Mali 23 -- The Dogon Region

Farming along the Bandiagara cliff consists mainly of onions, a cash crop. They don't require much water, and most of the irrigation is done by hand, transporting buckets of water from the well or stream to the fields. In some places there is a small creek on the banks of which onions grow; perhaps twenty meters on each side of the stream is arable. The contrast between the green of the onion shoots and the bare rock just a few feet away indicates the precariousness of Dogon agriculture. Not surprisingly, more and more Dogon are turning to tourism as a way of increasing their incomes.

Wind-swept and sunburned, the top of the Bandiagara cliff is mostly exposed rock, although a few hardy grasses eke out a living from the dusty soil. Just over the horizon, the plateau ends with a drop of 400 meters. The village of Songha overlooks the cliff, and is the starting point for virtually all anthropologists and tourists that come to study the Dogon. Increasingly, villages at the bottom of the cliff are building hotels to attract travelers seeking "original" Dogon arts and crafts.

It was incredibly beautiful. The landscape was simply amazing: look left and see a huge rock looming up, full of ancient history, look right and gaze out over the approaching desert towards Burkina. Not even the gorgeous cinematography in Souleymane Cisse’s Yeelen (Brightness) had prepared me for the natural beauty. I imagine the Grand Canyon must have a similar effect, but the Grand Canyon doesn’t have evidence of two thousand years of human habitation, or people living and growing things in some of the most inhospitable conditions in Africa.

We visited a village at the bottom of the cliff, where the townspeople came out to greet us (and sell souvenirs). We greeted them in Bambara, which of course they didn’t understand, since they speak Dogon. It reminded us that despite our progress in the most widely spoken language in Mali, there were still many people we could not communicate with.

Watching the dancers, I didn’t know whether to be sad that these traditions were being exploited, or happy that sharing them was providing the community with income.

We spent the night at a village about ten kilometers from where we had descended through the cliff, and a few of us got up early to watch the sun rise over the plain. We climbed up the rocks a little ways and then sat ourselves down on huge boulders made up of varying-shaped and sized pebbles. I am rarely awake to watch the sunrise, and this one was so beautiful I couldn’t believe it happened every day. We packed up and drove back up to Songha; a road had been carved out, winding and rising at what seemed like 45 degree angles. Back at the village we saw our dance, which left a weird taste in everyone’s mouths. Our guide informed us when we could take pictures, and presented each dancer and his mask individually when they were done. I didn’t expect to find an authentic and untouched culture, but I had difficulty seeing the performance the same way I see ballet or square dancing. Kate pointed out that it was kind of like a dolphin show at Sea World: the movements are things they do naturally, without an audience, it’s just that they do it on command, and that’s how we get to see it. Still, my oversensitive liberal artsy desire not to intrude on cultures, and my awareness of being white and privileged and neo-colonial made me uncomfortable. I didn’t know whether to be sad that these traditions were being exploited, or happy that sharing them was providing the community with income. I wanted badly for them to realize that I wasn’t just another tourist, that I was a student, that I wasn’t one of those people like my grandparents that did whirlwind ethnotours and told their friends about the primitive cultures they had witnessed. I wanted them to understand that I knew more about their culture than the average tourist, and it was frustrating to realize there was no way to communicate my difference to them.