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Dogon country is one
of the most fascinating areas to visit in Mali. Most of the Dogon
villages are along the Bandiagara escarpment east of Mopti (the 2nd
largest city in Mali). The Dogon villages
were established some thousand years ago because of the Dogon people’s
collective refusal to convert to Islam. To aid their defense, they located
their villages in the rocks along the walls of the escarpment. The Dogon
still practice an animistic religion even though Islam is now widespread and
there are pockets of Christianity. The Dogon mask
dances are famous. Above is a picture of one performance. |
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On the left is our
GPS track in red and the Dogon villages we visited. We spent 6 days in
the area hiking (NE to SW) a total of 40 miles and sleeping for 5 nights on
roof tops in the villages. Nianamou, our guide,
was from Yendouma (farthest north) but lives now near Mopti. We were very
fortunate to have Nianamou because of his Dogon background. |
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On the left is a map
of Dogon country displayed on fabric. |
Even though the
Dogon tried to escape Islam a long time ago, many are now Muslims and one
finds Islamic mosques frequently like the one in Sangha on the right and
below. |
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The iconic
architectural feature found in Dogon villages is thatch roofs on the circular
storage buildings for grains (mostly millet and sorghum), and small square
buildings with mud roofs for homes. Each home has a small walled-in
courtyard. Because the houses
are so small, everyone sleeps on the roofs. Most villages only have
electricity from rare generators. |
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We never got tired
of looking at these villages! |
Before storage the
grains are dried on the roof tops. |
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The village of
Sangha has a circumcision cave ornamented with red and white rock paintings
of animals and plants. The picture on the left and the next three show that
cave. In Dogon thought,
male and females are born with both sexual components. The clitoris is
considered male, while the foreskin is considered to be female. Rites of
circumcision thus allow each sex to assume its proper physical identity. Boys
are circumcised in age groups of three years, counting for example all boys
between 9 and 12 years old. This marks the end of their youth, and they are
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initiated. The blacksmith performs the circumcision. Afterwards, they stay for a
few days in a hut separated from the rest of the village people, until the
wound has healed. The circumcision is a reason for celebration and the initiated boys go around and
receive presents. They make music on a special instrument that is made of a
rod of wood and calabashes that makes the sound of a rattle. Nearby is a cave
where music instruments are stored. The newly circumcised boys must walk
around naked for a month after the procedure so that their achievement in age
can be admired by the citizens of the tribe. This practice has been |
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passed down for generations and is always followed, even during winter. |
The Dogon are one of
several African ethnic groups that practices female genital mutilation. The
majority of the Dogon women practice a class 2 circumcision, meaning that
both the clitoris and the labia minora are removed.
Girls are circumcised around the age of 7 or 8 years, sometimes younger.
Circumcision for both male and female is seen as necessary for the individual
to gain gender. Before circumcision they are seen as 'neuter'. There are
people – even a famous local man – who go village to village trying to
convince people to stop this practice. |
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Nianamou shows us
the cave where music instruments are stored. |
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The views from our
hikes on the escarpments down to Dogon villages and to the Sahel behind were
always amazing. |
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The structure on the
left is quite common. This palaver house is a building only for men. They
rest here much of the day throughout the heat of the dry season, discuss
affairs and take important decisions. The roof of a palaver house is made by
layers of millet stalks. It is a low building in which one cannot stand
upright. This helps avoiding violence when discussions get heated. Clever idea. |
Trekking through
Dogon country. |
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Dogon architecture.
This is of the compound where the village fetishes are kept. |
Wood carvings right
and below. |
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The Dogon are famous
for their carved doors. Unfortunately, in
the past tourists have convinced locals to sell the masterpieces, so now only
“new” doors can be seen. |
On the right is a
divination site. During the day the
sand is marked with various features (rocks, sticks, lines and mounds) based
on questions from the locals. Nocturnal fox tracks are then divined in the
morning to provide answers to the questions. |
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Behind the Dogon
villages, against the escarpment are the villages of the original inhabitants
of the Bandiagara Escarpment. These peoples are referred to as the Tellem,
who buried their dead in caves on the cliff face. They also made some of the
earliest cloth and wooden objects found in sub-Saharan Africa. The Dogon
believe they were a magical people who could fly. It is believed they were
hunters; the Dogon are cultivators. |
There are two main
theories as to why the Tellem disappeared. The first is that the Dogon cut down
the forests here so they could farm, depriving the Tellem of their
traditional means of survival; the other is that the Dogon drove them away by
force. |
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Here are photos of
more Tellem old (abandoned) villages and the caves above. These villages are
behind practically every Dogon village, so we walked/climbed through as many of these as we did
the Dogon villages. |
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Left and below,
Dogon doors. |
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A baobab tree. The “skirts”
on the bottom are caused by harvesting the bark which is used to make
baskets, mats, etc. |
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There are a couple
of theories as to why the Dogon came here (14th, 15th
century) – drought and to escape invaders in the old Ghana Empire, and to
seek refuge in the cliffs to avoid being taken slaves by either forces of the
Songhay ruler or by bands of Mossi
calvary. After the Tellem
departed, the Dogon’s main enemy
were Islamic Peul, nomadic cattle herders from the plains who attacked
from horseback. By living in the rocks they were safer from these attacks. The Peul are today’s
2nd largest minority and are everywhere in Mali, particularly in
the Niger Inland Delta (where we visited Peul villages) |
One stays over night
in Dogon villages by pitching a tent on the roof. It was quite warm and all
is needed are pads and a mosquito net. We were lucky and there were no
mosquitoes. Just a few years
ago, tourists had to sleep on the roof of the chief’s house. Now many villages
have a special building built for tourists. |
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A storage hut under
construction. |
Goats are not
acrophobic! |
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The baboon on the right
seemed to be quite tame and docile. When Juergen was
within the reach of his chain, he leaped forward and scratched his foot
pretty badly. |
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We bought this
wooden lock from the craftsman. |
The inside of a ripe
baobab fruit is very tasty (sweet). Baobab trees are useful in several ways:
the leaves for seasoning, the bark for mats etc., and the fruit for food. |
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These are red and
white hibiscus flowers that are used in many dishes. |
An open air Muslim
service. This is Saudi Arabia at work. “They” come into a village here and
offer free education in Saudi Arabia. A boy goes and is given a Wahabi
education (like Taliban) and then returned to Mali with the instruction to
convert the others. They’re doing this
worldwide. |
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Millet beer is very
common in Dogon country. Here is Juergen’s first try. |
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This is a very high
chief. |
Exploring villages. |
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Baobab tree with
bark harvesting scars. |
These ‘sculptures’
are found everywhere and have a deep spiritual meaning. They are fetishes, part
of the animist religion. |
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Up and down the
escarpment. |
After crossing the
top of the escarpment and before dropping down into another village. It’s literally
“dropping down.” We trekked down on such steep paths/rocks that we’d be down
in just a few minutes. |
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The villages have
their farms between the escarpment and the Sahel. |
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Wooden bridges
across crevasses. The Dogon are amazing at woodwork, and these bridges are
extremely stable. Needless to say,
Yvonne did not look down. |
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In the crevasses one
often finds water reservoirs and local women often come from considerable
distances to fill the water buckets. |
Some of the ups and
downs are quite steep. All of those
branches are a safety net over a crevasse in case one slips when going down. |
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Looking back up at
the “safety net.” |
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It was fun when our
descent down the escarpment took us through the old Tellem villages. These are very like
our Hopi cliff dwellings, and are there for the same reason. |
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Very little of the
40 mile hike was level… |
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Nianamou is usually
greeted with millet beer (or water) upon his arrival to a village. It’s a riot to watch
Dogons greet each other. They practice a custom of elaborate greetings. This
custom is repeated over and over, throughout a Dogon village, all day. During
a greeting ritual, the person who has entered the contact answers a series of
questions about his or her whole family, from the person who was already
there. Invariably, the answer is “sewa,” which means that everything is fine.
Then the Dogon who has entered the contact repeats the ritual, asking the
resident how his or her whole family is. Because the word sewa is so commonly
repeated throughout a Dogon village, neighboring peoples have dubbed the
Dogon the sewa people. |
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A storage hut with
yeast for the millet beer hanging on the outside. |
The young in Dogon
country no longer want to live in the rocks and are setting up villages on
rectangular grids on the flat land below. Some old people
refuse to leave the old villages so their relatives have to carry food up to
them. |
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This is a Dogon
religious house reserved only for the spiritual leader of the village. He is
elected by elders of the village. When he dies, another one is elected. In
the particular case here, someone was elected and afterwards they found out
he had converted to Islam. Since that is incompatible with their traditional
animistic belief system, he can’t serve. But since he was elected, nobody
else can be elected. The person on the left is a caretaker until the
unsuitable person dies. |
In this special building,
built in a hard-to-get-to place, is kept the traditional fetish (one for each
family) for several villages. Any question a
member of the community wants answered by the religious leader requires him
to know which fetish is necessary for the rite. A rite cannot take place
without the fetish. Not too long ago,
Muslims destroyed such a building along with all the fetishes. This may put
the animistic religion at greater risk of losing members to Islam, as they no
longer have the security of their own religion. |
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The caretaker (in
black) and a helper (orange) are responsible for the building above. |
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This little boy
belonged to the caretaker family living close by. |
The Dogon religious
building described above. |
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One of the Christian
churches we found (Catholic). We thought the
church bell (a former truck wheel) was imaginative and practical. It had a
nice sound. |
We came up that
cleft, walked around the village, then hiked back down to the village where
we stayed. The scenery was all
jaw-dropping – but it would have been far different if we had just been
driven to each village. |
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Some of the cliff
dwellings are difficult to get to; many require ropes. No one lives in
these any more. |
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A palaver house with
a view. Another interesting Dogon culture feature is that these palaver houses
are where the elders provide service to the community. They settle disputes
here between community members – both neighbors and within a family. At one
village, when it was dark and we were all in bed, a couple started a very
noisy conversation. We couldn’t tell if it was a fight or not, but they were
definitely disturbing the peace. In the morning we mentioned it to Nianamou
and he said that he imagined they’d both be summoned to the palaver house
this morning to meet with the elders! |
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In the village of
Borko there is a pond with sacred African dwarf crocodiles. During the rainy
season they have many places to go but when we were there they were all in
this one pond. The villagers live side-by-side
with them. When we asked Niamanou how this was possible, he told us that the
villagers make near-daily offerings to them of chickens… These crocodiles are
mostly extinct elsewhere; this sacredness has saved them here. |
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The African dwarf
crocodile (sometimes called African caiman) is the smallest extant crocodile
species in the world. Medium adult length is 5’. Still wouldn’t want
to get close to them… |
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Millet beer is made exclusively
by women and they also sell it. It takes a lot of boiling in these huge vats. |
Due to the expense,
their traditional funeral rituals or "damas" are becoming very
rare. They may be performed years after the death. Damas that are still
performed today are not usually performed for their original intent, but
instead are done as a source of entertainment for tourists interested in the
Dogon way of life. The Dogon use this entertainment to gain profit by
charging the tourists money for what masks they want to see and the ritual
itself. The traditional dama consists of a masquerade that essentially leads
the souls of the departed to their final resting places through a series of
ritual dances and rites. |
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Dogon damas include the
use of many masks held on by securing them in their teeth. Each Dogon village may differ in the designs
of the masks used in the dama ritual. Every village may have their own way of
performing the dama rituals. Even though these
masked dances are performed for tourists, they’re still profoundly religious
and traditional. They’re really performed for the elders (above and below)
who judge, advise and criticize the performers. On the left Nianamou greets
one of the elders. |
These dancers have to
be among the strongest as their dance consists of making big circles with the
Kananga mask, bowing and scraping the top of the mask on the ground and then
lifting it high, again and again. This mask is quite heavy. |
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The most famous of
the performers are probably the ones on stilts. This shows they’re
close to heaven. |
Yvonne and Nianamou
are on the right. This entire
45-minute dance was put on just for us. The elders are
standing in the background. |
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Rabbit mask. |
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Goiter mask. |
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At the end, we play
tourists and have our pictures taken with the performers and the elders. |
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During our treks we saw
this hunter with a rifle who did not want to be photographed. |
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Another sleeping
site on the top of someone’s roof. From there, we took the church picture
below. |
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Above, left and
below is a Catholic church. |
The church bell is a
propane gas cylinder. Didn’t sound bad. |
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Trekking along the
escarpment. |
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Another of our roof
camping sites. |
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Interesting mosque. |
Gun repair shop. |
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Above, right and
below Dogon ladders bridging crevasses. |
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It was quite hot
during the day. Fortunately, there was plenty of good beer. |
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Yvonne trying millet
beer. |
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