Back from Sangha

Yesterday was quite the Dogon adventure. I got up as the sun was rising to get ready for our trip (and prove to Minkailou that I am capable of getting up early). In fact, I was probably the first one ready to go. We finally got on the road around 7:30 in our rented 4x4, stuffed full by Oumar, Minkailou, Steve, the driver and myself.

The road, of course, was non-existent, just a sandy track weaving between scrub bush and rocks, but the scenery was nice. We were in good spirits, even when the car overheated once or twice from trying to plow through sand and we needed to toss water on the engine.

Around 11:30, we pulled into a village called Banani, a touristy village located down the cliff from Sangha. There we stopped to eat lunch, relieved to peel ourselves from the stuffy car. Minkailou helped Steve and me bargain our way to souvenirs while we waited for the food to get ready. It was kind of fun to see all the “quintessential Dogon stuff”, but at the same time, I’m glad to not work in a tourist destination.

The villages themselves along the cliff are beautiful, though. Granaries with thatched conic roofs, carved doors, and then most striking of all, the old Tellem settlements nestled high into the cliffs themselves. The Tellem were the inhabitants of the area before the Dogons. They built their houses directly into crevices and overhangs in the rock face, protected from the elements and invaders. If you ask the Dogon how they were able to get up there and build, they will tell you that the Tellem had very long arms. They would have to be at least a hundred meters long to build in some of those places.

After a lunch of couscous, we stopped being tourists and got down to business. The drive up the cliffs to Sangha was one of the more hair-raising trips I have been on here. The driver took these hairpin curves on broken roads at break-neck speed. And mind you, there was no guard rail between you and a rocky plummet. I was praying all the Arabic prayers I knew on the way up (al-Hamdu li-lAh il-rabb al-‘alamina), and hey, they got us there okay.

Sangha is a huge village compared to any others I’ve been in. Its blossoming is largely due to Marcel Griaule’s work there and the awareness he raised for the village. Afterwards, it was missionaries and now NGOs, the 21st century missionaries. There’s electricity in the main village and nice hotels (nicer than Douentza) and schools, etc. I was quite shocked.

We found the people Minkailou had contacted about finding us someone for Steve to work with. We sat down in his house and eventually this big guy came in with a young man with dreadlocks. I guess they had originally proposed the big guy, but since it’s election season here, he doesn’t want to leave the zone, so he proposed his brother. That was all fine and good, but when we (and by we, I mean I, since Steve doesn’t speak French) explained the work and proposed our usual 3000 a day price, the young man told us he wanted 15,000 a day, the price he apparently charges as a guide. This threw us for a loop. We didn’t know he was a guide. 3000 a day is a very reasonable salary for our work. Oumar can work a full day of construction, hard manual labor, and make 2000. But tourist prices are not Malian prices.

I called Minkailou out of the room to talk to him about it, then Steve. I had my reservations about working with a guide in general, afraid that if he started off asking15,000, what other luxuries would he expect that we can’t afford? We decided finally that if we could get him down to 4000 plus his food and lodging, we would bring him back, but if not, we’d just figure it out in Douentza.

We proposed this new price and after a bit of discussion amongst themselves, the men present agreed. We were beginning to suffer from the oppressive heat, so we went over to one of the hotels and got cold drinks while waiting for everyone to finish up their preparations or their tea drinking.

The trip back felt like it was 3 times longer than the trip there. It was still hot, still bumpy, still sandy, and the car probably broke down 3 more times. I had to sit in the middle of the backseat, so I couldn’t even lean on anything. By the time the sun went down and we were still on the road, I was incredibly grouchy, so I just put in my headphones and checked out until we got home.

This morning, Steve and I started working with Ely, his assistant. It’s fun for me to start working a bit on another Dogon language, since it is proof of how much I’ve learned in this year. So much is familiar, both vocabulary and grammatical points, but there are still interesting differences. I can’t hear this guy’s tone very well at this point, but hopefully that’ll come soon. I think we were all a bit frustrated throughout the morning, but I think it’s just a matter of getting used to the working situation. Ely will get used to us asking him to repeat things a bunch of times, I’ll get used to having to play translator and keep it slow, since Steve has just started Dogon, and Steve will learn to speak some French and get his ear attuned to the new sounds. I think we’ll get good work done in the month I’m here, and then he’ll be ready to keep going on his own.