Sociolingo’s Mali

Source: Earth Architecture

The Future of Mud: A Tale of Houses and Lives in Djenne

Thursday, November 15, 2007

The Future of Mud: A Tale of Houses and Lives in Djenne, a new film by Susan Vogel and presented by the Musée National du Mali, is the story of Komusa, master mason and heir to the secrets of Djenne architecture. He hopes his son will continue the family profession and maintain their world heritage city - but Djenne is connected to a global world now, and competing ideas about the future have arrived. Documentary footage and staged scenes tell an intimate story of family tensions, contemporary building practices, and the precarious future of the renowned mud architecture of Mali.

Treehugger writes of the film:

A “collective connection to earthen architecture is best seen in the film’s footage of the annual re-plastering of the town’s pride, the Great Mosque, which is the world’s largest earth building, in addition to being a distinguished UNESCO World Heritage site. The first earthen structure here on this site dates back to the 13th century and is re-plastered every year. The day-long, annual festival is truly a communal affair, with plenty of foreign tourists gawking on and filming the orderly chaos.”

photo of the Great Mosque of Djenne by Ferdinand Reus

The Future of Mud: A Tale of Houses and Lives in Djenne
Co-Produced with Trevor Marchand and Samuel Sidibé.
Edited by Harry Kafka. Music by Issa Bagayogo. In Bamana, French, English with English subtitles. Color, 58 minutes. Distributed by FRIF.com. Available fall 2007.

I’ve been trying to find information and reports from Terra 2008 which was held in Mali from 1-5 February 2008. So far all I found was an ended discussion forum on BBC NEWS about ‘Should Africa do away with mud buildings‘ which I thought was a very negative question - as did most of the respondents. It was also a strange question to ask on the week that 300 delegates were meeting to discuss the preservation of earthen architecture.

I did find one delegate report at Aluka Blog . By the way you may be interested to explore that blog as there are some really interesting links on Mali, and Djenne in particular.

Here is the information from the Getty Foundation who are funding the conference:

10th International Conference on the Study and Conservation of Earthen Architecture“

Bamako, Mali
February 2008

	Djenné Mosque. Photo: Leslie Rainer.

The 10th International Conference on the Study and Conservation of Earthen Architecture will be held in February 2008 in Bamako, Mali, West Africa. The conference is organized by the Getty Conservation Institute and the Ministry of Culture of Mali with the collaboration of Africa 2009, CRATerre-ENSAG, ICOMOS South Africa, and the World Heritage Centre, under the aegis of ICOMOS and its International Scientific Committee on the Earthen Architectural Heritage. Three hundred international specialists in the fields of earthen architecture, conservation, archaeology, scientific research and site management are expected to attend.

	Songho village, Dogon country. Photo: Leslie Rainer.

This is the tenth conference to be organized by the earthen architecture community under the aegis of ICOMOS since 1972, and the first to be held in Africa. It provides a unique opportunity to discuss and observe firsthand conservation issues particular to sub-Saharan Africa, a region rich in earthen architecture. During this conference, specialists will present papers and posters that reflect the latest research and practices in the study and conservation of earthen architecture worldwide.

The languages in official use during the conference will be French and English. A four-day postconference tour to Tombouctou, Mopti, Bandiagara and Djenné will be organized for a maximum of one hundred participants. Funding opportunities for participants from developing countries to attend the conference will be available.

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

Continuing my thoughts on Mali archaeology today, here is an article from a travel blog - Michael and Doria’s travel tales. The photos are about the best yet that I’ve seen of archaeology in situ in Mali, and I have taken the liberty of posting the whole article here rather than just a snippet. Please go to the blog and enjoy all the other articles too!

Djenne and Djenne jenno

The city of Djenne is known first and foremost for its magnificent mud mosque, built in 1906 on the site of several more ancient mosques dating back to the thirteen century. It’s hard to communicate the experience of standing in front of this building - its sheer size coupled with the otherworldliness of its aesthetics…

Only a few kilometers away is the Djenne Jenno - Old Djenne. It’s the original site of the city, abandoned when the town moved to its current site in the early thirteenth century. In the 1990’s there was an active dig here, but work stopped in 1999. The site is remarkable - it is absolutely covered in potshards.

Here’s a photo of Sarah taking a photo of one …

We spent a couple hours wandering around, and could have stayed longer. But we were accompanied by the director of the little archeology museum on the site, who wanted to get back. I have a hunch he was along primarily to make sure we did not remove any artifacts.

Here is a fragment of a black pot with elaborate desgins etched into the surface…

Further along we came upon the ruins of the cemetery. Burial was in large urns, in foetal position. I was startled to see the occupant of this one so plainly visible. At first I thought it rude to photograph him-or-her, but then seeing how he was tucked in so cosy and sleeping comfortably all these hundreds of years, I took a photo anyhow.

But let’s not leave Djenne on a note of death. It’s a very lively town. We spent new years eve there - Doria and I downed quite a few Grand Castels, the Malian beer in the the big, big bottle. On New Year’s day Sarah took this shot, which shows how the life of the town goes on not indoors, but on its rooftops and in its courtyards.

The mosque of Bla, Sikasso Region, Mali, originally uploaded by Malilady.

This is one of the larger mud-brick mosques in Mali.