By the end of the day joe also managed to get himself a blanket, so at least in theory we’re all prepared for another cold night on a roof. Before we went to bed though after we ate a decent meal of fried chicken and sweet potato fries Goldfish talked to us for a while and told us a good story on the origin of mask dancing in Dogon. Hopefully I’m getting it right here but here’s a basic retelling of the tale:

Long ago, soon after the moved to this area a young family lived in Sanga. The husband sent the wife out to the forest to collect firewood for cooking but day after day she returned empty handed. When questioned she told her husband that she saw a devil dancing in the woods and was too scared to gather firewood. This devil could take many forms, including that of a man. The husband sent his wife out to collect wood the next day telling her that if she saw the devil throw some small stones at it. Once in the woods again the wife did in fact see the dancing devil again and although she was scared she threw some stones at the creature. The devil disappeared but in its place it left all of the hair off of its body. The wife took this devils hair and returned home. Instead of telling her husband what happened she hid the hair in the village granary. The very next day the village Hogon died. This was unprecedented. Before this time the Dogon people never died; when their time came they would transform into a sacred snake, so this portentous omen scared the villagers. They called a village meeting and discovered that the wife had hidden devil’s hair in the town granary. She withheld the information from her husband and disrespected her duties as a wife; she had sinned.

So from that time on the Dogon men began carving masks of devils. At a funeral ceremony they dance, to chase the spirit of the deceased into paradise. The women are not permitted to join in the ceremony and must never touch a mask. This is the story told by Goldfish. He told us her was permitted to carve the masks because his father did. This honour is inherited by the first son of a household. Goldfish then told us that his sons, who are all Muslim like his wife have abandoned this tradition in favour of a modern western education, Islam, and money. In a way its obviously very sad, traditional living is coming to an end everywhere in the world. But I sure wouldn’t want to stop anyone from having the opportunities I had just because my culture has lost their heritage and we admire those that haven’t. The world is changing as Goldfish said with a shrug last night, his children are doing what’s right for them.

Today seemed a giveaway day to me. I thought it’d be easy. A 20km trek north across the lowland. Even though 20km is a lot I figured it’d be easy, a good break day from the up and down. Oh how wrong I was...

Around 5am I woke up physically shaking from the cold. I really do like my new blanket, but it just wasn’t enough to keep me warm. I put on another full set of clothing ontop of what I was wearing already so I had on 2 pair of pants, 3 pair socks, 3 t-shirts (1 long sleeve), my hoodie, a touque, and then I wrapped my towel around my thighs. Then of course I had my blanket. With that I finally managed to get back to sleep again; despite the very loud singing and dancing from the all night very loud circumcision festival.

Anyhow, we got up, and headed out as soon as we could, and honestly at first everything seemed ok. But the flat, sandy road was monotonous and my pack seemed waaay too heavy, especially once it got hot. The view was nice but I think the up and down provides some good variety to the day’s hike. Tim, Joe, and I were all pretty beat by lunch. But that might also have been the fact that we were hiking along pretty damn fast. We covered 17km in 3 and a half hours only to find that the encampment we’d stopped at for lunch didn’t actually have any food. We took an hour or so break there anyways, chilled, and talked with the 30 or so local kids that invaded the encampment. Joe seemed to make pretty good friends with a little girl who spoke pretty good Bambara, a lot of the words are actually the same as in Mandinka.

The proprietor’s wife was very nice and gave us some fresh millet cake. It wasn’t bad, and similar (or so I hear from Joe) to what they make in Gambia; but I wasn’t overly stoked by the Baobab sauce that came with it. After this small meal we headed out and made the final 3 km to Bamba pretty quickly.

Today is market day in Bamba and although it is a much bigger market than yesterday’s in Yendouma I wasn’t overly impressed with the selection. The Bamba market seems to be all food, which is fine and all but its not exactly the stuff I’ve been looking for. I’d really like to pick up some gifts here in Dogon for the home people, but I’d really rather not pay the tourist shop prices. Maybe I’ll run across something later though. I don’t necessarily need to add more weight to my bag right now anyhow. I did get some dates though which are excellent and although the encampment we’re staying at tonight seems pretty ghetto to me, Goldfish is happy because it belongs to his brother who he hasn’t seen in over a year. Tomorrow we go back up the escarpment, and I’m looking forward to it.