Trekking in Dogon Country

Toguna at Dourou

Pounding Millet

After resting for the night in Bandiagara the next morning me and my guide, Mussa, left for the village of Dourou from where we would commence the trek. Dourou was located on the edge of the Bandiagara escarpment and was roughly in the middle of the south-west to north-east running escarpment. I had decided to trek the northern circuit since it was reputed to have more picturesque villages compared to the south which was preferred by the trekkers wanting to continue onwards to Burkina Faso.

Granaries at Dourou

Tellem houses

Before we got to Dourou, we had to negotiate about 20 kilometers of extremely rocky and sometimes sandy terrain on a little moped. The rocky section of the road was not too difficult but the sandy one was very tricky with the moped skidding a couple times. At one instance, as the moped was skidding I got down from it with my backpack still on my shoulder while the moped was still in motion. Mussa who was driving the moped drove a further for 20-30 meter until he realized that I had jumped off the moped.

Gardens of Nombori

My breakfast table in Nombori

Along the way, wherever the rocky terrain gave way to little soil, there were small patches of onion fields. Onion along with Millet formed the prominent crops of the Dogon with the millet planted during the rainy season and the onion in the dry.

Posing for the picture :)

Dogon girls transporting wares between villages

We had lunch at the pretty village of Dourou before embarking down the falaise (cliff). The best memory of the village was walking around the pretty village with its typical Dogon houses and granaries and playing futbol with the kids with a deflated ball.

Kids being kids!

Lunch spot...notice the stairs

After leaving Dourou, we started climbing down to the village of Nombori situated at the base of the falaise. Nombori was one of my favorite Dogon villages because it had a great combination of the falaise, the Dogon houses, the abandoned Tellem houses and lush gardens which were planted with onions, tomatoes and other vegetables. The gardens were sustained by water from hand-dug wells from a dry river bed. Mussa assigned me a local guide to walk around the village which was very necessary since the Dogon tradition is rich with cult and rituals and hence several locations that look mundane might be extremely sacred. I was told that if I trespass some places they will have to sacrifice a chicken…less than a hundred years ago it could very well have been a human…perhaps the one who commits that gaffe.

Millet in foreground

Millet fields and Baobabs

The reason for their strict interpretation possibly could be because the Dogon, being agriculturist are extremely dependent on the nature to bring timely rains and consider any digression from the rituals as a bad omen and have to perform sacrifice to appease their God. The evening was spent walking around the gardens of Nombori and eating some of the best tasting tomatoes from the gardens.

The next morning I had breakfast on the terrace gazing at the village and the cliffs. Next, we followed the dry river bed to reach the village of Idyeli Na, which also had gardens but was not as picturesque as Nombori. The basic plan was to walk during the mornings and late afternoons to avoid walking in the scorching heat of the Sahel. After Idyeli Na, we entered Komokani through a thicket of Mango trees which were nourished by a stream flowing through the cliffs. By early evening we reached Tereli where we spend the night. After dropping off my backpack at the campement, we walked through the village and later headed to the top of the cliff to spend the sunset watching the Tellem dwellings lit up in the orange tinge of the setting sun and with the plains of the Sahel providing a perfect backdrop. Of all the four days in the Dogon, this was probably my most memorable moment.

Sunset in Tereli

On the third morning we passed through the village of Amani which had a small pond with sacred crocodiles. Not wanting to see small crocodiles being fed chicken morsels, we decided to move along to the next village Ireli which was reputed to be the most scenic. Before we did that, we spend some time with Mussa’s mother and his friends where I brushed up on my Dogon greeting which was pretty unique and tasting some millet beer than Mussa’s mom had just brewed.

Traversing through the cliffs

Tasting the millet beer in a calabash

Whenever two people meet, the elder asks the question aga po (hello), to which the younger one replies seo (fine). Then the questions continue with oumana seo (how is the family?), ounou seo (how are the children?), yahana seo (how is the wife?). Each time the response is a seo regardless if one has wife and children. Once the elder finishes asking the question, the roles are reversed. The greetings are more like a rhythmic duet between two people rather than formal questions. Mussa’s mom then packed me some fruits of the Baobab tree for the journey to Ireli and we set off to Ireli. As we passed along the cliffs, it was pretty evident that the there were a lot more Tellem dwellings clustered in this region of Bandiagara.

My bed for the night in Terili

Could not see the real Mask dance...but here's a painting

Morning in Tereli

Ireli by far had the best views of the Tellem dwellings and I could get very close to them as well as the Hogon’s (the spiritual leaders) dwelling. Its inconceivable how the Tellem managed to live in these vertical cliffs. The Dogon believe that they could fly but a more scientific explanation could be that they used rope and being pygmies where very nimble. The village itself was fairly large and was divided into four sections where I spent the whole afternoon exploring it. The destination that night was to reach the village of Banani which we reached around 5pm and were welcomed by a local celebration going on in the main center. Even though it was a Christian celebration, the dances were very typically West African with men and women dancing in a circle while the men were playing the music at the center of this circle.

Banani was the last cliff village on the trek and after resting the night, the next morning we climbed the cliff one last time to walk towards the village of Sanga which is a village on top of the falaise. Even though Banani had some stunning Dogon and Tellem housing, the village seemed a little bit touristic.

Mussa's mom brewing the millet beer

On the ride from Sanga to Bandiagara I felt slightly ill, but I brushed it off thinking it was nothing more than fatigue due to the exertion of the 4 days of trekking in the heat of Mali. We made it back to the town of Bandiagara around 2pm and I was just in time to catch the direct bus to Bamako which runs once a week. After 14 days in Mali, I had seen and done what was on my checklist for Mali and with a few days to spare I felt that if I could make it to Bamako the next morning I could get an earlier flight out of Mali and spend a couple days in Togo instead. Well that was the plan anyway. It certainly did not pan out that way.

Tellem dwellings in the village or Ireli

Early Dogon and Tellem dwellings

The bus was crammed, hot and extremely slow, seemingly stopping at every place it could to pick up more passengers even when there was no space on board. On the journey, my illness had turned to a serious sickness with vomiting and loose motions. I still vaguely remember a couple instances; the first was when the bus broke down the first time during the night when I climbed on top of the bus and waded through goats and then chickens before finally finding my backpack to pull out my malaria pills. I was not sure if I had malaria but I could not take a chance so I popped the pills (which I always carry with me in Africa). The second instance was somewhere in the middle of the night when the bus broke down the second time when all passengers had to get down from the bus. I vaguely remember than I got down, headed to the bush to throw up and then unable to bear the sickness or the agonizing wait for the bus to be fixed, I spread out and slept on the mud right by the road side until I was awakened by somebody to tell me that the bus was fixed and we were ready to proceed.

View from the Dogon houses

Celebration in Banani

After an arduous journey for about 22 hours I reached Bamako where I had just enough energy to get a hotel room and spend the next day and half to recover. I have to mention that without the help of a kind passenger called Malik, my bus ride could have become a real nightmare. He helped me as much as he could through the journey and I have sincere gratitude for him.

Village of Banani on the last morning of the trek

After recovering, I was able to get an earlier flight but my destination was Liberia and not Togo as I felt I did not have a lot in my tank to explore Togo. Now that I look back, I am probably never going to forget that bus ride…for the wrong reasons. I understand its part of travel to take the bad with the good but it still was a grueling experience.

Despite the sickness, the trip to Mali came pretty close in experience to the one I had in Comoros and Madagascar last year. Too bad I fell sick but the good thing was that it was at the end of the trip and not during it. The country itself is fascinating with its diverse population and different ethnic groups. Its also is a bridge between North Africa and West Africa and the Caucasoid and Negroid populations.

My unforgettably painful ride!

The people, if I take out the ones that are exposed to tourists in some parts of Timbuktu and Dogon, were extremely kind, generous and eager to know and interact with me. The country however is extremely poor and a combination of rapid population growth and increased desertification leaves me to wonder about the future of this old but fascinating civilization.