The garibou: travelling on foot, with all their worldly possessions, studying the Quran, finding food and shelter where they may...

A group of young garibou on the road in the Dogons

Photo: Frits Brussard

Yaya tells us stories under the starry skies -- of kings and shepherds and good wives....

We have set up our bush camp. Tents are pitched – snorers making sure they are far enough from the 'non-snorers' (or so they think) so as not to elicit a few sharp remarks over breakfast, a delicious dinner enjoyed, dishes washed and flapped dry and everyone lazing about and relaxing on the grass mats. It is a dark night and the stars form a magnificent canopy above our heads.

We had left the relative comfort of The Sleeping Camel behind us and, almost with a sense of having escaped from the confines of comfort and luxury, we are on the road again. Tonight, on our way to the ancient mud city of Djenné and the Dogon country, there was a sense of excitement as we set up our first bush camp in more than two weeks – too long a time. The location is not the most beautiful – and probably not the safest, as we have pitched our tents in a dried up dam, the surface underfoot deeply cracked dry clay, but with ominous thunder clouds on the horizon and even the occasional strong smell of rain carried in on the pre-storm breeze. We take our chances though – we are tired after a long hot day on the road and besides, the high walls of the dam offers a perfect screen from the nearby road and its accompanying noise.

Yaya and Assikae, Abdul and Ebrahim have set up their tents by the side of the truck and I went over to them to ask a few of my endless questions about what have seen and what we were to see the next day. Yaya offered me tea (Malian the is the normal very strong and very sugared tea brewed in a small pot and kept over the coles, drunk from small glasses, and hathe is what Yaya was offering – even stronger and sweeter – almost a black syrup) explaining that I must have three glasses as the first is Death, the second is Life and the third is Love – there is death waiting for each one of us, there cannot be death unless there was life as well, and there is no life unless there is love. Over the little tea ceremony, I asked my questions and Yaya and Assikae giae me the answers – when I realised that these were explanations and stories probably everyone in the group would love to hear as well. So I asked them is they would be willing to share some of their stories with us. They agreed and we moved over to the rest of the group to take our places amongst them on the mats. Complete darkness, Only stars above us. Only the smell of the thunderstorm on the distant horizon. A small group of friends somewhere in Africa listening to the stories passed down through countless generations, told and retold and retold again. In his deep timbered voice and beautiful English, Yaya began...


The city of Djenné is very very old. It was already there a long time before * the Faluni man came from the North, down through Timbuktou, set himself up in front of the Bozo king's palace, at the entrance of the market, and started telling people about Islam. Everyone who came to the market heard his message. They heard his stories about the wonders of Islam, about the greatness of Allah, about the goodness of his prophet, Mohammed. Every day he sat there at the netrance and told his stories. People stopped and listened. Some came back the next day to hear more. Many asked questions, and slowly more and more people of Djenné converted to Islam. The Bozo king heard the stories every day. But he did not want to convert. Eventually almost everyone in Djenné had converted to Islam, but their king still did not want to convert. The man went to the king, every day, and told him more and more stories about this new religion that most of his people had already accepted. But the king could not be moved; he was animist, as his ancestors had been since the beginning of time, and he had no need of a new religion, a new god. So, one day the Bozo king had had enough and he devised a clever plan to get rid of the Faluni man for all time. He said to the Faluni man “Here is some gold. Take is and go away and do not come back to the palace to try to convert me.” The Faluni man took the gold home and put it in a safe place and then sat down to try to think how he could convert the Bozo king.

In the mean time, the Bozo king had a thief brought to him and he instructed the thief to go to the Faluni man's house, to steal the gold he had given him and to go throw it in the river. The thief went to the house of the Faluni man and stole the gold, ran to the river and trew the gold into the river. When the Bozo king was sure that the god was gone, he called the Faluni man to come to the palace. He said to him: I have changed my mind. You can stay. But I want the gold I had given you back.” The Faluni man went home to fetch the gold, only to discover that the gold had disappeared. He was distraught. How was he going to return the gold to the king if he no longer had it? He had no idea what to do. He was desparate. Being the honest man that he was, he told the king that the gold had disappeared but that he will pray every day for the gold to be returned to him so he could give it back to the king.

However, back in the river, there was a huge Capitaine fish ** that came across this shiny shimmering gold lying on the bottom of the river bed. He swam closer, nudged it this way and then that, and then swallowed the gold. But, because the gold was heavy in his stomach and he could not move fast, it was not long after when he was caught by the nets of a fisherman, hauled out of the water and taken to the market. It was Monday, and like every other housewife in Djenné, the Faluni man's wife went to the market on that day to buy their food. She decided to buy a beautiful Capitaine fish for her husband, hoping that the delicious meal would make him feel a little better. She bought the heaviest fish the fisherman had, took it home and cut it open to prepare it for her husband. You can imagine her surprise when she found the gold in the stomach of the fish! Oh joy! She rushed to the entrance to the market to find her husband and give him the gold she had found. The Faluni man immediately took the gold from his wife, turned around and went to the Bozo king. “Here is the gold you had given me. You see how great and good Allah is. I have prayed and prayed to Allah, and today he returned the gold inside the Capitaine fish that my wife bought at the market.” The Bozo king responded to the Faulin man: “I do not have a fetish as strong as this god of yours. Never have I seen such a miracle to happen when I make sacrifices and pray to my fetishes. Come inside and tell me more about this great and good god of yours,” and he sat the Faluni man down in the palace and for many days listened to all the stories about Alla and his prophet, Mohammed. And after a long time, the Bozo king of Djenné converted to Islam and promised to build a mosque greater than any other mosque – right there, at the entrance to the market ***, and to this day there is a Faluni man sitting at the foot of the steps of the mosque, at the entrance to the market, telling anyone who will listen how great and good Allah is.



* Archeological evidence proves that the city of Djenné existed as far back as 300BC
** The Capitaine fish is a large river fish in Mali, an excellent eating fish.
*** The mosque was first built in 1280, as promised, after Koi Konboro - the 26th king of Djenné - converted to Islam.

Djenné is home to 50 madrassas (Quranic schools) for citizens of the city as well as 40 other madrassas that are open to everyone. Almost all the boys are taken in by an immam at an early age and instructed in the Quran until the age of 15. These boys have to find food and donations for their board and lodging as well as to feed their teachers. One sees little boys with large tins walking the streets in all Malian towns. These boys as 'garibou' - Quran students whol live with a 'maribou' or immam -- they are not begging as such, but rather just hoping for your kindness, no matter how small.

Yaya -- our brilliant Fulani guide in Djene

Yaya's favourite pic...

My favourite picture...

The mud mosque in Djene : the biggest adobe structure worldwide

Photo credit : Frits Brussaard

For Africa

I wished myself young again for you last night

only if for your gaze

your touch -

but geography of life

carves roads on my face

erodes the youth from what

I see when you take me in your eyes

Would that for us the time

between your touch and mine

when skin meets,

and smiles,

the years collapsed,

that mirrors had no memory

I opened the doors to the night storm,

hoping to quench this thirst

but the torrents of rain lit the fire

I picked up the splinters of Habib's sweet sounds

and behind us stretched the endless desert.

Yet you remain as beautiful as the earth,

as children at the village well

as the lonely traveller without luggage, and I

I sit here on my suitcase of days

waiting for the train to who knows where

I want to forget the days

I want your blindness

-forgive me -

and travel with you

to the lands of wonder

I wished myself young again last night

for you, you understand

not for me.

I lie

It was all for me

Habib Koité, Malian singer, songwriter and guitarist

African Time : The Art of Waiting

Waiting waiting waiting...

Travelling through Africa means that you have to get used to waiting. The Western visitor speaks of 'African time' with a slightly patronising smile, a small tsk-tsk and a shake of the the head, while thinking: Come on! Get on with it! But, when you travel through this continent and have to do battle with bureaucracy – and French bureaucracy at that (after all, no matter what the British civil servants tell you, it was the French who are the champions in the art of shuffling paper and tying red tape), you can be patronising, you can be impatient, you can be downright rude, but you will get absolutely nowhere with your western ways; you will not rush the system; you will not get things to move at your stressful pace; you will not change their way of doing things.

A good case in point is the process of obtaining visas to continue on your journey. Instead of “Slow Food”, think

“Slow – um – slow – come-back-tomorrow – slow”. Add to that the odd uprising here and demonstration there and military action yesterday and general election tomorrow, and add as well the heat and more heat and then some, which seems to license anyone working here to take a couple of hours off work at random and unannounced times during the day, and you pretty much get the picture.

We are now well into the third week of waiting; endless days of sitting on the pavement in front of embassies waiting to have the gate opened to get into the premises; hours of sitting on benches against the grubby wall waiting to have your turn come up to go present your papers and applications for visas at the desk where the taciturn consular official is peering over her glasses and so obviously getting a sadistic thrill in telling you that one of the vital papers or letters needed for a visa to her country is missing and to come back tomorrow.

With all that waiting, there is of course plenty of time for good things to happen too. Like meeting a young man who will write you a letter of invitation to his country which has to accompany your

application. Forget about approaching the top guns of huge companies to provide such a letter – they cannot help – and understandably so; after a conversation with a young local he decides he likes you, is willing to vouch for you, calls his sister on his mobile, get passed onto his brother in law who works in the embassy, the letter is quickly written on a scrap of paper, and the entire group has a personal invitation to be his family's guests in the country where you hope to be heading.

Other official letters are also provided – at a small fee – and the price of an official stamp – by young men who sit on the pavements outside the government buildings and embassies. Over there, behind the motorbikes parked under the trees, against the wall, these young 'scribes' sit and await your business. Need a letter of reference to apply for the permanent residency of country A that you need in order to apply for the visa. Wait several hours to be let into the building, another few hours in the line to hand in your forms and passports and letters of

reference and photographs, go back to the camp and wait a day – two days – three days – return to the offices, go through the waiting process there again, be told to come back tomorrow, repeat the process and if all goes well, in just over a week you have the piece of paper that grants you permenent residency of this lovely hot country. Next you go off to the police commissariat on the other side of town, have a lovely chat to the the four (female) police officials clustered around a small table in a tiny hot room, exchange a few pleasantries about your travels, your family, compare ages of number of

grandchildren, wait for them to each in turn go through the process of washing – feet - three times, hands - three times, face - once, ears – once, and then kneeling down and praying on the grass mat rolled out at your feet, and then start the laborious process of filling out their forms – one per person in the group – with all the information they need to confirm and authorise your permanent residency in their country. Name, date of birth, residential address (The Sleeping Camel, Route 25, Gate 80, Badebalou, Bamako), nationality, passport number, date of issue, date of expiry, names of parents (and parents, please forgive us, but all of us who have had a turn at one of these 'officialdom' form fillings, have had to quickly think up names for each of you – not necessarily the names you are normally known by! You would think we would just have the list handy with parents' names already written out. The list exists. But invariably, when the question comes up, that list happens to be with another member of the group who is busy on the other side of town waiting on the pavement outside another government building to be let in to sit on a bench against another wall to reach the front of another queue to get to hand in another set of papers for another form we need in this process of obtaining visas to get to the countries we hope to be heading to.)

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting...

We are now permanent residents of one country, have visas for the next country – despite their borders being 'closed', visas for the country after that – despite them not issuing visas to anyone at the moment, and our passports and applications are still with the final one that has proved to be the biggest hurdle. And that is a good sign. If the passports are still there and not returned to us on one of our daily visits to the embassy, that means there is still a chance we will get those visas – so keep your fingers crossed for us as wait to get these last visas soon so we can move on and continue our magical journey following the fragrance of the shooting stars!

A portrait of the mud city of Djene and Mopti, the Venice of Mali 3

A portrait of the mud city of Djene and Mopti, the Venice of Mali 2

A portrait of the mud city of Djene and Mopti, the Venice of Mali 1