Mali-Diverse and exciting

Dearest friends,

I have so much to say about Mali that I actually had to outline this entry before writing it so Id be able to fit the important points. Mali is a huge country with Mopti as the capital of its heavily touristed section.

My trip began with the first night in an unusual hotel. Searching around for the cheapest hotel in Mopti, a generally very expensive place for tourists, I was given the name Bar Mali which wasnt in the guide book. Going there I found an extremely dirty and dark hotel, but with pleasant people. I was guided to my room in which the hall had a half broken wooden door which I was told to close when I came buy. The door divided about 6 rooms from the rest of the hotel and was about 6 feet high. I didnt quite understand its purpose because the other block of rooms didnt have a similar door. Regardless, the room had a working fan and a lock so it was great. I returned to the hotel around 8 or 9 and found the rooms in the hallway without the wooden door had a chair outside of every room with the door open and a nicely dressed woman sitting at the door. Apparently at night, half the hotel doubles as brothel for thirteen women that pay for the rooms until 1am. Obviously, nights there were a little noisy but it was a funny experience.

The next piece of the voyage was to Dogon country. This heavily touristed site is described by the guide book as being one of the top 10 places to see before you die. Its the home of the very culturally interesting Dogon people. Nonetheless, I wasnt particularly impressed. The location is quite beautiful because its nestled into the side of about a 1000 foot high cliff. I spent four days walking from one village to the next learning about Dogon culture, and learning a little bit of the language but this activity is heavily touristed. I did not really enjoy this experience that much and dont have too much to report about it, but because every single tourist that goes to Mali goes to Dogon, I had to at least tell you my thoughts.

Onto more interesting things. After Dogon, I took a pinasse ride up to Tombouctou, or as we spell it Timbuktu. I dont think Ive ever had such a mix of emotions. The whole trip was beautiful; watching herds of birds fly across the river at sunset, women and children washing bowls and clothes in the river, and bathing children who all shouted Toobaboo and waved excitedly as we passed. I went with my Spanish friend Millan who I mes in Dogon. The trip was to take 3 nights 4 days and we were in this maybe 20 meter long boat with hundreds of boxes of tea, bags of millet, and about 20 other people. Nights we slept on the boxes and bags. Our movement was about one meter between where we slept and the front of the boat where we sat for the best view except when it was too hot. As we traveled the water would frequently be too shallow so the crew, a family, would get out and push the boat in a circle until we could continue again. The small motor that powered the boat went about 35-50km per day perhaps.

The difficult part of the experience was being patient. You have no idea what is patience until you are at the whim on nature on a slow moving boat for a 300km journey without much time to spare. Especially considering that when we asked the captain how far it was he would respond with a distance that didnt make sense and there were dozens of incomprehensible stops. After 3 days on the boat it started to get to me because we had no idea where we were and it could be 10 days before we arrived given the wind, shallow water, stops, and slow speed. Not only that there was no way out because the villages we stopped at had no cars to Tombouctou to take. So we were stuck for who knows how long. On day 4, when we thought we were a couple hours from the end we were transfered to another boat because our boat ended its journey in Tonka. With this new driver and crew with an unknown number of days left it was challenging to be patient. In addition I started to get sick of eating a large portion of rice three times a day and only moving about 2 meters a day. So in essence this was the biggest test of my patience Ive ever had.

Nonetheless, there were funny experiences and good experiences. One night on the new boat while we were sleeping we felt something crawl over us multiple times, it was quite large and I felt 8 legs. I assumed it was a camel spider which can be about one foot or two feet large, telling Millan this he started to panic while I went back to sleep. I started to think about why it was called Camel Spider perhaps because it kills camels? So then I thought it wasnt a good idea either. Moving to the bamboo roof or the boat at 3 am we couldnt sleep anymore. We scanned the boat with a flashligh and about 10 minutes found out it was just a rat. Only in Africa would I remark, Oh Thank God Its Just A Rat, and go back to sleep, but we did.

Finally we heard the beautiful word Kouriome, the port for Tombouctu, on day six at about 2pm. I had overall clocked 120 hours on this small boat and was so glad to finally arrive. We really felt like explorers the whole way. tombouctou has a history of explorers who traveled fearing their lives and never made it to the fabled city. So having traveled similar to explorers I have quite an appreciation for how remote a place this is and how difficult it is to reach.

Meeting up with a friend of a friend, I arranged to spend 4 days in the desert with a nomadic people called the Taureg. The next morning, Al Halifa, my good friend for the next four days arrived with his two camels and took me to his house. This travel was not touristy as I stayed with Al Halifa and worked during the day with him, ate the same food, pumped water, and didnt pay for the extra tourist stuff. Al Halifa lives in a temporary house made of sticks and mats which stands up quite well to the Sahara dust storms and rains. Each day was similar and went something like this: wake up aruond 530, take two cups of tea and elewa for breakfast, locate the camels, feed the animals, break for the heat of the day to eat lunch, around 3 feed the animals again and come back in time for dinner. Now feeding the animals is not how it sounds. Halifa has 14 goats that roam the desert near the village. The first day we walked through the desert to some spot and sat down. Halifa lets out a high pitched EO multiple times and a kilometer in the distance I hear the response of goats. As he keeps calling they come to him at which point he takes his axe and cuts down part of a small tree and pulls it onto the ground for the animals to eat.

Now whats interesting is that because the Taureg are nomadic, they dont keep track of their ages or have birthdays. So one afternoon I had the strange experience of explaining to Halifa his age and birthday. He hands me a voting card that is in French, which he cannot read and barely speaks. I see the phrase date du naissane 12/31/80 and spend the afternoon explaining in broken French that this was his premiere jour, first day and that he is 28 and on this day hell be 29. He doesnt know the phrase birthday in English or French or Tamasheq so this was quite a strange experience for me, but particularly interesting.

Tombouctou, although synonomous with the end of the earth is actually the sister city of Tempe, AZ!!! When I got there and people asked me where I was from, I said Arizona and they said, do you know Tempe. I said, yes I am from there, how do you know Tempe! Voila!

Well, its down to the last week or so in Burkina Faso so I will keep you posted.

Best,
Ben