Hiking in Dogon Country, Part I

The quality of a guided tour depends on the guide. It sounds obvious, but even the most spectacular sights can be ruined by a guide who’s annoying, uninformed, or an outright scam artist. In Africa, especially, near any place frequented by tourists beware the legion of people who approach offering goods and services. We called them “faux types,” literally, fake people. “My friend, my friend,” they say, grabbing your arm, imploring you to come look at their trinket shop, or to employ them to show you around the touristy sights. While most aren’t trying to rob you outright, they do seem to compete to offer the least value at the highest possible cost. Never trust a stranger who greets you as “my friend.”

That’s why we called Omar. Omar’s name had been passed down by generations of Peace Corps volunteers as the guide to call if you go to see the cliff dwellings and magic of the famous Falaise de Bandoriga in Mali, better known as Dogon country. Omar, people told us, was friendly, knowledgeable, fluent in English, and inexpensive. 8000 CFA per day, per person, food and lodging included. For a five day hike that totaled 40,000, plus 10,000 for transport there and back, and another 10,000 to cross the border from Burkina. In all we paid 60,000 each, or about $120, for a five day vacation. That was affordable even for volunteers.

Eight of us crammed in a bush taxi in the Burkina border town of Ouahigouya, along with luggage and another six or seven Africans, plus the driver and his assistant, filling in all possible cracks in the twelve passenger van. We were concerned because Mali had just jacked up visa prices for US citizens to $200 in retaliation for the high prices the US charged Malians. Arriving at the border, however, the official stamped us in for the usual twenty bucks. There was no formal visa, and it’s likely the money went straight in his pocket, but we were successfully into Mali and unconcerned. Another hour in the car and we arrived in Koro, gateway town to Dogon Country, where we met Omar. He seemed a bit reserved at first, which seemed comical looking back on it. Later we realized he was waiting to get a handle on the group dynamic before unleashing the full force of his own personality.

After lunch, we set off in a hired station wagon to cross 49 kilometers of desert to the base of the cliffs. “How long will it take?” we asked our guide. “Oh, a few hours maybe,” he answered. “It’s hard to say. It rained last night . . .” And in fact we had to make several stops when the car got stuck in thick mud, all the guys jumping out to push. We made other stops in the small villages along the way, searching for gasoline, since Koro had run out of fuel. Eventually the road got too sandy to continue and we hiked the last three kilometers to the village where we were to spend the night, the cliffs looming up in front of us. Besides his backpack Omar carried a large crate of breakfast supplies on his head.

On the walk, the relationship with our guide blossomed. This was where his English skills came in handy. We all spoke French, but our conversations among ourselves were naturally in English. Omar understood everything and quickly picked up that our maturity level was at a lowpoint. Fortunately, so was his. “Shut up!” he told us anytime we said something stupid or provocative, which was frequently. That might not be the behavior you normally want out of a guide, but we deserved it.

Regrettably, I didn’t record any of the village names. The first one we stayed at was a sight to see itself, set right at the base of the cliff. Houses were perched on all various levels of rocks, with narrow pathways winding and climbing between them. Some houses were built out of the familiar mud brick, but most of them were unmortared stone, attractive to look at and a lot more durable than mud. Ladders made from solid logs with notches chopped out of either side for steps led up to the flat roofs, where people slept in hot season. High up on the cliffs above, totally inaccessible, were little man sized holes in the rock, homes for spirits of the long since departed Tellem people who built them. Some people say the Tellem flew up to their little caves. Others claim that a few centuries ago, the climate was wetter and vines covered the cliffs, allowing people to climb up and down. Take your pick.

Our hotel featured a small courtyard, some stuffy rooms, and a spacious roof. There was actually a toilet, minus the seat and tank, the stool balanced over a latrine hole. As we climbed to the roof to enjoy the evening, Omar warned us not to jump up and down for fear of collapse, and casually mentioned that he had ordered some dolo, the local millet beer . . .forty liters of it. Our kind of guide.

Dinner was pork, beans, and more dolo, and afterwards we spread out on the sleeping pads provided. “If you have to use the bathroom, you can just go off the side,” Omar said, “But please don’t forget you’re on a roof.” “Don’t forget you’re on a roof,” he repeated, many times, making us wonder what disasters had happened before.

The roof was cool and breezy, at least until some strong winds whipped up and we barely mobilized to get all the things down the ladder into the rooms before the thunderstorm hit. We were stuffy then, but dry. Farting, though, became a serious problem. Beans and dolo are a potent combination.

Breakfast was toast, with honey, vache qui rit cheese product, jam, and “Major Cream,” Africa’s answer to Nutella. These were the items Omar had carried in on his head the day before. Plus Nescafe- instant coffee, and lots of it. It’s nasty, but in a testosterone fueled environment, how many scoops you can stomach turns into a challenge.

Our morning hike took us up a crack in the cliff to a village on top, then followed a stream down the other side and back around the cliff face to where we started for lunch. The distances we hiked each day weren’t long- maybe four to six kilometers in the morning, and the same in the evening, but the terrain was strenuous, ascending and descending the cliffs several times per day. Plus, though the June rains had started, it was still the tail end of the hot season, and the long lunch break from noon to four to avoid the midday sun was a welcome one.

So up we scrambled that first morning, huffing and puffing our way to the top, our guide chain smoking all the way. We finally arrive at the summit, to find a great view, and . . . cell phone reception. That, and a village. The children came running as Omar explained what we were looking at. Up here, all the houses are built of rock, because any mud would have to be carried up from down below. Except they still go to the trouble to build the granaries from mud because they don’t know how to build them from rock. Why the knowledge didn’t carry over from houses to granaries was never satisfactory explained.

We also looked at some fetishes, which were pointy rocks with white millet paste poured on top. I was expecting to be cursed at any second, but to me they just looked like random rocks that birds had used for bathrooms. There were also some special houses we weren’t allowed to look in because they were reserved exclusively for menstruating women. Our group did number two females but neither had the courage to step forward and take a peek.

Omar seemed to know everyone in the villages, greeting the old people as we passed, explaining which ones we should give kola nuts to. I thought it odd that these people’s lives should be tourist attractions. Plenty of people deal with tourists for a career: Disneyland employees, park rangers, Omar himself. But here we were walking among people’s actual houses, gaping at them as they went about their business. At least they got some kola nuts out of it. The nuts are a strikingly bitter meat you chew up and suck on, providing a burst of energy not unlike scooping three heaping spoonfuls of Nescafe into your cup. It’s a tourist tradition to hand them out, a small way of saying “thanks for letting me stare at you.” Naturally, we got into them ourselves, leaving precious few to hand out to the village elders.

As we descended the other side of the cliff, we stopped by a pool to rest. There were fish, but they were sacred but we weren’t allowed to catch them. Later we passed a tiny swamp filled with crocodiles, which were also sacred. Shortly thereafter we ate lunch back at our hotel, consisting of macaroni and chicken. Omar asked what we wanted for dinner. “Sacred fish!” we answered. Or, maybe, sacred crocodiles. “Shut up,” he told us. “Can I go in the menstruation house Omar?” “Shut up.” He had learned quickly how to deal with us.

Hiking in Dogon Country, Photos

You get what you pay for.



Marching through the desert to the cliffs.



You need a cigaratte break there, O?



The rock village where we spent the first night.



Climbing the cravasse.



"Je demande bon-bon!"



We're probably getting cursed for this.



The cliffs run for 150 kilometers and are over 1000 meters tall at their highest.



This is a serious head rush.



Step back from the abyss!



I'm definitely getting cursed for this one.



An abandoned village.



Designs on the walls.




Photos by Josh Mitchell

Hiking in Dogon Country, Part II

Around four we left our lunch stop and headed for a different crack in the cliff. While we climbed, a horde of kids came down, wearing school uniforms and practicing their English on us: “Hellohowareyoufine!” Everyday, they make the same trip, up the cliff and four kilometers to school, then back down in the evening. My Dad claims he walked ten miles in the snow to get to school, but he never had to climb a 600 foot cliff.

Once we reached the top the rest of the hike was flat. Arriving at our destination village, we were again assaulted by children, hands outstretched. “Ca va? Je demande bonbon! Photo? Photo? Mille francs!” They wanted candy, and for us to pay them to take their pictures. This is an annoying facet of Africa; the children who have been conditioned to beg from tourists. One thinks of a “perfect Africa” in which no one gives out handouts and the kids sit quietly playing, or doing whatever it was they did before they learned that white people could be suckered into giving out presents. It doesn’t matter, though. Regardless of whether we like begging children or whether that fits our notion of what Africa should be, we were dealing with the Africa that exists, not some idealized vision. Anyway, a Dogon’s idealized vision of the place probably doesn’t include tourists walking by staring at him every day, so I can’t really complain.

The hotel was much the same as the previous night’s, a good meal and a sleeping area up on the roof. The next morning our walk followed the cliff top, passing a few deep fissures that would have made good jumping-off spots if they’d had a little more water in them, thirty or forty feet down. Arriving at our lunch stop, we deposited out bags and made a loop down the side of the cliff to an old village, saw the fetishes and menstruation houses, then right back up for lunch. After the break we kept on, stopping at a mini cliff to see some spirit dwellings, only ten feet up this time instead of hundreds. There was just enough space to crawl inside, if you kicked the bones out of the way.

The whole walk we were farting uninhibitedly, fueled by more beans. “Shit!” Omar exclaimed every time someone fired off. “Do we fart more than any group you’ve ever had, Omar?” we asked. He assured us it was true. Someone farted again. “Shit!” he said. “Do you ever shit your pants, Omar?” “Shut up.”

The village where we slept that night was perched on the most spectacular cliff yet. We walked to the very edge to view the sunset and crawled out to look into the abyss. It is a strange feeling, looking straight down 600 or 700 feet. Though my body could not have been more stable, with 90% of it on solid rock, only my head poking over the edge, it still felt like I was going to fall any second, cast into oblivion by the next gust of wind. An exhilarating, if terrifying way to go. Slowly, carefully, I inched back away from the brink.

On another cliff we spotted some goats in a seemingly inaccessible location. What choice did they have but to die there? But when we looked the next morning, they had gone. Maybe they jumped . . .

One thing you might not realized about tiny Dogon villages perched on cliffsides is that they sell handles of gin for a few dollars. We took advantage, and learned later that Omar covered the cost of them as part of the tour package. Another point in his favor. Did he have an ulterior motive though? “If any of you get too drunk to climb up to the roof, I can find a place for you to sleep on the ground,” he assured us. Oh really. “How many Peace Corps girls have you slept with, Omar?” He wouldn’t tell us.

“There are girls that call me from the US; they want me to come live with them. But I’d never do that,” he explained. “I like it here better. Plus, no woman would want to live with me. I am very complicated. I had a wife but she left me. I am too complicated.”

The next day we struggled back to the edge of the cliff to see the view in the morning sunshine. We looked at miles and miles of desert, small bushes sprinkled about in the sand, a town at the base of the cliff, and a cell phone tower, barely visible in the distance. From there we visited a hunter’s courtyard, snake and monkey skins draped over branches to cure, and animal skulls sticking out of the mud walls.

Our morning hike skirted a gorge, went straight up a small cliff, then across the plateau, passing through another village. The descent went down a crack, crossing crevasses on the traditional ladders laid horizontally. About half way down we passed a big pile of hay bales. People were carrying them down and got tired, so they left them, to come back later and finish the job. I thought it would be easier to just throw them off the cliff.

At lunch we met a few members of our party who had felt too ill to do the difficult cliff descent and had instead gone down through a ravine. They’d been waiting for an hour when we arrived. “Omar, where’s the bathroom?” someone asked. “What, you’ve been here an hour and now you ask me where the bathroom is? Go shit your pants in the corner!” the guide answered. He had learned well how to deal with us, but his demeanor was flexible: other volunteers had taken their parents on tours with him and reported no vulgarity whatsoever.

The afternoon walk was flat, notable for the cliffs looming above and the hordes of children that again charged us looking for handouts. We spent the night in Omar’s birth village, and I tried to ask him about the Dogon people, their legends, and the Sirius star. The Dogon are famous for their supposed oral tradition stating that the Sirius, or “Dog Star,” part of Orion’s belt, was in fact two stars long before modern astronomers confirmed the fact. There is some contention as to whether the Dogon came up with the idea on their own, or rather were influenced by early European explorers. Tom Robbins suggests that they learned in from space traveling frogs. I wanted to hear what an actual Dogon had to say.

Without too much prodding Omar started on a diatribe about superstition, tradition, witchcraft, and the state of being complicated. Unfortunately his accent could be a bit difficult to understand under normal circumstances, and we were most of the way through a bottle of gin so I didn’t catch most of what he had to say. One thing I did learn from the lecture is that a sorcerer, jealous of Omar’s success as a guide, tried to curse him by laying an egg on his doorstep. This was good to know, if it didn’t exactly answer my question about the star.

The next morning was another easy walk to the village where we were to be picked up. First, however, we climbed up the cliff side a short distance to get a closer look at an abandoned village. What we saw was more of the same: Sacred houses, menstruation houses, fetishes, and cracks in the cliff face filled with bones. The walls were decorated with animal skulls, geometric designs, and lizard reliefs made of mud. There was a meeting place on a small shelf of rock offering a good view of the village below and subsequent desert, though not as spectacular as from the cliff top.

And that was it for Dogon country. A car drove us back to Koro, where we said goodbye to Omar and caught the bush taxi back to Ouahigouya. The best testimony I can give our guide is in our later retelling of the trip: Every time someone asked, “How was Mali?” our response wasn’t about the spectacular rocks of immense scale, nor the fascinating villages and their traditions; no, instead, inevitably the first thing we said was “You gotta meet Omar.”

Someday We'll Look Back And Laugh . . .

Ah, ah, ah, yah, ah, ah, yah, yah, ah, no, no, NAY! I don't think so.

Part of the fun of traveling is meeting different people. Whether locals or fellow travelers, they add depth to to journey and make the stories more interesting. In many cases, they become the stories themselves. Who wouldn't want to hear about the drunken Kamba elephant killer, or DJ Pata Pata the dwarf? Out of all the colorful characters that I've encountered, it's easy to pick out the one who stands out the most, who made lasting impressions on my vocabulary, my health, my patience, and my sense of humor. A volunteer for Planet Drum in Ecuador, for privacy's sake we'll call her Henrietta.

Henrietta was a 63 year old Swedish woman, and right away you could tell something was off about her. "Ah, ah, ah, yah," she'd helpfully say as she stood over someone, watching what they were doing. She was travelling with a number of other Swedes, mostly in their early twenties. "Is this normal for Swedish people?" I asked them. "Are all of you going to act like that when you're old?" They assured me that even in Sweden, she was a strange character to say the least.

How would I describe Henrietta? Adventurous is one way. She was over twice the age of anyone else on her program. She was more than twice the age of anyone else volunteering at Planet Drum. That didn't stop her from coming out in the field with us, pitching in and getting her hands dirty. She tried to fend for herself as much as possible, always insisting on pulling herself up into the pickup truck herself at the end of the day despite offers of help. Of course, she was physically unable to perform a lot of the work like hole digging and trail clearing, so we always tried to find a low intensity job like stake painting for her to do. If there wasn't anything to do, she would find someone to stand over, get in the way, and say, "Ah, ah, ah, ah." It was important to keep her busy.

Another way to describe her would be stubborn. When she got an idea in her head, she was determined to carry it out, no matter how counter productive. One day, we held an open house outside city hall to promote our activities. There were a number of potted plants around, and Henrietta decided that they didn't look very nice. She then made six or seven trips back to the hostel, two blocks away, each time bringing a pitcher of water which she used to wash the dust off the plant leaves. She had decided that dust free leaves would improve our presentation, although I'm not sure the flooded courtyard that resulted was a big help. Another time, we were out in the field with trees to plant and a few dozen gallons of water to get them started. "Should we water these trees?" Henrietta asked, referring to some saplings that had not yet been planted.

"No, Henrietta," we told her, "We're going to carry them up the hill, plant them, and then water them."

"But they are thirsty!" she protested. We finally convinced her that it was annoying to carry muddy trees up the hill, we only had a limited amount of water, and it would do more good once the trees were already in the ground. "Ya, ya," she acquiesced. Or so we thought. We got back to work, only to look back and see her emptying the precious water jugs into the unplanted trees.

I got assigned to cook dinner with her a few times, which mostly meant I did whatever she told me, because any disagreement would lead to an unwinable argument. I followed her as she puttered through the market, and participated in ruining some good fish in the frying pan. Once, though, I had to make a stand, when we were making two separate stir-fries to accommodate the vegetarian in the house, one with chicken bouillon, one without. Henrietta set aside the tiniest amount of vegetables for the vegetarian dish.

"Henrietta, don't you think we should make more? Alex will probably want to eat more than that, and if we make too much, the rest of us can always eat it, but she can't eat the bouillon stuff."

"No, nay, nay," she said, "It's no good without bouillon. It tastes like nothing." I solved the problem without argument by tossing extra handfuls of vegetables into Alex's meal while Henrietta's back was turned. She also loved to pour massive amounts of salt into the dish, only to add even more to her plate once she served herself. That wasn't just her, though; it seemed to be a Swedish tradition.

Henrietta was also a very compassionate person. There were two dogs living in a small yard at her hotel, and she made it her mission to take them out on walks to the beach every day. When it came time for her to go back to Sweden, she spent hours making a sign-up sheet so volunteers could keep taking the dogs out. "Don't let us drink the ocean water or we will get diarrhea," it said, next to a nice picture of the dogs. She even emailed after she got home to ask if anyone was looking after them. In that case, I decided that lying to an old woman was the right thing to do.

The parakeet was another case of compassion. She found it at the greenhouse, injured and unable to fly. She caught it in a box and brought it back to the hostel, setting it up with water and some fruit to nibble on, and made a sign: "BIRD. DO NOT MOVE." The next morning, I looked in and saw the parakeet was gone, and actually believed for a second that it had gotten its strength back and flew out the window. That's when we found the body on the floor, with its head half eaten off. We lied about that one, too, telling her it had flown away.

Henrietta spoke English well but sometimes made mistakes. Once she told Clay, "After I leave I might send you naughty emails," taking us all aback until we realized she was talking about computer viruses. Other times, her comments translated all too well. When she was sick with giardia and couldn't come to work, she told us that when she went to the bathroom it was "like a waterfall."

The worst, though, was the scabies. We had a scabies outbreak at the hostel, and Henrietta got blamed for it. I am not totally convinced that she wasn't being scapegoated, but the story went like this: All the Swedish people had scabies in Quito and got treated for it, but Henrietta didn't believe she had it and didn't take the treatment. A few weeks later, the problem came back with a vengeance while they were at our hostel. Regardless of whether or not she actually was the cause of it, Henrietta's behavior while we tried to get rid of the bugs was nothing short of infuriating. Part of the treatment is that everybody has to do it, or the eggs or mites could survive in someone's skin or clothing and reinfect everybody. Well, she refused to treat herself until we threatened to ban her from the hostel, and even then I'm not entirely sure she went through with it. "I think you're all being quite hysterical about this," she told us as we put the hostel through a thorough cleaning. "Ooooh, scabies!" she said, wiggling her fingers in mock despair. "Yah, ah." Considering the location I'd been stricken with a particularly visible reaction to the mites, I had a hard time finding humor in the situation.

One big question we had about Henrietta was how many breasts she had. Sometimes it seemed like she had two normal ones, but from different angles it appeared there was only one. This led to a totally inappropriate amount of time staring at an old woman's chest until one day on the beach she changed out of her swimsuit right in front of us, which answered the question once and for all: one. A few weeks later, she told us about her treatment for breast cancer six years previously. The story helps explain why maybe a scabies outbreak doesn't seem like such a big deal, and does help build admiration for a woman willing to stretch her horizons and challenge herself, coming to do manual labor on a continent she's never been to before. True, she doesn't interact with the world in a completely normal fashion. But who does? I'm glad we lied to her about the parakeet. Why spread tragedy when there's a happy alternative of hope and recovery, even if it's fabricated?

Yah, yah. There were plenty of good times to remember: When she led daily stretching sessions before work, or when she poured herself a glass of cream thinking it was yogurt, or when she insisted on carrying my surfboard down the beach, a most unlikely sight.

Then again, there was the time she picked a scab off her arm at the dinner table while we were eating. When we pointed out that she was bleeding, she wiped up the blood with her finger and then licked it up. Maybe the bouillon wasn't enough flavor for her? Yah, yah, ah, ah, yah, ah.

In Through The Ear Hole

"Is that a hole in your ear?"

It's always a conversation stopper. It's been mistaken for a tick, a clod of dirt, and an earring. Whatever the initial reaction, we always have to stop whatever we're doing so I can explain.

There is, in fact, a hole in the top of both my ears. The left one is what people notice, easy to see for a person facing me. The right one is harder to perceive, asymmetrical with the left, only visible if I fold my ear over a bit. If my hair is longer no one even sees the left, but after a haircut it has a way of catching the eye, either a light or dark spot contrasting with the rest of my ear depending on the light and how I'm standing.

The hole is a Masai tribal marking, hearkening back to my study abroad program in Kenya. The Masai scar up their bodies in a variety of ways depending on the sect, including stretching their ear-lobes, branding circles on their cheekbones, and circumcising in a unique manner in which the foreskin is left attached, hanging down in two flaps. All those options sounded pretty drastic, painful, and ostentatious for an outsider. However, the smaller holes at the top of the ears seemed tasteful and discrete to a few friends and me, looking for an interesting way to commemorate our time with the tribe.

Our plan proved tricky to carry out. The Student Affairs Manager got wind of the idea and told us that while she couldn't forbid us from piercing our ears, none of the staff members were allowed to help us. That would have made it easy, since many of them were from the area and had family members who performed the ritual. Undeterred, we made the three mile walk from our campus into town during some free time to look for someone else who could do the job.

Here we faced the challenge of simply finding someone who spoke English. Kimana was a small town, and we walked from one end to the other unsuccessfully, even striking out at the New Paris, the bar where we'd go to drink warm Tusker beer whenever we got the chance. There was another bar nearby, this one filled with men playing pool. We were a little intimidated to approach them so we sent in Nicole, the least self conscious of the group. She caused quite a stir but found success; there was a man who spoke English, who talked to another guy who knew a guy whose mother could do the piercings. It sounded good to us so we arranged to meet them on the next market day.

When the market came around, we had plenty of questions, like would the procedure be safe? Would the old woman even show up? The whole class came in to town so our group snuck away to down a few Tuskers for courage and meet our contact, who led us to a hangar behind the bar. The mama was there, complete with a bucket of hot coals, which assuaged our health fears. Our course, AIDS in Africa was on every body's mind, but any unlikely chance of transmission would be nullified by the heat, which would also cauterize the wound and help prevent standard infections.

I held a few students' hair back while the mama took an ice pick, set it in the coals for a few seconds, then quickly pushed it through the cartilage in the upper ear. Then it was my turn. I sat, she stuck the ice pick in and out, did the other ear, and it was over. People always ask, "Did it hurt?" And it did, for a split second, the pain leaving as soon as it arrived as the nerves were burned by the heat. What I actually experienced was the vivid stimulation of four of the five senses: Feeling the brief but intense pain, seeing the skin turn white before the ice pick poked through my friends' ears, hearing the sizzling of burning flesh, and smelling the same-- a memorable experience, which was what we were going for.

And that was it. I kept acacia thorns in the holes for a few weeks so they wouldn't close up as the wound healed. It started to get painful again after a few days, but nothing unbearable. And other than a weird, oozy crust that built up periodically, I suffered no ill effects for it. One girl did get an infection in one of her ears that warped the shape of the hole, but everyone else was all right. We were a little worried that the Affairs Manager would be mad at us when she found out, but all she did was offer us some antibiotic cream. The whole operation was a pretty big success.

People's reactions have varied. "Did you take a hole-puncher to your ear?" is a common one. Some think it's cool, others weird. My mother had the best response, so taken aback she could only say, "At least you didn't get your **** split." She meant to say tongue, referring to a practice gaining headlines at the time, but was flustered and instead came up with a vulgar word for a piece of anatomy I don't have.

Seven years later, the holes are still there and showing no signs of closing up. I'm still happy with them, although I get tired of explaining sometimes when I have short hair and lots of people are asking. I don't usually tell the whole story unless someone shows particular interest, especially since it's generally in the middle of another conversation when I get asked. And I don't really do anything with the holes; no jewelry or beads, although I may occasionally stick a flower in there, or absentmindedly run my sweat-shirt tassels through them. So what good are they? They remind me of Kenya, and they give me something interesting to talk to girls about, which were the real motivations all along.

Development: A Cautionary Tale

The following story takes place in Burkina Faso and uses local diction and idioms, in particular the pervasive use of the French phrase "en tout cas," translated as "in any case."


The sun hung low in the sky while a light breeze filtered through the neem leaves overhead. Four men were seated together on a mat under the tree, along with several bottles and calabashes. Amadou took a swig of dolo.

"Soon, the rains will come," he remarked. "In any case."

"I can't wait," said the Peace Corps volunteer, accepting the extended calabash and drinking deeply. "The sun hurts me."

"Yes," Amadou continued, "the rains will come and people will go out to the fields to cultivate. If not, in any case, it's not easy."

"But why doesn't America send us sacks of corn flour?" asked Sulymane, sitting on the other side of the mat. "You feed it to animals instead. Here people need to eat. This is a poor country."

"Well, that's why you're going to work in the fields, no?" the volunteer responded.

"But it's not easy here," Amadou countered. "If you calculate, you see that, in any case, you put more money into cultivating than you get out of it."

The volunteer shrugged. "Well," he explained hesitantly, "there are people in America who say why should we care? That it's your problem, not our problem, and you need to figure out how to stand on your own legs."

"But we are here together, as brothers," Amadou argued. "If you have something and your neighbor does not, you must share."

"Isn't it better if your teach your neighbor to feed himself?" the volunteer asked. "In America, we say that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him to fish, you feed him for life."

"Exactly!" Sulymane exclaimed. "It's the technique that is important. But it's not easy here, in any case. You must send the sacks of flour."

Amadou poured the last of the dolo into a calabash. "It is finished," he said, fishing some coins out of his pocket. "Go buy another two liters," he instructed Noufou, the fourth man under the tree. Noufou was younger than the others and had been silent up to that point. He nodded and took the money, a sudden grin appearing on his face as he walked off toward the cabaret.

"Noufou, I'm going to hit you!" Amadou called after him, laughing.

"Why?" the volunteer asked, draining the last of his drink. "He's getting us dolo. Why would you hit him?"

"He farted!" Amadou said, still laughing. "Still you haven't smelled it?"

The volunteer chuckled. He had been instructed that farting was culturally inappropriate, and had so far in his service avoided the subject around host country nationals. Noufou's action was an interesting development.

"But don't you see," Sulymane continued, interrupting his thoughts. "We are a poor country. It's the sahel. It's dry! Some of us have something, but many have nothing. We try to help each other out, in any case, but it's not easy. We have a saying, 'If there are ten poor men and one rich man, and the rich man tries to feed everybody, you will have eleven poor men.'"

"That's just it!" the volunteer said. "So America is the rich man. How can we feed everybody? We will be poor as well."

Sulymane looked at him blankly. "No," he finally answered. "You are America. You have everything. In any case, you must send the sacks of flour."

Frustration mounting in his voice, the volunteer responded, "But what are you going to do for us? Why should a farmer in America work to grow corn if he is only going to give it away and get nothing in return?"

The argument was interrupted by Noufou returning with the dolo. Amadou filled the calabashes.

"In any case," he mused, "things will work out. Here we have dolo and friends and we can be happy today . . . Noufou!"

The fart was audible this time. Noudou doubled over with laughter as Amadou feigned hitting him.

"Sixteen years old and you fart like that!" Amadou admonished. "You will sleep with the pigs tonight."

The volunteer considered the situation. He was tired of serious conversation, tired of debate. If these guys thought farting was funny, why, he'd be the funniest guy in town. He felt one coming on, and held it for a few extra seconds to build up pressure before releasing.

He didn't stay to finish the dolo.

Years later, the volunteer would look back on his service and wonder if he made any real difference. Did the villagers take to heart his lessons and outreach work? Did they really want to apply the knowledge he tried to share, or did they just pretend to understand to appease him, and forget everything the day he left? He didn't know.

There was one thing, however, he was sure they would remember. One thing that truly left a lasting impression on the people of the village, and would surely be passed down to the future generations as well. No matter what they thought of his trainings and development theories, he knew that for the rest of their lives, they would never forget the day the white man shit his pants.

Food For Thought On A Wet Morning

At ten to seven in the morning, the sun has just begun its ascent over the horizon. Mist is heavy in the air, and dew thick on the ground. The walk to the farm is chilly but not unpleasant in a flannel jacket, though my feet and pant cuffs are immediately soaked from the wet grass. My path winds through some corn, following a waterway, dry now after a week with no rain. In the corn, I could be anywhere in Iowa, anywhere in the Midwest, nothing visible but row after row of identical green stalks. Likewise, I am invisible to any other human who might be up and about, unless someone should fly over in a crop duster. There are none operating this morning, anyway, or I wouldn’t be walking around out here.

The animals know I’m there, however; the birds flying overhead, the cat that disappears in the cornstalks, the grasshoppers who leap out of my path. The frogs, sitting by small puddle remnants of last week’s rains, surely recognize that I pass, but they are still too chilled to move, even when I prod them with my foot, amphibious bodies and brains not yet warmed up enough to react. Occasionally I spot canine tracks, a worrisome sign considering all the livestock around, but so far nothing has been attacked, except of course the turkeys.

Emerging from the corn back to the main path, I am pleased to see the cows and sheep, already at work grazing pasture below the woodlot. They are managed using rotational grazing techniques, moving nearly every day for maximum grass productivity, and as such I am never sure where I might run into them from day to day— behind the garden, down in the water way, or maybe up by the soccer field, a pleasing if distracting background for the players at practice. Wherever the animals are, they’re worth a few seconds to stand and watch while they happily eat and socialize with each other.

Then it’s up the hill towards the barn, when I’m surprised by a flock of small black birds flying overhead. Starlings, perhaps? I’m not sure. There are hundreds, and I turn back to see hundreds more, appearing from nothing in the sky. I might have thought them migrating for the winter but that they are headed north, maybe in search of a productive feeding ground for the day? The sun is up by now, already drying out the ground and my feet. It looks to be a good day in the garden.

First, though, I have to feed the pigs, in three sets: The pygmy sows, then the pregnant Berkshires due to burst with new babies any day now, and finally the piglets in the barn, scarcely able to be called piglets any more as they get fatter and fatter. Here, too, I linger to watch them feed, running from place to place around the trough looking for the best access to the corn feed, nipping, fighting, and squealing at each other. They’re cute and they look good to eat, a kind of funny combination to think about, so I stay and watch a moment more. Next I look in at the turkeys, and am mildly disturbed to see the hen roosting by herself. The chickens were recently moved to the other side of the campus, a story that is not without some tragedy: The lone guinea fowl in the flock was hatched with the turkeys and thinks that she is a turkey herself, spending all her time meandering around the yard with them and shunning the chickens. She was taken away from her turkey friends when the chickens were moved, however, and now suffers a major identity crises, missing the other members of her adopted race.

There was another turkey related tragedy this year when the school bought a clutch of babies and set them in their own trailer, letting them wander by day. Fewer came back each evening, until none at all were left and Scattergood was doomed to having a very sad Thanksgiving celebration this year. Now, peering in the hutch, the Tom Turkey is missing as well. I’m not too worried about him; out of all the fowl on the farm he is the most able to look after himself. In fact several of the students and faculty members are afraid of him and his aggressive, bulky stance. Even so, I’d be more comfortable if I caught a sign of him, and am relieved to hear his distinctive gobble soon after, from a mystery roost somewhere outside. Later he makes his appearance, strutting around with his mate and looking as proud as can be for a bird with a scaly head and a four inch flop of red skin hanging over his beak. His whole head is colored patriotically, in fact, red white and blue, which makes me wonder if that’s the real reason Ben Franklin thought turkeys should be the national bird instead of bald eagles.

“Shut up, turkey,” I tell him as he sounds off again—it’s a ridiculous noise— gobbling doesn’t begin to describe it.

But enough of the turkey talk. There are vegetables to harvest.

First up are the beets. Tom Robbins wrote a whole book about beets, Jitterbug Perfume, beginning the story "The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious." I’m not sure about the philosophy, but I’m just harvesting them, not writing about them, so I don’t worry about it too much. The beets give up their purchase on the soil easily, pulling cleanly out of the ground. I inspect them for rodent damage and unromantically toss them in the basket. Tom might be disappointed with me, but later I will scrub the dirt off the root and leaves, a more intimate handling maybe more in the spirit of the book.

Next is arugula, which looks like lettuce but is really more of a spice, with an extremely strong, bitter flavor. I twist the arugula in bundles as I pick it, with the odd leaf escaping and demanding a revision of the twist tie-- I’d hate to ruin someone’s day with loose arugula. Another concern is the thistles. They are small but ubiquitous in this part of the garden, threatening to take over to such an extent that I joke that Mark has given up on vegetables to become a thistle farmer. Once they take hold, thistles are nearly impossible to get rid of. The roots shoot down six feet underground and send up new stalks from below, while plants allowed to flower and go to seed spread millions more potential baby thistles through the air, attacking the landscape from all directions. You can’t stop thistles, you can only hope to contain them, and a number have popped up right in line with the arugula row. I’ve been pricked by enough of the things to find the idea of them turning up in someone’s salad perversely hilarious, but the victims might not be so amused, so I am careful to exclude them, regretfully, from the bundles.

My next stop is the pepper patch. They produced prolifically, with dozens of fruits hanging off each plant. The trouble is that all the rain has delayed their ripening, so a kind of scavenger hunt ensues as I scour each plant for the good, bright red showcase peppers hidden amongst all that are still green. In the end my basket contains a number of greens anyway, not because there aren’t enough reds but because the plants are fragile and from time to time I accidentally break off errant stalks in my rummaging. The green fruits aren’t as sweet as the reds, but they still taste pretty good in a stir-fry. I’ll eat them, in any case.

Normally we would wait until later in the morning to pick tomatoes, until the dew had totally dried up so we wouldn’t spread disease between the plants. At this point in the year, however, the tomato plants have already taken a pretty serious beating, so it doesn’t really matter anymore. A nasty blight attacked from below, browning the stalks and leaves from the bottom on up. There is talk of some chemical agents made from heavy metals that can combat the blight, but certainly nothing usable in an organic garden, so we have watched helpless as it gradually takes over the entire plant. If that’s not enough, horned tomato worms hit from the top, big green caterpillars that munch off all the tender new fresh leaves. So the tomatoes are in bad shape, under assault from above and below, but the fruits are still there, bright red spots hanging off on an otherwise brown, dead looking plant. They don’t taste as good as they might-- excessive rain is also a culprit here, as tomatoes need a bit of heat and drought stress to really nail the perfect, sweet flavor, but they’re still better than not eating a tomato. The farm produces red hybrid tomatoes, plus a wide variety of heirlooms-- green and yellow and red, striped, orange and pink, tomatoes the size of softballs, tiny ones that look like peaches, and more. The real stars, though, are the sun gold cherries, the perfect snack, sugary and tasty even under less than ideal growing conditions.

Next on the list are the cucumbers and zucchinis. Now, garden work often lends itself to lowbrow humor. There are urination puns with peas and leeks, jokes about hoes, and of course no end of comment about the animals constantly shitting and having sex with each other. The best jokes of all, however, involve the cucumbers and zucchinis. One day Mark commented, almost angrily, “You have no idea the amount of self-control and restraint it takes to not make inappropriate jokes about the cucumbers in the CSA newsletter.” Indeed.

Jokes aside, the harvest is almost done for the day. Mark shows up with ice-filled coolers to pick the broccoli, which quickly yellows if not stored in a cool place. I save the basil for the very last, because the leaves will blacken if they are at all wet when picked. Basil grows three stalks out of a joint in the stem, and the trick is to pick off the middle stalk. This stimulates both the side stalks to grow more productively, whereas they previously deferred energy and resources to the middle one. With it out of the picture, they flourish, sending out ever more leaves and stalks, stalks that will split off into their own three part system. Thus by picking it we stimulate more growth, leaves that will be picked another day, and on until the cold morning dew turns to frost and the year’s harvest is finished, seeds and tools put away until the following spring.