shower block
view down to a dwelling complete with tree
the village inn - I slept on the roof
grain stores, rainy season dwellings
the village
the best room in the village
walking towards the village
view across the planes
Thursday, 22 October 2009
Photos of Dogon Country, Mali
shower block
view down to a dwelling complete with tree
the village inn - I slept on the roof
grain stores, rainy season dwellings
the village
the best room in the village
walking towards the village
view across the planes
Sunday, 16 August 2009
French in denial
In Bamako, being a big heaving market city, there are lots of people trying to get your attention. Generally one tries to avoid them but sometimes, one gets pulled into conversation. For example:
Passing young man: Bonjour, comment vous appelez vous?
Me: Je parle pas Français
Young man (with a grin) : Mais tu me comprends et peux dire "Je ne parle pas Français"
Me: Oui, c'est le seule phrase je comprends et peut dire.
Young man (bemused): Ah, okay.
Passing young man: Bonjour, comment vous appelez vous?
Me: Je parle pas Français
Young man (with a grin) : Mais tu me comprends et peux dire "Je ne parle pas Français"
Me: Oui, c'est le seule phrase je comprends et peut dire.
Young man (bemused): Ah, okay.
French Speaking?
Speaking a little French, I enjoyed talking to the people of those central African countries where French is also the second language of much of the population.
I remember waking up in our tents in that part of Mali, where the soil is red and people infrequent, to learn that we were short of diesel due to a fuel tank leak. As we pulled onto the road from the bush, I spotted a young man walking along the road and it was decided that I should ask him where the nearest petrol station might be.
The conversation went like this:
Me: Bonjour
Youth: Bonjour
Me: Nous avons un petit problème et nous avons besoin de trouver de l’essence.
Youth: Bien sur, à 31 kilomètres
Me: Splendide, merci beaucoup
Youth: De rien, est ce que vous avez une cigarette?
Me: Non, désolé, nous ne fumons pas.
Youth: De l’eau?
Me: Pardon, nous n’avons ni de l’essence ni de l’eau. Je suis désolé
Youth: Okay, bonne chance
Needless to say 31 km later, we find a stall selling petrol; how he knew it was 31km away, I don’t know. Pity we didn't even have any water for him.
I remember waking up in our tents in that part of Mali, where the soil is red and people infrequent, to learn that we were short of diesel due to a fuel tank leak. As we pulled onto the road from the bush, I spotted a young man walking along the road and it was decided that I should ask him where the nearest petrol station might be.
The conversation went like this:
Me: Bonjour
Youth: Bonjour
Me: Nous avons un petit problème et nous avons besoin de trouver de l’essence.
Youth: Bien sur, à 31 kilomètres
Me: Splendide, merci beaucoup
Youth: De rien, est ce que vous avez une cigarette?
Me: Non, désolé, nous ne fumons pas.
Youth: De l’eau?
Me: Pardon, nous n’avons ni de l’essence ni de l’eau. Je suis désolé
Youth: Okay, bonne chance
Needless to say 31 km later, we find a stall selling petrol; how he knew it was 31km away, I don’t know. Pity we didn't even have any water for him.
Saturday, 15 August 2009
Memories after the event – The Niger in Mali
My first memory will be of the river trip that I took en route with my 2 Australian travelling companions. We took the boat from Mopti which is a heaving city/town on the Niger. Although Mopti is a long way from the sea, the river is surprisingly wide at this point considering it’s got a few thousand miles to go before it empties into the Atlantic in Nigeria. The river had started just 150 miles from the sea but headed first for the Sahara before turning east towards where our boat was waiting.
Mopti has hundreds of long wooden boats powered by outboards or teenagers with poles. Maybe 2 dozen of them are for tourists and ours has 2 crew and the 3 of us so there’s luxury in terms of space. It’s even got a toilet which is a cubicle at the front of the boat with a hole to the river below. It has a tin can on a piece of string, not to act as a telephone but to act as a receptacle for water for washing/flushing purposes. There’s palm weave flooring and a roof and curtains for shade. The boat goes slowly and quietly on the slow waters heading notionally down river but the flow is so slow you can’t really tell. We pass vastly overloaded boats and boats owned by individual families who live on board stopping for fishing or to wash clothes or trade
We pull into 2 riverside villages which are interesting for their mud mosques; the children there follow you around, holding your hand, but slightly erksome with their requests for cadeaux, bics or argent.
Our lunch stop location however is much more relaxing. We pull up onto the sandy Northern shore of the river. Little can be seen apart from some temporary huts that have been constructed by the nomadic people and which will disappear into the river when the rainy season arrives. Lunch has been cooked with vegetables being chopped with a machete and cooked in the pot on the onboard charcoal fire as we went along. It’s hot but the boat is low enough for hands to be dangled in the water and there’s a canopy to provide shade. After lunch we notice 5 boys of around 8 years old who are eyeing the boat from a distance. It takes them about 30 mins to get close enough to see that we are friendly. Joe gives one of them a boiled sweet (okay, not my idea of a good idea, but whatever). It is shared with his friends being passed from mouth to mouth – it’s going to last a long time as it’s still in its wrapper and to be honest, when they try it without the wrapper they don’t seem that much more impressed. Maybe it’s like me being given a sheep’s eyeball as a delicacy. After a while, the stares of the children become poses for the camera and then there’s swimming and acrobatics in the water. We don’t have a ball but an improvised game of “piggy in the middle” takes place using a filled water bottle.
When it’s time to go, after a few hours sitting in the still water, the 5 children push us off of the sand and back towards Mopti. More tea is drunk in a 5 stage process where the tea gets stronger and sweeter as the sun sets; silhouetting donkeys and more mosques as it does.
Mopti has hundreds of long wooden boats powered by outboards or teenagers with poles. Maybe 2 dozen of them are for tourists and ours has 2 crew and the 3 of us so there’s luxury in terms of space. It’s even got a toilet which is a cubicle at the front of the boat with a hole to the river below. It has a tin can on a piece of string, not to act as a telephone but to act as a receptacle for water for washing/flushing purposes. There’s palm weave flooring and a roof and curtains for shade. The boat goes slowly and quietly on the slow waters heading notionally down river but the flow is so slow you can’t really tell. We pass vastly overloaded boats and boats owned by individual families who live on board stopping for fishing or to wash clothes or trade
We pull into 2 riverside villages which are interesting for their mud mosques; the children there follow you around, holding your hand, but slightly erksome with their requests for cadeaux, bics or argent.
Our lunch stop location however is much more relaxing. We pull up onto the sandy Northern shore of the river. Little can be seen apart from some temporary huts that have been constructed by the nomadic people and which will disappear into the river when the rainy season arrives. Lunch has been cooked with vegetables being chopped with a machete and cooked in the pot on the onboard charcoal fire as we went along. It’s hot but the boat is low enough for hands to be dangled in the water and there’s a canopy to provide shade. After lunch we notice 5 boys of around 8 years old who are eyeing the boat from a distance. It takes them about 30 mins to get close enough to see that we are friendly. Joe gives one of them a boiled sweet (okay, not my idea of a good idea, but whatever). It is shared with his friends being passed from mouth to mouth – it’s going to last a long time as it’s still in its wrapper and to be honest, when they try it without the wrapper they don’t seem that much more impressed. Maybe it’s like me being given a sheep’s eyeball as a delicacy. After a while, the stares of the children become poses for the camera and then there’s swimming and acrobatics in the water. We don’t have a ball but an improvised game of “piggy in the middle” takes place using a filled water bottle.
When it’s time to go, after a few hours sitting in the still water, the 5 children push us off of the sand and back towards Mopti. More tea is drunk in a 5 stage process where the tea gets stronger and sweeter as the sun sets; silhouetting donkeys and more mosques as it does.
Memories after the event
I’ve been back for a few months now. I decided one Monday morning that it was time to return but as I boarded the next flight on the Saturday, I wished I wasn’t. I realise that when I was actually in Ghana, the experiences that I was having temporarily removed the thoughts of the experiences that I encountered on the way there. I’ve just found some notes that I made in various bits of Saharan Africa however, so, keen to recycle the paper and reduce clutter, I thought I’d commit the thoughts thereon to a couple of blog entries. I shall start with Memory 1.
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Jungle Walk
Went for a walk out of the other end of the village today. It's about a 10 mile loop to go out to the next village and back round to come back via the other road but that was a bit far to undertake by the time I left. I'd knocked out a quick design for a new canteen before lunch (2 mono pitched "wings" with goat-slide roof since you ask. One "wing" joins the other at a jaunty angle taking advantage of 2 different floor levels so that one roof can oversail the other forming a porch for both; if that makes any sense. Perhaps I should enter it into the Hyde Park Pavilion competition). Anyway, the walk took me out past farms farmed by the community and into a rolling jungle landscape reminiscent of a never ending Winkworth Arboretum. Background noise was like a low level dawn chorus – nothing to be heard apart from the birds.
Back with the work gang
First day with a proper work gang today – 4 masons (who happen to be men), 4 masons labourers (who happen to be men), 6 general labourers (who happen to be women). Great to be working with people who know what they are doing when it comes to checking levels, digging trenches, marking lines (we are constructing a drainage channel). To some extent it's a novelty for these people to be working with a bruni (literally: white person but normal applying to non-Ghanaians so a black Londoner would also be a "white person"). They ask questions: about are clothes dried in the UK, do white people fish? When it comes to get the cement from the yet-to-be-stocked-with-books library it becomes apparent that all the cement is missing. Much exclamation on site about this "stolen" cement which is worth about 170 Ghana Cedi (equalling 110 1 litre bottles of Star Beer, 850 portions of rice and stew, or monthly pay for a teacher). The assembly man, who is my interface with the local people, borrows 4 bags from the village to keep people going. Things continue in a manner typical of construction world-wide when it is discovered that there is a wheelbarrow but no wheel. Man cycles off to next village with a wheelbarrow wheel in need of repair but by the time he comes back a complete wheelbarrow has magically appeared. By now it is 1pm so assembly man (in true construction style) is off to the woman who makes fresh doughnuts and returns with 25 of them – very nice too. Work carries on to good standard with me constantly encouraging, "less cement, less water, more mixing". By the end of the day, about 2 tonnes of concrete has been laid which is about a third of the way through.
Enquiries regarding the missing "stolen" cement lead to the suggestion from a child that the cement has been moved for safekeeping. Sure enough, but to my surprise, through the shutters of the primary school storeroom, I see 18 No. 50kg bags of finest Ghana cement.
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