Djenne Part 1

After the New Year, Lise and I were set to leave Bamako, and move up country. She only had a week and a half in the country, so we didn’t have the luxury of time to hitchhike. This would lead me to take my first long distance bus ride of the trip (nearly four months!). Of course, taking buses for me used to be commonplace. I traveled around Central America, Ghana, Thailand and India almost entirely by bus, so I was used to the challenges. The wait, the lack of space, the heat, the cost, etc. Traveling by thumb, of course is not easy either, and presents different challenges. The challenges of hitchhiking are more immediate, though. You often walk very far to find a spot, or have to navigate unfamiliar local transport to get out of big cities. Your pack is heavy, and you are never sure if you are really going to get a ride. The uncertainty is the biggest challenge. With a bus, though, you know that, eventually you are on your way. But upon entering your vehicle, whether by hitchhiking or by bus, the difficulties are inverted. In hitchhiking, the benevolent giver of rides will pick you up, and all your troubles are gone until you need to look for your next ride. On the bus, though, this is when the problems begin.
Traditionally in Africa, as in many developing regions, the buses leave when full. It would not be an economically viable business unless this way. However, on my first bus ride in Africa (in Ghana two years ago) I purchased a ticket for a bus that would leave at a specific time. And miraculously it did, and it was not nearly full. I still don’t know how this happened, but I think it left a misleading impression. We had learned that the last bus leaving for Mopti would leave at 4:00, so we arrived an hour early. We were hustled by two insistent guys toward the office of the bus company we planned to take. The ticket price was what we expected, and we paid our bag surcharge (standard in Africa, a scam in other places). We didn’t expect the bus to leave on time, necessarily, but we did not want to underestimate their punctuality. We had a beer at the bus station’s seedy bar, then waited patiently near what we assumed would be our bus. We snacked on various bus station treats and homemade drinks. In a way I was annoyed by the heat, dustiness, and loudness of our surroundings, but at the same time I remembered that this environment was one of my favorite aspects of traveling and I had truly missed it. Finally, near 7:00 there was a bit of commotion. It seemed that enough tickets were sold to ensure our bus company a small profit, and our bags started to be moved to the top of the bus. We were the first people on the bus, and for some idiotic reason we secured our seats in the very back seats. The bus was idling, and a hole in the floor was letting the exhaust collect in the air around us. We sat waiting patiently, trying to figure out how to open the windows for thirty minutes. Then somebody climbed on to the now crowded bus and called “Angata!” Let’s go! Everyone started to get off the bus. We followed and joined the crowd centered near the front of the bus. The bus driver had a clipboard with everyone’s name on it, by order of when their ticket was purchased. Our names were the second on the list, and we climbed back on and resumed our poorly chosen seats. We continued to idle for another thirty minutes. Sweat poured from me everywhere, and we choked on the air. Nobody around us seemed bothered by the accumulating smog, but instead seemed very preoccupied with playing with their tricked out cell phones. At one point there were four different guys playing music on their phones at full volume, making a disgusting and indecipherable mix of distorted music.
After another half hour we started moving. I expected the movement to relieve us from the heat and exhaust, but no windows were open in the back of the bus. We finally figured out how to open our window, but when we did, the person behind us immediately shut it. A little about Malians. More than anywhere I have been, Malians are intolerant of the cold. Even on hot days in Bamako I occasionally see people, at all hours of the day, wearing heavy parkas, sweatshirts, or hats. I wish I had taken pictures of all the people I had seen wearing ridiculous hats that they found who knows where. Furry Russian hats, jester hats, santa hats, etc. If it was warm, they were wearing it. A sleek, behind the head pair of ear muffs was also very popular with young guys. After all, this is January, and it frequently dips down to 90 degrees.
So we were in a constant battle with the people around us over the openness of the window. The heat was bad for us, but the exhaust was making us nauseous. I felt like I had grown soft, as I used to masochistically love these difficult transit conditions.
After thirty minutes of driving we stopped at the edge of Bamako at some sort of transit point. Our bus was mobbed by beggars and people pushing cold drinks and road snack. I got out for relief. The hawkers wanted too much for what they had on offer, so I consumed (relatively) fresh air. People bought provisions for the long journey, and the bus driver crammed the nooks and crannies of our bus with additional passengers. People laid in their aisles, limbs everywhere.
At 9:00 we hit the road finally. Although it was a long wait, this was actually good for us, as we wanted to arrive to our destination in morning so as to avoid paying for a hotel for the night. We were on the bus to Mopti, which theoretically takes 7-10 hours. We would be getting off, however, two hours before Mopti at the turnoff for Djenne. I assumed that this would take us somewhere between five and eight hours. At two in the morning, though, we had only made it to Segou, which should normally take between two and three hours. Lise and I managed to get occasional scraps of sleep, interrupted by our frequent stops to load more travelers.
At 10:00 in the morning we finally arrived at the turnoff for Djenne. When it was all over I felt it was probably my most uncomfortable, unnecessarily long bus trip of my life. This might be true, but I could easily think of several journeys that rival it, and that I did not mind at all at the time. Four hours standing in a cramped bus in Guatemala, clinging for my life in the back of an overloaded pickup in Honduras, an overnight third class train in India. Each of these, though grueling, I had thoroughly enjoyed. Hitchhiking had made me weak.
We hopped into the bed of a large truck with benches. There were maybe eight Malians, two French, one Belgian and us. This would be the most touristy (Microsoft Word suggests that I use the word “tourstiest”) destination of the trip, but I was still excited to see a place that I had read about many times.
The truck moved along a paved road, until reaching water. We waited for the tiny ferry to retrieve us. We were hounded by people selling food and trinkets. They were extremely persistent. I watched an elderly tourist (I see many more middle aged and old tourists in Mali than I see young backpacker types) pay $3 for a bottle of water that should only cost $1. I was nervous about hating a place that I wanted to love.
We crossed the river, and on the other side awaited us even more trinket pushers. Eventually we reached the center of Djenne, the historical town that sits on an island of the Bani River, a tributary of the Niger. It is most famous for it’s mosque, the largest mud brick structure in the world, built about a hundred years ago, modeled after the much older mosque that used to stand in its place. For centuries, like Timbuktu, it was a center for Islamic scholarship and it attracted students and traders from all over West Africa. We arrived in the midst of its famous Monday market, which takes place directly in front of the mosque. We were hounded by guides and people offering us hotels, but we ignored them, as we had studied the map enough to know how to get to our guesthouse with confidence. We bargained for a place on their roof top ($5 per person was reasonable) and they even arranged a mattress and a mosquito net for us. We could see over the entirely mud brick town, and even had a view of part of the mosque.


We explored the crowded, but small market. Although it was famous, to me it was simply like any other market it any other town in Mali. I am a sucker for markets, but this was only unique because of its location directly in front of the mosque. I also would never want to buy something here unless I was sure of the price, as the touristy nature of it inflated prices for us “Toubabs” (ever seen Roots?) or foreigners.

Packing up at the end of market day

The end of market day from our roof top

After a quick meander and a snack, Lise wanted to get a hold of some of that local millet beer. There were no real bars in town, just hotels that served over-priced beer. I was worried about asking around for the millet beer, as this is a very Muslim town, and I didn’t want to come off as a booze-fiending toubab. Luckily Lise had no problem asking any passing person if there was a place to get the Nya (millet beer). We were passed from person to person, slowly moving in the direction of its source. It was a couple of kilometers from town (the island of Djenne can’t be more than 5 km across an any directions). Eventually a young boy pointed us towards an unmarked mud brick building that looked like any other home on the street. There was no door. I clapped, as they do here, to announce my presence, and quickly a young woman appeared. We asked about the millet beer, and we had found the spot. Although there was no more millet beer, they said they had honey wine, so we bought a liter of it and sipped. It was sweet and much stronger than the millet beer we had known (hence it being referred to as wine) and at the end of the bottle we were feeling pretty good.
We were soon joined by a few young guys, one from Djenne, the other two from Burkina Faso. They said they were guides, which made me skeptical of their motives, but they turned out to be completely genuine. One of them even paid for our honey wine. We had long conversations about all sorts of things. They were an interesting mix, representing West Africa’s religious makeup. One was Muslim (the guy from Djenne), one a former Muslim turned animist, the other a Christian. At one point the issue of hiring a guide came up. We said we didn’t have one because it is a little expensive, and we like to experience places on our own, meet the people we happen to meet, and not be led around. They understood, but still said there were many things that we might not catch without a guide. I took their words as genuine as they were busy and had no need to be our guides.
We took some bottles of honey wine to go (at a $1 a liter how could you not?) and made our way back to town. We could hear the calls of prayer echoing throughout the mud village. The grand mosque has speakers, but occasionally the muezzin would do the call to prayer old school style, and just stand and yell it out unplugged.
The night on the roof was freezing, and my +60-degree sleeping bag just wasn’t cutting it. But in the morning, the rising sun immediately scorched us and we had to get off the roof. We went to the Islamic library next to the grand mosque and paid our $2 entrance fee. A tall man in a long robe with the keys and opened it up and gave us a brief tour. Normally I would feign like I understood all of the French, but this was important to me, and I constantly checked with Lise to make sure I understood correctly. There were shelves of books dating from the 13th century. It was all written in Arabic script, however, the language itself was sometimes Bambara, Songhai, Tamashek. Subjects ranged from mathematics to geography to science to Sufism to many other Islamic related topics. The breadth of study that was occurring right here in Mali 700 or 800 years ago was astounding. It is hard for westerners to imagine pre-colonial Africa as connected to the outside world, but it certainly was internationally involved centuries before the Portuguese started poking around the west coast of the continent. These days, the grandeur of the scholarly West African cities has fallen a bit. Djenne has been declared a Unesco World Heritage Site. At the time, I did not know what this entailed, but later I read a NY Times article describing the difficulties that makes for the town’s development. At the time, I was under the impression that the fact that every building (post office, police station, etc. included) in town was made from the traditional mud-brick design was natural and honest. However, the residents are actually not allowed to build their house a different way, as modernizing would put their Unesco label in jeopardy. Many people have to rely on tourism to make a living and many people with the means to modernize their homes with things like tile floors cannot. I enjoyed seeing a town that appeared to be so pure and traditional, but I was disappointed to find out that this was imposed on them. In my eyes, a place that is forced to artificially maintain its heritage for the sake of tourism, while appealing to the ignorant (like me), is as bad as one that has forgotten it all together.