Abolutions

I like this photograph because it shows the presence of Islam in northern Mali and depicts everyday life here. This is a man preforming abolutions before prayer with the ubiquitous plastic 'salidaga' or kettle in the door way of his small shop in Mopti. Check out the Arabic graffiti on the door.

Caga {part II}

The Dogon do not name the village well or the broken pump (now the rusted, village equivalent to the garden gnome). However, the spring has a name, a formal name: Caga. It is one of the first words I learned when I came to live here and the first place I visited. It serves as the primary water source for at least two of the six quartiers of the village – approximately 200 people. It is the laundromat and public bath, a place where stories are told and where gossip is exchanged among the women. Children swim and play their carved flutes into the echo of the grotto. It is the foundation of the community. In fact, it may be the sole reason why the village exists.

“The past lies embedded in the features of the earth,” writes Keith Basso, an Anthropologist who lived and studied the Western Apache in southeast Arizona. “[It] shapes the way they think…Knowledge of places is therefore closely linked to knowledge of self, including one’s own community and to securing a confident sense of who one is as a person”. This examination of place – of home really – can be applied to people across the globe. Yes, even suburban middle class Americans like myself. Of course, the further we remove ourselves from communities – such as not knowing our neighbors, isolating ourselves in the comforts of the digital age – and the more we live above or beyond our ecosystems that surround us, the less this applies. I still believe that deep meaning of place is there in all of us. It’s there under the surface. It’s what we long for. For the Dogon, place and identity (both individual and communal) are closely linked, inseparable, and the collective memory of the Spring helps to shape this community.

Perhaps this is a contributing factor to why the pump sits forgotten, why women and children wind down the steep rocky trails that have taken lives from families, why, even now at the tail end of the dry season when only a few inches of water pool below the spring, people choose to come here rather than pull water from the well to the west of the village. These other places have no memory. They have no work or story involved in their existence.

Communities need to grow and build upon the foundation that has already been laid down. “Your not going to invent a new [village], instead you’re doing a strange archaeology, trying to enhance the old, hidden design”, states Jaime Lerner, the city planner of the Brazilian city of Curitiba, one of the most successful examples of sustainable urban planning in recent years. “You can’t go wrong if the [village] is growing along the trail of memory… [it] is the identity of the [village]”.

rainy season passtime

you would think that after nine months without rain all i would want to do would be to stand in the rain and sing praises. well, i did that. it turns out that it doesn't take much time before you get cold and take shelter. so what do you do on rainy days when you have alot of energy? jumping self-portaits of course! this is one of many that i took one rainy day with my new camera that i just recieved (in one piece)via the surprisingly reliable malian postal service. warning: jumping photos are addictive. just ask any volunteer in the mopti region. they may deny it, but i suspect that an investigation of their pictures would reveal the damning evidence: a suspended pair of feet, an awkward landing, a mass of mid flight hair or a deer-caught-in-the-headlights-late-jump stare.

Caga {part I}

To happen upon the village right now, at the end of the dry hot season, you would find a monochromatic, brittle, lazy landscape mostly devoid of color. The greens of the occasional neem or wild grape tree are exaggerated by the red-brown rock expanse that shifts slightly in the heat, threatening to swallow any cool breeze that may pass. At the edge of the village, the cliff drops abruptly. A sandstone scree joins the dirty tang colored dunes below in the Bonbo valley. Standing on the edge of the cliff you can see the Dogon plain beyond the valley to the south and east stretching through the dusty haze into Burkina. There is a subtle yet intimidating beauty here.

At first glance, nothing here even hints at the possibility of water. However, tucked in the folds and boulders of the eroding escarpment, a small wood grows; a veritable forest compared to its surroundings. A closer look reveals several species of trees not found on the plateau. A tangle of vines wind up the varnished stone walls. The Yellow-Billed Egret, the Canary, the Weaver and the bright turquoise Abyssinian Roller flit in the cool air created by the transpiring grove below. Small birds of prey perch in the high limbs overlooking the chasm. I have been told that monkeys come here in the drought years and that the once sacred caiman hides in the stacked boulders. At the head of the deep arroyo a small spring trickles out of the rock and pools, then disappears only to resurface 50 meters down the wash. This is the preferred water source of the Dogon who live here. They call it “Caga”.