West Africa's Largest Postcard Collection Grows!

We moved to a new postcard wall! Our friends and family are so amazing that we are not only be able to decorate a part of our living room but have now moved on to what we’ll call our "solarium" (which is actually more of a sandarium). At least once a day we check them out. It is inspires us to see where you all travel. It cracks us up to see what ludicrous cards you can find. It makes us nostalgic to see where you all live. Most of all, it heartens us to know what amazing support we have.

There were some serious travelers in this batch and some great scenes from all over, on the homefront and beyond.

Our friend Kelly “Big Red” Huster from Jackson, Wyoming, touched on a little of both themes when she crossed the entire country and sent us a postcard from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her first time to Fenway Park was almost as exciting as a mention on our blog!

The Traveling Campbells continue their amazing string of journeys, checking in from sites as far a field as Tucson and Scotland. We are starting to wonder if they are ever at home.


Kelly Jones got all the way to South Africa for some safari stew before being sent back to america. She says that she is home in Colorado now but we are not sure, having no postcard-o-graphic evidence to confirm this fact.

We do know Steve Bory and Natalie Mette-Bory made it safely home to Chesapeake Bay. They also completed a swing through the southwest states, from which our postcard wall should benefit, insh’allah.

The "Ice Queen", Liz Becker, completed a lengthy trek herself. She checked in from Utah and Saugatuck, Michigan and Washington Crossing Historic Park in Pennsylvania on her way to the east coast after her eighteen-day float down the Grand Canyon. She sent us a postcard from the bottom of “the ditch” that was carried out partly by mule, a form of transport normally only occuring on the Malian end of things!

Our friends Nicole and Andrew Wallace sent one from far away but not quite from the road. They have moved to Orleans, France. The majestic chateaux seem a bit more appealing than the mud brick huts they had been accustomed to in Mali.


RPCV Emily Doerr is killing it on the postcard front, having checked in from Seattle and Portland, Oregon and from McMinnville, Tennessee on her way to the nation's capital where she sent a ridiculous card of the first family. We expect the cards to continue coming since, at last check, she didn’t have one of those pesky job things that might inhibit postcard writing.

PCV Therese Pasichnyk sent us one from Cadiz, Spain, where she traveled with her family. They apparently wanted to go as close to Africa as possible without actually stepping foot on the Dark Continent. You can practically see Morocco from there!

Casey and Matt Stratford got all the way to Iceland. This would normally be an impressive postcard except when compared to the other two absurd cards they sent out: Sam and Mark’s wedding and on the Jackson Hole Gondola with Sam and Mark. Awesome!

We even received a card all the way from Malaysia sent by a Choong Chee Yen, who is apparently making postcard wall as well. It is a small world!

Speaking of outlandish postcards, Kevin Coughlan has really hit his stride. He has been specializing in touristy Wyoming kitsch. From the stuffed bears asking that more tourists be sent because the last ones were delicious, to the bizarre owl claiming it misses us, to the legendary fur bearing (due to the extremely cold waters) trout and the elusive Jackalope, he has been nailing it.

Ben Carlisle sent Baroque Obama. Enough said.

Brian Hannon has recently been specializing in eccentric British cards with old ads for Brylcreem and a not so subtle claim from the MG car company that their vehicle will increase your chances with the ladies.

Brian’s friend Denis Moran lives in Santa Barbara and studies Africa as part of his reference publisher gig. Judging from the picture of the area, we suggest he continue working from afar, it is much nicer.

Ex-roomie Jon Scheibel continues his subtle pitch to get us to return to western Wyoming by sending cards from Jackson Hole and Yellowstone National Park.

Laura Cuddie and John Morgan reminded us of the beautiful scenery of the Teton Range. It is fun to show pictures like that to Malians, they are always blown away.

Back on the east coast, Jay and Jenni sent us one of their new hometown Media, Pennsylvania. This was less to show the beauty of their town and more so that Jay could point out his local coffee shop in the photo. The thought of a sandwich where the egg is not deep-fried and that has bacon and cheese on it is too much for us to fathom at this point. The Hannons went international too, kind of. Jay, Jenni and Frank sent one from Quebec City.

The Lavers have moved up to New Hampshire and sent a view of the Mt. Washington Valley. It reminds us of when we were able to see Mt. Washington from the dock at Sam’s family cottage on Lake Winnipesauke, a long time ago in galaxy far, far away where it is safe to touch the water.


Norma Crichton continues her come home to Bangor, Maine campaign with a card of the Thomas Hill Standpipe. Mark could still to this day ride a bike to his childhood home blindfolded from that particular landmark if the need arose.

Tom and Cathy Hannon sent a beautiful view of Scituate harbor in Massachusetts. It makes us want to see the ocean and eat fish from water which can be smelled miles away for its saltiness and not its raw sewage.

The same goes for Cousin Cindy’s card from Rye harbor, New Hampshire. Also, considering Rhode Island’s diminutive size, the large format postcard she sent from there gave us a chuckle. Mostly, though, it is her postcard of New England fall foliage that looks quite a bit like the farm road near Sam's house that makes us miss home.




Thanks everyone for your reminders of where we’ve been, where we're going and what we should put in our hair.









Kevin Coughlan summed it up nicely:

Posh Corps

Its official, we have transferred from Peace Corps to Posh Corps. Moving to Bamako a few months ago from Yelimané has been less like moving towns and more like changing of planets. While we certainly still have challenges in our daily lives, when compared to village life it feels like we are on vacation.

Get this: there are these switches on the walls of our house that, when toggled, turn on and off lights without any batteries or matches!

There are these metal pipe things which bring water into the building itself. It comes out a shower! Not only that, but there are other pipes which take dirty water away from the toilet in our house. Granted, most wastewater eventually empties untreated into the river not far from here but at least it is not collected in a cesspool outside the concession wall for children to play in (they only have donkey poop to throw at each other, dommage).

We have a bed that is not made of bamboo, a table with chairs and a sofa. We have tiles on our floor instead of concrete and paving stones. We have fans to move the swelteringly hot air around and dry our sweat. We get the BBC on the radio, so we know a little about what happens in the world. We even have (want can only be called) an easy bake oven. Best of all, we have a little refrigerator for cold water!

Work life is different in Bamako. We hesitate to describe it because it still is not that interesting for the American reader. Suffice it to say that it exists, which is a big step up from village. While the village life was relaxing and culturally enriching it could also be torturously slow. We would often reach our limit of reading books and playing with children but the only alternative was often staring off at the horizon for hours on end. In the city the time passes faster, which is good.

We have done so many things in town that we never had the opportunity to do out on the edge of the desert. We’ve swum in pools, we’ve gone to soccer matches in stadiums, we’ve been to concerts performed by famous Malians, we meet friends once a week for drinks, we eat chicken! We are no longer out at the end of a seldom-traveled spoke of a desolate wheel but at the hub of the country, so we see people a lot more. Time goes fast enough that we actually have to manage it!

And time runs short these days. It is hard to believe that we are in single digits for months left in Mali. By way of clarification, Peace Corps is a two year service after swearing-in (front row, with shades). This means that that count only began when training finished, two months after our arrival. Those of you who expected us back in July will be surprised to hear that our technical last day of service is September 11th, 2010. That is not when we arrive home, however, as we will likely travel around for an undetermined time. Not to mention that due to administrative constraints that day could be a month before or a month later, nor is it including any extensions past that or early end dates for which might possibly be applied. Is that clear enough?

So, while we really have no idea when we will be home to the States, you will be happy to know that this place has become an acceptable home in the meantime.

(Its a sweet pad, Avril is always hangin' out at our place...)

Holidays

We recently marked two holidays, Thanksgiving and Tabaski. These are strikingly similar. Although one is religious and one is not, they both are marked by gluttonous consumption of meat. Thanksgiving has its turkeys to commemorate the survival of the Pilgrims thanks to the cooperation of the Native Americans. Tabaski has its rams to commemorate Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only son, Ismail, to prove himself to god. The bottom line is that an animal is killed and folks gorge themselves. These two separate cultural holidays happened to fall two days apart this year, which made for the tastiest week ever.

Since Tabaski was on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and it is the biggest holiday in Mali, the Peace Corps crew who live in Sikasso held their annual feast early, on the preceding Monday. This was perfect for us because it meant we got to go there and pig out on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and maybe a beer or two and still make it back to Bamako to go to the U.S. Ambassador’s residence on Thanksgiving itself for more of the same! This was our Mali version of Thanksgiving with the Hannons and then driving to New Hampshire for Thanksgiving with the Briggs. Score!
Tabaski is celebrated by virtually all Malians and that means that the same move could be pulled for this holiday too. We spent the morning with our family cutting up animals and cooking then we headed to our tutor’s place for a feast with his friends. After that, we came back
home only to eat even more with the family again before they returned to the mosque dressed in their finest. Normally, everyone gets new clothes made for the occasion but since we rarely wear Malian clothes in Bamako our “swear-in” outfits were new to them.

(Sam with our host family in Bamako)

We ended the evening in an untraditional fashion watching a France versus New Zealand rugby at the bar. Heck, we are even culturally exchanging with Kiwis!

Happy Thanksgiving

Just a quick note to let everyone know we are doing well. Another Turkey Day without the family but at least there was turkey this time. We headed over to the U.S. Ambassador's residence for a feast she was throwing for those less fortunate (read: Peace Corps Volunteers). We were treated to turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, yams, veggies and wine and we didn't have to clean one dish. That's the life!

We recognize that the updates have been lacking recently. While this is partly due to a little computer snafu we'll explain later, it is mostly just us being lazy. Too lazy to even make up excuses. We'll get on that.

In the meantime, here is an update on the mummified cat:

It has returned to the earth.

Halloween 2009

Here’s a picture of Sam and Mark at a Halloween party in Bamako:


Those tins on their arms are beggars’ cups. No, they are not dressed as street beggars. C'mon, that would be uncouth. While Sam and Mark appear to be dressed as mere beggars, a closer inspection of their clothes reveals them to be - wait for it - twins.

What?!

A word about twins in West Africa: they are considered good luck. Yes, I know what you are thinking, they should be considered good luck everywhere, true, but here it goes beyond that. You are supposed to give them money. Another word about twins: they need not be real twins at all. In fact, they often are not.

Why?

A word about beggar mothers: it is safe to assume that beggar moms have lived in West Africa most, if not all, of their lives. So, while they may not have had the chance to attend the Sorbonne, they still know a trick or two. Giving money to twins being considered good luck means that when a beggar gives birth to a set it is kind of like hitting the daily double. Donc, it is very common to see children who are clearly not twins (sometimes it is debatable whether they are even related) dressed alike to bring in more money. We didn’t say they knew any good tricks.

Due to a fluke in the genetic code of the West African populace there are tons of twins (and, even more odd, albinos) floating around, mostly fraternal. Are Sam and Mark real fraternal twins? We hope not on so many levels.

More Postcards! Thank you!

We recently had a bit of a postal delivery/common sense snafu which could only happen of in Mali.

PCV: Can I have my mail, I see it there on the desk (pointing).
Mail Guy: We have to wait until the names are correctly on the mailboxes.
PCV: Here’s my mailbox (holding out hands), put it right here.
Mail Guy: We have to wait until the names are correctly on the mailboxes.

This went on for so long that the price of overseas US postcard stamps went from $0.94 to $0.98 in the meantime! Upon delivery resumption, a month later, our collection doubled in size once again. Well done, readers, the postcard wall multiplies faster than giardia in the large intestine!

A funny story relating to the ridiculous postal debacle: for an entire month now Sam has been upset that the Scheibels of Littleton, Colorado sent a postcard addressed specifically and only to Mark. She felt, it must be said, somewhat slighted. Fast forward a month, to the postcard windfall, and there in the pile was one addressed from the Scheibels of Littleton, Colorado specifically and only to her, sent the very same day! They dodged a bullet with that one. They were going to have to answer to Sam. Also, there were two from their formally postcard delinquent son, Jon.

Mark’s mom did send many but one was just to Mark, so she will have some answering to do. I guess her and John will owe Sam a dinner for this slight (for which Mark will tag along ).

Mark’s dad sent a bunch of sweet views of the artists’ colony formerly known as Belfast, Maine. His brother, Tommy, is doing much better now and will certainly soon be following the lead of his daughter Cindy, who sent one from Boston’s public garden.

Also in Boston was Brian’s friend Matt Kelly, who had some disparaging words about him written on the back. Similar sentiments came from Vince, Brian’s buddy with whom he is “competing to see who can finish his PhD last,” or so Vince says. This is a tight race.

Alyssa Wyman was a blast from far enough in the past that she has a new last name (Radcliff). Thanks for the lobster postcard. We try not to eat the seafood here, for obvious reasons. Also Maine based, Norma Crichton sent two views of beautiful Bangor, Maine. It’s the Queen city, you know.

Julie (Emery) Furlo and family went to Martha’s Vinyard and sent us some cards from what was, hopefully, a much more tame trip then her time living out there with Mark, Jay, Bryce and Scot. Her daughter was confused by the sexual ambiguity of the carrousel rider on this card and, frankly, so were we.

RPCV Emily Doerr is making the transition from Mali back into American life in Spokane, on the prowl for dudes to make out with (she also sent one from Turkey, although how long ago she visited there is uncertain).

Basadiki Ly and Habe Diallo (a.k.a.Cousin Mikey and Sarah) are also adjusting back to life in America after their long trek to just about everywhere in Mali except Tombouctou, which was fine because that is for "you know who" anyway...

Susan Rainey sent one from Mopti which had pictures of Montana, possibly because it looks so much nicer than Mopti itself.

Bishop sent us a picture of the old Tram flying over Crystal Springs pond at Jackson Hole. Mark fancies himself to be driving it in this photo (it could be him as we don’t hear the welcome recording playing).

Amy Widener sent us a selection from the “Beauty of the Patagonia Collection,” just in case we forgot how much cooler other places in the world are. The new $0.98 stamp from Jackson Hole that everyone is using reminds us quite well already, thank you very much.

The Travelling Campbells of Los Angeles (via Ireland and Scotland) are well travelled indeed. They seem to be all over the world. Owning a motorcycle really gives you lots of great opportunities to get out there and hit some cool spots. They get the award for creepiest postcard so far: a shot of the statue of liberty with the Manhattan skyline in the background complete with ghost twin towers rising towards the heavens. What the?!?!

One of the funniest cards this time came from Doug Cook, Lift Ops. The Aluminum Man sent us a coaster from Red Lodge Ales Brewing Company, Montana. Used, of course.

Keep them coming…



Note: Steve and Natalie, we had better be getting some road trip cards!



Nice one, Slats! You managed to find a card with the wrong character name on it (correction noted) and the town spelled wrong. Good eye!

Rainy Season

There are three distinct seasons in Mali: hot, cold and rainy. Hot season is an agonizing torture. It is the time when the entire countryside shuts down, reduced to hiding from the sun and napping for most of the daylight hours. Cold season is a misnomer. It has nothing to do with our normal understanding of the word “cold” but is merely a reference to our new understanding of the word “hot”, redefined during the previous hot season. Cold season might be renamed “sleep season”, as it is the only time it is truly comfortable to do this at night. The rainy season is a mixture of the two, hot days and relatively pleasant nights except, here’s the catch, everything is damp and covered in red mud.

Rain in Mali is an intimidating experience in itself. It is rarely the gentle New England rains that come in and patter all day, silently renewing the landscape with life giving moisture. There is none of this rainy day spent relaxing with a book curled up on the couch which you have in your mind’s eye. African rains are as chaotic as everything else here. Anyone who has ever been in a thunderstorm on a mountaintop knows the feeling. Typically coming out of nowhere, a blast of wind announces that you have mere seconds to find shelter before all hell will break loose. The first crack of thunder, originating from somewhere approximately ten feet from your ears, indicates that your scramble for cover has been much too slow. The sky opens up, the water hits the ground far too fast to be absorbed and it all starts heading downhill toward the river (directly through our neighborhood) taking everything imaginable from trash to dead animals to small children right along with it.


Currently, we are at the tail end of the rainy season. This is a monsoonal flow which typically lasts for three to four months (we are definitely on the long end of that estimate in Bamako this year). It does not necessarily bring rain every day, just most of them. It is hard to explain the disgustingness of a rainstorm here to anyone who grew up in Europe or America. The roads are already kept muddy year round by the human and animal waste flowing freely down them (you never fully appreciate pavement until faced with this situation) but add to that the rains of rainy season and it’s especially repulsive.

Picture a land without trash collection. Where anything one throws out literally ends up in the streets just outside one’s home. Picture a land where all toilets flush into those same streets. O.k., don’t picture toilets per se but picture all pee produced by a household leaving that house through a shallow trench dug to channel liquids under the concession wall and out into the street. While this may take away the urine of any given household, it simply joins it to the larger pee stream from other houses. Everybody lives downstream from somebody. “My pee flows by your house and your pee flows by my house, the more we get together the happier we’ll be…” Sure, here in Bamako there are some sewers on the main roads but not everywhere. It is an open sewer system (literally, you can easily fall in if you are not paying attention) and serves more as a rodents highway than to alleviate any sewage issues. Smells great, too.


Our neighborhood is in a low-lying area of town just next to the Niger river. This means that it floods out with even the slightest rains. Daily we are forced to jump from one little muddy island to the next in an effort to get out of our house (see: first picture) without having to wade through the sewer water running through the streets. We wish it could be said that we were always successful but that would be lying. Some days the rain comes so hard that we are utterly cut off. The only way out is to roll up the pant legs (we never wear shorts here, that is far too risqué) and wade out across the temporary lakes of vile sludge.

One morning Mark was wading along knee deep through a main street of Bamako, drinking yogurt from a plastic bag and thinking, “Well, this can’t get much more surreal,” only to be passed by not one but two dogpaddling rats (cue the carnival music). Another time he and a cabbie marveled at the temporary fast flowing river they were plowing through so deep the water seeped in the doors of the taxi when a moto rode by (feet up on the handlebars to avoid dragging in the water) and sent a cascade of filth in through the window all over them. No reaction. The window was silently rolled up and they stared straight ahead for the rest of the ride, neither wanting to mention the horror they had just experienced.

(A woman wading across what had been a road and soccer field mere hours, minutes actually, earlier - in fact, all these photos were taken within hours of each other. The first one is our front door.)

ATT Supercup in Mopti

Mopti would have been quite uneventful (not to mean boring, just relaxing) if we had not decided to go to the A.T.T. Supercup final. This is an annual soccer tournament during which the different regional champions play in a championship tournament. It is named in honor of the president, Amadou Toumani Toure, a.k.a. A.T.T. It was fantastic.

In order to get anyone to the stadium instead of just watching at home, the event was free. This fit nicely into budget of Peace Corps volunteers and Malians alike. The stadium was packed. Barely any toubabs present, only “real travelers” like us and locals. Our new home, Bamako, was taking on Segou. It was a clearly pro-Segou crowd and we were sitting in the heart of the Segou fans. Mike and Sarah were recruited to root for Bamako since they were staying with us. Susan and Rabayah took a neutral stance.

Right behind us guys were making tea on the charcoal stove they had brought (a common sight in American stadiums, right?). We were making friends. Bamako was winning 1-0 at the half.















Then the clouds started rolling in. The sky went through one of the most beautiful progressions of colors ever witnessed. Going from clear to cloudy to pink, red and finally black.

The second half began just after the wind. Another sandstorm! They played on. We made the call to stay through the rain as Susan’s house is literally next to the stadium and we knew we could change into dry clothes soon. The rain came. It got more intense, embers flew everywhere from the tea set. We couldn’t believe they were still playing since it was raining so hard that we could not see the far side of the stadium. Then, right as someone mentioned that it was getting downright biblical, maybe in response to that comment, the lights went out. All hell broke loose. We headed for the gates, only to find them locked shut. Perfect. Mark, Sam, Sarah, Mike and Susan (Rabayah had headed out just before the worst weather) huddled in the tunnel with about eighty men crouching to avoid the rain by hiding behind one another but, at the same time, dancing to the ubiquitous African drummer in an attempt to keep warm. Lightning flashed every few seconds, eerily illuminating the scene at semi-regular intervals, as if with a glance to the side would see Andy Dufresne attempting an escape from Shawshank prison. What would have been a disaster in most places in the world turned into a party the likes to which we’d never been. We stayed for a long, long time in the tunnel, cold but whooping it up with the crowd until it became apparent that the lights would not come back on, the game would not resume, the rain would not get any warmer. People started to flee, jumping the fence, heading back into the stadium, anywhere but the tunnel.

Sam, Mark and Susan bailed, searching the empty, darkened seats for Mike and Sarah who had left not long before. They could not be found and we hoped that they remembered how to get back to Susan’s. We waded across ankle deep streams of rainwater (read: fast flowing raw sewage) to the house and found them. Each of us took turns washing the filth of the road off ourselves in the shower, completely clothed.

Then the lights did come back on after all. The rain had stopped. Mark and Mike went back to the stadium to catch the end of the game. Bamako was just wrapping up the win, although Segou had its chances to tie it in the closing seconds. They headed back to the Segou fan section just in time to witness the fusillade of rocks, batteries, flaming charcoal, etc. launched toward the Bamako players who were taunting the losing fans with the ATT Cup. Now that’s what we picture when someone says “So, there I was, and a championship soccer game in Africa...” Perfect.



(sweet pre-game graffiti outside the Stade de Barema Bocum)

Elephant hunt

We had some enough time to squeeze in a bit of a safari. We stopped in Douentza and hired a Land Cruiser for a day, heading to Boni and then southward for a chance to spot some of the last of the wild desert elephants on the planet. It had rained the night before and ended up being a bit sloppy on a number of levels, to say the least.

Apparently, the only thing that could match up to our driver’s surliness was his ability to get his vehicle stuck through his own ineptitude. We drove around for two and a half hours without seeing any elephants, only large piles poo that made it clear that there were elephants around (or we were in Jurassic Park).










Then we got a flat. No problem. This was unsurprising as a road simply did not exist, we were bushwacking. Unfortunately, while we might have expected a flat outfitter clearly did not, or we should say he was not sufficiently worried enough to have checked his gear before departure. Changing your tire in the heat of the Sahel is never pleasing but when the spare that is put on is just as flat as the original one must simply shake one’s head. There was nothing else to do, not for the four hours this issue took to be resolved (by our guide walking to a village and getting a bicycle pump).

As we packed up and drove out we happened to come across a lone bull elephant. It was actually quite breathtaking. It was huge, bigger than expected, a really cool experience. As far as our driver was concerned, it was a done deal, we disagreed. We headed back and, during a heated argument about a revised price which we felt we were entitled to, we ended up going to see his boss. The Malian who owned the car honestly did not see the problem: you saw an elephant and you didn’t sleep outside, what’s the problem? It took Mark a bit of time to try and calmly explain that we did want to pay, it was simply that we did not feel it was just to pay the full amount when 30% of the time was spent marooned and not accomplishing our goals due to the ill-preparedness of the outfitters we were to pay. This is where the Western sensibilities and those of the African fail to see eye to eye. While we could see his point that we were paying to go see elephants, he could not understand that we were paying a guide separately for the elephants and his car was for driving (i.e. moving on inflated tires) towards that goal. « Je ne veux pas payer pour sortir en brousse et de lire mon livre dans votre mobili cassée ! » “I don’t want to pay to go out in the countryside and read my book in your broken car!” Mark said. This discussion with the grand patron turned out to be the most exciting part of the day.

(tracking the bull)

Gao

After Dogon, we were back in Mopti for just long enough to convince Susan that she needed to cross Gao off “the list,” so it was the five of us that headed out for a night trip “up north”. This is the furthest east town you would really ever want to go to in Mali. That is, until you get there and then you realize that you probably passed the most eastern town you would ever want to go hundreds of miles back to the west (maybe it was Mopti or Segou, could be Bamako or was it Dakar or Philadelphia, hard to be sure) and just didn’t know it at the time.

There is little to draw one to Gao except for the bragging rights of saying you have gone all the way out there. Sites and activities are slightly limited per square mile. We actually had to pass through Timbuktu Region on our way there and back, stopping on the return leg during a horrific sandstorm followed immediately by a rainstorm during which it arguably rained harder inside the bus than outside (but only on one side of the bus, the side that Mark and Sam happened to be sitting on).


There is a sweet view from the Rose Dune which involves a great pirogue ride out to it, during which Mike did a nice little photo essay of the dead animals we passed on the riverside.







There is another World Heritage Site at Askia’s Tomb and there is the unlabeled marker of the prime meridian which, of course, can actually be enjoyed much closer to civilization (but when it is out in the Sahara that’s pretty cool).





Which brings us to a hilarious topic of conversation during our travels - the notion of tourist vs. traveler. We often had a good laugh when we would come across other toubabs (white people) because more often than not they would simply ignore us, trying not to make eye contact or in any way acknowledge that there might be another toubab present. This amused the hell out of us. If you really want to go to Africa and think you are the first and only white person to ever have been to the region go ahead, just know that you are an idiot. We spent a good bit of our time ridiculing each other in the manner of the “real travelers” who sneer at mere “tourists” and are put off their lunch even knowing they have to share the planet with such posers. These are the folks who define their personal worth by how long they’ve been out (whatever they think is longer than you have been), how many places they’ve been that no one else has (zero) and how much more they can endure than anybody else (usually just the insufferable pissing contests that are each others’ conversations). It would have been so great to see one of these “real travelers” as we descended the Rose Dune outside of Gao and tell them, “Golly, that’s a whopper of a view up there! What a great picnic spot.” Of course we did not see any of these hardcores since “real travelers” wouldn’t be caught dead on the Rose Dune, that’s for tourists...


(pictured: tourists on the Rose Dune)

Dogon

After checking out Mopti (which has a mud mosque to rival Djenne’s if you don’t have the time or the inclination towards uncomfortable transport to go to Djenne itself), we headed to the true “Crown Jewel of West Africa”, as far as we could tell, Dogon Country.

The Dogon people live among the cliffs that stretch for 200km more or less from Douentza to Bankass. They retreated there with the coming of Islam in an attempt to avoid conversion. They moved into hard to reach crannies in the cliff face, replacing the earlier Tellum people who had lived in such ridiculously inaccessible spots among the cliffs that the Dogons believe to this day that the Tellum could fly. Without the vines that likely made those higher cliff dwellings possible in more lush times, it is easy to see where they would get that idea. Most of the Dogon now live atop or bellow the actual cliff. We spent a few days hiking in the area and never got tired of the amazing landscape.


Our days went like this: eat, walk, eat, nap, walk, eat, sleep. On our very first day we were pinned down by a fantastic sandstorm. Luckily, we were already up in a deserted cliff dwelling and took shelter there. Not surprisingly, four kids from New England had never hidden from a sandstorm in an abandoned cliff dwelling before. You don’t get much more foreign than that. Before and after the storm were fantastic views and during the storm had an eerie quality all its own.



The striking vistas and freakish Dogon architecture could have kept us enthralled for weeks, not just days.







There were some spots that were a little dicey for anyone afraid of heights.






During rains we had to hide until it was dry enough to scramble up the slick rocks of the cliff. Often, the rains were so heavy we had to ford streams that would not have been there at any other time of the year. In one of the most surreal moments of the trip, the four of us forded a small river only to be approached by a crocodile as we put our footwear back on. It swam right up to the edge of the water where we had just exited. Had we known beforehand that there were crocs we’d probably still be standing on the other side waiting for dry season! A few moments later another crocodile swam towards us, this one albino. Very cool.

(Click on the photo and try to spot the white croc)