NORTH!

Were I live, its flat. Sometimes green, sometmes brown, usually both, but always flat. Charm, certainly, is a realative activity and one is taught to find beauty in where they are, not were they would like to be. Thats a fine thought to have, sipping mimosas on the veranda of your summer villa in monaco, less attainable in south sahelian Mali. Forgiving all the charms and virtue of the Bamanan peoples with whom I live, the landscape here is droll, monotoneous, scrubby and largely devoid of anything you might call a "feature".The earth itself wanders very little in any direction but out and away. Topographically speaking, the land ululates witht the cadence of a disallusioned branch manager, running through some requisite quarterly report. Fluara, generally so eager to diversify its station in life, seems here to have taken on the resplendent beauty of a poorly landscaped Burger King, and there isnt even any handicapped parking. The avian population here IS stunning at times. Brilliant, opalecent hues of blue and purple, like oil slicks on fresh asphalt, reds so intense, no ink/paper affair could do them justice, they vibrate against the blue of the sky. Its like a darwinian bra burning, nature aschewing the usual schtick of finding some kind of symbiosis between animal and enviroment and just sort throwing some stuff out there to see what sticks. As out of place as these birds seem, they are a welcomed addition. Otherwise it would be like living on a lite-brite board with out any pegs. like the birds, even many of the military and gendarmiere seem randomly out of place here, as they all choose to were arctic blue camoflauge in a land practically seething with those classic jar head camo colors seen on films, tv and monroe doctrine adherents alike. Although I did here that it snowed once in extreme northern Mali back in 1960, so, maybe there are just preternaturally prudent? Ultimatly, things being as they are, a rut was bound to form. I have spent the better part of my fiirst peace corps year ambiling around the same 300 kilometer radius, knowing better, but still giving in to assumption that this country wanted to choke the life out of my creative heart. This is not a place for dreamers dear friends, survival is terrestrial. I have known about the north, its there of course and is a place of great fascination with Volunteers, Malians and the general, niche culture craving public alike. Nowhere is Niche culture more aptly defined than in eastern Mali, home to, among others, The famed and often incorrectly mythologized Dogon people.
The area known as Dogon country is rich with history and myth( both of the self aggrandized and outsider variety) and is often misinturpreted entirely in the process. Dogon people were not the origional homesteaders here, rather a group of people called Tellem came first, and they built their villages into the side of the high sweeping cliffs that define the areas topography, they are also responsible for some of the earliest know sub-saharan handicrafts ever found. The Dogon tell stories of transmagorification, pygmies and giants and other Tellem-centric fiction with reverence to the earlier population. Currently, most Dogon have moved down from the cliff dwellings they inherited and begun to cultivate the deforested earth below, many converting to christianity or islam in the process and being largley appropriated by the more "conventional" western part of Bambara land. A great effort is made by outsiders ( see: whitey) to preserve the Dogon culture, or even to turn the Dogon on the the broader reach of the mythologies they hold dear, and to, of course, espouse the economic virtues of an esoteric belief system. This is not a new trend either, for decades, pre tourism, the largley untouched Dogon poeple have been infiltrated by westerners in jodhspurs and pithe helmets seeking knowledge or a byline for some serial adventure rag. As early as the 1930's A french anthropologist named Marcel Griaule, came to the area to try and obtain and explain a bit of the Dogon's mythylogical ethos. The most enduring, and obstensibaly the most culturely defining (to the west at least) idea that Griaule took away from the animist preachers and chiefs in Dogon was the seeminlgy inexplicable and exacting knowledge that they had of certain celestial bodies that modern science wouldnt find for centuries after the presumed inception of the Dogons knowledge. Allow me to digrees and briefly explain the myth of the Dog Star.
Sirius, aka the Dog Star, is the brightest visibale star in the sky, and its alleged that for centuries the Dogon knew that. Thats no great shakes, its been there since we were primordial goo, and any one who developed a tropic vertabrae could look up and see it. What does cause interest is that these priests and chiefs also told Griaule that Sirius was not one but three stars, The bright, visable main star being orbited by two smaller stars that are completely invisible from earth. Known as Pa Tolo and Emme Ya respectivly, there existance wasnt confirmed by modern science until the late 1920's when the tiny but Uber-dense Pa Tolo was classified as a " white dwarf", one of the heaviest objects in the sky. The grand polemic however, is how on earth did these ancient and isolated peoples know so much about stuff that was most certainly not on earth? In 1977 Robert K. Temple wrote an (in my opinion) entertaining and contoversial book about the subject, postualting that these ancient Dogon were in fact visited by an extra-terrestial race who imparted this knowledge to them, though, clearly just for kicks or the yet to develope occult book industry. Temple says, intruigingly enough, that the ancient egyptians were also visited by the same "space men" 5000 years ago, sighting that at exactly that time, the egyptians, who also associated sirius with a diety, switched there calendrical system to start on the first day that Sirius re-appears in the spring sky after being invisible for the three winter months. These space travelling informatio-nauts apperently began life, in Dogon lure, as an amphibious diety named Nommo. potentially his amphibiean nature is a parable for the terrestrial/intersteller road trip these space know-it-alls took. Of course skeptisism abounds and people naturaly assume that the dogon some how garnered this knowledge from an even earlier and more intrepid westerner than Griaule, though it is food for thought and a large part of the Dogon allure. Its a large part of why pseudo adventure seeking tourists come to trapse around the hills for a few days a year, and It was at least in the back of my mind when I finally made a trip norht of San this week to see for my self.
My reason of course for going north was in a way more logical, if not productive, as I set out with a group of friends to paint a large world map on a school house wall in a frinds village. The world north of San unfolded for me in a more dramatic way than I am used to things unfolding here in mali, in that there was a note of drama to be had at all. The lanscape slowly begins to pitch and swell and grow even more barren in the process, undulations and grades develope in the distance and like megalithic mammals, sleeping on the horizion line, the cliffs spring up from the eroded no-where. The first large town north of San, is Severe. economically well to do by malian standards, with a few hotels and a large NGO prescence, its mainly a pass through kinda place, on your way to Bandiagara. Bandiagara is a tourist town in the same way that an airport is your final destination. there are ample francophone lodging options and an overabundence of eager street hawkers, selling pap, or profering a ride to which ever of the well worn tourisim friendly Dogon towns you clearly want to see. I try everyday to integrate myself as best I can with my host nation, and though I am well aware that I will never, ever, be mistaken for a malian, I still make great strides to play to the illusion. Heading north and hitting Bandiagara was a new challenge in itself because the very idea that I had ever made the effort to integrate was lost on the people there, and rightfully so. I am white, and I am, in turn, made of money and thus gulibly there to spend it on there wears and services. Knowing better, and with thicker skin, we were largley able to get around Bandiagara without to much hassle. hitting the peace corps friendly hotel swimming pool and hiding out for the night in the stage house. In the morning, the caravan rolled out towards my friend Sara's village; Peleni. 37 kilometers from the center of Bandiagara, it feels like the end of the line, isolated and remote. They ( the denizens of peleni), like most Dogon, speak a language that only they and there imidiate neighboors understand. While you can aknowledge the existance of a "Dogon Language", conceptually, in reality, its a shattered dialect, strewn around the Dogon plateau, and an imidiate challange in navigating the area if thats all you happen to speak. Sara happens to speak dogoso, the local dialect as well as french so, with that and ample bambara, we did alright. The World map was fun. After three days of griding, lots of squiggely lines, and with a loyal and loud audience of children, we had a large, colorful, well heeled world map on the wall. A drippy latex equivlent of the Malian aviary scene, its a strong splash of light and color the dull beige landscape, and with any luck the children will find a perspective on there place in the physical world, we literally put them on the map. On the third day, our last, we met Saras friend Issa. We had heard about Issa before we met him. As a youth he tried to take, on foot, a pilgrimige to mecca, many thousands of miles east of his home in mali. On crossing the sahel Issa arrived in Chad, a country at the time, fraught with civil war. he was given the choice to stay and fight for the rebel cause or to die on the spot. with an obvious pentiant for self preservation, Issa stayed, and for more than a decade, he was fed amphetimines and alcohol, armed and drugged and kept fighting in this tawdry rebel militia. After finally making it home to Mali, or at least the border, he was denied entry into his own country as he lacked the proper paper work. despite his story and the his ability to speak fluent Bambara, and Dogoso, he was arrested and sent to jail in Bamako. today Issa lives on the outskirts of Peleni in one of the most palatial and fascinating homesteads I have seen. A snaking labryinth of streams and tree lined passages warp and weft through his compund, hand dug wells 20 feet wide that you simply walk down into to gather water. Papaya, banana, shea, mango, all represtened in this arborial wonder land. a thick sweet shade exisits around most of the grounds, under the canopied gardens. Issa also happens to grow a large crop of a certain "medicinal herb".....dont make me explain it anymore specifically than that, It was rather intersting to see in that nascient state. Funny, in america, those who move to the suburbs are usually noted for there ability to go un-noted, conformity being the rule, while if you find your self living on the outskirts of a Malian town, its in large part becuase you avoid what would be considered decent, traditional Malian behavior, in favor of something more progressive. Issa certainly fits that latter billing. What began as a casual visit with Issa turned into a very long, very spectacular Dogon hike, the variety of which people pay well for, though this one was free. We planned that morning to leave for a leisurly hike through some nearby hills, though upon hearing this, Issa was eager and happy, in the warm, hospitable Malian way, to show us around. After clumping through flooded fields and neck high grasses we reached the foot of the hills surrounding Peleni. They really just happen, these cliffs, they Jutte out of flat green nothing and they look like layer cakes of ancient rock. slabs upon slabs of pale orange and brown, mushed up, becoming cliff face and providing the neccessary ledge and levy for the ancient inhabitants to build their stone houses. You come onto them almost by accident, these houses. Their conglomerate parts cut from the same cliffs and dales that surround them. After clammering up the stepped ciff face you round a corner, and under the eave of a slab, built into the rock walls are small hovel like stone dwellings. large enough only for sleeping, or squating in some cases, they offered nothing more than marginal shelter. The cliffs were chosen, to my knowledge, for the the elements of fortification inherent in living bivouaced to the face of a rock, but they stand today as a strange and elemental nod to the diversity of mans intent and the relativity of the lives we choose to lead, or are lead to. As well as living up there, they naturally of course, died up there and were subsequantly buried up there. Many of the largest structures are graves, or really just storage facilities for bodies that become bone and decay. theres a notable stench to some of these, though hard to explain, as none of the graves are remotely. Like their odor, "fresh". We found bones, and even a few skulls laying haphazerdly on the ground, as obvious and un disturbed as a childs imagination, though far more tangible. That speaks to the sheer isolation of these places, these bones wernt placed here for photo opps and ropped off, they wre simply there and had been for a long time. We bounced around some more on the cliffs, agog at the vast, sweeping vistas that these hill top encampents offered. It as been said that nothing fortifies the human spirit like a sweeping vista, speaking to all that is possible and all you posess in both mind and spirit. Having spent the last year at slightly above sea level, i'll second that notion, observing that there is still infact a world out there capable of enchanting and changing those who get to see it.
We left Peleni the next day on a typically rickety Malian bus, and after a 37kilometer, Five hour trip, we made it back to Bandiagara. Back to the peace corps bubble, street food, hawkers, bus schedules and mosquito nets. All things that, only a weak earlier had rounded out my opinion of Mali, or maybe just the life I lead here, though, after climbing high above that, looking down and around at a greater world, these old hang ups and signifiers seem to fall away. Relagated to a few frayed ends of the long, knotted history and taut, exciting reality that is the north, that is...Mali.