This extract from the African diary recounts most of Olivia's and my experience in Djenné, a village in the middle of Mali famous for its Mosque and considered the most beautiful in black Africa by LP.
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8.07.04 The day we go to Djenné
We had arranged to meet the Americans at 9.30 at Sévaré’s bank to share a car to Djenné as the bus there doesn’t leave until Monday. Woke up with a thumping hangover and poisonous guts from the toxic whisky. Luckily, omelette sandwiches are a great morning-after food. It was already getting hot when we piled off with our huge rucksacks and many bags, and we were sweating heavily at the end of our two kilometer hike to the bank. By the time we arrived, the crisp looking Americans, Ted and John, had already changed money and found a car to take us. 10000 each for a 140 km drive! It was wonderfully fast; a couple of times we picked up some people and dropped them off at various villages. After barely two hours, we reached the Carrefour de Djenné. From there we took a small car ferry over a stretch of river in which men were washing down their donkeys.
There are two hotels in Djenné: one is expensive, one is cheap. We opted for the latter, Baba’s, and our room is very basic, with a couple of straw mats and no electricity. It’s on the top floor and overlooks the lively street on one side and the courtyard on the other. We slept most of the afternoon away from the baking heat while Ted and John visited the town; they left before we got up. Around 9 we went to get something to eat, following two children to a cheap restaurant. We had couscous grains with a pile of skinny chicken bones. There is no light in Djenné after dark, so we went back to bed.
9.07.04 The day we get settled in
I had promised Ousman, the elder of the two kids that I would look at the necklaces he sells. He arrived at 7, and I allowed myself to be ripped off, knowing that at least he wouldn’t spend it on booze. I made my way to the loo, which is behind a wooden door in the corner of the terrace at the top of the stairs. It is a sit down bog, but as there is no plumbing you just crap in to a pit below. In this heat, the smell hits you like a concrete block. As I went in I saw a cat- sized rat dive down the hole.There’s no way I’m going in that. Time to explore the hotel. Djenné, like Mopti, is built of grey mud but is famous for still being a small, functional village with many of the original traditions still going. Unlike Mopti, it has never grown beyond 20000 or so in population, cannot take cars in its narrow winding lanes, does not have electricity except for a couple of private generators. It is also famed for its buildings, which have stood in place for hundreds of years despite being made of a mud the dries and crumbles in the sun. Talking of which, it’s 8.15 and stunningly hot.
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After breakfast, Olivia and I decided that we needed a loo. We walked around town looking for the nice hotel, away from the centre where the mosque and the wide market square are, and deeper in to the maze of streets. Everything is made of the usual grey mud, the colour and texture of elephant, dusty and cracked. The tiny little alleys are open sewers full of sand and rubbish. We quickly got to the end of the village and went round the edge, one side a dense race of people, the other side deserted countryside dotted with pools of water from the recent rains. It is boiling hot and cloudless today though. Back in the labyrinth kids started following us shouting “toubabs!”. This town is strange, much smaller and narrower than I expected, much more littered and unkempt too. We found the hotel and allowed ourselves to use a sparkling bog in exchange for a second, overpriced, breakfast.
For lunch, sick and tired of stringy chicken we went to a guide book restaurant on the square in front of the mosque. Everything was off except bloody chicken so we tried “tion-tion”. It was just horrible: sticky clumps of rice with a bit of chicken leg smothered in dried-fish sauce and onions. It’s awful to complain about the food in such a poor country but it really is a nightmare. Nothing keeps in this weather and fridges are rare; provisions come only once a week on market day. We were choking on our tion-tion when the sweet young waiter came over and asked us if we would like to pre-order a pizza for tomorrow. Would we hell?! “What’ve you got? Sure!”, we drooled, “Cheese and tomato?”. He looked amused. “Oh no! you can’t get cheese around here, and tomatoes are hard to find, but we’ve got aubergine.” Aubergine it shall be then.
It was almost time for Friday afternoon prayer so we decided to get close to the mosque, which is as always forbidden for us. The little boy we had seen the night before told us we could go up on to someone’s roof to get a look over the wall. Only two stories high, and practically next door to the enormous mosque, we mainly got a good view of the surrounding neighbourhood. From here we can see the village, made of mud and the odd wooden beam. Back at the room we took care of laundry and have been sitting up on the roof since the late afternoon. Olivia is crimson. It’s rapidly getting dark, a single light is flashing from the top of the mosque which looks increasingly like a elaborate square sandcastle, with three buckets of sand at the front and a low outer wall around it, and pieces of wood scaffolding sticking out of it. It’s absolutely beautiful..
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A man we had met the day before (the Americans’ guide) and who called himself “l’historien” came up to our room to see if we wanted a tour of the town. As we did, we decided to see Djenné properly again tomorrow with him as well as nearby Djenné Djenno. We’d arrange to go to a nearby Peul village the day after. It was time to work out a price; he let it slip that the Americans had given him 6000 an hour. Everything was about to work out very expensive indeed and we negotiated for an hour before he suddenly changed his mind and told us that as friends we could have it for free. Now we’re just confused. We also need to find a donkey and cart for our Sunday visit to the village. As the two little boys are sulking because they wanted to be our guides we could try and sort something out with them. Though to be fair the little boys seem to know nothing about their town, and l’historien is a teacher.
For supper, tired of chicken bones, we got ourselves a coal stove and a saucepan and made some of my emergency powdered minestrone in mineral water. With a candle, two spoons and some chewy white bread we had a very atmospheric meal under the stars. Despite this I am in a bit of a state. I just don’t know whether this not-paying-the-historien-thing is going to turn out to be a nightmare. He says he’ll be our guide for free, but why? What does he want? Nothing is free over here, only more-or-less explicitly sold whether for money or otherwise.
The hotel bog is now clean but still scary and the rats are scurrying in the rubbish filled streets. Christ, if this is the most beautiful town in sub-Saharan Africa…
10.07.04 The day we learn about Djenné
We met l’historien for breakfast at 8.30 and after omelettes and coffee started our tour. We had convinced him to take 1000 off us over our meal. First we set off to the “quartier marocain” where he showed us three taller houses that had intricate window screens carved with stars. These allowed the women to look out but not the men to look in. They houses date from the 8th century when Moroccan merchants from the other side of the desert started trading with Djenné. At the top of the house are little turrets and windows that represent penises and vaginas; the number of turrets says how many kids there are in the family. If one dies or is born, a new one can easily be destroyed or added. Next we saw a mound of ruined, 9th century cottages on which goats were grazing. They were destroyed because their inhabitants hadn’t carried out the “crépissage”, the annual adding of a new coat of fresh mud on the building’s walls. This is done after the rainy season which we should be in the middle of, when the rains wash away the top layers of the walls. L’historien then took us to the village chief’s house which is a little wider and taller than the others. In the surrounding streets, we met some women who weave and sell blankets to raise money for local projects, mostly weddings it seems. Olivia liked the indigo blankets and said we would return later.
The oldest school in the Mopti region was nearby (4th oldest in Africa), and was built on the site of an ancient mosque. In a town of 16000 people, there are six secular schools and over 40 coranic ones, some of which we passed. Small boys sat outside scratching verses of the Koran in to their wooden tablets. The final thing we saw on our tour was a roofless mud room built by the side of the town. In one of its walls is the body of a 8th century 15 year old Bozo virgin who was walled in alive as a sacrifice, a town protection dreamt up by some marabout when the walls of Djenné kept collapsing. She had screamed until her father told her to stop dishonouring him. A toothless old crone looks after the place- she is the direct descendant of the poor girl. A man stopped l’historien in the street and gave a brief speech before walking off. It turned out he went from person to person giving them the Muslim equivalent of thought for the day. Our guide then went on to say, rather bizarrely, that he wanted to convert and be a Protestant. The population of the area is 100% Muslim, usually with a bit of animism and ancestor worship thrown in. He believes that there are too many rules in Islam that aren’t respected, he wants a religion that can impose its laws. After this very odd speech, he took us to one of his students whose uncle could loan us a donkey and cart tomorrow morning.
Uninspiring lunch of semolina and green beans. Nevermind, pizza tonight. We were surrounded by copulating lizards during our whole meal. The males are really extraordinary- the size of Coke bottles with bright blue bodies and orange heads and tails.
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When the sun had dipped a little we set off for the archaeological site of Djenné Djenno which is just outside the town, and which is the site of oldest town in Africa.
Once we got out of the tangle of Djenné’s dusty streets we found ourselves in luxuriant green countryside and crossed a bridge. Lots of people including small children and old women were busy carrying mud bricks from the riverbank up the steep banks to the town. Apart from a dead donkey lying bloated in a field, the view as we got further away from the village was just stunning, waving green grass and flowery trees either side of the road. The air got cleaner. Rather than going to the actual site of Djenné Djenno which is closed to visitors, we stopped at the Museum, waiting for the curator, Samaké, to finish with another pair of toubabs. We sat under a tree in the courtyard, next to a man reading the Koran. Another man appeared, a drunk rasta who reminded me of Max back in Dakar.
The museum is small, a couple of rooms and a corridor full of pictures and photos. The first room gave information about the archaeological site. The first pottery found dates from 250BC and there is evidence that the inhabitants lived off fishing, hunting and farming. Iron work from the same age wrecks the theory that the iron age was imported from Asia Minor. The second room is about Djenné today. It confirmed what we saw this morning: the Moroccan houses are the taller ones with wooden shutters, the original Sudanese-Berber ones have open courtyards and split level-terraces, and the colonial ones are ugly little shoeboxes. We saw pictures of the mosque, the largest mud building in the world, and learnt about its crépissage, when hundreds of volunteers both local and international come to help every year. We also learnt why non-Muslims were not allowed in. Fifteen or so years ago some crazed Italians got caught having sex in it, which understandably enraged the local population. I felt deeply ashamed of my fellow Europeans. Some old pictures showed Djenné in the late 19th and early 20th century. Without the town’s plastic litter and sewage problem the beauty is startling. The packed buildings around the huge central square and the imposing, grey mosque look like a smooth sandy rock formation and blend in with the countryside. Samaké told us that an NGO and a team of Germans had decided to install running water in Djenné. Traditionally the population walked 300 meters down to the river and only those too old and sick had water brought to them. The Germans installed a tap outside practically every house, hence the presence all over town of stinking stagnant puddles, miniature swamps full of mosquitoes and open sewers. The NGO is now looking in to providing an underground evacuation system, but because of Djenné’s UNESCO World heritage status, no sewers can be dug. Samaké was a fabulous guide. Thanks to his obvious love of Djenné, I began to see how this isolated town dominated by its incredible mosque could be considered the most beautiful in black Africa.
The sun was setting as we walked back to Djenné, the fields were green and damp and the village glowed beige against the soft blue sky. People seemed more brightly clothed than usual in shades of indigo and blue. Felt peaceful and content, and rather sad that the place had ever been discovered by white men, who had enslaved it, colonised it, and now were melting it by trying to bring it up to some kind of international comfort standard. I don’t think Mali is compatible with global influences. Things here are based on family and sharing, everyone is part of a huge, explicit network. Huge amounts of time are spent strengthening status in order to look after one’s community; how is this compatible with frenzied individualism and competition?
Pizza time! We went back to the restaurant. Certainly an interesting if not particularly authentic effort: a pastry case with a very salty onion filling inside -a change at least! Tonight we are going for tea at l’historien’s.
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Have just had one of the most traumatising experiences of my life. After the pizza, I felt my guts shifting uncomfortably and decided it was time to vanquish my fear of the loo. All the stodge we had been eating made me want to it down with a good book for a couple of days but this, not least because it was dark, was impossible. I took the torch and saw the rat leap in to the loo. “Dammit”, I thought as I went to fill up the water bucket, “it’s more scared of me than I am of him. The rat does not exist, the rat does not exist.” I was mid-shit in the dark when I heard something in the room with me. Before I could get the torch back on (it’s important to save batteries), the creature had jumped on my leg, scuttled up my thigh, and dived in between my legs. I just screamed and instinctively ran for it. Olivia wept for laughing after I had run back in to the room, trousers round my ankles, and told her what had happened. I’m never going to the loo again. It’s one thing if the rat lurks about, another if it’s tame.
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