Velvet

Malilog, Stardate 112608 After lasting the whole trip with no illness whatsoever, the previous evening’s fancypants meal had me up at 3:30am vomiting and horribly diarrheic. With little to no sleep from then on I was up three times to expulse. After watching the most beautiful sunrise through our little window, we got up at 6am and sat down for another wonderful breakfast, where I only managed to get down a banana and two bites of fresh bread. With much trepidation but little choice we faced a long travel day. Very concerned about keeping my insides inside and kicking myself for not having a joint left to smoke to quell the nausea, we walked to town straight after breakfast. In the town centre we bought our tickets to Carrefour, the crossroads that leads to Mopti in one direction and Bamako in the other. The collectif leaves when it’s full, and we waited about three hours for it to fill. And when a collectif around here is full, it’s full. A Toyota minivan barely held together with tape, wire, and hope, with nineteen passengers. I had a glad baggy in my pocket in case of vomiting and hope in my soul in case of diarrhea. When we got to the ferry we had to wait again. At one point I thought for sure I was gonna turn inside-out, telling Heather I wasn’t going to make it, but I held it together somehow. At 10:20 we made it to Carrefour where we then had to wait to see if a bus would come by with room for us to get to Bamako. First came a bus for Mopti, no good for us. Then came a bus for Bamako, but it was full. Finally, after two hours on the side of the road we got our bus and were exhaustedly ecstatic to be on the road back to the capitol. The bus from Bamako to Mopti had taken us nine and-a-half hours, and as Djenne is two hours closer to Bamako, we figured we were in for a seven to eight hour ride (no bathroom or air-conditioning on board of course). The bus stopped incessantly to pick up and drop off passangers and for prayer time, but mostly to allow the roadside merchants to rush the bus and scramble aboard screaming their wares. I never have to hear another person yell Benubebenubebenubebenubebenube!†It was about forty degrees on that bus and the only air movement came from the ceiling hatch, which brought with it debris flying off of the ever-changing roof load. At one point we were stopped for well over an hour while the bus guys repacked stuff they had mistakenly unloaded. Too fearful in my ginger condition to eat any of the mystery food being pushed roadside, by late afternoon we were both hot and hungry, and I was approaching a very miserable outlook. As the heat became more and more unbearable I brought a frozen drink just to on our bodies to stave off heatstroke, and I stared at the sun begging it to go down. As time crawled on at a pace just slower than our bus we became more amazed and irritated that the bus had to stop every forty-five minutes for more road merchants. I mean, really, if you want a banana in an hour, buy one now! Do we really have to stop again?!?! Finally, finally, finally, we arrived in Bamako and got a taxi to our hotel after enduring a sixteen hour travel day. It could have been worse though. The twenty or so live goats that were piled like luggage into the lower luggage compartment with their bodies bound up in rice sacks probably had a pretty rough ride too.

Malilog, Stardate 112508 We woke up early in our sandy oasis and saw a breakfast table elegantly set for two in the courtyard. We sat down and were served a marvelous small breakfast that included warm fresh bread, butter (a first), peanut butter (another first), and real coffee served in a bodem (you guessed it, another first). We met the European lady that owns the place and had a lovely chat. For a late morning excursion we walked a kilometer or two to the Djenne-djenno museum. We checked out the exhibits and picked up a very informative guide who walked us to the Djenne-Djenno site. In the 1970’s a pair of western archeologists did a dig here and found what carbon dating showed was the oldest known settlement in West Africa, countering the then-accepted theory that Arab nomads first settled in the area. As we walked over the flat, hard-packed fields towards the site I wondered how archeologists could have thought to dig in this specific area. Soon it was clear that the answer was underfoot. To stroll around the Djenne-Djenno site is to constantly trod on and around thousands upon thousands of pot shards, pieces sometimes bigger than your face, just sitting there. Most of these decorated pieces of pottery are about 4,000 years old, and here we are unable to avoid stepping on them. We were shown the original city walls, which were several feet thick, and the remains of a few dwellings. There were several large clay pots seemingly intact, though only the top few inches stuck up from the ground. Most of these were coffins – the people placed their dead inside these clay pots in the fetal position facing west, towards their final sunset. The burial pots have a hole in the bottom so rotting yuckiness could seep out, but also allowing a means of escape for the interred soul. One of the pots we saw had bones on top of it, where, according to our guide, animals had dug down to get at what the pot held. Our tour went over the sunbaked lunch hour so we were very hot by the time we started walking back towards town. We decided to stop in at the hotel for a rest and chill out until the sun arced a bit and found that our room had been cleaned while we were out (a very unexpected first). Our ashtray had been cleaned of roaches and our last two joints sat on the table, neatly lined up with our papers and other belongings. As I had never dreamed our room would be made up I hadn’t thought to put any of that stuff away, and we were rewarded with a feeling of anxiety. I wasn’t too worried, thinking if there was going to be trouble it would have been waiting for us already, but I wasn’t carefree about it either. I’m sure Malian prison would be an interesting experience, but I suspect it would grow tiresome eventually. Though we assumed we were safe, we decided to getting rid of the meagre remainder of our pot right away was apropos, rather than following the plan to save one joint for sunset tonight and one for the morning. So on our stroll to the city centre we burned the evidence. In town we did a walkabout and checked out the incredible mosque again. We went to a restaurant but decided on just a Coke, changed some Euros to CFAs, checked and found the Post Office closed several times, and walked back to the hotel. Earlier I had spoken to the owner about the guitar I had with me, which was given to me by the good folks at The Ottawa Folklore Centre to play during my trip and leave here in the country as I saw fit. She told me they had a guitar there at the hotel and there was a man, a welder, who sometimes did work for the hotel, and he would come by often to borrow the guitar and practice. After his long days at work he’d get on his scooter and drive to the hotel and sit on the roof for hours, learning songs and writing songs. I asked the owner if she would call the guy and have him come over, and he came by around 6pm. We got both guitars out and jammed together for an hour, which consisted almost entirely of him showing me things. Completely monophonic, as was all the guitar playing I’ve heard in this country, I think I discovered one of the keys to the Ali Farke Toure sound. They use E pentatonic minor when they play in the key of A, so relative to the key you get R, 2, 4, 5, b7, which makes sense. Given that there is no 3rd to identify the quality of the key, it’s vague, yet immensely versatile. Dit Weah was a pretty good player and we both had a good time jamming tunes. I thought the owner had told him that I was going to give him the guitar but it seemed not. Heather took a couple of pictures of me with him playing the guitar for the OFC newsletter, but when I handed him all of my picks and an extra set of strings Weah looked baffled. When I made it clear that the guitar was a gift for him the man actually screamed. He could not have been any happier. He thanked me and thanked me, pumping my hand with both of his, a look of wonder and amazement in his eyes. I went downstairs to sit with Heather leaving Weah on the roof where he played on and on. I think I gave the guitar to the right guy. When he came down off the roof to leave he thanked me profusely again and said the next day everyone in Djenne would know of the gift I gave him. He started by telling the other table of tourists before leaving for home on his moto a happy, happy man, with his new guitar held tightly under his arm. At 8pm tables were set up with lanterns in the courtyard for dinner. We had heard that this was a fancy place, but when we saw the meal! Pate and fresh tomatoes with warm bread to start, pepper steak and potatoes for a main and fresh in-house yoghurt for dessert, and all under a canopy of stars and surrounded by lush tropical trees and scurrying lizards. It all sounded and looked so good but I had a hard time finishing my meal for some reason. After dinner we had a drink and soon went back to our lovely room for bed.

All rolled into one!

My responses were way too wordy. It's not an argument of "they have it so good I wish I had it as good as they do", but more of a "they have it better than they should considering the amount of work involved in getting where they are, and should not be asking for more." Anyway, ax is buried. Until the next time you bitch about something, of course!

I worked in a unionised warehouse once where a forklift operator (THE most coveted job in a place like that) came in drunk and drove into a wall, leaving two holes. He was back at work the next day, all was forgotten.

Bradm: There are so many reasons to hate you for your post, but I can't bring myself to. Mr. Dinghy: Your last post made me laugh really hard. Very wonderful post on a series of levels.

Ah I'm sorry Ollie, just having a little fun this morning I guess. You going to the Motley Crue show at Scotiabank in March?

For the record, I'd like you to know Mr. Dinghy that I direct none of my comments at you specifically. I think you're a great guy, and I suspect you are a heck of a bus driver, though I've never seen you do it! My problem is an ongoing one with unions. Do I think you make too much money? Well, yeah, in a relative sense I do. But I think I make too much too, especially when I think about how hard I worked and how little I made whaen I worked at factories and moving furniture and stuff like that. Though I don't feel like I can support the OC Transpo en masse I will always support you, and I honestly hope that you get back to work as soon as possible with a deal you think is fair. On a personal level it's irrelevant to me if what you think is fair is incompatible with what I think is fair, because as I said before, the strike won't affect me much. I suppose the only real effect this strike has on me is how it affects my friend, who is a bus driver. But as his views run counter to my overall view of unions, I'll say I'm glad I don't have any actual say in the situation! My real beef in this thread is Ollie's assertion that I've attacked a couple of times, and one I suspect I'll have fun with in the future. My bottom line is this: I hope everything works out for you RubberDinghy as quickly and as benefitially as possible.

You're implication was clear. If someone has spent several years training to be what they want to do for a living, and they find that someone with significantly less training makes more money than them and then goes on strike for more thus bringing strategic inconvenience to the public, that person should hold in their bitching and apply for the job their bitching about. If waste removal personnel decide to strike, and we find out that they are striking because they want $35 an hour and six weeks vacation intead of $28 and hour and five weeks vacation, then as the garbage piles up we should all hold our tongues and noses and if we feel like bitching we should just apply to be waste removal personnel. Is that about right? If a burglar breaks into my house and slips on my newly waxed floor and sues me for $1,000,000, well, I should just become a burglar then? All those figures are made up. This is about looking at a situation and seeing it as being unfair. One person works at what they consider a useful service and looks at someone else working at a useful service who strikes when they make double the money of the first guy. First guy is supposed to be placaded when second guy says, "Well, I guess you're a fucking idiot for not applying for my greedy-ass job"? Unions are supposed to keep employees from being screwed over, but too often their job is to squeeze whatever is possible from the employer by striking at a time that will screw them over the most. Fairness does not play into it. For me, becoming a bus driver would not solve anything, because I could not bring myself to vote to strike in this situation.

If you think artists have it so good, become an artist. There ya go, all arguments solved. Good strategy Ollie!

I found this line from cbc.ca quite funny: "We apologize, but during the current transit strike, bus and O-Train service is not operating," said a statement on OC Transpo's website. "The City of Ottawa is doing all we can to reach a fair settlement," the statement added. The way it's worded implies that the city is working hard to reach a deal, but the union isn't. Gotta say Ollie, you're "if they got it so good be a bus driver" argument is such a stupid stance it surprises me coming from someone as intelligent as yourself. So is it only bus drivers that can bitch about bus drivers? Only cops can bitch about cops? Only teachers can bitch about teachers? Next time you complain about the blues fest we'll just suggest you start your own. Got a problem with the Sens? Get your own team! As my daddy taught me a long time ago, unions are a good idea gone bad. If OC Transpo workers made $18 an hour and had three sick days a year there would be no shortage of people applying for the job. It's frustrating for people with enormous student loans finding themselves unable to get to their $15 jobs because people making $25 with no student loan are demanding more. Right or wrong, good luck explaining the situation to people in that situation and getting sympathy. I had to train over ten years to be qualified for my job, a job that comes with 0 sick days, 0 overtime, 0 pension, 0 benefits, 0 job security, 0 bonuses, but y'know what, I love my job and don't take the bus, so what do I care? The only effect this strike will have on my life is when my students won't be able to get to their lessons. I get to sit there and practice while their parents still have to pay for the missed lessons. I suppose I'll lose a little income because a few students will likely cancel their lessons until the strike is over. One thing I am confident about - our lame-ass mayor who gets paid remarkably well will sit back and do a whole lot of nothing to end the strike. I know Ollie, if the mayor has it so good I should run for mayor, but I won't.

Duly noted. I assume you're not holding your breath?

Yeah, we just finished dancing the happy dance.

I think it's still an option, but with this lineup and tix to Phish in Hampton I suspect I won't be exercising the option.

Just noticed my credit card has been charged, so phorbesie and I will be attending our first ever Olympics next year. We scored tickets to the gold medal men's hockey game taboot!

They must be holding out a few acts, non? I'd love to see Tricky.

Gotta say, Davey Boy brings up an excellent point.

My nephew loves dragons, so I can always fall back on something dragon-related. Lego is a good stand-by. If the kid hasn't got a stack of Dr. Suess books yet, do them a service and get all your shopping done at Chapters.

Malilog, Stardate 112408 Another nice sleep in Mopti. We woke up without setting the alarm (always a joy) and tended to shower, injury redressing, rolling our last few joints, and packing. With a comparatively late start we grabbed out stuff and walked out to where we get a collectif to Djenne. There is no direct bus service so we laid out our 2,500 and waited until they had enough people to warrant leaving. The magic number was nine, and Heather and I made four when we arrived. We sat in the waiting area and watched Malian city life play itself out. People sit there and watch television together while other people saunter by selling virtually everything from carts, or more often from baskets perched on their heads. A boy with a tray of peanuts, a man with a string of turbans, trays of sunglasses, Mr. Fastfood with his cut-between-the-fingers meat chunks and onion served on a torn piece of paper, people wearing enormous trays of toys that dangle absurdly creating huge sombreros of dollar store squirtguns and Blandness Girl™ dolls. There are several women with traditional black tattooing on their hands, the soles of their feet, and around their mouths. A joined a small crowd engaged in watching a fierce foosball match and witnessed an innocuous fight between an old man and a younger one, who ended up running away. Hours went by as we sat there, and when the television program “Fils De Dragon†with David Carradine came on the place filled up. Though the waiting was truly quite a fascinating experience, we were anxious to get to the famous Djenne Monday market before it ended at 6pm, so we paid an extra 2,500 and left with only eight passengers. Our ride was an incredibly beat-up Peugeot, though not the roughest car we’ve been in here in Mali. No door or window handles, not a single moving dashboard indicator, we squeezed eight people plus driver in somehow and set off for Djenne, two and-a-half hours and a ferry ride away. We arrived in the middle of the market around 4pm, and without a hotel booking on the busiest night in town. Heather went a-booking while I stayed put and watched the bags. She initially turned up empty but enlisted the help of Alex, a guide we met in Dogon country. We had planned on a splurge for our time in Djenne and stay at what we heard was a really nice place called Hotel Djenne-Djenno, but when we tried to prebook we were told the place was full. Alex checked the place for us and the owner took a chance (rightly, it turned out) that one of her late arrivals wasn’t coming and gave us a room. We booted it over there on motorcycles. The place was like an oasis. Inside the old-style mudbrick compound was lush with banana trees and the lounging courtyard was literally crawling with big cool lizards. We were shown our lovely room complete with a whitewashed contoured mud ceiling, animal horns built into the walls for hanging things, and, for the first time this trip, our own bathroom, with hot showers no less. We were in bliss, but decided to burn a quickie and head into town before market ended. The Djenne market happens once a week in front of the Djenne mosque, the world’s largest mud building. Measuring seventy-five metres by eighty-five metres, with an interior ceiling of eight metres, walls two feet thick, and a peak height of eighteen and-a-half metres, the building is a sight to behold from the outside, the only place where we, as non-muslims, are allowed. Even though the road to town was made unbearably dusty by all the merchants pulling out of town as we pulled in, the market was still remarkably colourful and an absolute feats for the senses. About everything one could buy in this country seemed to be for sale at one stand or another in this mayhem of micro-capitalism. I purchased this notebook (the Alphasmart is deemed deceased for the remainder of this vacation) and then we did a city walkabout during sunset. We ended up at Chez Babas, a bar/restaurant we heard was hosting live music that evening. After not eating all day my meal of boiled potatoes and two edible chunks of meat was a big letdown. Heather chose more wisely and seemed to enjoy her chicken, and when she threw in the towel I ravenously ate her remaining cold boiled potatoes. At 7:30 the band showed up, two djembe players and a bass drummer. The music was very reminiscent of my drumming classes, a very steady rhythm with impossible counter-rhythmic soloing on top. Occasionally a local would get up and dance, and eventually a group of young girls showed up to dance. They acted like flirty-blushing schoolgirls, sticking their asses in front of the musicians and shaking them for all they were worth. The musicians in turn tried to keep up and play the girls asses off. Tired, Heather and I left about an hour and-a-half into the show, walking the kilometer or two back to our oasis, and went straight to bed. That’s what, five live shows in a row?

Malilog, Stardate 112308 We awoke to find our first batch of clean(ish) laundry waiting for us outside our door. I redressed my wounds, adding some rubbing alcohol that I had purchased the day before. The pain was just short of unbearable, both hands clasped hard muffling my screaming mouth, but it subsided in short order and I felt like the healing process was going along well. Amazing how resilient we humans are. After a shower I donned clothes that had been beaten clean and felt more refreshed than I had since arriving in Mali. Not surprisingly we had failed in our attempt to smoke all of our weed in Dogon country so I spent an hour developing a quite effective method for de-seeding and rolled a handful of joints. Our connection had assured us that smoking in our room at this hotel was fine, and rigorous testing of the theory showed him to be right. We went for a walk along the river, trying to determine how this city acquired the nickname, “the Venice of Mali.†Well, there’s a river, and though I’ve never been to Venice I hope it’s more visually attractive than Mopti. Bought some faux Pringles for a sorely needed chip fix and checked out a bit of market. Back at the hotel I lounged by the pool with my chips and a few beers, bouncing back to the room for the occasional joint, while Heather swam and read. My still sensitive and occasionally bleeding injuries kept me out of the water. In our travels we discovered that while the rooftop terrace restaurant at our hotel was nice, clean, and comfortable, it had the worst and most expensive food. As such we were avoiding eating there until that evening when we heard live music wafting down from the terrace. Upstairs we quickly maneuvered the front table and watched as a great band played for tips in the restaurant. A killer balafon (African xylophone) player and the only in-tune guitarist I’ve seen in Mali played over the beats of a djembe player who kept it steady, leaving the solos to the others. There was a female singer who shared her time between the microphone and tending to her baby, who for the most part slept beside her on stage. The music was very up and dancy. The sole African woman in the audience spent a lot of time on the dance-floor, with the tourists occasionally joining her. This band sounded more ‘pop’ than others I’ve heard, and the wonderful guitar player even approached harmonic playing with the occasional arpeggio left hanging in the air. The balafon player appeared to be the star of this band, wailing out machine-gun melodies that sat in perfect disconnection on top of the rhythm. The audience ate it up, but it seemed the local employees enjoyed the show most, stopping to watch whenever they could and often singing along with what was obviously well-known pop songs. We closed the place and finished off our beers before turning in for our last night in Mopti, happy with finding good quality live music four times in a row.

The guy who plays Lahey is a good actor. I thought the show was pretty funny, Bubbles killed me with the line, "Fer crissakes, let him keep the dignity he has left," after the Randy mopping. Hi-larious. I also liked seeing The Hip in there. I am a few seasons behind. Was that version of the theme song unique to this special or was it from the last few seasons?

Malilog, Stardate 112208 Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up with a bladder bursting with the remnant of many bowls of millet beer. Still drunk and half asleep, I was struggling to contain myself such that I didn’t take time to put on my sandals in my rush to the toilet, which given the toilet’s Turkish-prison style sanitation is just a bad idea all around. I made my way down the puzzle of stairs and down the narrow hall leading to a village pathway. I turn left to walk the three metres to the toilet and bam, I go down hard. I landed with a thud and a moan, and laid there for a second or two. I then got myself up and stepped into the cubicle of walls with a hole in the middle and pissed, unknowingly leaving a large circle of blood where I stand. I hobbled out of the bathroom and looked down at my foot. In horror I initially thought I had severed my big toe, and that it was oddly dangling. In short order I found that I had in fact ripped the bottom off of my left big toe by tripping over a large rock that makes up part of the path. There was a flap of skin the size and thickness of a loonie that dangled and led me to believe my toe was off, and had I managed to get to a doctor or anything I’m sure I would have received about fifteen stitches. On the other foot I had banged up one toe pretty good and was bleeding from a crack in the sole of my foot. Moaning I stumbled up to our resting place and holding a flashlight between my teeth I treid my drunken sleepy best to clean and dress the wounds with my tiny first aid kit. I had some difficulty sleeping after that, partly because of the pain, but mostly from worrying about how damaged I really was and how I was gonna get out of this village, being five kilometres and up one cliff to the nearest road. In the morning I borrowed a more adequate first aid kit from Martha and David and made a second attempt at cleaning the dirt and rocks out of my wounds and bandaging them tight enough to stem the bleeding. We had breakfast and bought some souvenirs and for me a cane from a shop next door, and they we headed out. I was in a pretty large deal of pain at first, but after not too long the numbness and weed worked together to give me a fairly sprightly step once I got used to the cane, and I did a fairly good job of almost keeping up with my comrades. I even went back up that amazing crevasse with the boulders perched overhead at the lead of the pack, though I suspect this was to keep me from falling too far behind. Along the way we passed a half-dozen ladies returning to the village from some chores. They saw us and bent over mimicking some of the dancing from last night, blowing air between their teeth where their reed whistles should have been, indicating they were at the party last night. They made it clear that that they had a good time. A little farther on and we passed two older ladies hard at the millet pounding. They said something to our guide who in turn asked us if we had any aspirin, as the ladies had headaches. I ponied up Advils to both of them, while our PEI companions did one better, giving one lady their flashlight and the other their very nice Swiss Army knife. Very good presents indeed, and I think I can truthfully say that the knife might be a life-changer. Our guide told us the ladies had no children and as such had a very difficult life. It is certainly a climate where the impulse to give people things, anything, is strong. British Steve gave our guide Hama his hiking boots before he left the previous day. After a walk that I had initially looked forward to and then dreaded that turned out to be not so bad, I hobbled in to our final village, had some lunch and were eventually ushered into a car to take us back to Mopti, via Bandiagara and Sevare. On our way out we found the road blocked by a truck that had lost most of its load and ended up buried in mud half off the road, and the winch truck that was trying to pull it out. We were stopped for about an hour, when eventually people loaded the huge sacks of rice that had been dumped onto the winch truck and it pulled ahead allowing us to get by. I can’t imagine how they are gonna get that truck out, but Hama tells me they’ll just get a bigger winch down from Mopti or something. We stopped for beers in Bandiagara and I napped most of the way to Sevare, relishing in the hot air that rushed through the windows of the moving car. We said goodbye to our PEI friends and continued to Ya Pas De Probleme hotel in Mopti where Heather swam in the pool, I showered and properly cleaned and dressed my wounds for the first time, finding a childs-tooth sized pebble wedged in the sole of my right foot along the way, and we sent out our clothes to be washed, for the first time on this trip where I only have three t-shirts. We did a pretty big walk around in Mopti that afternoon and into the early evening, which perhaps wasn’t the best thing for my foot. On a tip from one of the hotel employees we took a taxi to Sevare later in the evening and caught a really good band at an even better restaurant. The food was to die for after the rice and beef/couscous and chicken cavalcade that was the Dogon culinary norm, and the band was awesome. A bass drummer who also played the tamborine backed up a stellar djembe soloist, with a really good bass player and a fantastic guitarist laying down unison grooves underneath a singer who seemed to weave his vocals intrinsically into the music in the most disconnected and surprising ways. Curiously, the guitar player never tuned his ever changing guitar strings, playing great lines so absurdly out of tune it was hardly believable how good it sounded. I mean if he tuned it would not sound any better. Not a chord was played all night, only monophonic lines, cutting down on the cringability of the guitar, to the point where there was no cringing at all. I’ve never heard of music that works without tuning in some way, and this goes some way to explaining the traditional Toureg ngoni, which is an untunable three-stringed instrument. The band was rocking and obviously having a good time, and the crowd that eventually grew to standing room only was loving it. Fatigue prevented us from staying until the end, but my hardline wheeling and dealing for a taxi back to Mopti left us standing on the side of the road at midnight with few options. We eventually ended up getting a ride the ten or so kilometers back to Mopti in a “taxi†that I believe used to be a Peugeot and had a top speed of 30kph, and that was once it got up to speed. I mean this is the poorest excuse for a car I’ve ever moved from one place to another in. There was not a handle or know anywhere on the interior, hell the interior was missing from the interior. Anything that opened was held shut by wire and the vehicle had a sideways shimmy to it so severe that I think I lost eight pounds on the drive. The vehicle was so bad we got off where we would have to walk through a field in the dark because there was no way this car would make it through the streets of Mopit. I wonder if the car ever made it back to Sevare. The 3000 we gave him for the ride could buy him twice the car. Back at the hotel we went to sleep looking forward to a day off to relax and the first sleep-in in forever.

Malilog, Stardate 112108 Again, nature’s alarm clock rings nice and early, in a snooze-buttonless crescendo of squeaks, squacks, and honks, and the prehistoric stone towers that surround the village of Benimato give the wakeup an extra dash of unholy beauty that cuts through a hangover like mortar through millet. It’s like camping on location in the Grand Canyon on the set of a Spielberg movie about the Keeblers. If you get the picture. The previous night our man Baba had told us that the people in Benimato village put on a show for the tourists to raise money for the local school. He assured us, and I believe him, that all money went straight to the school, no bullshit, and all the tourists generally give pretty generously, and the seven of us responded by giving around 150,000 to him, signing our pledges in a notebook. After breakfast we were taken for a walk around the other side of the rock mountain that borders the village on one side. Over there we treated to a performance of music and dance by members of this small village. It was an hour long performance rehearsed and performed for the twenty-five or so tourists who were staying in the village that night. About six musicians, most playing tama, commonly known as talking drum, tapped out repeated unison rhythms. Held under one arm and played with a curved stick, the player can widely and suddenly change the drum’s pitch by squeezing it, and a group of them playing together inadvertently creates microtonic chords that randomly recur within a steady, unified rhythm. And this all underneath the call-and-response singing that is great-great-granddaddy of field hollers and the blues. Kicking up dust in an ever-moving circle were the dancers, all in traditional masks and clothes. The mostly purple long shaggy outfits of fur and skins were secondary to the large expressive masks worn continually by the dancers. They danced and leapt about in circles and synchronized patterns seeing only through thin slats in heavy wooden masks. It was really quite well rehearsed and entertaining. And then around the corner came the two dancers on stilts! The musicians kicked off a new tune and the stilters effortlessly danced their ceremonial dance around the band, before they were joined by the dudes in the twenty-feet tall masks! Those two had a dance where they faced off and tilted their enormous masks this way and that together, while the band played on behind them. It’s fair to remind the reader to remember the venue. Picture a warm morning of sun and blue sky atop a rocky plateau, overlooking a curvature-of-the-Earth flat valley with impossibly balanced geological wonders towering just a hundred yards away. And these performers were going for it, showing us stuff they do at weddings and funerals and special celebrations. Afterwards the dudes gave an explanation of the significance of the dances and the masks and apparel, and it was pretty cool to see, though I’ll admit I’ve dreamt of witnessing something more authentic here in Mali. I was surprised to find out later that they do the show only once every month or two, and that our tour dude Baba had routed us to be here on this day, so at least they aren’t grinding out a daily routine for the whiteys that I’m sure they would eventually tire of. After the show we headed out for one last village as a septet. The walk saw us pass by several ‘farms’, locations where there was a spring that could be taken advantage of to constantly water the plants. We saw peppers and beans being grown by hard working people bent over their lifeblood with buckets of water irrigating land baked dry by the hot sun. We also saw the only pig we’ve seen in Mali, and I asked our guide if we could have it for dinner, unfortunately in vain. After walking on enormous slabs of rock for a couple of hours we found ourselves in Dourou, where we lunched and said goodbye to all but two of our travel companions. When I found out that for our last night we were descending the cliff into the valley once again and walking back up in the morning, making for our first backtrekking of the journey, I was a bit disappointed. Actually, I was disappointed to the point that I felt like it was kind of stupid to have booked a fourth day…what would we see that we haven’t already walking another five kilometers and back? Only a journey that will stay with my forever. That’s all. The four Canadians; Heather and I, David and Martha, and our guide Hama left Dourou midafternoon and walked over ancient curved slabs of rock before coming to a crevasse in the cliff edge. We descended into the valley along the route that has served locals for time immemorial, walking along a prehistoric staircase of rocks that fell into the crevasse eons ago, a path that wound beneath giant boulders wedged in the crack above. Taking a break halfway down we watched the village herders bringing their huge herds of animals in from the sandy fields for a drink and a bath at the almost-gone-for-the-season river that borders the village of Nombori, our final stop. The view was incredible, and the crevasse we walked through was stunning. It was one of the most interesting walks of the journey. Down on the plain again, it was only a kilometer and-a-half or so and we were done for the day. This place was the most un-hotel of the non-hotels of the Dogon trek. Please don’t get me wrong, I was extremely happy and felt lacking for nothing, I use the terms not derogatorily but for description only. Anyway, this last place was just someone’s house and little compound. There was a bathroom and a shower right next door, just down a little walkway and out the door of the compound, and there was even an extra house that nobody seemed to be using, making for an extra roof for tourists. That’s where Heather and I eventually camped, at it was our first roof with a little roof of it’s own. Plus, instead of having to scale a notched log like every other night, here we had an Escher-like 3D staircase. Relaxing with beers our guide Hama was looking restless. He asked the four of us what we were going to do that night, and of course we said we were gonna eat dinner, have a few beers, and go to bed shortly after dark. He said he had an idea. He said if we could get 30,000 together we could buy a bunch of millet beer and some rice and have a party. He was explaining that for 6,000 each we could get half the village out playing music and dancing and having a good time, and we could even ask the French folks that he knew was staying at the campement in town if they wanted to come, and pay even less. I was initially confused by the math until it occurred to me it was the five of us that were pitching in, us four tourists and Hama, our guide and brainchild of the plan. It was really great figuring out that he was into holding the party and wanted us to help him pay for it as equal partners. Anyways, of course the four of us agreed to be in and Hama went off to talk to the other tourists. While he was gone we heard a band playing right outside where we were staying. It turned out this was the band for the evening, and they were playing in a way that announced to all listeners that there was a dancing party tonight, to be held right here where they were playing. Hama came back and said the French were in, and gave us back 2,000 each. And right after dinner, the party started. The musicians came in, playing tama, calabash, and bass drum, and the women started to show up, each one dressed in beautiful indigo robes, and decked out in their finest jewelry. The fifty litres of millet beer we bought was poured from yellow gasoline cans into wooden bowls which were then passed around. We four whiteys (the French showed up late) were given a bowl to share, which came with our own boy, who sat there waiting to run and have our bowl refilled whenever we would empty it, which was admirably often. The row of women grew to about twenty or twenty-five, and they weren’t shy with the millet bowls either. The musicians had theirs and the seventy or so others who crowded into our compound to join the party shared the beer and rice gladly and seemed to enjoy the music and dancing as much as we did. Kids watered the sand floor to eliminate dust and the musicians began to play. The women stood in a semi-circle along the perimeter of what became the de facto dancefloor and sand. They had repeated phrases that they would chant together over the rhythm, and often the chants would be joined antiphonally by a single woman, who seemed to be telling a story that was agreed with by the rest of the women as they sang together in response. It was all mainly quite upbeat and lively, and continually punctuated by solo dancers. At times that seemed to surprise only us, one or two women would rush the centre of the dancefloor with short fast steps, bent over and blowing short repeated patterns on reed whistles that are constantly held between the dancer’s teeth. The musicians would instantly take up the role of playing to the rapidfire movements of the dancers, turning the western concept of dancing to the music on its head. After manically dancing the soloist(s) would make their way back to the perimeter, where soon other soloists would repeat the ritual. Sometimes a lady would be dancing her ass off and turn in such a way that you could see she had a baby strapped to her back, eyes bugging and head bobbing in the throes of infant whiplash. Occasionally a musician would throw their drum at a dancer, which was meant as a compliment, with the musicians act telling the dancer that she dances so well he is not good enough to play her movements. The soloists would invariably touch the ground between themselves and the musicians when they were finished their solos, which serves as an apology to the earth for dancing on it, a sensible gesture for an animist to make. It was the oldest music in the world. The millet swilled and the party raged on. The ladies laughingly got us tourists up to dance with them, and though I tried my hardest to mimic their moves I think Heather wins the prize for most natural African dancing. Eventually the town elder called for Hama, our host, and told him we had gotten their ladies too drunk and shut us down, but not before half the village had a rockin’ good time on a Friday night (or whatever day it is in their five-day week). We got an encore where the kids jumped in the circle and danced like their mothers, trying to make the whistle sound by blowing through their teeth. I had taped the entire party and had to promise the crowd that soon grew around me struggling to hear themselves dance that I would mail them a copy of the tape. I’ve been dreaming of coming to Mali for almost twenty years, and one of the main things I wanted to do here was be a fly on the wall at a real Mali dancing and singing party, and there it was. This was not like the show this morning. Though this party was funded by (mainly) tourists, this was a real party, this was what people really did and how they really acted when they were celebrating; it was real. And I was in bliss the whole time. I went to bed with a big drunken smile on my face.

Malilog Stardate 112008 Waking up here is magical, though if you like to sleep in, look elsewhere. Mali is chock full of goats, with an admirable number of roosters and donkeys and other living noisemakers thrown in, and the critters like to get a jump on the day. Laying under a mozzie net on a thin mattress, deep sleep is infringed by the first critter call of the day, generally a rooster. From off in the distance comes the response from another village, prompting more local critters to get in on the act. Donkeys need a minute or two of revving up to get to full hee-haw ability, and within minutes only the hardest core sleeper still sleeps as all the animals bid good morning to each other. Very soon the chorus is augmented by the drum-like thump-thumping of early bird millet pounders, and sleepy or not, you’re up and feeling around in the weak twilight for your glasses. That’s when you sit up and shake the cobwebs out of your head and remember that you’re smack dab in the middle of fairyland. Yawn, stretch, teeter down the notchlog with toothbrush in hand, piss in the hole and it’s time to start the day. Good mornings (to the tourists) and ca vas (to the locals) all around and it’s breakfast. Instant coffee, bread sticks with jam and cheese wedges, and Martha’s mind-numbingly delicious treat of Kraft peanut butter brought from home is the standard breakfast and I was happy to see Heather in good health joining us for the morning meal. The village we had slept in is noted for making blankets. The weavers have basic looms that are basically a spike in the ground about twenty feet away from some complicated wood bracing with the fabric stretched between the two. I shook the hand of an old man who spent his days involved in this work and his palm felt like it was made of stone. Whether it was one rock-hard callous or a thousand I cannot say, but I’ve never shaken a hand like it. Again, people here work very, very hard. Heather and I spent some time haggling and bought seven blankets, the purchase of which came with a porter to carry the sack to the next village where we would rendezvous with a 4x4 carrying our luggage. We toured the village and found similar amenities to the previous villages we’ve visited. There was the local courthouse, which is a waist-high mud dwelling where the elders pass judgment on local cases as they come up. As there are no police in Dogon country, they take care of their own justice. Women are not allowed to enter the small building, but they can listen and offer their opinions and testimony from just outside. Even if a woman is the one being tried, she is not allowed to enter. Cleverly, the ‘court’ buildings are always made waist high to discourage people from fighting inside. Each village also has a mosque, the size of which is relative to the size of the village and the number of Muslims living there. Sometimes the mosque is so small they look like they could only fit three or four people at a time. There is often also a Catholic church, identifiable only by a cross, and there is always a brick schoolhouse, which is usually the only building not made of mud. Each village has a hut for women to stay in when they are menstruating, a time when they are not allowed to stay with their husband, or if unmarried, with their parents. Men are forbidden from entering this windowless hut and women must stay inside until the end of their period. Even male children are barred from this area once they are three years old. Most of the villages are next to the cliff that leads out of the valley. When the Dogons first came to this area millennia ago they sought out areas of cliff that had an overhang to shelter it from the rains and they built their villages halfway up the cliff. As the centuries went by and the Sahara moved in, many of the critters that kept the people up the hill disappeared. Nowadays there are no lions or tigers to bother the people so about two hundred years ago they decided they were sick of going up and down the cliff all the time and built their villages on the plain, in the shadow of their former home. Though the old villages were also made of mud, the strategic positioning that sheltered them from rain saved them, hence every village has another looming above it. These villages are uninhabited (though animist spiritual leaders were the final holdouts – we visited one upper village where the old medicine man that lived up there with his snake had just died a couple of years before), though some villages still use them for storage. Today’s walk was big, and split into three segments, seven, six, and five kilometers. The middle hike took place during the noon hour and was hothothot. The heat doesn’t deter the locals from working through it, rather they find it quite cool this time of year. How many people have I walked by that are wearing three layers topped with a winter jacket zipped all the way up while I’m sweating off my sunscreen in shorts and a t-shirt? Our final stop today was back on top of the cliff, an ascent we were dreading which turned out to be gorgeous and not too tiring. The village we stayed in was surrounded by rock formations that seemed to balance tentatively in a geological game of Jenga and was reminiscent of some of the more picturesque episodes of the Road Runner. This would be our last night as a group of seven, with the Spaniards and British Steve scheduled to leave after lunch the next day, so we had a little celebration. One of our guides brought us a plastic water bottle of locally made millet beer, which is served warm and quite tasty. That made the rounds while I inquired about stronger stuff. Soon there was a small bottle of Dogon gin on the table, a harsh local moonshine they call chappa-chappa. My very real fears of blinding myself were pushed aside by my equally real growing inebriation, and all the time we were kept in stitches by our guide as he told us the hilarious story of when he first flew to the West, arriving at the airport in NYC after knowing nothing bigger than Bamako. By this time my snoring had segregated us, and when sleep time was unavoidable Heather and I crawled up a roof as far from our group as possible and fell into a deep sleep.

Unfortunately the Alphasmart didn't actually pull through - I had to change the internal battery and remake up the logs.