The Dogon Trek continues

After a breakfast of doughnuts and sugar, and some awful 'Jolly Sun' tea (just add sugar hahaha), Baba took us through the village up to the huts in the cliff, where the village used to be before the families moved down to the plain so they could farm easier. The climb was steep in places, but the wait for the dust to clear was well worth it - the view was great, of the whole plain spread out beneath us. Little did we know it was going to get a LOT better.

The mud huts and granaries are all built into the side of the cliff on natural rock ledges, but it is still incredible to think of the villagers carting up mud handful by handful in the baking heat. Baba took us through the old village, while smoking his morning joint (comforting), and showed us some painting on the sides of one of the huts. The black, red and white paintings were part of the Sigi - a traditional Dogon festival held every 60 years (next one due in 2027). It is a complicated initiation ceremony, involving a Great Mask, 10m high, to be carved out of a tree. Baba thought that with the increasing number of Dogon young moving to the towns and cities, that the next Sigi will probably be the last, and that the true Dogon culture will slowly become consigned to the history books. Bit sad really. Fascinating culture.

Then he showed us the circumcision stone, where the clitoris or foreskin is removed. This used to be done by the blacksmith! The basic reason is that in the Dogon universe everything has two parts; a male and a female. For a youngster to grow into an adult, one part must be removed otherwise they become confused.

After a truly fascinating morning, it was back to trying to keep up with Baba Schumacher in front, as we wandered along the plain in the shadow of the falaise. We walked past a natural lake, created in a kind of swamp area, tall trees that had the bark stripped off them from the ground to 2m up to make rope and some amazing views of the cliffs towering above; huge rock formations, boulders obviously fallen hundreds of years ago and all the way along huts hundreds of feet above the ground.

One rock was resting on its smallest point, like an upside down triangle, and Baba said it had been there as long as he could remember it. The Dogon story goes a young girl went to cut down a tree, became tired and took a nap in the shade of the tree, but when she awoke it had turned into rock. The girl was so disturbed that she remained mute for the rest of here days.

We stopped quite early for lunch in Endè (Baba's apparent home village), and we would have preferred to have kept on walking. We ended up sitting around for about three hours, playing cards and me and Tilly swapping accents - she speaking like Mary Poppins, "all proper-like" and me adopting a South Carolina twang - "Y'all", "Po-lise". Very funny. We reckon Baba spent lunchtime smoking a bit more as he came back pretty chilled out.