Sociolingo’s Mali

One of the things my kids (now grown up with kids of their own) reminisce about from their life in West Africa is mangoes fresh from the tree. They both loved green mangoes, a peculiarly teenage phenomenon as far as I was concerned, sour and acidic. I can get mangoes here in the UK, but they are a shadow of the freshly picked, ripened on the tree version. I was pleased to spot a photo essay on BBC NEWS specifically on mangoes from Mali. We used to drive out along the Sibi road for picnics and it was a joy to get the first mangoes of the year from road side stalls. I say stalls but really it would be just a few piles of mangoes on a cloth, or maybe on a rickety table or in large washing buckets. None of the ladies spoke any French so I had to struggle with the Bambara money system, based on 5. I never really felt i had a handle on it. But it gave them a laugh anyway.

Here are some delightful pictures courtesy of BBC:
In pictures: Mali’s mangos (click here to go to the photo essay and notes)

Djenaba Coulibaly is having a good season. She sells the mangos everyday at Sibi’s market, and gets about $1 for every 30 mangos.“I can look after my family with the money, and buy clothes for the children. But this year I’m going to treat myself,” she says.

Short season

Attempts are being made to diversify the industry and develop the income-generating potential of those - mostly women - who work in it.At the Jeka Bara co-operative in the Sebenikoro district of Bamako, a group of 17 women are having some success in maximising their income. “I’m going to get some new clothes, some really nice food and even a beautiful pair of new shoes.” This is important as the mango season is a short one - beginning in February and lasting between two to three months.

See the rest of the photos

Source: masquerades of the bozo, kirango (mali)

This interesting webpage By Elisabeth den Otter has lots of photos which you can access through links. It covers the rarely seen circumcision ceremony and has other cultural information

Kirango is an old village located on the bank of the Niger river, about 35 km north-east of the city of Ségou. The inhabitants are Bamanan (farmers) and Bozo/Somono (fishermen). Both ethnic groups celebrate their masquerades, each in its own way. For the Bozo/Somono circumcision is a very important ceremony, which takes place about every ten years. For that occasion, they organize a masquerade, with dances, masks, and ‘sogow’ (literally ‘animals’) that represent an animal, symbolic or domestic. They are accompanied by drumming and singing.

Go to the webpage and see the photos

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Cross-posted from Sociolingo’s Africa

Posted by sociolingo on May 5, 2008

A new blog, The Face of Afrika, is aiming to focus on positive news celebrating the continent of Africa. Please support this initiative.

One recent post about The 52nd Venice Biennale: The African Pavilion and Malick Sidibé’s Achievement caught my eye:

The Venice Biennale’s prestigious Golden Lion lifetime achievement award was presented to Malick Sidibé, from Mali. The artist made history. Not only was he the first photographer to be so honored but Sidibé was the first African artist to ever win the award.

Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement:
Malick Sidibé, born in Soloba, Mali, in 1936. Lives and works in Bamako, Mali.

Photo credit AFP

Read the full post

Things you see transported constantly win the funny photo stakes in Mali. I never cease to be amazed at what people transport and how they do it. Today’s topic is sheep.

Here’s a pic from  Peter Baldwin

and one from Ferdinand Reus

Here’s one from Johanne Veilleux

  

Source: http://homepage.mac.com/melissaenderle/mali/pages/museumsymbols.html

Visual Griots of Mali - Student Gallery
This is a wonderful collection of photos by young Malian photographers. The young people were trained to use the cameras and then sent out to record their lives. The photo exhibit of 49 black and white photos opens at the Smithsonian.

Technorati Tags: Mali, photography

 Many people come to Mali with the intention of visiting the Dogon villages. Places of Peace and Power has a good article on the sacred sites of the Dogon with excellent photos.

The Dogon are an ethnic group located mainly in the districts of Bandiagara and Douentza in Mali, West Africa. This area is composed of three distinct topographical regions: the plain, the cliffs, and the plateau. Within these regions the Dogon population of about 300,000 is most heavily concentrated along a 200-kilometer (125 mile) stretch of escarpment called the Cliffs of Bandiagara. These sandstone cliffs run from southwest to northeast, roughly parallel to the Niger River, and attain heights up to 600 meters (2000 feet). The cliffs provide a spectacular physical setting for Dogon villages built on the sides of the escarpment. There are approximately 700 Dogon villages, most with fewer than 500 inhabitants.

The precise origins of the Dogon, like those of many other ancient cultures, are lost in the mists of time. The early histories are informed by oral traditions (that differ according to the Dogon clan being consulted) and archaeological excavation (much more of which needs to be conducted). Because of these inexact and incomplete sources, there are a number of different versions of the Dogon’s origin myths, as well as differing accounts of how they got from their ancestral homelands to the Bandiagara region. The people call themselves Dogon or Dogom, but in the older literature they are most often called Habe, a Fulbe word meaning ‘stranger’ or ‘pagan.’ Certain theories suggest the tribe to be of ancient Egyptian descent. After living in the region of Libya, they are believed to have migrated to somewhere in the region of Burkina Faso, Guinea or Mauritania (different scholarly sources give different places for this period). Around 1490 AD, fleeing invaders and/or drought, they migrated to the Bandiagara cliffs of central Mali. Carbon-14 dating techniques used on excavated remains found in the cliffs indicate that there were inhabitants in the region before the arrival of the Dogon; these were the Toloy culture of the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC, and the Tellem culture of the 11th to 15th centuries AD.

Places of Peace and Power have a great article on Djenne, with some good pix.

Djenné, the oldest known city in sub-Saharan Africa is situated on the floodlands of the Niger and Bani rivers, 354 kilometers (220 miles) southwest of Timbuktu. Founded by merchants around 800 AD (near the site of an older city dating from 250BC), Djenné flourished as a meeting place for traders from the deserts of Sudan and the tropical forests of Guinea. Captured by the Songhai emperor Sonni ‘Ali in 1468, it developed into Mali’s most important trading center during the 16th century. The city thrived because of its direct connection by river with Timbuktu and from its situation at the head of trade routes leading to gold and salt mines. Between 1591 and 1780, Djenné was controlled by Moroccan kings and during these years its markets further expanded, featuring products from throughout the vast regions of North and Central Africa. In 1861 the city was conquered by the Tukulor emperor al-Hajj ‘Umar and was then occupied by the French in 1893. Thereafter, its commercial functions were taken over by the town of Mopti, which is situated at the confluence of the Niger and Bani rivers, 90 kilometers to the northeast. Djenné is now an agricultural trade center, of diminished importance, with several beautiful examples of Muslim architecture, including its Great Mosque.

Read the full article and look at the pix

Photos from my Flickr collection

This is so typical of driving in Mali. A tarmaced road only two lanes wide, just enough for a car and a bus to pass each other. Red laterite crushed stone either side, and dense brush.

Off the main road laterite dirt roads branch off to far off villages.

Dense scrub bush goes as far as the eye can see with small stunted trees pushing above it.

Source: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~anth/arch/niger/ceramics.html

Summary Description of the Pottery of the Jenne-jeno, Hambarketolo, and Kaniana Assemblages Copied and adapted from Mcintosh, Susan, ed. (1995). Excavations at Jenne-Jeno, Hambarketolo, and Kaniana (Inland Niger Delta, Mali), the 1981 Season. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Phase I/II (c. 250 B.C. - A.D. 350). The pottery assemblage in the earliest levels consists primarily of simple rims from ovoid-shaped open bowls, restricted globular jars, and domed potlids. Together, these constitute 70-100% of the rim sherds in early occupation levels. Rims from more complex forms (everted rims, carinated forms) are rare. Many of the Phase I/II vessels must have had rounded bottoms as the ratio of base to rim sherds is 12.5/100. Ring bases predominate, but flat and pedestal bases are also found. Several fragments of cylindrical potlegs were also recovered. Rim diameters are generally small, and there are remarkably few sherds with demonstrable signs of use as cooking pots.
In general, Phase I/II pottery was very well made. Paste was predominantly medium textured, with grog tempering. Occurring in variable frequencies was a distinctive category of thin-walled, finely prepared pottery that produced the high-pitched clinking of fine china when two sherds were knocked together. Its fine fabric is responsible for its high-pitched sound and refined appearance: the paste includes clay, variable amounts of quartz sand, and a small quantity of finely ground grog. Sherds with medium-texture paste have larger amounts of coarser grog. This fineware was produced only in Phase I/II. The care with which it was produced is evident not only in the fineness of the paste and thin walls but also in the exceptionally smooth and even surface finish. From the fine surface lines, it is clear that a tournette was used to turn the pot slowly during manufacture, just as it is by Jenne potters today. The careful smoothing was probably done with a piece of leather. One fineware rim and several others in the Phase I/II study collection had the characteristic dimpled surface created by the hammer-and-anvil technique which would have thinned the walls, removed irregularities, and smoothed the surface of the piece.
The dominant decorative mode in Phase I/II is twine impression. Over 75% of the body sherds are decorated with twine alone (plain sherds = <5% of the body sherds; slipped = 10-15%). Impression with a plaited strip roulette accounts for 70% of the twine-decorated body sherds. Rim sherds have smaller relative frequency of plaited strip roulette and larger frequencies of twisted twine rouletting due to the popular practice in Phase I/II of placing a zone of twisted twine roulette impression near the rim, directly above the plaited strip roulette impression covering the greater part of the pot surface. In addition to these two roulette types on the same pot, other decorative modes unique to Phase I/II include rockering, fine horizontal incision superimposed on other roulette types, cord-wrapped stick roulette, and red paint applied in cross-hatching on an unslipped zone below the lip of simple open bowls. Black and white paint and channeling (multiple grooves) are virtually non-existent in the early part of this phase. They appear at the end of the phase, foreshadowing the explosion in popularity of paint-and-channeled pottery in the succeeding phase. With the exception of single grooves and incision (on twine), other plastic motifs are largely absent throughout Phase I/II, although two examples of raised applique were recovered, both on singular objects that may not have been used in a domestic context.

More 

Metropolitan Museum of Art pages

Encompasses present-day Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger, and eastern Chad

	See also Guinea Coast and Eastern and Southern Africa. The influence of Islam and the deepening networks of trade spur the growth of several great savanna states, including the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai empires. Further development of metallurgy contributes to both material wealth and artistic production, and Arab reports depict the Ghana empire as the “Land of Gold.” As well as stimulating trade, Islam sparks great cultural and artistic innovation, producing newly syncretic mixes of distinctive regional and Islamic traditions. In 1324–25, the ruler Mansa Musa brings the wealth of the Mali empire to the attention of Europe, North Africa, and Arabia when he completes a pilgrimage to Mecca. Architectural traditions are transformed during the Mali empire. The construction of enormous adobe mosques such as those at Jenne and Timbuktu dates to the thirteenth century. The mosques standing today in West Africa are the product of long histories of construction and reconstruction. They nevertheless reflect the economic conditions, cultural histories, and architectural traditions of the medieval empires from which they originated. Read the full article

Fabric shop in Bamako. A wonderful collection of materials in a shop in Bamako

http://www.flickr.com/photos/81593724@N00/402001396/

Here’s a typical sight which can be seen all over Mali household items, arranged beautifully. This shop is in Timbuktu. http://www.flickr.com/photos/marshall-mayer/378779520/

Here’s a tourist shop - Farafina Tigne in Sevare (http://www.farafina-tigne.com/) - the Bead museum is upstairs,http://www.flickr.com/photos/45199850@N00/394872300/

Beds for sale at the side of the road in Bamako
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carsten_tb/384802580/

These older vehicles can be seen crawling along roads so heavily laden that the wheels splay out! Loading them is an art form and often takes several hours.

www.horizonsunlimited.com/…/malipho7.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/slozano/242547952

http://www.flickr.com/photos/azaleski/305824723/

I thought I would see what pix I could find of buses in Mali.

http://www.thisfabtrek.com/journey/europe/austria/20060419-vienna.php

Bamako to Segou road

Yes, they really are sheep on top of that bus - a common sight at Tabaski.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ferdinandreus/400554140/

Small green buses called bachees or dourounis run fixed routes in town, and to suburbs out of town.

www.sp.nl/…/20060121_workshops.shtml

Traffic in Bamako, nose to tail dourounis

http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinelaine/48078597/

Loading up one of the long distance buses

www.rockonthecoast.com/heinzelman/Mali.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/50731733@N00/76562281/