Mali, Dogon and on...

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It's been too long, but internet has been hard to find. Since the last post, we went (in Mali) from Bamako to Segou to Sévaré to Dogon Country, with a couple day trips to Djenné and Mopti. We're now sitting in a "cyber" in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Where to start? The picture at left was taken from a restaurant in Segou, of a boy polling along the pirogue while his father put out a net. Watching the sunset over the Niger with a beer was a highlight. As we've mentioned, travel has otherwise been hard. There is clearly a heavy tourist trail most everywhere we've been, but not many tourists as its the down season. The result is there are far less tourists to garner the attention of would be guides, curio hawkers; etc. It gets old after time - with almost any walk of any distance involving a significant amount of repetition. After being here for weeks, I would love to know how many people (in Sénégal and Mali) have asked us to take a look at their wares "juste pour la plaisir de les yeux" - just for the pleasure of the eyes. I think we're nearing the triple figures on that one alone.

But on to some quick impressions :

• Segou - the Niger is beautiful there, and when we weren't being followed/spoken to, it was fun. Unfortunately, that wasn't for very long...
• Sévaré - We did mellow out a bit in Sévaré. Its a bit in convienient, but centrally located. Not much shaking, but we did get our day trips in to Djenne and Mopti
• Djenné - this unesco world heritage site with a large mud mosque built in 1905 has sewerage running down all the pathways in open streams. The mosque is certainly unlike any building I had seen before, but after taking 3.5 hours to get there, we were very glad we would be leaving that day.
• Mopti - After being told that it is the "Venice of Mali", I took a day trip out there with some friends we'd met in Djenné while Erica sat it out. We got to see a great thunderstorm come in to the town, and the pinasse and pirogue activity around the river was fun to watch, but I couldn't muster the strength to tell Erica she'd missed much.

Dogon country requires much more than a bullet item. It is certainly the main tourist draw within Mali along with Timbuktu. After having a bit of a rough go attempting to secure a guide into Dogon Country, we tagged along with Nick, a Peace Corps volunteer from the Gambia who had a connection via some Peace Corps Mali volunteers. After a SUV ride to the first village (wonderfully pronounced "jiggy-boom-bo"), we started walking down the falaise (french for cliff). It feels a bit like one half of a valley in the Canyonlands, but as its the rainy season, there's a fair amount of greenery with an occassional palm tree. I wish I could upload pictures as they would assist me here. We stayed for 2 nights and hiked for 3 days.