San and Mopti

After breakfast under the frangipanis off we went to San, an animist village for what was the most incredible experience of this trip if not all trips, as we thought at this point. Every three years, the villagers replace the wooden trunks around their sacred well and rebuild the mound around it. We just happened to turn up for this and be allowed, for a small fee, to observe; again, it feels like we are the only Toubabs in Mali. The chicken had been sacrificed and its feathers wee at the head of the well. The men wee all around the top of the mound around the well, the leaders intent on advising the younger en how to lay and trim the logs. There was much shouting and drumming and sawing to the rhythm of the tm tams. It was intense, focussed work and around the well women of all ages danced and younger boys pick axed at the mound, while we two females toubabs at the rim of hr well worried that we were the real sacrifice...but, no. All was well; the final log was cut to size. Oh, wow, speechless, awesome! Everyone was so happy when the deed was done. We went in to San itself and saw its beautiful mud mosque and enjoyed Capitaine fish and salad not believing our luck. However, yet more was to come.

We arrived in Mopti which is the cross roads of the fish trade. If you look at a map you will see that Mopti is directly north of Ouagadougu and Burkina Faso and the coast further south, and all points in Mali to where the seafood is transported. It is as if we have landed in another magical universe of beautiful people and products. The banks of the Niger are CROWDED with hard-working people busy catching fish, selling fish, trading their wares and they don't seem at all to mind us tasting, questioning, wandering around in awe at the sight.: spices and dried and fresh fish galore, slabs of salt, calabasses, the big dried gourds used for serving food, men recycling huge, blue metal oil cans into nails to make pinasses or boats. A teaming, purposeful, beautiful tableau on the banks of the Niger. All followed by a pinasse trip across the river to an island opposite in the sunset to learn more about their nomadic lifestyle: go where the fish is;

And on the Hotel Amberjelé, hotel de charme, just outside of Mopti for organic French food in a setting modelled on Dogon style.