This site is continually being added and changed. I wanted to get this live since EVERYONE and their mothers are asking!!! Last updated February 17, 2003. I spent two weeks in Mali and Côte d'Ivoire with my old Peace Corps buddy, Susan Latta, and thought the best way for you all to see the pictures is to put it on the net, so here we go.
Please note: I have gone a little overboard in my descriptions so if this is too much, just go to the picture links at the bottom--it's probably just as interesting.
My boss and I thought we had prepared appropriately for someone to cover my duties while I was away and got a lady very well suited (open, warm, all that). Of course, she was so awesome she got herself another job the afternoon before she was supposed to start temping with us so the day of my trip I was back at the office training another guy (who incidentally only temped one day until he had to move on to other things and had to train someone else).
My flight headed out at 7:20 pm so Jean and I were at the airport at 3:15 pm. Yep, that "3 hours in advance" was really necessary--check-in took all of 3 minutes. And a very uneventful and mostly-boring flight got me to Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire 3 hours late at 10:30 pm Saturday, January 26. Being on a full 747 made waiting for luggage (in my case, a 3 kilogram empty cat carrier for Susan's kitty, Njimba, in Gabon) 45 minutes.
I do need to add that if you have the chance to fly over the Sahara in
a window seat in the daytime, I highly recommend it. Around 5:30 pm the
shores of Sudan came into view and the beautiful white Alps and winter fields
of Europe became a dark brown expanse south of the Mediterranean. Watching
from above, the dark brown gradually became lighter and lighter; the fertile
lands marked by geometric patterns showed themselves only randomly; what
were large rivers became silty river beds; and evidence of civilization
only represented by a few thin dirt roads that shot out in one unwavering
direction.
From above I could see so many different dune formations: lines and lines
then funny bubbles of sand then finger-like pockmarks over flatlands; ripples
the size of cliffs; ripples so reticulated they resembled tripe (stomach
lining of cows). Then suddenly, circular crops with a line extending from
the center like a radius. Three of them, how bizarre! And remnants of rectangular
houses. And we're still in Algeria, what an enormous country!
Having been forwarned that Côte d'Ivoire is having some post-coup issues, we were a little nervous about gendarmie attitudes towards two American women. Susan was able to spend all morning in Abidjan and felt it was pretty safe. So we opted to get a good view of Côte d'Ivoire by taking a bus north through the middle to Bamako, Mali. Good idea if you're not claustophobic.
Two long days of gendarmie stops (23 in all) later, we found ourselves at the border in Pogo, Côte d'Ivoire. Out of these 23 stops, the gendarmes entered the bus 21 times. You can imagine how much time that takes. And it's usually the same people who were pulled off for having insufficient paperwork (they were lost yesterday; burned in a fire; taking the bus to Mali to redo the papers... you name it, someone probably had that excuse).
With 8 hours to kill until the next bus came, we tried to rehydrate ourselves with 2 1.75 liter bottles, then spent 100 CFA (10 cents?) for bucket baths. I had originally opted to save 25 CFA and go for the 1/2 bucket but then the idea of washing my hair was just too tempting. This was our first time we had to pay to use water(25 CFA for plastic teapot, 75 for 1/2 bucket, 100 for bucket), but I tell you it was worth it after 18 hours in a hot dusty bus.
Pogo is a pretty town. Just south of the Mali/Côte d'Ivoire a couple kilometres there was some evidence of border-activities (bus stations, transport trucks) it was really a typical sleepy town and we were very happy to take a break from the road to watch the world slowly turn in Pogo. After a short sweaty nap in the shade I headed out to find Susan who had wandered off, not being able to sleep in the heat. Being different comes in handy quite frequently and I soon passed a teenager who asked if I was looking for my sister. Must have stuck out in the crowd. Soon found her exploring the village and joined up with my camera.
We found graineries grouped between their houses. These clay/sand-slabbed cylindrical structures were removed from the ground by logs and/or large rocks; each was accessible by a small padlocked window near the straw-covered roof. Met a group of girls who were selling mandarines (mandarin-bé). Susan tried to strike up a conversation but fell onto the same problem. They spoke their dialect, not French, so we were left with the old faithful--gesturing wildly--to determine what they were carrying on their heads. Follow this link to my grainery photos.
Having rehydrated ourselves sufficiently and feeling dustily-clean (did you know you can feel that way?) after the bucket baths, we headed back to the bus area and heard someone call out "Vous voulez une boisson?" (Do you want a drink). If I were alone I wouldn't have even answered, my typical response to strange men offering drinks, but feeling the support of Susan with me and realizing we hadn't had a beer for two days, we joined them. It was very nice but I was hesitant to be drinking too near our time of departure. The worst feeling is having to pee and not being able to get off the bus.
I originally was seated next to a very devout older Muslim who would be spending the entire trip fingering his prayer necklace and mumbling the verses. That would have made for a very tiring night and, although he was very courteous and made sure no part of his body or clothing touched me, I felt it had something to do with me being either American or female or both. Fortunately Susan had a seat next to her and I was able to move on our first stop. I think I had the best seat. Susan controlled the window so we actually had air coming in and I could prop my feet up on the spare tire and excess baggage. Well, unlike our past experiences, the bus took off when it was scheduled to and, sleeping most of the night, we arrived at 6 am south of Bamako at Sogoniko, the main bus area for trips heading east in the interior of Mali. Boy, were we happy to have arrived in Mali finally!
Wow, Bamako is so expansive! I'm sure I would have been more in awe if I was just arriving from the interior. Mopeds zipping around taxis, honking everywhere. Surprisingly, we weren't dragged as much as we anticipated (not that we wanted it) and were frequently ignored! We stayed at the Catholic mission downtown. Very nice and safe. We came there after our trip to Dogon country so we became very familiar with the place and got to know the guardian, Charles--nice guy.
Our first day there I bought some mud cloth. I wish, on hindsight, I'd bought more because it's so beautiful--I just didn't want to have to carry it all over and thought I'd get more in the interior, which I ended up not being able to do.
The next morning we headed back to Sogoniko for a bus to the Carrefour Djenné which is a village of around 10 houses and an out-of-commission bus where the road splits for Djenné. The driver didn't speak French so we were a little nervous about missing the village but after 8 hours in the bus almost everyone knew where we'd be stopping so there was no way of missing it. We passed mud houses--square with flat, slanted mud or tin roofs and very small windows which made me wonder how air passed through. Dry empty savannas with electricity poles in the distance (very ironic). Plantations looked dead which made sense as we were there in the driest season. The roads were all paved and very smooth but every entry and exit to a village had a road bump to slow down the buses. Along the roadsides were piles of gnarled wood--where did they come from? Never seen baobabs before coming here. Wow, they are so majestic and eery. They were mostly leafless but the fruits were hanging down from long stems.
I was surprised how quickly another van came heading to Djenné--we only waited maybe 1/2 an hour. Susan got the most precarious seat in this van--facing backwards, feet hanging out the open back doors, holding onto her seat for dear life.
We arrived in Djenné in the dead of night so didn't realize until the next morning that we had actually crossed the river on a ferry to get there! We were heading to the encampement area when a boy of around 18 who called himself "Philipe the Magnificent" called to us and spoke in great English that he had Peace Corps friends and knew of a nicer place to stay than the camping area so we met the man who ran the Restaurant Kitakourou Djenné, a very nice man with a wonderful family who rented out a room as a hotel and offered great fish meals at cheap rates. Over dinner we arranged with Mr Magnificent that he'd be our guide for a trip to Senossa, the village south of Djenné about 8 km, then a tour of Djenné. Having haggled to death (or almost), we came to an unhappy settlement on both sides and Susan and I quickly found our room, found our bed, and crashed.
The next morning we woke up at sunrise to the chirps of two birds the family kept in cages. Wanting to get pictures of sunrise and of the beautiful house before the family woke, I quickly took my camera upstairs. It was a very interesting setup. The ground floor had two guest rooms, kitchen, dining and their bedroom--all around a central courtyard. Standing in the middle looking up you see a netting they had placed above the bird cages where they had strung vines long ago and now these vines were taking over and creating almost another ceiling. Walking up the winding stairs to the second floor were more bedrooms and the shower area around the open courtyard again. Susan and I couldn't figure out why the shower and WC would be on the upper floor but assumed there was a logical reason, right? Then, if you are feeling stable enough, you can climb up the tight ladder to the open flat roof where you can see over all the other roofs to the Grande Mosque (the reason we came to Djenné in the first place). Extraordinary!
Our guide found us at 8:30 with a horsecart complete with horse and driver (necessary)
OK, you have come to the end of this page. I would like to do a little ego-boosting, here. My other sites (wedding and Gabon) were done through Geocities' handy-dandy Yahoo! PageBuilder but I wanted to do my Mali sites in HTML hard-coding only. So, now go up to View, choose Source (or Page Source in Netscape) and see all that? I typed allll that! Yep, I did.