Graduation Day

March 8^th

On my way to my friends place in village and I noticed that the place was completely empty, not one person in sight. Very strange considering it’s a Tuesday at 3pm where normal village traffic fills the street, the small shops, and small hangers where the usual topic of discussion is under way while the tea is brewing over some hot coals. But nothing. Doors are all closed with motos and bikes taking the people’s spots where they would usually sit under their hanger, lost amongst their chatter. So finding no one to talk to I head to the end of the road where I find one person, Yacouba, sitting listening to the radio as he tends to the grinding machine which Mado runs during the day. I grab a seat and greet Yacouba who is a jolly guy, tall and slightly more rotund than your usual Malian but a guy with the biggest smile when you greet him and an all around humble guy. I ask Yacu what is going on today and why there’s no one in town. He explains to me that there is a “Quran Jigi” today and that everyone is in the Numu’s area for the ceremony. The Numu ethnic group are blacksmiths, making knives, hoes, and anything else requiring metal, which explains why their work area is adorned with furnaces, anvils, gigantic pliers, and 8lb sledgehammers. A “Quran Jigi” is when students of the Quran school achieve a certain level and then are deemed ready to become leaders in the Islamic community, able to take on students who would study under them. A big deal in Mali as it is predominately Muslim. And this event doesn’t happen every year from what I gathered. From time to time there is a “Quran Jigi” and never on a regular basis. So my curiosity and my status as a visitor in their lives, I trek my bike over to the event to see whats the deal.

Upon arrival, there are about 300 people gathering under the Neem trees, encircling the selected few who are being honored, those few wearing nothing but all white robes sitting on prayer mats. The men have encircled the new graduates while the women are off to the side in no particular order, looking on from their positions. People are in chairs, sitting on benches, on prayer mats, the elders being the closest to the action while the age range gets younger as you move farther away. I am called over to sit with my friend Yaya who is on the outer edge of the circle. I take a place on the bench and look on, figuring out what every mannerism means by the guy in the all yellow robe, with a red checkered scarf donning a white cap who is speaking through a microphone. I try to pick up what he is saying but only receive bits and pieces as the output of the mic sounds like a drive-thru window speaker at Del Taco.

After struggling to understand what is going on and going through my own assumptions on what is happening, I turn to Yaya to gather some more info. My questions are standard, “whats going on, who is that guy, who are the guys in white, when does this happen, where do these people come from, etc” and receive all that I need. That these few students, the youngest being all of 13 from what I gather, are leaving the Quran school and becoming “teachers” of the Quran, that this happens once and a while, that “that” guy is the leader of the celebration, and that some of these people come from as far as Mopti to attend this event. After I know all that I want and can know of the event, I sit and watch, understanding as much as I can and enjoying what is happening before me as only here can this event happen in this way, in Mali, in my village with people who I’ve shared more than a year of my life with. Its pretty cool!

After what seems like blessings to end the ceremony, people are chosen to help distribute gifts to the patrons of the event. As they walk around with large aluminum bowls filled with small biscuits, a millet dough cake that I can’t describe or determine a close relative to one we can find in the States, and tamarinds they hand you what ever they grab, a mélange of goodies for everyone. I eat the millet dough cake immediately, don’t get any small biscuits, and stuff the tamarinds in my pocket for later. As the guys with the bowls walk around giving out the Quran Jigi goodies to everyone, others are giving 100CFA to old men who’ve attended while another guy gathers cola nuts, which are offerings given to the graduates. After everyone gets their take home goods, the food starts to arrive and you can sense an anticipation in the crowd. Everyone eyes the food, hauled in by enormous bowls carried by two people. The chatter is sporadic, people stand to see what’s provided today. The duty of dividing up the food rests with a few people who separate it into smaller bowls to be passed amongst the mass. At this point I am hungry, however knowing how everyone will wash their hands and the tussling of positions around the bowl just to get my hand on a single grain of rice is I deem not worth it. And to my surprise, I am right. As soon as the bowl enters the vicinity where I am in, people rush to dip their hands in the bucket of water in order to get a good spot. The hand washing is absurd, no soap and pretty sure 40% did a mock wash, putting their hand in the bucket but not in the water. Clever. I am invited to eat and I politely decline saying that I am full. I peek at the bucket and its gray, so no thanks. Around the bowl people are squatting, a half squat, and standing just to get a bite to eat. It’s a free for all and I am a spectator, but happy to not be in that mess. I look around and eye people grabbing a big handful and leaving with it, to save for later. Others are more ingenious and bring plastic bags with them to take some back home for their kids. The funniest and most clever technique came from another friend of mine, also named Yaya who is involved in the school and is a man of his late 40’s or early 50’s. He comes out of the fray with a gigantic smile on his face and a huge lump in his shirt. He has taken at least two handfuls of food and put them in his shirt, carrying it like a child who just got a bounty of candy and has no bag to hold them in. Its great to see from Yaya, a little humor in the matter. After the meal everyone disperses and heads home. I walk back to my bike and head home to go play soccer at the school while thinking about the Quran Jigi, what it was like and how great it was to see. Also knowing confidently that I wasn’t going to get sick from not eating the food, always a plus.

Dogon Country

Day #1

Our guide, Hassinni, drove us out to this bedrock of sandstone, far as the eye could see which blanketed the entire floor upon which we stood. A huge discrepancy between the elevation we were standing on and the ocean of sand with trees dotting the landscape until they could not be individually identified. He then dropped us off to walk down the cliff we were on, giving us a longer lasting and more enriching hike down to the valley floor. This gave us a sense of how big everything is and how small we fit into it. The wind raced passed us as we descended foot by foot towards our first town. The sandstone glistened like smoothed glass in the sun, showing its age in eons due to water erosion. Once we got to the bottom of the cliff you could see the scope of our descent. Rock walls a few hundred feet high at its best with streaks marking where waterfalls start and end in the rainy season. Our first town was nice, home of a volunteer. We then walked 3km to the next village to see the swellings in the cliffs. Back in the day, dogon people would hide from the Islamic movement and created these villages in the cliffs. Free standing houses and granaries with a network of walkways that connect families to families, this enclave housed many Dogon’s from the persecution of Islam. So long ago that at one time, vines hid this village from sight like a green, living and breathing opera curtain which concealed this village from oncoming invaders. After touring this village in the cliffs, walking in the footsteps of the last inhabitants centuries before, passing the house of the spiritual leader in the village, touring the village hospital, and seeing the remains of hunting trophies still proudly displayed at the hunters house, we moved on to another village that was a few miles away.

Walking along the trail, every step leaving an imprint in the sand as we follow along the base of the cliffs, the redness of the sand, a saturated hue of orange that stains the landscape and gives it its character. Trees are few and thin, offering little relief from the relentless sun. We glance up at the cliff, stout in length and size, appearing as if it’s moving towards us inch by inch, looming over us. At certain places you can see the tiny enclaves of the people thousands of years ago who called the shelves hundreds of feet up the face of the cliff home. They were a race of people that were pygmy in size who somehow managed to climb up to the slots of the cliff where they made their houses way off the deck. Amazed by how they could exist this way but gave my imagination something to simmer on during the long hike.

We get to Ende where we pass the night, looking at the sea of stars, picking out the ones we know and the ones we just learned about thanks to Cheryl and her star chart.

Day 2:

We rise early and eat breakfast consisting of bread, jam, milk, coffee, and tea. We head out for a day trip to the remnants of a village up on the cliff. We see similar structures here with the exception of a grave high in the cliff where they would hoist the dead up to this cave opening with a rope and seal it with mud. After touring the village we purchased some items from the women’s association who make indigo cloth and headed out for our next camp. Along the way we meet people on the road, greet them “hello” in their dialect, (Ay waa na), and smile as our paths cross, our cultures acquainting each other. One sour spot, the village with the pushy kids selling things, the one portion that could have been avoided from our trip. It’s a reminder that giving things away to people does tend to have some negative effects and the kids of the village were used to getting things from visitors year after year. We meet other people; pass through small villages some only consisting of ten or less people until we get to our ascent of the cliff. We start our climb up the stone layered trail heading between the opening of two massive cliff formations. We reach the gorge between the two formations to only be awarded by a fully functioning, lush, beautiful garden. Fern gully in the middle of one of the hottest places on earth, the garden is filled with onions, tomatoes, and eggplant, all being fed by an underground stream. Well organized, it looks unreal. They water by taking two gourds, one in each hand, fill them with water, and walk to their plot where they disperse the water in a fan-like shape using their hand over the gourds opening. It’s beautiful and more impressive that they are dedicated to succeeding. The time and effort they spend in this garden was truly inspiring and the people being so humble and friendly, a memorable experience. We climb to the top where we reach the village built on the rocks. This village is segmented into three parts, Muslims, Christians, and Animists who worship the earth and nature and its connectedness with the person spiritually. We drop our bags at the camp and go hike to the top of the cliff where we will catch the sunset. Along the way we stop in a hunter’s house where on display are his trophy pelts, baboon, another kind of primate, and some ring-tailed cats, with baboon skulls. Also on display are his many guns, decorated with wear and hunting stories of ages hunting in the bush. In his compound there is also a live monkey tethered to a post. When we greet him, he presents a gourd of millet beer (called Chimichama) to us. We drink some and as a welcoming gift he gives us a liter and a half of the stuff. Really nice! We hike to the ridge, rock all around us, its features smooth and sharp bending around each corner like molten taffy, until we reach the edge of the cliff, 30 minutes from sunset. The cliff runs to the west for miles as the bottom drops below us extending for endless miles to the south. No range in sight as its flat, for a very….long....way. We stay to see the sunlight dim on our second day before heading to camp. We pass the night under the veil of stars, finish the millet beer, while the cool desert wind wraps around the rock formations, silencing the rest of the village around us.

Day 3:

Early wake up. We eat breakfast and head out ton our last day in Dogon Country. Our guide takes us along the ridge, over and through passages marked by the evidence of last year’s harvest season. The rock is barren minus a tree or dried grass that has found a home on a flat section of rock. We tour another village that’s on and made of rock. We see a traditional animist house, sacrificial places forbidden by anyone under the age of 60yrs and to all women, and special houses for women who are menstruating, isolating them from the rest of the village. Its believed that when they are having their period, it is bad luck for anyone to touch her or vice versa if she were to touch anything or anyone. Once we pass through, we reach the cliff edge where we start to make our descent to the lower floor of Dogon Country. We travel through this massive crack, walk across a crevasse using tree trunks with steps carved into them, pass a burial with human remains still in it, and descent hundreds of feet by way of a trail that was built using stones. We make it down and pass through a village that was abandoned just a couple of years ago. Once on the floor plain we make it to the camp for lunch while we wait for our Dogon taxi, a wagon pulled by a cow. We load the wagon with our bags and head back to the car with some people riding on the wagon while others walked behind. It’s the peak of the day and the sun is relentless. The walk seems longer than when we first started our hike a few days ago, but village by village we inch closer to the car that awaits us to take us back to Bandiagara. After 3 ½ hours of hiking, 15km+ of trail through rock and sand, we make our way back to the car, our express way out of Dogon. As we leave by way of the single lane road on top of the bedrock, you see Dogon slowly fade away out of sight until it is concealed by the ridge. Descend down the same road to reveal a truly mystical place still woven in the history of their culture, one that even Mali to this day has yet to discover.