A trip to Mali is an ethnical, historical and architectural trip that from Bamako, "crocodiles' bank" reaches the universe of Dogon people, crossing the site where the Bani and Niger rivers meet and we find Mopti "the Venice of Mali", with Djenné "the mud town", and at last Timbuktu' "the queen of the desert", about which is said:
it is better to see with one's eyes rather that to be informed by others...

For the ancient Romans, for the men of Middle Ages and Renaissance, Africa evoked images of wealth and sumptuous kingdoms. It was the cradle of wisdom and civilisation. In the vast region crossed by the Niger river, in the period corresponding to our Middle Ages, different kingdoms originated. These kingdoms were very developed civilisations under the social, political and cultural point of view in regard to Islamism and Christianity. Many of the territories that built up the so called sudanese kingdoms are today part of the Republic of Mali. In this region the Niger river shapes a big bend that enters the desert in the north. Thanks to its favourable position, this region became the natural meeting place of all the trans-saharians trades that connected the Black Africa with the Mediterranean Sea. The news of that historical time tells us about caravans full of precious wares as ivory, amber, silk tissues and glass works, spices and perfumes, but particularly gold and salt, and about the legendary king of Mali Kankan Moussa, that left to Mekka with a thousand dromedaries and so much gold to make collapse the Gold Market in Cairo for the following fifteen years, and then also about the splendor of the courts, of rich libraries and coranic universities. Big traditions, a great past, that can be breathed in the methaphisical beauty of clay architectures, in the shady courts of the mosques, in the pages of precious manuscripts, in the proud elegance of the peoples. For centuries the Niger river was defined by the arab reporters "the Nile river of the far West". Like the Nile it flows across the desert and was the witness of great civilisations: on the banks prospered medieval kingdoms; river towns like Djenné, Timbuktu' and Gao, rich of history and culture, they were called the ports of the desert, apart from being for the river itself. Here the last caravans of the salt met the slender boats of the fishermen and the big "pinasse" of the the traders Songhai, Malinké, Bambara, loaded of wares and passengers. In the river ports of Mopti and Segou, hundreds of pirogues travel on the water, and hundreds more just rest at the pier. Coming and going of pirogues and wares, people of land and people of river that give birth to a colourful carousel of men dressed in blue djellaba or white burnus, women dressed with clothes in brilliant colours and children of all ages, vendors of toasted seeds and sugar fritters, sheep and zebus, baskets, carpets and bundles.

BAMAKO, the capital

It is the capital of Mali with a population of about 1,5 million inhabitants. It is a very active town, with motorbikes and cars, people that buy and sell, and do business under the hot sun of noon. In spite of all its problems, the town is very lively. Unfortunately the Grand Marché (big market) in colonial style was destroyed by a fire in 1933; sooner or later it ought to be rebuilt, but for the moment the stalls are arranged along the sidewalks and the side roads where you can get lost very easily because all roads seem to be the same. Here it is possible to find any kind of ware: from indigo blue and golden materials to african music tapes. There is also the typical vendor of traditional medicine. The National Museum is one of the best ethnographic museums in west Africa and is sheltered in a building inspired by old clay brick structures still nowadays visible in Djenné: there is a rich collection of tapistries, masks, tissues, funeral furnishings and weapons. The museum is trying to preserve with any means the artistic treasures of the country, but the fight against the collectors of art that illegally buy in Djenné, for a few cents, the old clay statuettes is foreshadowed quite hard.
Bamako faces the west bank of Niger river. The central district, where can be found the main markets, shops and restaurants, and also some hotels, are situated in the triangle formed by Av. du Fleuve, Blvd. du Peuple and Av. van Vollenhoven. The big Market (or better what remains of the market after a devastating fire) is right in the middle of this triangle.
The town is very busy and has nothing particular to offer apart the dirt and the poverty that is everywhere. The very few hotels are: Hotel Salam, Sofitel, Mande and smaller hotels of lower category.

The town has 130 thousand inhabitants and is located at the watersmeet of rivers Bani and Niger. It is a commercial town 100 years old. In the middle of the XIXth century, Al Hajj Umar made of what was a Bozo fishing place a military zone for his troops at war in the Massina. King Ahmadou, the successor of the muslim conqueror wanted that Mopte, which means "the reunion" in Fulani language, later called Mopti, became the town of the peace and of the reunion of his people. From that moment, the town held the role of melting-pot of civilisations, but became also a commercial centre where the people that came from the south with their canoes would have met camel-drivers from the desert. Consequently Mopti took the place of the medieval role of Djenné as a commercial crossing, where was sold salt and dry fish, cola nuts, millet and rice. The Bambara from Bamako and Ségou, the Dogon people from the cliff of Bandiagara, the Soghai and Tuareg from Gao and Timbuktu', in a few words, all the Malians met in Mopti. Around the port in town can be heard speaking all the languages of the different ethnic groups. Every day there is the market in Mopti, but the heyday is on Thursday, the market day par excellence.
The main hotel of the town is the Kanaga**** located on the banks of the Bani river. It is also worth to visit the Small Market with fruit and vegetables, fish and meat, and on the second floor are located many shops with any kind of souvenirs. It is also suggested to take a tour with a pinasse along Bani and Niger rivers, perhaps stopping at a Bozo village (fishermen) not far away.

A town with two faces, of clay and water. After the big autumn floodings, Djenné becomes a town lagoon, reflected on the calm waters of the Bani river, tributary of Niger river. As in Ganvié, the town built on piles in Benin, the pirogues full of people and wares go until under the houses, whose pinnacles fronts inspire in Djenné, during the sunset, that irreal aspect between land and water of an exotic Venice. Djenné already existed when Rome had still to meet Carthago. Fragments of pots, glass, pearls, jars and clay statues, warriors and knights of different sizes have brought to light twenty three centuries of history buried on a hill on the outskirts of the city, giving the chance to recontruct the film backward of the most ancient urban reality of west Africa. Heart of the great black sudanese empires and known on the great business route, Djenné raises, in the old fourteenth century, a cathedral of clay, whose splendour celebrates the opulence of a rich and active mercantile class. The commercial importance of the town can be understood also in the elegant style of the private houses: those of Djenné are houses of merchants that love to show off their welfare. Along the alleys, in the small dusty squares, under the shadow of the portals, terraces and façades, the today traveller can still read the traces of a splendid, unknown African Renaissance.
The Mosque of Djenné, favourite subject of photographers, completely built in clay and complete of overhanging towers, stands out in the desert panorama of the region. It is the biggest clay structure in the world, as well as one of the most refined examples of Sudanese architecture. The only inconvenience is that it tends to melt with the rain and it must always be readjusted at the end of the humid season.
Unfortunately the non muslim visitors cannot get inside the mosque from when a fashion photographer disturbed its quietness with a horde of models running everywhere inside it. Every Monday, just outside the mosque, in Djenné takes place the biggest market of all Sahel. A moltitude of traders belonging to all malian ethnic groups, invades the square with beasts of burden that transport the goods, whereas the rafts continuosly bring people and animals pushing the long poles in the shallow waters of the Bani river. In an extraordinary totality of colors are piled up, on the ground or under small tents, edible tubers and vegetables, aphrodisiac as the cola nuts, salt slabs from Sahara mines, fresh and smoked fish, millet, rice and hot pepper, karkadé and black pepper. Everything can be found in this market: silver, gold and amber necklaces for the rich Bambara and Soniké women, concoctions of the traditional pharmacopoeia, dyed and embroidered leather shoes, bags and saddlebags of caravaneers, perfumes and ointments, materials and vegetable dyes, imported plastic or porcelain tableware, striped blankets from Timbuktu', old sacred arab books, baskets full of golden mangoes or papaias, overflowing peanut basins that wait along a road or at the entrance of the villages. All Africa is a land of markets, and the market is above all woman: women with their sleeping children tied up on the hips or sleeping among the baskets, women that travelled on foot tens of kilometers of track bringing on the head, with the confidence and elegance of queens, chickens, fruit and vegetables.
Djenné is about 400 kilometers from Bamako, and can be reached by bus or by "pinasse" (big motor canoes).

The main attraction of a trip to Mali is probably a trekking in the Dogon region, going along the Bandiagara Cliff. The Dogon people has a complex and varied culture, and it is famous for its masterpieces: an itinerary on foot is therefore the ideal solution to observe from near the pink sandstone houses and the barns excavated in the rock walls, and to learn something about gardening in the smallest spaces. As a matter of fact, the Dogon cultivate tiny plots of land along the edges of the rocky walls. If you visit Mali during the month of April it is possible to attend the Fête des Masques (masks feast), with dances and millet beer. The other important festival of the Dogon society is the market day, which falls every five days: it is a moment of big excitement for the village, which reaches the climax around noon and is usually animated with jokes and gossip, and by the ubiquitous millet beer.
The Bandiagara Cliff is 135 kilometres long, and spreads out from Douentza to the north, and to the outskirts of Bankas to the south. Bandiagara, Bankas and Sangha are all very popular departure localities for trekking: Bandiagara and Bankas are 550 kilometres from Bamako, whereas Sangha is located 40 kilometres to the north. These villages can be reached by plane, by bus or by boat from Bamako till Mopti, and by a small bus or collective taxis from Mopti forward. The trekking from Sangha to the dogon village lasts two and half hours, with overhanging rocks, hardly walkable by whom suffer from vertigo. It is suggestable to have climbing boots and at least a bottle of water. Nevertheless, tourists are always accompanied by local boys that are available to help during the descent down the escarpments. Of course a tip is always well accepted as thank-you.

Communication lines between the peoples of black Africa and the saharian Countries, cradle of ancient civilisations, the Niger river reserves still nowadays the charm of the big rivers. Along its flow die the caravan tracks of once upon a time, river landscapes alternate with sand dunes, clay towns with groups of huts and villages, the colourful crowds of the ports and the long pirogues leave the space to the slender fishermen's boats that swing between sky and land. The malian people call it "Djolibà", that in malinké language means " the big blood". Arterial road of vital importance in the life and economy of Sahel's peoples, the Niger river rises from Guinea, in the massif of Fouta Djalon, crosses Mali for about two thousand kilometres forming a huge internal delta, laps the desert in the northest point of its flow designing a great bend between Timbuktu' and Gao, ethnic and cultural limits between the two worlds, and then flowing anew to the south and reaching the Atlantic Ocean in the Gulf of Guinea crossing the Republic of Niger and Nigeria

Town of the sciences, of flourishing coranic universities, of wise and venerated Marabouts, born at the crossing of the big caravan tracks that connected the Mediterranean Sea with the Black Africa across the huge desert areas of Sahara, Timbuktu' reached its highest splendour in the XVIth century with a population of hundred thousand inhabitants (nowadays only 35 thousand), a cross-section of different ethnic groups of the Sudanese empires of that time: Berbers, Arabs, Moors, Haussas, Fulans, Songhais, Bambaras, Tuaregs, that settled building each of them one's own district, attracted by the profitable commercial perpectives and by the reputation of the intellectual environment. The islamic university of Timbuktu' became so famous that from Egypt, from Persia, from Spain and from all the Maghreb poured in men of letters, theologians and professors. Under the clay colonnades of its mosques studied and discoursed twenty thousand young men, hundreds of scribes compiled in Arabic the volumes of a huge library that left very old illuminated Qurans, treatises of physics, theology and astronomy. The library of the muslim marabout Ahmed Baba, preserves 12 thousand precious manuscripts, and represents the memory of the town. Timbuktu' appeared for the first time on a map of the XIVth century. The cartographer called it Tembuch. The Tuaregs that three hundred years before had founded a settlement at the borders of Sahara desert had entrusted the daily life with a woman whose name was Bouctu. From then Timbuktu' (Tombouktou for the French speakers), the well of Bouktu, has driven the men crazy. Legend town, myth town of every traveller, border town, mystery town , "queen of the desert". Fifty two days of travel by dromedaries from Zagora, in Morocco; fifteen days of caravan from the salt mines of Taudéni, three days of navigation from Mopti: Timbuktu' really exists. Town of sand and dust, town crumbled and dilapidated. Bruse Chatwin, years ago, scornfully said of it: "It is not nice at all". He is right. He is completely wrong. The Tuaregs explain: "The Word of God, the small stories, the happy tales, the wise things can be found only in Timbuktu'". A town where women show only one eye because no man in the world could "support their look without getting crazy". A town without walls because "its beauty, by itself, would stop every enemy". Timbuktu' is also the five hundred pillars that hold up the vaults of Djinguere-ber mosque, built in 1325.
Plates built into the clay walls remind the houses where the first white men lived in Timbuktu': the english major Gordon Laing, who was killed by his men and could not narrate his venture; the french explorer René Caillé that arrived disguised as an Arab; the german geographer Henrich Barth that needed five years to cross the desert. And we don't have to forget that Donald Duck, in order to run away from Uncle Scrooge, was always hiding himself in Timbuktu', unachievable place.
The best way to reach Timbuktu' is sailing along the river, either with passenger boat or with a pinasse. If the level of the river is too low and does not allow the passage of the boats, you can use an off-roader. The distance between Mopti and Timbuktu' is about 420 kilometres. From Mopti to Douentza the road is asphalted; then starts a dirt road 200 kilometres long that takes to the river, which can be crossed by ferry; then starts the road lined of eucalyptus trees, 15 kilometres long, to the the mythical Timbuktu'. During the journey no trafic, hotels or restaurants are met. It is important to bring with water and a good driver that is also mechanic in case the car stops. The desert is only with bushes and nothing more. Here and there, sometimes, some huts and goats...

The most used word around: Tubàbu (white man). The children are the first that call the turists using this word,
and asking for a cadeau (present).

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