Note:

part 2 of dogon is underneath the first part. i had so many pics that i started with the 2nd part and it ended up posting first....anyway, just keep scrolling if you care about the 2nd part!

Dogon Country-Part 1

Monday Jan 3, 2011: after a breakfast of bread and jam, we woke up early on monday morning and headed out to meet up with our guide in dogon country. while we were waiting for our guide, i looked around our hotel......

goats. lots of goats.

tiny lizards.

cows love gas stations

when he showed up, we started our drive through the gorgeous mountains in dogon. we came up to the first village on our drive and saw some kids driving-what else-a donkey cart. one of them turned around when i took out my camera and waited for me to take an adorable picture:

motorcycles in the mountains

lp and meg in the mountains

tim, lp and meg-the three muskateers!

when we got out, i started taking pictures. there were a few kids around and every time i took a picture, i would show it to them. i have never seen kids get so excited about seeing themselves in a picture! this was one of my favorite parts of the trip. the joy that they had was enough to make me want to continue taking pictures!!

view from the top of a cliff

one of my favorite things in africa was that the women strapped their babies on their lower backs/top of their bottoms. when the mothers were busy, the little girls would take responsibility for the babies

and how did they carry the babies?

lp called them my posse

convenient store

mashing up some millet

scary ladder

one of the best moments was rounding a corner and seeing what kids in a small village with no electricity do for fun:

they slide down the smooth part of a rock, like a slide. one after another, they slid like it was a water slide. luckily, lp got a video!!!

lp took a turn on the slide!!

a mud mosque

cliff dwelling

the women and children all take turns going to the stream at the bottom of the mountain for their water supply. they have to fill up tubs of water and then hike them back up the mountain, carrying the tubs on their heads. tim and lp both took a turn.

fresh water stream

after the village, we drove down towards the village. there were some amazing stone formations on the way.


part 2 of dogon-coming up!!!!

Dogon Country-Part 2

Monday Jan 3, 2011 (continued): after our trip to the village, we headed back to have lunch and meet up with a family who would be joining us for the rest of our day. we had a typical lunch-rice with tomato sauce.

after lunch, we met up with a couple and their 3 little girls (i think they were 5, 8 and 10). sidenote: i thought that it would be a real pain having kids on this trip but these kids were AMAZING! they hiked around, climbed, walked, sat and never complained. i think their parents should write a book on how to teach kids to be well behaved. back to the day-we drove to our next stop in dogon. the drive was through a canyon-type area and it was gorgeous.



after about 30 minutes, we came to another village. this one had houses actually built into the cliffs. they were so tiny, it's hard to believe that people would actually ever live there, but we'll go with it.
this is a view from the bottom of the cliff. we climbed up and checked out the houses a little closer.

carvings on the walls

we headed back down the cliff and drove further to a campsite for the night. it was an open, walled in area with a choice of rooftop sleeping or a small, doorless room. we chose the rooftop so we could look at the stars. in hindsight, this was a terrible decision. the stars were great for the 5 minutes i looked at them, but the donkeys having sex all night was not a great way to sleep. i have never heard such loud noises. tim had warned us about the donkeys, but i really thought it wouldn't be a big deal. it was horrible. i can still hear it in my head. needless to say, none of us slept too well due to the noises.

our 'beds'

the camp area

when we woke up, it was time for breakfast. most of the time, you get bread and jam for breakfast. this morning, we got peanut butter!!!!! i was in heaven, as i LOVE peanut butter! the peanuts in mali were really good. they were small (guess they don't put chemicals on their peanuts to make them huge) but they had a great flavor. anyway, i had like 3 pieces of bread with peanut butter. oink.

after breakfast, we drove further into the village and started a hike up the cliffs. our guide told us to just bring a bottle of water and acted like it would be an easy hike. we hiked for about 4 1/2 hours up and back.

halfway up the cliffs!

these were my most favorite trees. they were all over this area and i just thought they looked really cool.

here we are-middle of nowhere together.

village kids watching us

some friends i made

if you're bothered by naked kids, skip this picture! this kid started following us and we were trying to get a good picture of this turtle because the village gave the turtle all of their food to taste and make sure it was ok to eat! too funny. you can tell by this sweet child that most of the villagers we met were pretty malnourished by his skinny legs and distended belly. many of the kids also had a reddish tinge to their hair, which i was told is also a sign of malnourishment. not to bring anyone down, but just wanted everyone to know that that's what we were seeing for 2 days.

just climbing rocks!

tim up top and lp to the right. it was the highest spot around!!

we then hiked back down. it was so sunny and warm and of course i hadn't brought more sunscreen because we didn't know we would be gone for so long, so i got a little burned on the hike down. by the time we got to where we would eat lunch (rice and tomato sauce) we were all so thirsty that we gulped down a liter of water in like a minute! we took a short rest after lunch and headed to where they were having a celebration. i don't know why they were doing it, but there was some dancing people so we stayed to have a look.



tim, lp and i had to leave early because we were trying to make it to sevare before it got too dark. we drove back and stayed at the hotel we had been a few days. lp and i had to get up early (6:30) the next day to drive to timbuctu, so we said goodbye to tim and went to bed early.