Niger River Project

Next stop after Bamako is Djenne. This small town on the Bani river, one of the Niger’s major tributaries, is one of West Africa’s most famous, primarily because of its iconic mud mosque, the largest adobe structure in the world.

For our visit, we’ve teamed up with Sekou Toure, a local I’ve been put in touch with for some help with research we want to do into the controversial construction of a dam upstream from Djenne on the Bani. The dam has been the subject of a vigorous campaign for some years by locals and others who believe it will have detrimental effects on agriculture around the normally fertile Djenne.

We arrive at the town after dark. It’s on an island, so the only way to get to it is via a small ferry that takes cars, vans, goats and whatever else needs transporting across the water. We head straight to the house where we’re staying in the town, an amazing mud structure (like virtually every other building in Djenne) that has a wonderful flat roof overlooking the Bani. When we arrive an almost full moon is rising over the river, picking out the outlandish turrets and castelations of Djenne’s skyline with its crisp, white light.

The next day is market day when traders from miles around flood into Djenne’s main square, transforming the usually sleepy town into a pulsating, vibrant hive of activity. There’s everything here: bright cloth, heaps of stinking dried fish, piles of watermellon twice the size of a man’s head, buckets of dried herbs and spices, assorted pieces of animal for fetish charms – the list goes on.

With the backdrop of the mosque, the scene is also one of West Africa’s most photogenic, and unsurprisingly Monday is when the ‘toubabs’ – white tourists – come pouring into town in their droves. Luckily, by Tuesday, most of the toubabs have moved on and we pretty much have the run of the town. It’s a great opportunity to get properly under the skin of the place.

We spend the next few days walking around meeting various locals, to talk to them about the effects of the dam on the Bani River. Our first meeting is with the chief of Djenne, who gives Dan and I both honourary Malian names – Ba-Hassay Toure and Hassay Maiga respectively.

The Malian naming system is very complex, but highly significant to them. Apparently the names we’ve been given makes us cousins, and gives Dan the right to mock me at will. None of our friends in Djenne seem to be able to explain precisely why this is, but they’re constantly laughing and joking about our new names.

The chief is elderly and ill, so we don’t ask him about the dam. But others we speak to only have bad things to say about it, claiming it will only aggravate a situation that has been steadily getting worse in and around Djenne – namely that it’s drying up.

Djenne stands in the middle of a huge flood plain, that every year becomes effectively a vast lake. Traditionally, this has made it a highly fertile area, well suited to growing rice, grazing cattle and catching fish.

But a succession of poor rains and the arrival of two major dams on the Niger means the area is steadily becoming drier and less fertile, causing problems for all the farmers, cattle herders and nomadic fishermen who survive on the region’s waters. Every local we spoke to said the same thing: that the construction of another dam, this time on Djenne’s own river, the Bani, can only make a bad situation worse.

In all, we spend nearly a week in Djenne. Apart from the mud architecture, one the joys of the town is that its narrow streets inhibit traffic. Being able to walk around without the usual fears of being hit by a crazed motorist gives you freedom soak up the atmosphere and peer through the town’s many open doors at the scenes of African life within: women pounding millet with large sticks; men sitting around drinking glasses of sweet tea; children chanting verses of the Koran from little wooden tablets, for many the only education they will receive.

This is Africa at its most timeless, its most enduring. Long may it last.

Tags: Travel

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