Deeper Dogon

Note: We no longer have the luxury of Wes' computer to format pictures, so some of the following might not be at full resolution.

16 April 2007



It was 5:30 in the morning and the light was gray and things were just about to begin. A goat gave an enormous, human-like "Hey!", which bounced through canyons around us. Like a crescendo of tuning instruments before a symphony, all the animals in the village began to wake with their morning moaning and every sound uttered above a certain decible would echo around with reverberating force. Things became very loud very fast and the shouts and laughter of women and children entered.

We walked 16km through the dry countrysied, coming within walking distance with the Burkina Faso border. We were guided by a Dogon man named Abdullaye, whose kindness and grace I cannot allude to here.





In this stretch of country, there exists 65 different dialects of the Dogon language, all of which Abdullaye knows. We pass through each village and he exchanges greets with all the elders and they welcome us. For many kilometers, the walk is silent and achingly hot. Dave and I consume 6 liters each of water a day and barely piss once. Abdullaye can go these entire walks without having a sip and then get to a village and just have a cupfull, then lead us on our way across vast expanses.

A tiny girl runs up to me and holds my hand and asks for my empty water bottle. I walk with her for some time and heard a faint sound in the distance and within minutes we are upon a colorful market in the middle of nowhere, where we sit under the shade of a tree and drink millet beer and raisin juice.



We exited up a steep canyon incline, trailing behind a dozen or so young women with buckets full of produce on their heads. They were returning to their village in the canyon after their first day alone in the market, their initiation.



At the end of the steep hike, I looked down to find my feet had taken a nasty beating.



I was wearing David's cheap, sharp sandals because mine had been stolen at our hostel in Mopti, which was cruelly called Y a Pas de Probleme Hotel (No Problem Hotel). I didn' have much time to whine, though, because that is when the music began, so we picked up the pace.

There were a dozen children playing the calabass to welcome the initiated girls back home. We walked through the procession, set our bags down, and basked in the music. It is times like these when I kick myself hard for not bringing my video camera to record what I see and hear. At the same time, it allows me to rest further in the present moment and see what is in front of me clearly, where it will remain in future years somewhere in the fogbank of my memory.

Alas, it is nearly impossible to write about the music we heard that night and perhaps it is better that way. I can tell you, though, its effect. We sat on the mud roof as the sun disappeared behind the rocks and it sounded like the songs of the children were coming out of the gut of the canyon itself. After luch time, they set about on foot, without a single light to guide them, clacking their instruments together in perfect unison, and we could here their song coursing and winding along in the darkness. All of a sudden, they stopped, which made the silence deafening.