The Dogon people of Mali have a long history of defending their culture against unwanted influences, but is an increase in global tourism going to accomplish what invading armies failed to do? Naomi Schwarz reports
In Dogon Country, an isolated region in Mali, donkeys do not have to be seen in order to be heard. The unearthly braying does not sound animal at first; more like a rusted seesaw being forced, unwillingly – cruelly – back into motion. As other donkeys join the crescendoing chorus, you begin to wonder what unmentionable horror is being done to these animals to call for such terrible complaint.
Gradually the chorus fades away and the other sounds of Dogon life take over: the nasal ‘me-e-e-hs’ of sheep, the rhythmic thumps of millet-pounding from wooden mortar and pestles, the watery splash of a bucket in the village well.
These nosies waft up from wide, brush-filled plains. They are caught by the jagged wall of the Bandiagara Escarpment, a sheer cliff, 150km long, that forms a wall between Dogon Country and the rest of Mali. The escarpment stretches to the horizon in both directions; one side of the Grand Canyon, a sedimentary sunset trapped in stone.
Dotted along the cliff, built vertically into the mountain, lie tiny villages of mud huts. Still in good condition but no longer inhabited, these are the original Dogon villages that date back centuries, built to take advantage of the natural protection of the high ground.
This is the kind of place people visit when they want to discover a different world; when they realise that you can eat burgers in McDonald’s in Paris and drink coffee in Starbucks in Beijing, and that computers, movies and cellphones are ubiquitous.
This, after all, is the place the Dogon people found centuries ago when they were trying to escape a culture that wanted to change their way of life.
Thousands of visitors travel here each year and Dogon villagers also have access to modern technology. The older generation says traditions are dying and some blame tourism. But members of the younger generation say they can benefit from these changes without losing their culture.
As the modern world encroaches on once-isolated spots, many minority cultures face this dilemma: how to adapt while holding on to their unique traditions. The Dogon at least have had considerable practice in revitalising their history: the mud from which their historic villages are constructed is eaten away by wind and rain, and must be resurfaced every year.
The story that is generally told about the Dogon is that, 800 or so years ago, the stubbornly animist people fled from Muslim invaders who tried to convert them by force. They took refuge in the cliff-side dwellings that tourists visit today.
These days, those villages are empty and modern Dogon communities are built either on the plains or the plateaus on the Bandiagara Escarpment. A couple of days after Christmas, at the height of tourist season, after a hot hike up rocky passes and through terraced gardens, we arrive in one high plateau village. Here, dozens of men are performing a traditional dance in chunky, colourfully painted masks made from heavy wood.
Guide Ali Ban Guindo, a locally born Dogon, explains the meaning of each mask – including one that stretches three metres above a dancer’s head. Each style signifies the different role of the dancer: one is a guardian against unwanted spectators; another is for women’s funerals. The dance is acrobatic and beautiful, an example of animist Dogon traditions continuing today. It is also an example of change: scores of paying visitors watch the once-secret ritual dancing.
Dogon history did not freeze 800 years ago. Despite the animists’ initial resistance to Islam, most Dogon today, like other Malians, are Muslim. There is also a significant Christian minority. Some of the most distinctive buildings in each Dogon village are the sizeable, mud-built mosques and churches.
These religious conversions are one example of the Dogon’s continued interaction with the outside world, of which the tourist and technological invasion is just the newest step.
Guindo, who has worked as a guide for nearly 10 years, has been shaped through his whole life by tourism. Aged 27 and unmarried, he lives in the city of Mopti, several hours’ drive and hike away, which serves as the tourist gateway to Dogon Country. He dresses in a casual, Western style, in T-shirts and cargo pants, and he does devastatingly satirical impersonations of the different nationalities of tourists he has guided. His current lifestyle has almost nothing in common with the traditional Dogon life he shows tourists.
In that world, people marry young and build a house within their family’s compound. They are farmers and store their grain in distinctive storage huts; one style for men, another for women. To mark births and deaths, the remaining animists visit the Hogon, a traditional healer who performs animal sacrifices.
But Guindo’s life, like that of many Dogon today, changed course young. He remembers seeing tourists in his village, and, as many children still do, he would chase after them asking for gifts. One day, an older American woman gave him a brand-new T-shirt.
‘I was so happy that day,’ Guindo remembers. ‘Instead of wearing this T-shirt, I went and put it away carefully.’ He could not bear to wear the T-shirt and see it lose the bright sheen of brand-new white.
Attracted by the possibility of more gifts, Guindo stopped going to school. He would leave the house in the morning with his school bag, hide it somewhere, and spend the whole day begging from tourists. It was the start of the path that led him to leave home at 16 for the city, and eventually found him in a career as a tour guide. But, he adds, if he could go back, he would do things differently.
‘Now, I’ve got to this point, and I regret it. I truly regret it. Why? Because I can speak, and I like talking; I express myself, but I don’t know how to write. And I don’t know how to read.’
He has another regret. Guindo’s parents tried to choose a wife for him years ago, as is the Dogon custom, but he refused. Now, he says he wants a Dogon wife, but he cannot marry as long as he remains a guide. ‘I’m always travelling with tourists,’ he says, ‘and I don’t want to leave my wife alone for so long.’
Amadou Lougé has worked in the tourism industry as long as Guindo has. The men are friends and colleagues, and joke with one another freely. But where Guindo speaks French, English and smatterings of other languages he has picked up from his clients, Lougé prefers to talk to me in Dogon (though later, over a plate of grilled meat and a few beers, he chats away in French).
He offers an example of how modern Dogon might profit from tourism without being quite as separate from Dogon country as is Guindo.
Lougé manages a small lodging in the village where he was born. He lives a short walk away, with his two young wives (polygamy is legal in Mali and in Islamic and animist tradition) and children. He says tourism actually helps the Dogon preserve their lifestyle. ‘Before, all the young people had to go to work in Bamako, Mopti, and in other countries, like Côte d’Ivoire or Burkina Faso,’ he says. ‘Now people can find work here, in the tourism industry, and so they can stay near their families.’
Aminata Guindo, Lougé’s first wife, does not entirely agree. She says that 50 or 100 years down the road, there may not be any Dogon Country left. Everyone is busy making money now, she adds. ‘People do not work like they used to, to maintain the old villages. And those are the true Dogon Country.’
Aminata is speaking of the physical structures of the villages, which can only survive with constant upkeep. But Ali Ban Guindo says Dogon traditions require just as much maintenance. He says those traditions are getting lost, but it has little to do with tourism.
‘The elders, they don’t even respect their sons,’ says Guindo. ‘Before, all the boys would eat with their fathers, all the girls with their mothers. They would explain tradition, how to behave, how things work. Parents don’t do this any more, but then they complain that things have changed.’ He says his generation has never been taught the old ways. ‘If you don’t live the tradition in your family, that means it’s already gone,’ he says.
But Guindo says tourism has given young people an incentive to learn more about their history. In 2000, he and his fellow guides travelled along the Bandiagara Escarpment, asking village elders for information. And they organised a five-day ceremony in the first Dogon village, during which they paid homage to their ancestors and discussed their history.
‘Here, where I am,’ Guindo says, ‘I know that I have changed a lot.’ But not all changes are for the worse: tourists’ donations and profits have gone towards building modern health centres and more schools.
Now it will be up to Guindo, Lougé and their children to take what is good from the outside world without losing what is special about their own.
ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE
There is a scientific principle that says observing a phenomenon changes it. Here are some ways to ensure that a visit to Dogon Country leaves good spirits on both sides.
LEARN LOCAL GREETINGS
Villagers are used to tourists, but it does not mean they do not want to be acknowledged. Plus, you will never be able to pronounce owaaana (hello, in Dogon) correctly, and everyone enjoys a good laugh.
DO NOT COME BEARING GIFTS
Especially if you do not have enough for every child in the village – and there will be a lot of them. Guide Ali Ban Guindo says it is better not to start: ‘It causes jealousy and drama among the children.’
BARGAIN LIKE A NATIVE
If you are a foreigner, expect any starting price to be outlandish. Even if you have the cash, you do not have to accept inflated prices. ‘You think you’ve helped me,’ says Guindo, playing the part of a market vendor, ‘but I just think I’ve cheated you.’ There are better ways to make a meaningful contribution, he adds.
BEFORE THE DOGON
Visit Dogon Country and you will see several levels of villages. A narrow climb above tree level finds you in the early Dogon habitations, looking down over modern plains villages. If you look up, you will see the remnants of even older huts which have no obvious access. These are the homes of the Tellem, who lived in the Bandiagara Escarpment before the Dogon and probably left the area in the 16th century.
TELLEM ALL
Little is known about the Tellem, where they went, or how they managed to build in such an inaccessible place. Dogon myth says the Tellem could fly. Scientists have a more mundane answer: in the Tellem’s day, they theorise, a different climate meant tall trees and vines formed a natural ladder.
CLOUDED HISTORY
Oral history is murky over the question of what happened to the Tellem. Guindo says the earliest Dogon in the region encountered them. They then fought a war over the safest cliff-side spots, with the Tellem chased away. Another version has it that the hunter-gatherer Tellem left when the agrarian Dogon began clearing the land for fields.
