongy bread, not too dissimilar from the “dumplings” served in Czech food.

Our Tabaski feast (see post of 08.12.08)

And some local beverages to wash it down!

Despite the fact that Senegal and Mali are solidly Muslim countries, they fall in the category of Muslim countries with alcohol, such as Turkey and the ex-Soviet Stans of Central Asia. (In Mauritania, all alcohol is banned, although the local authorities never found the half-drunk bottle of Jim Beam which we have been carrying for so long on our trip.) First, a Senegalese beer, against a Dakar sunset. Second, a Malian beer, with the Mopti port in the background.

But we’re not big drinkers. Far more appealing was bissap, pictured to the left, which is a cool drink made with hibiscus leaves (also known as kalkade, e.g., in Egypt). The drink on the right is bouye, made from the fruit of the baobab tree. Also delicious. The third picture is little baggies of bissap and a sort of ginger tea, often sold on the street (and of questionable food safety).

Coffee Touba. Touba is a city in Senegal known best for spiritual leadership and second for coffee.

In Mali and especially in Mauritania, tea is king, made in an elaborate ritual involving much pouring back and forth to cool and generate froth.

Mauritania photo trains

The Iron Ore Train

We’ve had a handful of long bus, train and boat rides on our trip–going over the Torugart and Khunjerab passes, crossing the Taklamakan Desert, ferrying to Sulawesi, traversing the Balkan Peninsula, taking the COMANAV up to Timbuktu–but none has approached the chaos and uncertainty of the journey we just completed, from the Adrar to Nouadhibou on Mauritania’s famous iron ore train.

The iron ore train travels a few times a day from Zouerat in north-central Mauritania to Nouadhibou in Mauritania’s northwestern corner (link to map), carrying blocks of iron ore in hundreds of cars that form one of the world’s heaviest and longest trains, usually around 2.5 km long. Once a day, the train carries a passenger wagon, which most tourists (and many locals) opt to take over the free alternative of riding in one of the iron ore wagons (on which the Rough Guide says that the dust will work its way into your soul). Well, this sounded like quite an adventure, and, needing to go from the Adrar to Nouadhibou, we thought we would go for a ride this world famous train.

Our trip started at 8 AM in Chinguetti, a city of much peace and solitude that we were sorry to leave, when we caught a truck taxi for Atar, the main city of the Adrar, where we arrived a couple hours later. Atar being about three hours from Choum, the train’s sole stop between its origin at the mining city of Zouerat and its terminus at the port of Nouadhibou, and the train being scheduled to depart from Choum around 5 PM or so, we hung around Atar, using the internet and whatnot (there was no Internet in Chinguetti) until around noon, when we found another share taxi, this time to Choum.

The ride from Atar to Choum is said to be scenic, but even with high expectations what we saw was exceedingly beautiful–stark and endless rocky desert, with the huge cliffs of the Adrar Plateau nearby, and scattered, isolated tents and settlements. There was no way that someone who didn’t know the region well could possibly find the route along a track that seemed to keep disappearing and re-appearing, perhaps because even our driver lost it now and then, to regain it further on.

We arrived in Choum around 3:30 PM. Now, I didn’t expect Choum to be much–the only reason for its existence is as a service point for the iron ore train–but I did picture it as something like a town. No, it is pretty much a square–ringed with “restaurants” serving only tea and grocery stores selling only dry goods–surrounded by a bunch of ramshackle houses not so different from those in a sub-Saharan African village. There isn’t even a real train station, only a sort of shack as we would later discover. Surprisingly, considering that we were not in a big city or near the Senegalese or Malian borders, most of the residents seemed African, leaving us to wonder to what extent the current residents of the town had chosen to live there, or had arrived with some degree of compulsion from their employers (or masters or owners, given the supposed state of slavery in Mauritania, outlawed in 1981–yes, the eighties–but still persisting).

When we first arrived in Choum, not finding any ticket or train office, we just waited around. Hungry, but not finding any real food for sale, we ate the bread and canned tuna that we had brought along, together with ginger-pineapple flavored Foster Clark’s, a powder drink bought from a local shop. We played with the children who were begging us for money (and later dug out from the garbage and licked the empty can of tuna to see what it was that we had been eating). We watched the local men play some form of lawn bowling. Others were clearly expecting to board the train–they had luggage–and so we figured that we would just follow their lead. Eventually, a man told us that the train was coming at 9 PM, not 5 PM, which made us sigh but, well, it was not as if we hadn’t been warned that the schedule of the iron ore train is far from fixed.

The same man identified for us the ticket office, or rather the man in charge of selling tickets, and so we walked over and bought two, at around USD 10 each. The guidebook said that there were two available classes of travel–seats and berths–but the man didn’t mention anything of the sort, and offered only one type of ticket. We were told that the train was going to arrive around midnight, and that we should wait starting around 9 PM from a small white building on the horizon. And so it appeared that the train was already running seven hours late.

When we left the office, a dark-skinned, heavy-set man indicated to us in extremely broken Spanish that we should come to his house for dinner. (The Western Sahara, at one point a Spanish colony though a much neglected one, is still a sort of Spanish-speaking region, especially among the native Saharawi, as opposed to the Francophone Moroccans who have settled in the region after after its occupation/annexation by Morocco in 1975). Every time he spoke to us in Spanish, presumably the only language he knew other than his mother tongue of Hassaniya Arabic, he would look at a little crib sheet, with a short list of Spanish vocabulary written in the Arabic script.

We went over to the man’s house, and drank the tea made by his young son in the elaborate local fashion. To pass the time and minimize awkward silence we shared photographs from our trip that we had on our iPod with the man and his precocious son. There was much interest in the great architectural and cultural sights of the Muslim world, such as Cairo and Damascus, and we were surprised by how easily they recognized all of the key politicians of the region, calling out their names when they saw them. But the only pictures for which the man would have us go back? Photographs of women, which he would admire leeringly (we were told once that one reason that Muslim women dislike having their pictures taken is that they are afraid men will use them for some prurient end–and so it may be!).

Our show and tell was interrupted by the sudden sound of a train outside. It was only about eight–four hours before midnight, when the train was supposed to arrive–but it was clearly here. We grabbed our bags and ran through the darkness for the tracks–not far from the man’s home–and then ran the couple of kilometers along the tracks to the small building where passengers are supposed to board. The darkness, our small flashlight and headlamp bobbing up and down, the frantic and sudden physical exertion, the sound of the endless train rushing past–it was nothing short of surreal. We made it to the designated place, and could see other passengers who had made it there by truck, but the train didn’t stop, it just rushed past.

Now, there are supposed to be three iron ore trains a day, only one of which takes passengers, and so it made complete sense that there could be another, earlier train to pass Choum without stopping. Understanding that that is what must have happened, we went back to the man’s house.

And good thing, too, because he had been preparing dinner for us. We sat down to enjoy a communal plate of pasta with a meaty stew, typically basic but hearty Mauritanian fare. Not wanting to experience again the mad dash to the train, we left shortly after dinner, and the man asked a friend to drive us over to the “station” this time, saving us the long walk in the dark. Parting, we offered the man a bit of money for our meal, which he accepted with much gratitude.

We finally saw what that little white building was–a shed. With a dirt floor littered with broken bottles and crumbling ceiling and walls, it did serve as a shelter from the ferocious sand-laden wind that was blowing outside, but just barely that, as the
re were holes in the walls. There were eight or so other people–mostly young men–who were also waiting for the train. One of them told us that the train was expected at 1 or 2 AM. We made ourselves as comfortable as we could, lying on the dirt floor using our backpacks as pillows. One group of men boiled tea–Mauritanian men often travel with a full compliment of the tools necessary to make tea, including a teapot, fuel canister, tea, cups, etc–by building a small fire in the middle of the shed and using the hot embers to heat the pot. Gradually, everyone started to fall asleep.

Around midnight, we all awoke to the sound of an approaching train. Everyone gathered their bags and rushed over to the tracks. It not being clear where the passenger car would stop, we jumped on to a couple of trucks that had been hanging about, so that the driver would drive us over to the right car. But again, the train simply rushed past–another false alarm. We trudged back to the shack, and went back to sleep.

Finally, around 3 AM, about ten hours past the time we had originally expected, the train came.

Boarding was, as we should have expected, a fiasco. With only one real passenger car already packed with men filling the aisle alongside the six-person compartments, most of which had more than six passengers, it was not at all clear where we could go. Finally, someone squeezed us in into a compartment that was not yet overfull–we had to push aside the current passengers, who were somewhat sprawled about and initially unwilling to yield any room, but we pushed and shoved ourselves enough room on the bare wood seat (the cushions were no longer in place) to pass the night.

Any upsetness over our squeezing into their cabin had mostly evaporated by morning, and it was a jovial ride to Nouadhibou. The train would start and stop with no apparent cause, and it was clear that we were running many hours behind, but no-one had been expecting to arrive on schedule. When the track turned south from its generally westward course, we knew we were getting close. We were about twelve hours behind schedule when we reached the 43 kilometer mark, at which some passengers hopped off and we passed another iron ore train, and arrived at Nouadhibou around 7:30 PM.

Snaking into the distance, to the left and then to the right

Inside our cabin–note the condition of the seats

Iron ore

Sheep and humans can ride for free on the iron ore wagons.

Mauritania photo

On Deprivation

I’ve written before that, from an unfavorable perspective, the western backpacker in the developing world can be viewed as “slumming,” visiting relatively poorer countries in order to witness/experience poverty and primitive conditions (see post of 11.19). I certainly would not generally agree with such criticism–the developing world has so much more to offer, in terms of history, and beauty, and the values of a more traditional world–but in at least one sense it is true: Backpacking, either traveling long-distance or hiking/camping with a backpack, is, for me, partly about deprivation.

Back in college, reading the Rule of Benedict in my medieval Latin class or the Life of St. Anthony for my senior paper in Ancient Studies, I used to daydream that I would have made a good monk. (A friend recently told me that such an attitude “belies a competitive streak incompatible with good monk-hood.”) I am unlikely to give up my present life to become a novice, but I do believe that, especially back in a time in which people had relatively fewer career and lifestyle choices, being a monk would have offered the combination of a disciplined daily routine and ample time to think that I would have found satisfying. Part of my inclination toward that mode of living is something of an ascetic streak. As much as I love to indulge myself–who doesn’t–I also believe that it’s important to temper pleasure with abstinence, to maintain the supremacy of the mind over physicality, to enforce self control over bodily needs and wants, to exert oneself at times when one prefers not to, to go without.

It is partly this ascetic streak that I believe backpacking gratifies. To a “professional class” person living in a big city in the developed world today, there are so many comforts at our fingertips. We have the choice of eating and drinking whatever we want, products flown in from around the world and prepared according to an encyclopedia of styles. We have unlimited amounts of hot and cold water and electricity, and soft fabrics and cushions for our linens, upholstery and clothes. To get from place to place is a matter of hopping in some sort of vehicle, with limited walking, and elevators and escalators eliminate the need to climb stairs. We never have to lift anything heavy–there is usually a machine or someone else around to do that. If there is anything we need, we can simply buy it, at any of a number of stores. For work, we fly business class and stay in five-star hotels. What greater (temporary) antidote to all of this, all of this softness, than backpacking? On the road, we’re forced to lug around heavy bags, day after day. We take twelve-hour-long share taxi rides, squeezed four in the back passenger seat, and sleep outside Milano Centrale. We walk for hours a day, carrying still heavy daypacks, and frequently miss meals or have very little choice of food. We’re so used to having most anything we want; now, the things in our backpacks (see post of 12.05) are effectively everything we own, all that we have access to. Damaged shoes? It’s slippers until we can find another pair that will do. Damaged recharger for the camera battery? No photos for no telling how long.

But this aspect of backpacking is not just about mortifying the flesh–it is about discovering what it is we really need, in order to live a rich and fulfilling life, and what is superfluous; it is a way to remind ourselves that so many things in our world back home are really just distractions, things we shouldn’t value highly or let get in the way, from the sorts of interactions and experiences that really matter, that are so much more valuable. It is also a test of what our bodies can endure, how much discomfort is surprisingly tolerable as long as we don’t let it get to us psychologically; bodily pleasure is, generally, relative. I know all of this may sound phony, given that I enjoy the luxury to travel for so long and mostly with all the modern conveniences, but it is heartfelt.

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I have been forced to think about this because we just got back from a four day camel trek to see the Saharan scenery outside Chinguetti. How to convey to you the basic conditions on the trek? We paid roughly USD 16 per person per day, including not only our camels, but our guide and meals. And, we learned on our first day that it’s called a camel “trek” for a reason–most of the traveling is actually done by foot, not on the camels, because the camels cannot negotiate steep dunes with people on their backs, and naturally our route stayed mainly on the most picturesque high dunes. So there we were, in the Sahara, walking up and down mountains of sand, following our guide and three camels. We would break for lunch cooked over an open fire–pasta with tomato sauce and a can of sardines–and then continue again, trudging up and down the dunes, until we stopped for dinner cooked over an open fire–pasta with tomato sauce and a can of sardines–and sleep, in our sleeping bags under the starry sky.

All the water we had was that which we had on us or could draw from oases–enough for drinking and cooking but certainly not bathing. All the food we had was that which we brought with us–there was nowhere for extra provisions. Fortunately we had some cloud cover, to keep down the heat and the glare of the sun, but we also feared rain–believe it or not, there has been rain in Chinguetti–given that we had no cover.

It’s almost absurd–why do we tourists do this to ourselves? Whether in India, or Egypt, or here–why go on these multi-day camel trips? We say that it’s to see the dunes, or to achieve a sense of solitude, but really it is as much about deprivation. However temporarily, it is about living in a way that allows us to recognize the essentials of life and really appreciate the simplest pleasures. A can of sardines, perfectly edible anywhere, becomes delicious in the desert; a simple cup of tea, so refreshing and renewing. Your limbs sink into a state of blissful comfort when it’s time for a break, the weight of your head off of your shoulders such a relief when you lie down. The freshness of the evening, as it sets in when you’re about to sleep, feels as good as any blast of air conditioning in the hottest of summer. Unmolested by the frenetic stimuli of city life, your mind reaches a state of relaxation such that most everything seems carefree, enjoyable, and even funny. You laugh spontaneously. It feels like, if you spent just a few more weeks in the desert, with the newfound clarity of your mind you could solve not only all of the problems in your life but all of the mysteries of the universe. Your senses become heightened, and so many things become, taken in isolation, so lavish, so curious, so beautiful. The cool sand, a few inches below the surface heated by the sun, that your bare foot digs into. The movement of the camels’ lips as they pluck food from the branches of the thorny trees.

Sunlight cast against the sharp reliefs of your own footprint, against the ripples of the dunes

The wonder of an oasis, palm trees objects of luxuriant beauty and shade

But the hardship does get to you. Even with a mere three and a half days of deprivation, I started looking forward to my first bottle of cold soda, and my first night back in a bed, when I got back to town. I was reminded not only that there are many things that I do not need, but that that there are many things that I enjoy and take for granted. I thought about all the choices of food I normally have, and the special traits and qualities of each one that make it so pleasurable. I imagined myself drinking all sorts of beverages, each one tastier and more refreshing than the water we had on hand. I was in a delightful
ly lighthearted mood, and knew that it was a result of being out in the desert, but still wished to be back in town. And, in the afternoon of day four, we were back in Chinguetti.

And so you get back, but your mind goes back to the desert…

As we surround ourselves with worldly things, and become ever caught up in the complexities of modern living, how do we return ourselves, at least in spirit, to the state of the desert, to the state of the trail, to the state of the wandering road? How do we maintain perspective? Is it enough to go backpacking a couple times a year? Is meditation the solution? Or should we incorporate deprivation into our daily lives? Back home, a concerted effort to reduce our worldly possessions might result in the disposal of only an ugly old coffee mug or a book that I’ve read and didn’t like. But now, a year away from it all, it all seems expendable. Why can we do without it for a year but not the rest of our lives? Is it even possible to achieve the desert frame of mind, such power of perception, in our everyday settings? These are all questions that merit so much more of our consideration than we usually accord. And, as we gradually approach the end of our year’s journey, they become more and more essential.

Mauritania photo

Christmas in Chinguetti

Chinguetti Mosque

Chinguetti is one of the great cities of the Mauritanian Sahara, a place with an ancient history as a settlement, an island of culture and relative urbanity in the middle of a desert wilderness. Chinguetti is famous as a West African center of the Muslim faith, for its manuscript tradition attested to by thousands of volumes, and for its role in history. But like Timbuktu, a city of similar background about a thousand kilometers southeast across the Sahara, it is today almost swallowed up by the sands, clinging to its only remaining significance–that as a tourist destination.

Cemetery

But quite a tourist destination it is. The ruins of the old town, charming minaret aside, are not much of a draw, but the location could not be more spectacular. The desert around Chinguetti is the real deal, the Sahara of one’s wildest dreams. Fantastic dunes lie just meters from town; even higher dunes and romantic oases within a short 4×4 or camel trek away. Within reach are beautiful and desolate landscapes, archaeological sites and even an enormous meteor crater. With, believe it or not, direct flights to Paris, the Adrar (the region of Mauritania in which Chinguetti lies) is one of the most beautiful and removed, yet highly accessible, travel destinations I can think of, utterly peaceful and away from it all. [The flights were suspended for most of 2008 due to an incident near Christmas 2007 in which a French family was killed in a kidnapping attempt and to feared political instability following the 2008 (peaceful) coup in Mauritania. Quite contrary to the travel advisories, however, I could not imagine anything bad happening to a tourist in the parts of Mauritania that we visited (we had checked with the helpful U.S. embassy and a local Peace Corps volunteer before coming), and we only benefited from the resulting quietness and bargains on lodging–rooms were available for as low as USD 3.20 per person.]

For others out on an extended trip, holidays can be sad times, reminding them that they’re away on days they would normally be sharing with loved ones. Such travelers often gather around others of their nationality or religion at a backpacker or expat bar or restaurant, trying to recreate a sense of home. Frequently they’ll send forth emails trying to make the situation sound as positive as possible–“Hey man, I’m enjoying Christmas from this beautiful beach in Thailand!”–but if you look closely, there’s sadness. But we ourselves really aren’t that big on holidays (see post of 11.27), and so Chinguetti is as good a place as any to spend Christmas.

photo politics United States of America

John F. Kennedy, or On American Prestige

Post author By pkk
Post date December 23, 2008
1 Comment on John F. Kennedy, or On American Prestige

I’ve written before about what it’s like to be an American traveling in the Muslim world (see posts of 4.9 and 6.6), but in this post I thought I would share some more thoughts on what it means to be an American in the world today, especially after the election of Barack Obama (also see posts of 10.25 and 12.15).

This topic has come to mind yet again because we are in Nouakchott, Mauritania. Why, you may ask? Nouakchott is a fairly small city, being the capital of a country of only 3 million or so inhabitants, and its city center, however sprawling, is built on a fairly small number of avenues–but one of them is named for U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

This is one of many, many JFK roads throughout the world. Off of the top of my head alone, I can think of roads named after Kennedy in Paris, Buenos Aires and Istanbul, and I have no doubt that there are dozens of other cities around the world. Why is JFK so popular? Part of it no doubt has to do with the heroic stature given to him by his assassination, but it is also because of the hope that Kennedy represented to the world, how he presented America in its most flattering aspects and facets.

It is hard to imagine any country naming any street for the current U.S. President (although the San Francisco sewage plant would have been a good start–link). He is so reviled that reaction to his reign has gone from opposition to sheer bewilderment, a wonder that one person could be so ineffective, his actions at times so seemingly aimless and at others so incredibly hostile to global peace and prosperity. Before the November election, people would often respond with a one word question/statment/accusation when we said that we were American, “Bush?” They wanted an explanation, maybe even an apology. They wanted to know if we as Americans approved of the actions taken by our elected leader. We have had to answer for his actions, apologize for the state of our government, in such enlightened regimes as Uzbekistan, Pakistan, China and Iran. Imagine our position! People whose own countries torture, imprison citizens without a right to trial, push a very particular religious agenda, restrict all sorts of freedoms, people from autocracies and theocracies, were telling us how bad our government was–but, see, the thing is, they were right; the U.S. had fallen so far from it purports to be.

Yet we are happy to report, as I have explained in previous posts, that there are incredible reserves of goodwill built up for America and Americans, all over the world. Almost everyone reacts positively to us when we identify ourselves as coming from New York, not only with general politeness but with genuine enthusiasm for America and things American. It is just bewildering how often the stars and stripes is used as decoration in West Africa–the motif recurs at least a hundred times more often than the tricolore of the Republique Francaise and at least as often as the colors of the local national flag. (I’m not sure who we have to think for this goodwill–Peace Corps volunteers?)

In a Dakar taxi

A Malian truck

And, for all of the horribleness of the last eight years, I think that Bush’s reign has in some ways strengthened American prestige. The truth is that, in recent years, there has been much to challenge American hegemony. The nuclear rise of India and Pakistan, and the efforts of North Korea and Iran, challenged American control over non-proliferation. The economic rise of China put into doubt American commercial dominance. The rise of the price of oil and the fabulous accumulation of wealth in the Gulf created an entire class of super-rich well outside of the western Christian world sphere. The creation and rise of the euro created a currency to seriously rival the U.S. dollar. What have Bush’s disasters taught us? America may not have the strategic and political acumen to win wars and build strong and sympathetic regimes in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it sure has the resources and military power to create chaos all over the world. America may no longer lead the world economy in its growth but miscalculations by America’s greedy/idiot barons of finance can bring the global financial system to its knees, and reduced spending by American consumers can close factories across the world. The euro may be more valuable than the dollar but, in a time of true crisis, the dollar is still the ultimate safe haven.

In short, there is a new recognition of America’s significance in the world–that things have to go right in America for things to go well elsewhere. Currently, it seems that almost everyone in the world wishes America and its new President well–Bush may still be President, but we are now met by “Obama!” in a congratulatory or approving tone–and hopes that America can succeed, so that instead of dragging the world down with it, it can lift the world up. Maybe, hopefully, Obama will prove so popular that Obama rues and avenidas and strasses and sharias and margs and daos sprout up all over the world. Hopefully, he’ll be able to realize the dreams he currently represents not only for Americans but for so many around the world.

Inshallah.

Mauritania photo

Back in the Middle East

Back in our first “Arab” country of the trip, in Syria in April, I asked our Palestinian friend whether he really felt a kinship with all “Arabs,” including those as far out as Mauritania. The answer was a definite “yes”–everyone from Mauritania to Iraq was in fact Arab, part of the same ethnic group. I found this somewhat dubious at the time, and considering the great ethnic diversity of the so-called Arab world (see posts of 4.16, 4.25, 10.05 and 10.13), I had grown to think such feelings of kinship to be misplaced.

But perhaps prematurely. We crossed the border from Mali into Mauritania a couple days ago, and I am astonished by the extent to which, being here, we really feel that we’re back in the Middle East, more specifically, the Gulf. The feeling was immediate, and something more than the sum of discrete parts, but let me try to identify a few things that make Mauritania, at least at a superficial level, very much a part of the Arab world.

architecture – All developing countries have similar architecture to a certain extent–styles driven by cost and efficiency over aesthetics–but the boxy cement blocks of Mauritania reminded us instantly of less development parts of Oman and the United Arab Emirates (yes, despite all the oil money, when outside the fancy parts of those countries there are definitely “developing world” buildings). Not only the type of buildings, but their placement and density–sparseness of population encouraging tremendous sprawl–are similar to other desert Arab countries we have been to.

Great Mosque, Nouakchott. Built in a sort of Moorish style, but nevertheless similar to mosques in the Gulf–no doubt in part because it was paid for by the Saudis.

landscape – Now, it may sound a bit silly to say that Mauritania feels like an Arab country because it’s sandy, but it’s true. There is that certain bleakness and openness that is such common terrain in the Arab world–of course, this commonality of terrain is part of what allowed the Arab conquerors in the seventh century onward to expand so quickly into the countries that we now consider Arab.

population density – Like much of the Gulf, even “urban” Mauritania has a certain emptiness, resulting from low population density and sprawl, not at all like the crowded metropolises of Africa to the south.

food – The richness and variety of Senegalese food (the cuisine found in Mali, at least when you’re lucky) has largely been substituted by roasted meat (chicken or lamb) and rice or french fries, basically the common diet all over the Arab world (and large parts of the non-Arab Muslim world). Lebanese restaurants, which seemed somewhat exotic, fancy “foreign food” in Senegal and Mali, suddenly seem more like local food and are far more common. The quality of the meat, by the way, has miraculously improved–livestock here must be raised better, more scientifically. (And, holding true to what I’ve said about African pricing (see post of 12.18), food prices have dropped precipitously–much cheaper prices for much better food.)

the hours people keep – Arabs, especially in the Gulf states, like to stay up late. The excuse given for this is usually the hot climate, and I suppose it’s true, but the end result is that people engage in a very wide range of activities in the several dark hours following dinner, activities that elsewhere in the world would be handled during the day. Shopping centers are often open until midnight or later, and the level of car and foot traffic during those hours is also intense in Gulf city centers. Perhaps it’s because of the climate here, too–Mauritanians keep similar hours, and downtown Nouakchott buzzes late into the night.

hospitality – Not all Arabs rate highly in this regard, but it can certainly be generalized that Arab countries (or Muslim countries for that matter) have a more living tradition of hospitality than the developed countries of the west or east. Even if it sometimes feels perfunctory, there is an effort or reflex to be generous to the outsider (or at least certain outsiders). Not that Senegalese and Malians were not welcoming–they were–but the sort of formality and ritual that comes with hospitality in the Middle East is very much back, now that we are in Mauritania. (Some would argue that this relates back to the terrain as well: Arab hospitality is often attributed to the harsh desert climate, and the need to share shelter and protection from the elements.)

race – A banal comment, but, yes, the racial composition here is different from that of the countries to the south. It’s not a matter of night and day–Mauritania is something like 30% Moor, 40% mixed Moor/black and 30% black, while Mali is 10% Moor/Tuareg and 90% black–but it is a significant shift. Even in Mali’s Timbuktu you feel that most people are black, with some settled Tuaregs as well as Tuaregs coming and going from the desert; in Mauritania the average person is a tan Moor.

language – A dialect of Arabic known as Hassaniya is the official language.

—-

Now, I say that Mauritania feels to the outsider like an Arab or Middle Eastern country, and not an African (or sub-Saharan African) one, but the real demographic answer is that Mauritania fits somewhere in the middle. As I mention above, about a third of Mauritania’s population is sub-Saharan/black African, while another third is “mixed,” which likely means descendants of the black slaves of the Moors (some of whom, one reads, still live in a slave-like state, although it was officially abolished in 1980), making it a majority black country, as far as race is concerned. Mauritania until independence was part of French West Africa, and until 1973, when it joined the Arab League and started to align itself more with the Arab world than the former French colonial world, it was a member of the French West African central bank (BCEAO) and monetary union (the CFA Franc). So the answer to, “Is Mauritania a black sub-Saharan African country or an Arab North African one?” is by no means clear.

Mauritania photo

Faux Pas

Post author By pkk
Post date December 21, 2008
3 Comments on Faux Pas

Traveling around the world, in cultures so different from those with which you are familiar, you are bound to have some missteps, commit some cultural gaffes. Sometimes it’s as simple as wearing your shoes inside a place you shouldn’t, using your left hand to do something that your right hand should have or making a gesture that has a very different local meaning than you intended (no doubt, sexual). Or, perhaps, it is a matter of not honoring clear hierarchies that are visible to all the locals, but not to you. Faux pas are a persistent risk of travel.

One of my favorite depictions of a traveler’s faux pas was on an HSBC ad that was running for a while on channels such as CNN International. In the advertisement, a very pasty British businessman is having dinner with Chinese counterparts. As might be expected, the dinner is an elaborate production, with the group of six or seven Chinese businessmen eager to please and impress the visiting guest, who is seated at the head of the table. As you may know, one problem with Chinese cuisine, especially as one goes higher in price, is that the Chinese eat a much wider range of foods, including quite a few “exotic” items with which westerners are not familiar. Ending up with some animal or body part that you really don’t want to try is always a risk in China. The British guest in the advertisement is presented with an eel (shown to him live and slithering before it appears chopped up in his bowl), which he clearly does not find appetizing, but finishes, as the voiceover says, “The English believe it’s a slur on your hosts’ food if you don’t clear your plate.” His hosts first look on with approval, and then order another, larger eel. The Englishman looks a little more troubled, but dutifully finishes the second huge bowl of eel as the voiceover continues, “Whereas the Chinese feel that it’s questioning their generosity if you do.” As the commercial ends, a third, truly humongous giant eel is wrestled out from the kitchen, with the Brit looking even more pale and downright frightened.

We’re usually fairly cautious when traveling. For the most part, we read all the relevant warnings and try to offend as little as possible (although there may be some “customs” that we are aware of and still reject, e.g., my preference for using utensils, rather than my hands, to eat most foods, including especially sloppy cuisines such as South Indian). Nonetheless, we too make mistakes, and in this post I thought I would share a story of an embarrassing mistake we recently made in Mauritania.

We were taking a share taxi ride in Mauritania, one driver and six passengers, two in the front bucket seat and four in back, squeezed into a Mercedes sedan for a twelve hour journey from Ayoun el Atrous to Nouakchott. Now, Mauritanians aren’t particularly small like, say, Indians or Southeast Asians, and so four grown men squeezed into the back is a tight fit, and hours on end with that little room creates in your mind reasonable concerns about your physical and mental states at the end of the ride. That said, there is also a great sense of commiseration and camaraderie from such a long, difficult trip. On the one real break in the journey, we all sat down for lunch, in an Arab/Central Asian style tent with mattresses and cushions on the floor. We couldn’t quite figure out how to order food or even what was available, but, back in a land of compulsive hospitality, hoped that things would work themselves out and somehow we would end up with lunch. (It turned out that, in fact, one of the passengers had ordered for the group.)

Now, just a few days before our entry into Mauritania, we had gone on a 4-5 trek in the Dogon Country of Mali. On that hot and sweaty journey, you break up your trip twice a day, for lunch and for dinner/sleep, at so-called campements, established to feed and house trekkers. There is a certain routine at these campements, one of the first things after you arrive being that they bring you a bucket of water so that you can wash some of the dust and sweat off of your hands and face in preparation for eating. Before the Dogon, we were in Timbuktu, where, at the Touareg/Canadian-owned guesthouse of Sahara Passion in which we stayed, there was a similar routine. Since all food was eaten with hands, a pitcher of water, soap and a bowl were brought out before meals, for washing.

And so here we were, between Ayoun and Nouakchott in Mauritania, under a tent waiting for food. One of the staff of the establishment brought around a bowl of murky white liquid and offered it to Derek. Derek promptly used it to wash his right hand, thinking himself culturally savvy and in-the-know for doing the right thing. The boy looked puzzled and glanced over at one of his elders for support or an explanation, but after receiving neither, smiled at us awkwardly and suggested that we drink the liquid instead. Because of his smile, we assumed that he was joking. Then, one of the other passengers laughed and told us that it was “lait de chamaux,” or camel mlik, which I thought was a joke based on the classic “drinking the finger bowl” faux pas said to be committed by rubes throughout history. We laughed–we certainly weren’t rubes–and I proceeded to put my hand into the bowl, and swish it about.

After I finished with the bowl, the boy took the bowl back toward the kitchen, and Derek and I suddenly came to a realization. Smelling our fingers, it was clear what we had done: washed our hands in the communal bowl of milk.

The writing on the wall

Our co-passenger was indeed kidding, but only about it being camel milk (people do drink camel milk in Mauritania, but this was cow milk). The restaurant boy was smiling out of awkwardness and discomfort, while trying to get us to drink as we were supposed to. As we sat red-faced, hoping that the others hadn’t witnessed our stupidity, we could see the waiter whisk (the wire whisk seems to be obligatory) up another bowl of milk (they often start with evaporated milk, it seems, and then add water and sugar) for the rest of our group, as we had fouled the first one. We should have seen the milk coming. Although it was our first real day in Mauritania, we had already witnessed that Mauritanians drink huge quantities of milk, not too surprising in a desert country where little green grows but herding is a common livelihood, and the liquid in the bowl looked more like milk than soapy water. Even in the Dogon a welcome drink arrived at the same time as the bucket of water. Nobody came even close to trying to make us feel sorry or embarrassed for what we did, although of course we did. We had committed a faux pas several times worse than drinking from a finger bowl–we had used communal food to wash our hands.

Fortunately, nobody had to drink from the polluted bowl of milk, and, after the actual handwashing took place (with clear water from a pitcher, soap and a basin that was so much more obviously for handwashing), we joined at the communal table to enjoy what was incredibly tasty roasted lamb, infinitely better than we had had across the border in Mali. In the communal spirit of the traditional world, one of the passengers paid for the whole group (again leaving us to feel mildly embarrassed, as we had in Tajikistan, given our likely superior relative wealth), and we left again for Nouakchott.

Mali photo

From Segou to Bamako, A Mali Bus Ride

Post author By pkk
Post date December 17, 2008

Mali is a big country, in total area almost twice the size of the Texas. Now, much of that is desert that the average tourist has no interest traveling in, but even the parts of Mali that are relevant to tourists is quite large, for example, about 900 kilometers from Bamako to Timbuktu. To cover all that distance, tourists generally have two options, as far as road transport goes: private car hire or public bus. As comfortable and quick as a car hire would be, it is simply out of the reach of most travelers’ budgets, given the relatively high cost of everything in Mali (post to come), and so, for most travelers (including us), it’s the bus, and the distances involved and the false starts and delays of Malian bus travel mean that a great deal of a tourist’s time in Mali is spent on a bus. And so, I thought, what better way to give you a feel for Mali travel than to describe to you a typical Malian bus ride?

The journey I’ve chosen to cover in this post is the relatively short trip from the town of Segou, a peaceful riverside city much loved by foreign tourists (in part because of the serenity, in part because of the extremely comfortable available lodging), to Mali’s capital of Bamako. The total distance is only 230 or so kilometers and the ride is said to take three to three and a half hours (a rather optimistic estimate based on unrealistically ideal conditions, but one that the bus company will give every time and in a very certain, matter of fact manner).

There are two kinds of scheduled bus departures in Mali. The first, which is quite rare, buses actually depart at the appointed hour. For example, buses of Bani Transport, one of the leading bus companies, supposedly always depart on time (although I find this hard to believe). The second, and far more common, kind of scheduled bus departure? Completely disregarding the schedule, the bus leaves when full.

We were told by someone who travels from Segou to Bamako regularly that Somatra’s (another major bus company) 4 AM departure from Segou to Bamako always leaves on time, and that there were two other Somatra morning departures, the “7 AM” and “8 AM,” which leave after filling up (and therefore not necessarily at 7 AM and 8 AM at all). We asked Somatra about its schedule directly, and were told that there were buses to Bamako on the hour, all morning, which we knew must be something barely short of an outright lie. And so, heeding the first advice, but not wanting to get up at 3 AM, we headed to the bus station at around 7, and bought tickets for the next departure. (We wanted to take Somatra because we had earlier on the trip taken a very comfortable Somatra bus, an old-fashioned model with windows that open and great legroom. Unfortunately, most of fleet in Mali now consists of modern buses with cramped seating and sealed windows, to keep in the air conditioning, except that the air conditioning is invariably non-functioning or turned off–it is winter here and the locals tend to get cold quickly–resulting in hothouse-like conditions. Also, Somatra’s station was convenient to our hotel–inconveniently, Malian bus companies maintain separate stations, making the business even less consumer-friendly.)

We then sat and waited. And waited. There was no indication of when the bus would leave (certainly no straight answer from the staff), but, by this point in our Mali trip, we were nearly as patient as the locals, eating snacks and enjoying the characters at the bus station. Now, Segou is not a big place, and so there was not quite the level of activity and volume of long-distance travelers that might be found in Bamako or Mopti, but there were still plenty of young men selling everything from shoes (draped around their necks) to over-the-counter medicines to prepaid SIM and recharge cards (a thriving business in West Africa), livestock being transported in sacks, sometimes the head poking out, other times wholly bagged up, and flies.

Waiting room

A donkey cart, carrying freight. I have developed a great love of donkeys on our trip–could they be any more adorable?

Finally, about two and a half hours after we first arrived, the bus company indicated which bus was headed to Bamako–unfortunately one of the more modern buses with neither opening windows nor working A/C–and luggage was loaded. (Remember the supposed hourly departures? At this rate of delay, there must be quite large number of buses sitting around at the end of the day!)

Now, just because the luggage is being loaded does not mean that a departure is imminent, nor does the bus company telling you that a departure is imminent mean that a departure is imminent (as we learned in Bamako, where a bus departing “tout de suite” didn’t leave for another hour). But, fortunately in this case, our bus took off fairly soon after loading.

One of the drudgeries of a bus ride in Mali is the dull scenery outside of the window. In terms of natural beauty, the Sahel in the dry season is pretty unremarkable–flat, dusty, a mixture of brown and an unhealthy shade of green. Another hassle, and the reason that voyages take so much longer than they are supposed to, is that buses stop all the time. They stop to drop off and pick up passengers and freight on the side of the road, for security checkpoints and sometimes for, as far as we could tell without language skills, no reason at all. That said, there are some interesting distractions on the Malian road.

I developed a great respect for African entrepreneurship (and sorrow for the lack of economic opportunity) from the number of people who seem to make a living by selling food to buses passing by. Any time the bus stops, a crush of girls and young women elbow and push their way on, trying to be the first of usually three or four with their particular product, and verbally marketing with gentle, rhythmic repetitions of their offerings. With prices so low and competition so fierce, it’s hard to imagine them making much money at all, in spite of the grueling conditions. In the first picture are women selling a boiled root vegetable (not bad, surprisingly juicy and sweet) and cupcakes (gateaux). In the second picture, you can also make out in the upper right baggies of frozen juice, always tempting but for fear of sickness (sometimes thirst would win out, other times fear of tainted water prevailed).

Police checkpoints are extremely common in Mali. From our limited West Africa experience, it seemed that Senegal was run quite efficiently with minimal police checkpoints or visible bribery, while checkpoints and petty bribes were endemic in Mali. We heard that the situation was yet worse in Niger, although of course none of these countries stack up to the rampant kleptocracy and violence of Nigeria. On one of our Malian bus rides, one of the passengers took up a collection from all of the other passengers, and then turned to us to pressure us to kick in, so that they could bribe the police not to check the cargo hold (we did not contribute).

Always common in developing countries, due to the condition of both the vehicles and the roads: breakdowns and accidents. Note the U.S. flag decoration in the interior of the bus. Malian buses and trucks are often decorated with the stars and stripes–it’s amazing that people still love and respect America so much after the last eight years.

All in all, our journey was quite smooth,
with no significant delays. Even then, what is said to be a three hour journey ended up taking four hours, or a total of six and a half hours from the time we showed up at the bus station. But by now we’ve started to assume that any bus ride will somehow end up taking the whole day, and so an early afternoon arrival was an unexpected windfall. (Our ride from Bamako to Segou a couple weeks ago, which we were told would take three hours but ended up taking closer to five, was excruciating–it’s amazing the difference that expectations make in the tolerability of physical discomfort.)

One is made to wonder what the total benefit to a country’s development and economy would be, were there simply reliable and cheap transportation, given transport’s role in facilitating commerce (or, in the case of Mali, in impeding commerce and raising the cost of everything). Maybe all development aid should just be aimed at transportation infrastructure and logistics? But then, how would that help to get rid of excess American agricultural products?

Our fellow passengers (the man in the middle blocking his face must be either shy or a fugitive!)

Mali photo religion

Religion in the Pays Dogon

Post author By pkk
Post date December 16, 2008

Village of Ireli, on the main escarpment, cliff on left and plains on right

As noted in my posts of 12.04 and 12.07, the bend in the Niger made now Mali, in particular Timbuktu, a sort of gateway between Arab/Berber North Africa and black sub-Saharan Africa. As a gateway, Sahelian Mali also became a sort of transition zone between the two, where North African people and culture mixed with sub-Saharan African people and culture, resulting in composites. While for most ethnic and cultural aspects it seems the pivot point is around Timbuktu, there is another transition in the country, which takes place significantly further south–the transition from Muslim West Africa to Christian West Africa.

It is easy to imagine Africa, at its most colorful and “primitive,” as an animist society, a wild land of masked dances and worship of idols. But of course such a representation would be grossly inaccurate. North Africa and most of the countries on just the other side of the Sahara, such as Senegal, Mali, Niger, the Sudan and Somalia, are overwhelmingly Muslim, reflecting the reach of the religion’s conquest and transmission from the seventh century onward. Other countries in this middle part of Africa, such as Ethiopia, Eritrea and Nigeria, are approximately half Muslim, while further south the reach of Christian missionaries from the nineteenth century onward have resulted in a largely Christian populations. There are pockets of animism and traditional beliefs still left, but Africa is, largely, a Muslim and Christian continent.

Given the dominance of those two world faiths, some of the animist populations of Africa have received much notoriety and anthropological and tourist attention; among the foremost of such groups is the Dogon of Mali. With their complex cosmology, colorful rituals and historical resistance from the Muslim populations further north, the Dogon have survived to the twenty-first century as a vestige of animism. Trekking around the Dogon villages, one still sees the houses of the elder priests, or hogons, and the houses in which the village women are sequestered during menstruation, villagers still warn you not to step on this rock or that one, and phallic fetishes are still white from millet offerings. In Youga Dogourou, there was a basket for collections for the next Sigui, the traditional celebration which takes place every sixty-five years (the next is supposed to start in 2032).

Traditional hogon house, Sanga

An animist fetish, white from the grain offerings recently poured over, Youga Na

But while traditional Dogon culture is animist, it would be a serious mistake to say that the Dogon as a whole remain animist, that they uniformly subscribe to their traditional beliefs at the level of religion. No, for better or for worse, many or most of the Dogon have adopted religions of the outside world, namely Islam and Christianity, and conversion away from their traditional beliefs is ongoing.

Christian church, Sanga, in the background left, a mosque

The animist beliefs of the Dogon are certainly the main draw for tourists and quite a point of interest, yes, but what I found perhaps even more interesting is this incursion of the outside monotheistic faiths into Dogon society, how the Dogon Country thus serves as a modern battlefield for the two great Abrahamic faiths of Christianity and Islam. Just as Mali, especially around Timbuktu, acts as a transition zone between North African and sub-Saharan African culture, the Dogon Country acts as a transition zone between Muslim Africa and Christian Africa.

Mosque in Sanga

One story of the Dogon as a race is that they fled southward into their current home, the Bandiagara Escarpment, to escape slave raids from Muslim kingdoms to the north. In doing this they were able to preserve not only their freedom, but their animist faith. But the Dogon have not been immune from Islam’s general advance southward in Africa. In the villages that we visited, Muslim places of worship were by far the most visible, more so than sites of traditional worship or Christian churches. While we read in one guidebook that all Dogon villages had Christian, Muslim and animist populations, separated into their own quarters within the village, our (Christian) guide told us, and it certainly appeared, that at least one village that we visited was essentially entirely Muslim. Connections to the greater Muslim world were also peculiarly visible.

A Dogon mosque, in traditional Sudanese architecture, Yendouma. In the second picture, note the ostrich eggs, a feature common to traditional Dogon houses of worship and Malian mosques (as well as, historically, churches and mosques elsewhere).

While most Dogon mosques were constructed in a “local” style, by which I mean the typical Sudanese mosque architecture of the West African Sahel, at least one mosque in Sanga was built in an “Arab” style. This may fit into a pattern of money from the Gulf having a homogenizing or orthodoxizing effect on Islam’s more remote outposts–one person told us that Saudi money was used for much mosque construction in Mali, and that West African Muslims were returning from the hajj with quite conservative/orthodox views, with more and more local women appearing in burqas.

This Fulani Muslim missionary, presumably originally from Mali somewhere to the north of Dogon Country, greeted us near the village of Banani with great enthusiasm, pronouncing his almost overly Arab name with glottal/guttural fervor. In his hand, the Quran.

Muslim man in the Dogon, in keffiyeh

Christian missionaries have also been incredibly active in the Dogon. With a large presence in Sanga, an American protestant group based in Burkina Faso, just a few miles south of the Dogon Country, has been actively spreading the Christian faith among the Dogon since the 1930s, it appears with great success. We were told by our Christian guide that some villages were entirely Christian. (The hotel we stayed in in nearby Sevare was operated by a former missionary and son of missionary, known as Mac.)

Christian church, Sanga

Religion is largely what makes the Dogon so unique, and so it is easy to feel sad about the tremendous loss of culture that the conversion of the Dogon represents. Given that most of the Dogon customs relate back to their religion and cosmology, it is hard to predict how much of the unique elements of their culture will persist if all of the Dogon convert to Islam and Christianity. While of course the Dogon should be free to follow their conscience, it seems that both the Muslims and the Christians see the animist Dogon as ripe pickings, or perhaps low hanging fruit, and one wonders what material incentives are being provided by the more powerful faiths. No doubt, affiliating oneself with an American Christian outfit can lead to educational and work opportunities that might not otherwise be available in this impoverished corner of West Africa, while becoming a Muslim may help a Dogon become better integrated into Malian society outside of the Dogon Country. Perhaps, rather than decrying the missionary work of the Christians and Muslims, it is best to take comfo
rt in the fact that, to a certain extent, converted Dogon have succeeded in keeping some of their own traditions (the Christian faith in particular can be notoriously syncretic) and that the brew of religions in this Christian/Muslim transition zone does not seem to have led to conflict, such as the recurring violence in, say, central Nigeria, central Sulawesi or the former Yugoslavia.

Grain harvest, Youga Piri

Mali photo

How to Plan a Dogon Country Trek, the Easy Way and the Hard Way

Post author By pkk
Post date December 16, 2008
9 Comments on How to Plan a Dogon Country Trek, the Easy Way and the Hard Way

Village of Banani, off of the falaise

As a rule, we don’t like taking guided tours. We generally find that guides lack much knowledge (or perhaps we can’t afford the high quality guides), destroy any sense of discovery or serenity by leading you around like a dog and talking incessantly (perhaps some tourists feel they are getting their money’s worth the more their guide says, however useless and uninformative), cramp spontaneity and flexibility, and take you to shops and restaurants based largely on the kickbacks offered to him for bringing you. In an ideal world, of course having a guide could provide tremendous value and insight–but most guides are far from ideal. In place of a guide, I much prefer the more accurate and specialized information provided by a book. Besides, I love route finding and logistics–some might even argue that that’s what I like best about travel–and guides would steal from me that role!

Anyway, there are some trips in the world for which a guide, or even joining a guided group (for sake of economy), is necessary. Off of the top of my mind, hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, exploring the Salar de Uyuni and southwestern Bolivia in a jeep, African safaris and our trip to Iran, where Americans must be guided, come to mind. And, truth be told, we end up really enjoying most of these trips, if not due to our guide then to the fellow travelers with whom we are sharing the experience. Still, we do avoid guides and groups whenever we can.

Which is why we were somewhat stressed by our trip to the Pays Dogon, or Dogon Country, of Mali. The Dogon Country is a region of Mali where a unique ethnic/lnguistic group known as the Dogon make their home. Believed to have arrived at their current homeland in medieval times, the Dogon are famous for their animist faith, in particular its convoluted cosmology (of Robert Temple’s Sirius Mystery fame), their mask dances and their architecture, including the yet older architecture of the tellem people who preceded them in their current home. Located along a cliff known as the Bandiagara Escarpment, the Dogon Country is on anyone’s list of the highlights of Mali for travelers, and a 2 to 10 day tour, with guide, is considered an essential part of a Mali trip.

But, oh! how to choose the right guide and route?

Mali is, believe it or not, a fairly touristy country, one in which there is a well-established tourist circuit with all of its attendant conveniences and hassles. One of the most persistent of the hassles is the constant presence of would-be guides. Like most African countries Mali has many different ethnic groups, but almost all guides who approach you claim to be one of the two which add the greatest amount of value for the tourist: In and around Timbuktu, all of the young men who approach you are “Tuareg from the desert,” all the better to pitch to you desert trips (or, if that fails, “Tuareg jewelry from my village”). In the rest of the country, including in Bamako, all would-be guides announce themselves as Dogon, and thus well-equipped to take you on a tour of the Dogon Country.

Now, of course, there aren’t even all that many Dogon (less than a million), and certainly some of the would-be guides not only are not Dogon but neither speak Dogon nor know much about Dogon Country. Guidebooks warn that such guides will actually contract an actual Dogon guide upon arrival in Dogon Country–which means not only that you picked the wrong guide to start with but that you paid much too much. And so, we were extremely wary of the entire situation, and very anxious about finding the right person, someone who was not only actually Dogon and knowledgeable but also a person with whom we would actually enjoy spending four or more uninterrupted days.

Our first opportunity to hire a guide came, as with most tourists, in the capital city of Bamako. As a foreign tourist walking around Bamako, it is assured that you will have at least a handful of young men approach you, telling you that they are Dogon and trying to arrange for you a Dogon tour. Of course, being extremely distrustful of the whole situation (every guidebook tells you not to arrange Dogon tours in Bamako, to wait for cities closer to Dogon Country), we ignored all those who approached us, even though one young man in particular seemed knowledgeable and sympathetic (more on him below). The bottom line is that we had just arrived in the country and needed to get a better feel before we made any commitments. Although one of the guides we met might not have been a bad choice, as we figured out later, we think that this is generally sound advice–a Dutch couple we met in Timbuktu told us that they had arranged their Dogon trip in Bamako, and had a mediocre experience, with very little actual trekking (2-3 kilometers/day) along a poorly planned itinerary with little scenic or cultural variety.

Djenne was the next big hub of guide activity, but we found the would-be guides there far too aggressive. We met some Peace Corps volunteers who had a great experience (at an even better price) with a guide, but he was booked solid with other Peace Corps folk, and so unavailable. Eventually, we decided that we should head up to Timbuktu for Tabaski (see post of 12.08), and defer our guide selection for our return.

We took a boat to Timbuktu (see post of 12.07), but took a jeep back, through the city of Douentza. A French couple with whom we were sharing the jeep arranged a three day trip starting in Douentza and approaching Dogon Country from the northwest, a recommended itinerary, but we did not join them as 1) we wanted a greater selection of guides (particularly important because English language ability is scarce in Mali relative to French) and 2) we wanted to go on a longer trip.

Our next opportunity to hire a guide was in the city of Sevare, the city closest to Bandiagara, which is the most common starting point of a Dogon trip. In Sevare we stayed at Mac’s Refuge, a slightly overpriced but very comfortable hotel whose principal appeal is the affable Mac, an American former Christian missionary turned innkeeper who holds court every evening over delicious home-cooked dinners, one of the best meals we had in Mali. Mac offered us a list of English-speaking guides. While he told us that this was a “screened” list, it also seemed clear that he wanted no part in mediating the transaction–he was not running a travel agency and did not want to take responsibility for our choice. The morning after, we had a few of Mac’s suggested guides over for little interviews, but none seemed right. The first started at an overly high price, especially for transport (we didn’t really want our guide profiting from our jeep transfers), the second seemed lethargic and unenthusiastic and the third seemed to think, bizarrely, that our proposed itinerary, which we had arrived at after conversations with Mac and the first two guides, was simply not feasible in the time we proposed–perhaps he just didn’t want us as clients.

Around noon, after the failed negotiations with the Sevare-based guides, we headed to the share taxi stop for Bandiagara, hoping to maybe catch onward transit to Sanga for its market day, and sort out the guide situation there. Getting from Sevare to Bandiagara ended up being a mini-fiasco.

We arrived at the share taxi stop to find that a taxi had just left, and that seven more people (paying 1600 CFA or USD 3.20 each) would be needed to fill our car. The driver flatly refused any amount less than the full fare for all nine seats. Unwilling to pay that amount to go the short distance on the paved road, we crossed the street and attempted to hitchhike. There were almost no vehicles, but we figured that one tourist vehicle would be enough. While we were waiting, several people annoyingly walked up to tell us that we should pay for all nine sea
ts of a share taxi, it’s unclear what their stake was in the situation but they clearly had one.

After a bit more than an hour, a green Mercedes pulled up with heavy bass thumping out American rap. We asked through the window if the car was going to Bandiagara, and a reasonably well-dressed man asked us what our plans were, whether we had a guide for the Dogon already, etc. He explained that he owned the Hotel de la Falaise in Bandiagara, and said that he could drive us there, if we stayed at the hotel and considered using one of his guides for our trek. The hotel being reviewed quite positively in the Rough Guide, we thought this a good plan. As we were putting our bags in the car, however, we were interrupted by a number of people associated with the share taxi business, who came up to complain that we were rightfully their customers and that the hotel owner could not provide us transportation, which is their line of work (as if they had some sort of monopoly on all travelers on this road). The argument quickly escalated, with people yelling at each other tussling over our bags and generally getting in each others’ faces. Some money was exchanged, from the hotel-owner to the taxi drivers, but apparently not enough. Eventually, we grabbed our bags and told the hotel owner in English (which only he among the group understood) that we would walk up the street and wait for him there.

A few minutes later, the Mercedes passed us, with the driver yelling out the window for us to go to the Hotel Flandres, which we knew to be a good 20-25 minutes away by foot. Having all of our luggage on us, and it being mid-day, we were uncertain whether to follow these instructions for what might not even end up being a good situation. Nonetheless, since we were offered a free ride (and there was a good chance that there was no other ride available at all that day, especially since we had just gotten into a fight with the share taxi cartel), and because the driver seemed so confident, we headed over. At the town’s main intersection, a blue van drove up and lectured to us, in French, that we should take the transportation offered by the cartel. We ignored him, but the van continued to follow us. About mid-way to the Hotel Flandres, when we had briefly stopped to check on a Wi-Fi connection, a man we recognized as one of the passengers in the Mercedes came up to us and told us that he had come to make sure that we got to the Hotel Flandres. We proceeded, the blue van following all along at a distance of maybe twenty-five yards. (No doubt we would have been charged a fortune for a taxi ride that distance, let alone in a big van, but here he was wasting his fuel just to enforce the transportation cartel’s monopoly.)

We waited at the Flandres for the hotel owner to come with his Mercedes. Fifteen minutes later, he arrived and said it was time to go. When we took our bags to the car, however, we saw that the blue van had blocked us into the driveway, and that quite an active dispute was underway over our ride. After more arguments, the hotel owner somehow prevailed, and with a little fancy driving to get around the van we were on our way.

About five minutes into our ride, the hotel owner first instructed us, if the police were to ask, to say that we had hired him to drive us to Bandiagara, at a cost of 20,000 CFA. After more discussion with his friend, he told us instead to say that we had a hotel reservation and so were being driven over. All this suggested that the checkpoint would be, um, sympathetic to the interests of the cartel. However, the police at the checkpoint seemed quite content with the bag of baguettes that was handed over by the driver and required no other explanation, and our host seemed quite happy with himself for getting through without a hitch.

The Hotel de la Falaise is certainly a pretty smooth operation. The rooms are comfortable and good value, the food tasty and well-prepared and the setup for hooking up tourists with Dogon itineraries and guides very efficient. After we had lunch and made clear that we were ready to discuss our Dogon trip, a smartly dressed man sat down with us. We explained what we wanted, and he elaborated our itinerary, filling in one more town he thought worthwhile (but which we previously had thought too distant). He said that our itinerary would cost a little more than alternative ones, but the price quoted (20,000 CFA or USD 40/person/day) was still lower than anything else we had been offered as a “first price,” and well within the range of the prices suggested by guidebooks (15-30,000 CFA or USD 30-60/person/day). The man introduced us to our guide, who we were assured was a qualified guide from the guide association, and wrote out a contract with our routing and a list of everything included in the price (guide fees, transport, food, lodging, village taxes, etc.). We chatted with our guide some, found him amiable enough, and agreed to leave at 7 AM the next morning.

Tellem buildings near village of Ireli. The Tellem were the predecessors of the Dogon in their current home, and traditional beliefs of the Dogon ascribe all sorts of mysterious properties and powers to the Tellem, such as dwarfism and the ability to climb the rock walls like mini Spider-Men to reach their mysterious homes or granaries built into the cliffsides. To American eyes, there is a resemblance to the Puebloan villages of the Southwest, such as those at Mesa Verde.

Tellem architecture near Youga Dogourou

I am sorry to report that we were not, in the end, very pleased with our trip. While our guide was friendly enough, he was too passive and did not assure that we received the standard of food that we felt we should at campements en route (other tourists seemed to be getting better at the same establishments, and at one point even he received a visibly better meal than we, which I found incredibly irritating). Around mid-day, he would get a bit lazy, and suggest shortening routings or longer breaks than were really necessary. Explanations were overly succinct, and, while I believe he had a good understanding of Dogon culture (he certainly was Dogon himself), I did not feel that we received very good “guiding.” Finally, his familiarity with the route was not 100%, as at one point he hired another man to help lead us (and carry his bag–thus our guide had a porter, though not we). I don’t think these faults would apply to all guides represented by the Hotel de la Falaise, but it certainly did not work out as the foolproof method of finding the right guide that we hoped it would.

So what should you do? Well, you could try your shot at the Hotel de la Falaise–just be very clear (even to the point of rudeness, like asking how long lunch breaks will be, how many meals will come with meat) exactly what you are expecting from your guide and trip. Depending on the luck of the draw, you may still have to be somewhat aggressive with your guide, as we felt we had to be, in order to have the trip you expected. But perhaps your luck will be better than ours, or your expectations lower.

Or, you can try contacting one of the these two guides:

Pebelou Dolo, 7 408 33 07, dolobelou@yahoo.fr

Seck Dolo, 7 874 78 43, seckdolo@yahoo.fr (the phone actually belongs to a friend of Seck’s named Toube, but he can locate Seck)

The first is a man we met in Sanga, within Dogon Country proper. Of all of the guides we talked to on our Dogon trip, he seemed to have one of the best commands of English and also a very sophisticated worldview, suggesting that he would probably give good explanations and be otherwise agreeable on a long trip. The second is the guide we met in Bamako. At the end of our Mali trip, we were back in Bamako, and ran across the young man who had followed us around the first day suggesting that we hire him for our Dogon trip. We explai
ned what had happened on our Dogon trip, and he recognized the various problems, and assured us that, had we gone with him, things would have been better. Now having been to the Dogon, it was clear to us that Seck really was quite knowledgeable, and we had always had confidence in his language ability and general demeanor. Seck also assured that he could arrange affordable transport from Bamako to the Dogon (using public transportation as desired), or arrange to meet him there, and that his clock could start ticking once the trek started, not from Bamako. And so we think that both of these guides would be worth checking out. (If you try either, please let me know how your experience was so we can add it to this blog entry. Or, if you’d like to offer a plug for another good guide, please let me know.)

Carvings on the toguna, or case a palabres, the main meeting place for the men of a Dogon village, Kundu

The problem with our Dogon trip was not with our guide alone. To be honest, we were disappointed by the experience as a whole, including especially with the reception of tourists by the Dogon themselves. This may sound somewhat harsh to read, but we find that some peoples seem to take to tourism (or to being touristed) better than others; I would not place the Dogon at the top of this list. Compared to other places that are heavily touristed, Dogon Country, I would say, is more “ruined” than most, with relatively few opportunities for genuine and meaningful interaction (as opposed to, say, trying to be sold things) and a lack, on the part of the Dogon, of reciprocal curiosity and friendliness. Some concrete tips so that your experience is better than ours:

– Buy extra food. While there is no shortage of campements offering tourists food and lodging along the main routes, the standard of food is surprisingly low. Part of this was due to passivity on the part of our guide, but part is also due to lack of cooking skills and ingredients. Even though food is likely included in the price of your tour, you should supplement generously. Taking along a can of tuna or sardines (those red cans sardines are really quite tasty) for each meal will augment it tremendously, far better than the super-scrawny chicken, some of the thinnest and stringiest in the world, that is on offer in the Dogon. As in other parts of the former French colonial world, La Vache Qui Rit (Laughing Cow) processed cheese is also widely available, and tasty on a trek. Conveniently, such items can be purchased in the bigger Dogon villages themselves, as well as at the trailheads.

– The trail from Sanga to the town of Banani, using the staircase, is strikingly beautiful and should not be missed. One of our greatest annoyances with our guide was that he did not indicate this path to us.

– The three Yougas are definitely worthwhile. Youga Na, in particular, was, to me, the most beautiful of the villages that we visited and boasted the very best campement, with ice cold drinks and almost “boutique” decor, established with the assistance of the French (though oddly the food was horrible). If I were to suggest an itinerary, for someone in a reasonable state of fitness, I would suggest basing out of Youga Na, taking one day to get there from Sanga through Banani, another day to do a loop through the other two Yougas and then the third day stopping by Yendouma and Tiogou on your way back to Sanga. This is basically what we did, except that we hiked through Ireli on the way to Banani and slept in Banani, and also slept in Yendouma on the way out.

– In Sanga proper, which you can visit quite well without a guide at all, the Hotel Kastor is quite comfortable and good value, and offers great meals.

– Do not plan on taking a lot of pictures. The Dogon seem to be under the mistaken impression that photographs of them are highly marketable and valuable, and so treat the taking of photographs something like petty larceny. Now, we’ve encountered pay-for-photo regimes in the past, including most notably with the tribal people in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, but the truth is that the Dogon people, as a visual matter, are not all that interesting, generally not a people Derek would pay to take pictures of. When women start demanding money because they happened to get into a picture you were taking of a building, or when children who are clearly not in the picture (five feet to the right of you when your camera is pointing straight ahead) start yelling, “No! No! No!” it gets pretty irritating. (Older men generally do not mind, especially if bribed with a few kola nuts, post to come.) Dogon Country is simply the worst place in the world we have been, for ease of photo taking.

View of Youga Na