So Long A Letter

giving notice

i'm coming home! in two days! yay!

more posts to come, from the land of internet and unemployed-ness.

i love you!

yes, i was burned, but i call it a lesson learned

here's what else you need to know: when traveling through africa, never sit in the last row of the sweet-looking greyhound-ish bus. even if it looks nice and spacious. this is the seat directly over the engine, and as any traveller knows (except us, apparently), this seat gets really really really hot as time goes on. the slow heat-up really tricks you- feels normal at first and warms by barely perceptible degrees until your butt is on fire and the heat is radiating through the bottoms of your shoes. it's like a bus/sauna. without the mud wrap. we were sweating buckets upon buckets for the six hour ride from bamako to djenne. the sauna also had the unfortunate effect of making christine feel like she was on the gravitron ride at the fair- unable to sit up or move for several hours. but now we know. and isn't that always half the battle? it's a good thing christine has assumed the role of trip hydration specialist and kept us set with plastic sacks filled with water.

the road to djenne runs perpendicular to the main road, so we had to get out of the bus and wait for another car to go the last 30k to Djenne. we were feeling a bit cranky (see: six hours in a sweat lodge/bus, above) and the thought of the wait for the rattle-trap pick up to fill up was not an uplifting one. fortunately, we were switched for seemingly random reasons into a station wagon and we were off! a quick trip, excepting the short ferry crossing, where we were hounded to buy jewelry and hire tour guides (we later found out we were pretty much the only tourists in Djenne that day, which explains the intensity of the hustle).

Djenne is a town of 12,000, centered around a huge mosque, and everything in town is made entirely of mud. everything. really. it's so beautiful and so strange. Marie said she thought it seemed almost like a movie set. the mosque is the main reason people come here, tourists and pilgrims alike- it's the world's largest mud structure and the current mosque, built in 1906, is a reconstrution of an older mosque built in the 1200s. whoa.

we found all of this out when we eventually gave in to one of the guys hassling us (including at the dinner table) and took the grand tour. only muslims can go in the mosque, but we went around the outside and viewed it from several nearby roofs. we also saw the women's mud-cloth making collective, the chief's house, the library, and many other buildings. all made of mud. so detailed and intricate. several stories, even. and an incredible amount of work to maintain, apparently.

i can only imagine the rainy season does a number on this town... fortunately, there are also lots of drains and sewers and systems to move water out of the roads, so maybe it's not too bad. wishing dakar could pick up on some of that knowledge!

we stayed only one night in Djenne, just enough to get a feel for the place. which was empty, as the moment. we were the only people at our hotel and had been for days. no trouble getting a table at the fanciest restaurant in town, for some taboule and warm sprite!

the next morning, we were back on the road and headed to Sevare, a town 3 hours northeast of Djenne. there isn't much there, but we were needing a jump-off place for our next plan- hiking for several days in the Dogon Country region of Mali.

we arrived in sevare in funky moods- we had heard too much hype about the place we were going to stay and it didn't quite live up to the cuteness or the price. but our personalities were vastly improved by the discovery of a garden restaurant with lots of veggie options and a coversation with Hassimi, our tour guide for the hike in Dogon. Hassimi, on the other hand, most definitely lives up to the hype. he is huge, hilarious, and incredibly knowledgable about all things Dogon and Mali. We sat and planned the trip and listened to some live guitar and calabash music- ended up being a great evening.

the next morning, as planned, Hassimi picked us up at our hotel o' disappointments and we started on the two hour drive. our first stop was a village perched on the top of a small hill, just off the main road. just as everything is djenne was mud, here everything is made of rocks, piled up in various formations, to make houses, schools, latrines, stores, goat pens, etc.

we walked through the village, with hassimi pointing out various notable sites, showing us how to scramble down the ladders connecting different levels of the village, and helping us to greet people in our non-existant Dogon. although a lot of people there also spoke Mali's version of Pulaar, called Fulfulde. they were pretty shocked and happy when we busted out our "good morning"s and "how're your kids?". hassimi told us that this village was the first one of the Dogon villages to convert from animism to Islam and it operates under sharia (islamic law).

after a stop in another larger town for lunch and to buy hibiscous and mango jam, we drove out to the place where most of the Dogon villages are centered- a 200k long escarpment (in case you dont know this word- cause we sure didn't- it means a long, precipitous, clifflike ridge of land, rock, or the like, commonly formed by faulting or fracturing of the earth's crust. basically making for a very dramatic landscape and backdrop for the villages) with villages along the bottom and up on the rim.

we parked in the first one we came to along the bottom of the slope- called Teli- and climbed up the base to the mid-point, where there are some abandoned houses and granaries perched precariously on the edge. There are also some much older abandonded houses, left over from a people called the Tellem, who lived in the same place around 3000BC, according to Hassimi and Dogon legend. A lot of these structures are way up on the cliffs, with no apparent way to reach them. The Dogon people say that the Tellem must have been able to fly to reach them, although it's also possible that cliffs used to be covered in vines in warmer times.

after climbing back down, we drove to another village called Ende and spent the night in a campgrounds there, sleeping on the roof of the compounds mud buildings. possibly as a tribute to the fouta, there was a sand storm that night, followed by a brief rain shower. perfect for waking up with that special sand-mouth feeling. in the morning, we explored the village and did some shopping- beautiful indigo fabric and wood carvings. nice to finally see in real-life some of the things 'we've only ever seen in the museum in dakar.

we moved on through several other villages, seeing people working as blacksmiths, welders, carvers, and weavers. one of the major features of Dogon villages are the large granaries, separate for men and women, which hold the year's supply of millet harvested from the fields. Christine likes to rhyme this word with canaries. feel free to adopt this for yourself now, so you can be in on the joke when we get home.

after a lunch of tomato rice with chicken, we started the hiking (decidedly not walking) part of the trip. we went along the bottom, through several villages, and then climbed to the top of the escarpment (about 500 vertical meters). along the way, we saw people farming, ate seeds from the cheese tree (the aftertaste does appraoch cheese, although our standards are kinda high), gave out lots of kola nuts, and drank millet beer (very sour) with one of the village elders.

when we reached the top, there was a wedding going on in the christian section of the village (which is one third muslim, one third christian, and one third animist), with some great dancing and drumming. well, it seemed great when we got there. not as great at 6am the next morning, when it was still going on... spent that night on the roof of another small compound, although the roof had no walls, so the hurricane winds blowing over the village seemed a little intense and we felt a little, shall we say, exposed. but the sunset hike to the edge of the cliff was breathtaking and made us want to spend the night right there (until Hassimi told us about the 12 different kinds of poisonous snakes that make these rocks their home).

our 6am drum alarm got us going early the next morning.

we walked along the top of the cliff for about an hour, until we got to a village that is entirely animist. it looked a lot the same as the others, except that there was no mosque or church to be found. there were, however, several public "fetish"areas, where sacrifices are made on important occasions, other gathering areas for men, and special huts for menstruating women.

after this village, we started the steep hike down the escarpment. lots of rock-to-rock walking and several ladders over chasms and steep drops. not good for the faint of heart and those (me) who don't do heights well. but it was really fun and incredibly picturesque.

once on solid ground again, we hopped into Hassimi's car and commenced the "Fast and the Furious- Dogon Edition"- high speed driving through the sand and dirt paths of the Sahel. there's not really a road around here, so it was good Hassimi knew the track well. we passed lots of Pulaar/Fulani villages on the way to the next town, several of which were using camels to pull water from their wells, as the holes had to be dug so deep to find water.  after about an hour on the dirt road, we ended up in Koro, one of the last towns in Mali before the Burkina Faso border. We said our sad goodbyes to Hassimi and squished ourselves into the waiting van, headed for the border and the next chapter of our adventure.

Stay tuned for more on the border crossing (do you have any guns? no.), our copious amounts of back sweat, and the metropolis of ouagadougou.

Sending our love from Burkina Faso!

transitioning from hard core PCVs to whiny american tourists

you know how we're all lookin for a little adventure in our lives? well, here's the real deal...

as if the past two years weren't enough, i've decided to take off on a petit adventure with two of my nearest and dearest. for months, we've been planning reading, dreaming, and scheming, and now the moment has finally come. Peace Corps is over. Welcome to

the beginning of the beginning!

Myself, Christine, and Marie (aka Kierstin, Christine, and Kierstine) have decided to spend the next month traveling overland to Ghana, via Mali and Burkina Faso. Here's the start of the story:

it opens on a chilly morning in Dakar. we had officially finished Peace Corps a few days before and had spent the weekend enjoying our new Returned Peace Corps Volunteer status (riding motos without helmets, driving cars, getting pregnant, being rude to Senegalese people, risking life and limb jumping on giant trampolines, and not speaking Pulaar. just kidding. but not about the trampolines). Marie, our resident early morning girl, woke us up at 430am and we headed to the bus stop. meaning this random place up in the cut near the big mosque. we had purchased tickets the day before and thought we knew what we were getting into- the bus looked greyhound-ish, with straight-backed cushioned seats and big windows. and AC. or so we thought. well the seats were straight. and didnt go back. and the windows were big. but they didnt open. and the AC was... well, you can probably guess.

we were anticipating a 36 hour journey from dakar to bamako, mali. the first part was fun- the feeling of finally being on the road, seeing the roads for the last time, getting in the adventure spirit. by the time we hit hour 12, we were on one of the worst roads in senegal, bouncing along at a snails pace, listening to the driver's music blasting through the bus at top volume. i wish you could hear this music- i'm not even sure i can describe it. imagine an auctioneer, on speed, with an intense religious fervor, backed by a guitar with only 3 strings, and played at a volume that makes the speakers vibrate intensely against the plastic casing that holds them.... right above our heads....for hours and hours on end.

so,  we were pretty much on track until we hit the border between the two countries, around midnight. we went through senegalese customs with few problems. we rolled up on the malian side expecting about the same, with maybe a bribe or two thrown in for good measure. but no. we exited the bus to find lots of people asleep on the ground and everyone from our bus rolling out their mats and settling down. confused, we tried to ask around about what we were doing and where the passport office was. instead we were directed to the night guard, who offered to rent us our very own plastic mats for 250 CFA (about 75 cents). giving into fatigue and lack of options, we rolled out our new mats next to some bambara ladies who seemed to know what was going on, and snuggled up together.

flash forward to the next morning. people getting up to pray, go to the bathroom, start cooking tea and coffee (on their very own gas burner, which they had packed on the bus, along with a huge sack of rice, two jerry cans of water, food for two weeks, and a very cute baby). these people obvioulsy knew what they were getting into. so we're up, we're nasty, we're ready to go. it's 5am. let the waiting begin. apparently we're waiting for the malian customs dudes to show up. which they do, at 9am. after lots more standing around, we finally pull out at 1030. only to go 5 minutes down the road and get right back out of the bus, to get our passsports stamped. which happened again 10k later. and again 90k after that. so at this point, we've gone about 100k in 12 hours or so. thinkin we may not make this 36 hour anticipated arrival time...

the ride through mali is really pretty. baobabs and rocks and trees and rolling hills. surprisingly different from senegal. lots of stops for water and bathroom and praying. at one of the stops, we were off getting dinner when they started honking the horn that the bus was about to leave. how to do carry-out in mali?? solution: plastic bags. the lady who was selling us the beans dumped them into a black plastic bag, along with some spaghetti and we were off. maybe the weirdest meal ever. but tasty none the less.

we pulled into bamako around 11pm on day 2. christine's stopwatch read 40 hours on the bus. so ready to be D-O-N-E. one more minute of that prayer "music" and marie might strangle the driver. and then where would we be? found a cab, found a hotel (AC! for real this time!), and crashed. needed to rest our tired, swollen, dehydrated cankles (ankles that are indistinguishable from your calves= cankles). for 12 hours. it was amazing.

so far, we are loving bamako. so many trees, so much less trash, very little heckling. coming from senegal/dakar, this is a revelation. we're here for three nights, taking in the city and getting our visa for burkina faso. things we have most enjoyed: eating at a salad bar. the fetish market (read: shrunken moneky heads). cute bars/tex-mex karaoke. the niger river. fruit! the only thing disappointing us about mali thus far is the small number of pulaars we've run into. the bambara language is not coming quickly. soon enough, inchallah.

off to the north east of mali tomorrow. you only need to know one thing: the world's largest mud structure. yes. we'll keep you updated.