Niger River Project

The bush around Niamey is barren and seemingly lifeless. Yet, strangely, it’s home to reputedly the last herd of wild giraffes in West Africa.

The day after Dan arrives in Niger, the two Estonians and us arrange for a taxi to take us into the bush to try and track them down.

Leaving Niamey, we pass fields of litter and detritus. Niger, like every other African country, is fighting a losing battle against a rising tide of filth. Plastic bags are the main scourge, half burried in the ground like strange crops or fluttering – like giant fruit bats – from trees.

After about an hour, we stop to pick up the local guide that is compulsory for viewing the giraffes.

I ask the guide why, in the whole hugeness of West Africa, it’s here that the giraffes have chosen as their last stronghold. ‘Acacia trees,’ he responds. ‘You find them in other parts of West Africa, but here they’re particularly big and abundant – giraffes won’t eat anything else.’

A few kilometres down the road, the guide orders the driver to leave the road and plunge into the bush. It’s more dramatic than it sounds; here the bush is snooker table-flat. Importantly, though, there’s a profusion of large acacias. It looks promising.

Before we proceed any further, the guide doles out a big, fat caveat. ‘Of course, there’s a chance we may not see any giraffes,’ he warns. ‘They’re like hippos or any other wild animal: they free; they go where they please. Be prepared for the worst.’

But his warning proves unfounded. Within only a few minutes of turning off the road, we spot our first giraffes, three of them: a mother and her two children. Our guide has earned his money.

They’re a fine sight. Graceful and silent, they roam effortlessly from tree to tree, stopping at each to savour its thorny delights. They don’t seem in the least bit bothered by us, instead shooting us the occasional inquisitive glance. Other than that, they go about the serious business of eating as if we weren’t there, with the gourmand’s dedication to his food.

We move on and clock six more. This group contains a male, a real brute of an animal, at least six metres high. There’s something prehistoric about giraffes; they seem to break all natural laws of proportion and scale.

But there’s also an incredible gentleness about them. Maybe it’s something to do with their big eyelashes and docile looks. I leave the bush – and the giraffes – with a profound sense of peace.

One thing I don’t understand though: why does having a blue tongue better equip giraffes for dealing with thorny acacia trees? Answers on a postcard please…

After Tabaski, leaving Ben to return to Djenne with Cat, I decided to head off to Hombori, Mali’s very own Monument Valley, with Trevor – an Aussie travelling in Africa for a year.

The bus that we took from Sevare looked no worse than any of the other beaten up vehicles leaving that morning, but it proved less than up to the task. We wheezed to a stop on several occasions, the resident grease monkey being kept firmly on his toes.

Trev and I had been assigned two fold down seats over the back steps. We both looked down quizzically at the empty space that should have formed the bit you sit on. They were then produced, matter of factly, from the overhead shelf and we sat, semi reclined, allowing ourselves a rye smile: we had a relatively obscene amount of leg space. My luck was to drain away quickly, though. And severely.

During one of our impromptu stops, and the obligatory deconstruction of our seats to let everyone off, my money belt with my passport, and I went our separate ways.

Exactly when and where, I have no idea, but having extracted my bags from the bowels of the bus on reaching our destination, I realised what was missing, and knowing I had already checked under the seats, I turned to Trev and said: ‘Mate, I’ve got a really bad feeling about this’.

The bus was crowded with turban clad Touregs, who took the opportunity on one of our stops to conduct an ad-hoc prayer session. It’s possible that the belt fell out here and is still there – unclaimed booty – but not likely. More probable is the assumption that someones prayers were answered: they pocketed the money and destroyed the passport.

Needless to say, this event has slightly influenced the last two weeks!

I carried on with the trip to Timbuctou with Ben and friends, an opportunity not to be missed, then returned about a week ago to Bamako to sort out a new passport and decide on what to do next.

Here, Mohammed from the British Consulate in the Canadian Embassy (the is no British Embassy in Mali) took up the case with a smile and a refreshing ‘can-do’ attitude. He was due to fly to Dakar in two days, so he agreed to take my application with him and return at the end of the week. Meanwhile, our trusted Malian friends Sekou and Adama, together with a returning party of Bens’ friends provided much needed moral support.

With a rather humbling and extraordinary team effort, I find myself here in Niamey with Ben once again, new passport with new visas in hand, just a week after returning to Bamako.

Thanks to everyone already mentioned, and a very supportive family back home…

Recovery from the Journey from Hell takes at least two days, and is assisted by numerous cold beers. The Estonians are big drinkers and, convinced they’re the first of their countrymen in Niger, hold something of a celebration. Not wanting to let the side down, I join in.

The great joy of Niamey is that it serves the best – and cheapest – beer I’ve tasted since being in Africa. It’s called, rather unimaginatively, Niger Beer. But it’s good – for lager – and cold, so for the first day, we don’t do an awful lot except sample various of the local hostelries and their fine wares.

On the third day we set out to explore a bit of Niamey. There’s not an awful lot to see here. There’s the Niger, of course, but we saw that the day before from the comfort of a riverside bar.

In fact, picturesque as it looks here, the Niger is relatively insignificant in historical terms. So instead we head for an area of town where we’ve heard there’s a colony of giant fruit bats living. Strange, but apparently true.

Walking down the street where the bats are said to live, Pritt, one of the Estonians, starts pointing into a tree and gets his camera out, snapping off a shot. As we stand there looking up, it suddenly strikes me that this bat looks rather lifeless.

‘That’s not a bat, it’s a plastic bag,’ I point out to Pritt. He looks crestfallen, but brightens up when a few metres on we find another tree this time full of what are unmistakeably giant bats hanging upside down and squeaking at each other.

This is about the high point of central Niamey. Niger is an unbelievably poor country – statistically the world’s poorest. Because most people live off agriculture, they tend to have large numbers of children to spread the burden of working the fields. Consequently it’s Niger’s kids that really suffer, with two-thirds malnourished and only about one-third receiving any kind of education.

In the country’s far north, they have an even worse lot, as this is the area where Niger’s uranium mines are to be found. And, unsurprisingly, it’s the children who get the bum job of having to go down into these living tombs, in unspeakably awful conditions.

I’m surprised at Niamey, and how comparatively well it disguises its status; in some ways it looks better off – and certainly better organised – than Bamako in Mali. But look more closely, and Niger’s pains are there to see: scores of rag-clad children with hungry eyes wandering the streets with begging bowls; leppers with fingerless hands looming out of the shadows pleading for help; polio victims with useless, contorted limbs dragging themselves across the ground. It’s a painful sight.

On the evening of the third day, Dan arrives from Bamako, having against all odds managed to get a new passport and all the necessary visas to carry on. We’re back on track.

Gao is my last stop in Mali. After this, I’m headed for Niger.

As I gear up for the trip, I can’t help but think of all the stories I’ve heard and read about the bus ride to Niamey – bad road, hassles, bureacracy, unpleasant border guards. I’m preparing myself for a long, hard slog.

Fortunately, I’ve got some company for the trip: two Estonians are heading the same way, hoping, they believe, to be the first Estonians in Niger. It’s a pretty obscure country, so they could well be right.

We get to the bus in good time. Actually, it’s not a bus, rather a large metal box containing crappy seats welded to the back of a large truck. One passenger I’m talking to actually describes the vehicle as the ‘boit’ (box).

As we wait, a fight breaks out between a group of the young men, who, like in all other African transport stations, are hanging around trying to get tips for stowing passengers’ baggage on buses. They’re squabbling over which of them it was that hoisted our bags up on to the truck and thus who should get the tip. We didn’t see any of them put our gear up so we don’t give any of them anything. They slouch away, grumbling and muttering to themselves.

The trip gets off to a bad start. Someone from the bus company has reserved us some seats at the front of the bus so we don’t have to through the ritual scrummage with other passengers trying to get to the seats further back.

In fact, it turns out to be a poisoned challice as we have half as much leg space as everyone else, and some bright spark decides there’s room for seven across in our row, when in reality there’s only just room for six. Wedged in like chickens in a battery farm, we hit the road. I’m only glad Dan with his long legs has been spared this torment.

Actually ‘road’ is too kind a term. It’s more of a track, though at points even track would be inaccurate as there appears to be no discernable route at all – only ruts and bumps and sand.

We crawl along, the truck creaking and jolting its way over the terrible surface. To add insult to injury, the Malian government is in the process of building a proper paved road to the border, but it’s not quite finished. So for a large part of the way, we’re driving directly next to a lovely smooth tarmac road that we’re not allowed to use.

Despite the slow progress, there’s an interesting subplot to the journey. The two Estians’ visas for Niger aren’t valid until tomorrow, so we don’t want to get to the border too quickly or else they’ll probably be refused entry. Niger time is an hour ahead of Malian time, so ideally we don’t want to get to the frontier before 11 Malian time.

In the end, this is exactly the time we arrive. They’re safe. But instead of crossing the border in the middle of the night, we’re told that we’re going to spend the night here and cross in the morning.

Most of the passengers shuffle off to a collection of crummy old huts where passengers from other buses have already bedded down for the night. I poke my nose in to see what it’s like, but it looks too much like a refugee camp, so I opt to sleep in the bus.

This turns out to be a big mistake. The problem is that being in such dilapidated condition, many of the bus’ windows don’t shut. Although it’s scorching by day in Mali, by night the temperature drops drastically. And being basically a metal box, the bus has zero insulation; from being an oven, the boit soon becomes a refrigerator.

I awake only a few minutes after falling asleep shivering violently. For a moment I wonder whether I’ve got malaria again. But then I feel the wind howling in through the un-closeable window and realise that this is proper cold shivers.

There’s nothing I can do. My sleeping bag is in my rucksack on the roof. All I can do is curl up and wait for dawn.

After what feels like the longest night, dawn comes. Our fellow passengers, bleary-eyed, stagger on to the bus and we make for the border.

Surprisingly, and happily, border procedures are swift and painless. We hand over our passports, wait for our names to be called out

There’s a slight moment of fear when or some unknown reason the cruel-faced border guard starts slapping the man in front of me around the ears, but when I’m called up, he clocks my white skin and undergoes an instant transformation to Mr Nice Guy. He doesn’t even ask for a bribe. In a perverse way, I’m slightly disappointed it’s so easy.

This feeling quickly evaporates as the bus stops for several more roadchecks: customs, police, military… At each stop we have to go through the same rigmarol as before. It takes hours.

By midafternoon, Niamey is stating to feel a bit like El Dorado – not that I’m under any illusion there’s gold to be found there, but from the time it’s taking, I’m beginning to wonder if the place really exists.

Eventually, as the sun is beginning to drop, we hit the suburbs of Niamey. Like Bamako, Niger’s capital begins as a collection of slum dwellings that slowly cohere into something more recognisable as a city.

It’s taken us over 24 hours to complete a journey less than 400km long. But, we’re here. And there’s cold beer…

Gao is the former capital of the once great Songhai empire that ruled this part of West Africa several hundred years ago. Today, it’s not all that much to look at, a typical Sahara/Sahel town with wide sandy streets, flat-topped mud buildings and the innevitable piles of filth.

I get the overnight bus from Mopti to Gao, arriving at about six in the morning. Emerging tired and bleary, I’m immediately set upon by the innevitable tout who takes advantage of my state and whisks me off to some dismal looking campement south of the town.

Actually, it turns out to be a gem of a place – cheap, relaxed with friendly staff and other guests, though from first glance it looks a total flea-pit.

I meet up with a young Tamashek speaking local, who introduces himself as Small Guy. I never find out his real name, but he’s a handy fellow and helps me arrange my onward trip to Niger.

The thing I immediately notice about Gao is actually apparent from its absence: here, the children aren’t yelling ‘toubab’ at me every step I take as they do in other parts of Mali. And they aren’t demanding ‘cadeaux’ – the presents that kids in Mali’s touristy areas seem to expect from whites.

‘Here, some of the children are actually scared of white people,’ explains Small Guy. ‘In Timbuktu and Mopti, children’s parents encourage them to go up to white people and demand presents. But here, some adults tell children that white people eat Africans. That’s why they aren’t coming up to you.’

It’s a refreshing chang, and makes me want to stay in Gao for longer. Sadly, I’ve only got one full day here, but in the afternoon there’s time for us to take a pirogue out on the Niger to a nearby site – the Dune Rose – which, as the cunning linguists will know, literally means the pink sand-dune.

Pulling out of Gao in the little pirogue, the dune is immediately obvious, a huge towering eddifice on the opposite side of the river, slightly upstream. We must be a good couple of kilometres from it, but even at this distance its scale is evident.

The river at Gao is wide and divided into a number of channels by swathes of thick aquatic vegetation. My pirogue driver sticks to these areas, as the plants act as a buffer against the strong river current making the going much easier.

After about an hour we approach the foot of the dune. It looks more orange than pink, but the sun is beginning to set bringing out the first tinges of ‘rose’ for which the dune is famous.

‘The dune is sacred,’ Small Guy informs me. ‘Local believe it is home to ancient spirits and every year they come here to make sacrifices to the spirits.’

I can well understand why superstitious locals might believe the dune has magical properties. Its size, for a start, seems to defy all natural laws, soaring at a precipitous angle straight up from the water’s edge, to at least 150 feet high.

We jump out of the boat and start climbing the mound. The sand is fine and deep, and the going tough. Each footstep I take disappears up to the ankle, and it’s a stuggle to get to the top.

When we do though, it’s definitely worth it. The sun is now well and truly on its way down – ‘sleeping’ as Small Guy says – turning the west facing side of the dune a deep coral pink.

Along the ridge of the dune, the wind from the east has blown the sand into a sharp crease that looks like it has been sculpted by an artist with a knife. The windward side of the dune is also now in deep shadow, a sharp contrast to the pyrotechnics going on on the other face.

And the wind, the wind…With nothing to stop it for hundreds of miles as it sweeps over the Sahara, it comes driving over the dune with frightening power. With nothing to protect us, sat perched on top trying to enjoy the view, we’re totally at its mercy – and that of the sand it blasts in our face, filling our eyes, ears and mouths and stinging exposed skin.

Sitting – or rather huddling – on top of the dune, I realise that this is the first point along the Niger’s whole huge length that I’ve managed to get anything like a view overlooking the river and its surroundings. The land through which it flows is so flat and featureless, that not at any point have I surveyed it from on high.

It’s a magnificent sight. Huge and majestic, the Niger threads a glittering path through the dull browns and beiges of the Sahel stretching into the distance on either side.

Viewed in this way, within its landscape, it’s easy to see why the Niger is such an important in this part of the world. Quite literally, it is the only source of life in this harshest of environments. The people who do manage to scratch out an existence here only do because of this geographical freak. How different things might have been had it flowed south and not north from its source 1500 miles away in Guinea.

Ten minutes is all we can handle on top of the dune. The wind defeats us and we tumble and roll our way back down to the safety of the river.

The festival wraps up after three days of sound, colour and spectacle. Stupidly, the organisers have arranged the event so that the last day falls on the same day as the only weekly flight from Timbuktu to the outside world, so a large chunk of the crowd leaves before the main acts come on on the final night. Nevertheless, they’ve been a memorable three days.

Early on the morning after, we all squeeze back into the 4×4 and hit the piste. Adaman takes us on a slightly different route back to town, but it’s still a white knuckle ride as the car slews its way through along the sandy piste.

We get back to Timbuktu in record time. There’s a subdued air. Not only are we all tired after three days partying in the desert, but today Dan and I will be going our separate ways.

As blog readers will have seen, he managed to lose his passport a week before the festival. If he’s to stand any chance of sorting things out and carrying on the journey, he’ll have to get back to Bamako as soon as possible; fortunately, that’s exactly where Adaman is headed.

My plan is to stay in Timbuktu and find some transport heading east to a place called Gao, towards the border with Niger, the next country on the itinerary. Although the normal route to Gao from Timbuktu is over the river then south through the bush to the main road, I’ve heard there’s a much more interesting route across the desert skirting along the north side of the Niger. My plan is to find one of the trucks that ply this route a couple of times a week and hitch a ride.

I bid a subdued farewell to everyone. We’ve had a fun time together and I hate it when good things come to an end – even though they always must do.

The car disappears in a cloud of dust. As soon as it’s gone, I set out to find somewhere to stay. The hotel which has said I can put my tent up in its yard is depressing, so I decide to look for something else.

I’m immediately leapt upon by one of Timbuktus numerous and incredibly boring touts, who offers to take me to a place. Reluctantly I follow. I’m pleasantly surprised to discover he’s actually brought me somewhere really decent – a huge room to myself in a large family home, and less than a fiver a night.

I dump my stuff and set to work to find some transport. I head to the marketplace where most transport goes from and ask around.

The news is not good: normally trucks do go the way I want, though irregularly, but thanks to the festival and its huge demands on transport, there’s unlikely to be anything for at least a week. My choice is simple: hang around in Timbuktu and wait, or find some wheels going to south to the main road to Gao – the very same direction Dan and everyone else just headed.

In the end I decide to push on rather than skulk around. There are lots of cars still milling around from the festival, so I start hunting around for a space in one of these. I still have friends in Timbuktu, namely the ubiquitous Oumar,and between us we sort something. It looks like it’s going to be expensive, but there’s not much choice.

Funnily, I end up in the same car as the other Ben and Dan, the two guys who came in our pinasse from Mopti. The road heading south from Timbuktu is horrendous. Heavy rain during the wet season and passing traffic have conspired to give the piste a surface like a washboard. Then there’s the thick red dust that comes blasting in through the windows covering us all from head to toe.

To top it off, our car starts playing up. Smoking hubcaps? Anyone ever seen that before?

We limp into Mopti about 12 hours later. Literally as we pull into a petrol station, the vehicle runs dry and we all have to get out to push it to the petrol pump. Talk about cutting it fine…

Far as we’ve come to find it, we don’t have much time in Timbuktu. After visiting the explorers’ houses, we all pile into our hired Land Cruiser to set off for somewhere even more remote than Timbuktu.

The Festival au Desert is now a major fixture on the world music calendar. It’s held every year in an area of the desert near to a tiny Tuareg village, Essakane, 70km from Timbuktu.

Initially, the festival was started by Tuareg for Tuareg. During the early 1990s, the Tuareg, the nomadic people of the Sahara, fought a bitter and bloody battle with the governments of the desert states of Mai, Niger and Algeria. They claimed that since these countries became independent in the 1960s, the Tuareg had been persecuted and unfairly treated by their respective governments.

The Tuareg uprising which kicked off in 1990 went on for five years and led to many deaths. Ultimately, it failed to give the Tuareg what they wanted – an independent Tuareg state. However, things have improved for the Tuareg now, and one of the positive developments to come out of the troubles is the festival, intended as a showcase for Tuareg culture.

In fact, the festival is now one of Mali’s biggest tourist events, attracting several thousand ‘toubabs’ from Europe, the States and other parts of Africa. Sadly, this is also its least attractive aspects, meaning it has become something of a commercial feeding frenzy. But it’s not everyday you get to go to a three-day music festival in the Sahara…

We leave Timbuktu in a cloud of red dust. There are no roads here, just ‘pistes’. In fact, the snow analogy is a pretty good one; the road here is more sand-drift than road.

During the journey, our mild-mannered driver, Adoman, undergoes a strange transformation. We hit what we’ve been told is going to be the worst bit of the journey, where the piste veers off into the desert. As soon as we do, Adoman slams in a Bob Marley cassette, cranks it up and puts his foot down. Suddenly, we are in the Paris-Dakar rally.

Adoman’s philsosophy, it seems, is this: go so fast you won’t sink in the sand. And it turns out to be a good one, for the piste has been churned up beyond recognition by other festival traffic (traffic! in the desert!) coming this way. In England furrows like this would be full of mud, but here, there’s no mud, only sand. Adoman’s right: the only way to get a heavy 4×4 laden with people and gear through is to go hell for leather, before you have time to sink.

After a couple of hours of being thrown around, we finally make Essakane. The festival site is in a beautiful area of rolling sand-dunes to the east of the village. The sand here is almost unbelievably fine and soft. Hidden within it, however, are crum-crums, the so-called moquitos of the desert, little spiny seeds that stick in your flesh like sea urchins.

The focal point of the festival is the stage, a permanent structure overlooked by a great sweeping sand-dune that acts as a perfect natural amphitheatre. This is surrounded by clusters of Tuareg tents containing sleeping qurters, restuarants and bars. Yes, you can even get a cold beer in the middle of the desert!

It’s a colourful scene. Although tourists pay through the nose to come here, Africans get in free, so there are plenty of locals around. Most eye-catching are the Tuareg, dressed up in their finery, strutting around on great camels, the biggest I’ve seen before. Some of them are carrying alarmingly large swords. Must remember not to piss any of them off.

The festival kicks off with a parade of Tuareg men, who come sweeping into the performance area on camelback. Then the music gets underway, provided by a mixture of West African, Tuareg, European and Amercan artists.

The only downside to the three days is the large number of Tuareg traders hassling you to buy their wares. Some of what they’re offering is beautiful craftwork, but after three days of constant pressure, the hard-sell becomes wearying. Still, with this many tourists and their dollars on site, who could blame them?

In spite of all the time, money and human capital expended, when European explorers finally reached Timbuktu, they were hugely disappointed. Although still an important centre of Islamlic scholarship, as it remains today, they found it to be a shadow of its former self.

Timbuktu’s reputation in the West was based almot exclusively on the accounts of Leo Africanus, a Spanish Moor who visited the town in 1494, and sent back reports of great wealth and culture. Indeed, when Africanus visited, Timbuktu was at the height of its powers as a great trading centre in the old Malian Empire. But ever since it was attacked by Morrocans in the 1590s, and much of its wealth plundered, Timbuktu had been a city in decline.

For us latter day Europeans arriving in this most fabled of places, the experience is pretty similar. Getting to the place is still a great challenge, much as it was for our questing ancestors, and it’s this reputation for remoteness on which the town seems to be trading today. A t-shirt being sold by one of Timbuktu’s many touts sums it up: ‘Timbuktu,’ it says. ‘Welcome to the middle of nowhere.’

But the town itself fails to live up to they hype. Its wide, dusty streets are buried in deep drifts of sands, giving the impression that it’s being swallowed whole by the desert. Some of the architecture is interesting, particularly the impressive Djingarie Berg mosque, but much of it is like anywhere else in the Malian Sahel.

For all that, though, Timbuktu still has an air of mystery about it, mainly due to its colourful history. During the short time we have in the town, I fulfill a personal pilgrimage by visiting the old homes of Gordon Laing and Rene Caillie, two of the European explorers who actually succeeded in reaching Timbuktu.

Laing made it here and stayed a while but never made it home after he was ambushed and murdered by a group of Tuareg nomads as he tried to leave the town. Caillie, on the other hand, became the first European to reach Timbuktu and return to tell his tale.

Neither of their homes are much to look at now. Caille’s has been rebuilt and is closed to the public. Laing’s, on the other hand, looks pretty much as it would have to him, with crumbling mud walls and heavy wood and iron-studded door.

The door is ajar, so I decide to have a poke around. On the other side, the rooms are pretty much empty. Two startled looking men emerge from one of them, a pissed off ‘what they hell are you doing here’ look on their faces. I apologise, attempting to explain myself, but I wonder if they know or even care who Laing was.

We’re back on the river after our brief detour to Dogon country. The mode of transport is a pinasse complete with 40cc Honda motor. The destination is Timbuktu, the fabled city of gold whose discovery cost so many European lives.

We’ve been joined for the three-day trip by four friends from the UK, Cat, my girlfriend, an Australian, Trev, who came with us to Dogon Country, and two other English guys and one woman we’ve met in Mopti. Strangely, the two guys, from London, are also called Ben and Dan; should make for an interesting ride…

The first bit of the trip is a straightforward rerun of our earlier ventures to Lac Debo – where readers may recall I was first hit by malaria. It’s much the same as before – peaceful, little fishing villages slipping past as we eat up the miles.

During the journey, I find myself reflecting on Mungo Park’s journey up this part of the river. By this stage, Park was a desperate man. He had lost most of his men to malaria or murder. His presence – not for the first time – had not been welcomed by many of the local kings, but Park resolved to press on, abandoning all his usual diplomacy and opting instead to fight his way down the river.

In our pinasse, with its gleaming new outboard, we whip along at a pace. How different for Park; with nothing but wind or manpower to propel his craft along, progress would have been slow. Split into narrow creeks and channels, the Niger at this point is narrow. In their flimsy boat, Park and his men would have made a tempting target for any angry tribesmen attempting to hinder their progress.

Because none of Park’s diaries from this stage of his journey survived, one can only imagine the horrors he and his men endured as they fended off attacks from the bank. The wide open space of Lac Debo, where the tendrils of the Inland Delta come together, must have come as a welcome relief to the crew of the Djoliba.

For us, it’s Lac Debo where the fun begins. Due to a late start, we’re running slightly behind schedule – as far as anything in Africa ever runs to such a thing. There probably isn’t even a word for it here. If we’re to make Timbuktu in time for our next date – a three-day festival in the middle of the Sahara – we need to be across the other side of the lake by the end of the day.

Night falls, and still we’re a long way off our target. Somehow, though, our skipper manages to plough on in the dark. And it’s proper dark here, African dark – not a photon of light pollution in the sky and, tonight, no moon.

For us passengers it’s a wonderful opportunity to lie on the deck of the boat and watch the stars, Orion doing his nightly stellar battle with the mighty Taurus. For the skipper, though, the conditions are tough.

Even at this time of night, some Bozo fishermen will still be out dredging the waters for fresh catches. Some of them have lights in their pirogues, and these we can see twinkling in the dark. But it’s the ones we can’t see that are the danger. At any moment I half expect to hear bangs and shouts as we plough across the path of a canoe hidden in the murky blackness of the lake.

But after about an hour and a half, the skipper brings us skillfully up on the far shore of the lake, with scarcely a bump. We all applaud, relieved to be on terra firma.

After a night camping on the lake’s sandy shore, we set sail early. Day two passes in much the same way as day one. We stop at a village to buy fish – the plump, fleshy capittaine for which the Niger is famous, and seems to produce in endless quantities.

Mid-afternoon, the pinasse pulls into Niafunke, a town situated on the beginning of the Niger’s Great Bend, where the river gradually begins to deviate away from its logic-defying journey north into the Sahara, to a more sensible course east then south towards the Atlantic.

Niafunke is only small, but it’s famous for being home to the great Malian blues musician, Ali Farka Toure. Toure sadly died last year, but the town has been imortalised as the name of one of the last albums he recorded. For all that, it’s not much of a place – sandy, hot, the usual ramshackle market place, no sign of its illustrious son. We don’t stop for long, the pinasse skipper keen to push on.

Day three, I awake on the sand dune where we’ve stopped for the night with a strange thought rolling through my head: for the first and possibly only time in my life, I can say, ‘Today I’m going to Timbuktu’.

Once the first round of formalities is out of the way, each family returns to its compound for the ritual slaughter of sheep – or goat, if you are of lesser means. We’ve been invited for lunch with Atemelou’s family in their home up on the side of the escarpment.

Before we head there, though, we gear up for the day’s second formal set-piece. This involves a tour of what seems like the entire village, meeting and greeting friends, relatives and respected elders to wish them ‘Happy Tabaski’ – carol-singing, African style, but minus the figgy pudding.

At the first home we visit, two sheep have just been slaughtered. One of them is still twitching, flies gathering in a patch of its blood that has soaked into the dirt floor. As we watch they are strung up, skinned and divided into pieces. At every home we visit from then on, we find sheep or goats in varying stages of butchery.

We’re also offered either ‘Dogon beer’, a milky, gritty brew, made from millet and served in a half calabash, or ‘sadina’, a sweet, brown liquid made from grapes. Neither are alcoholic (yet; sadina ferments after a day or two, as we later discover), but Atemelou warns us not to drink too much. “Sadina will give you diarrhoea,” he informs us. It’s good, and a welcome change from water, so none of us listens to him; happily, none of us pay later for our recklessness.

Hours and about 20 social calls later, we finally flop into Atemelou’s family house, well ready for some serious feasting. The women are busy preparing the ubiquitous rice and sauce, while the men are getting the fire stoked up to roast the goat. The meal kicks off with a delicious dish of the goat’s liver with onions.

As we wait for the next course, one of Atemelou’s uncles (or maybe cousins or brothers; bloodlines are pretty opaque in this part of the world) spots us eyeing the goat’s testicles, which are hanging conspicuously above are heads. “You want to try one?” he asks. “They’re good.”

Without waiting for an answer, he slices off one of the deceased beast’s family jewels and throws it on a little charcoal brazier, usually used for preparing tea. The testicle, about the size of a duck’s egg, begins to move on the hot coals, expanding and opening a little like a clam shell.

It looks anything but apetizing. But, when in Rome…; after being cooked so nicely and neatly sliced up, there’s no choice but to give the gonad a try. It’s surprisingly good – not like chicken, as most ‘exotic’ delicacies seem to taste, but more like, well, goa’ts bollock; let’s not pretend it’s anything other than the reproductive organ of a farmyard animal.

The next course is more conventional – rice, sauce and meat – but plentiful, and after feasting for about an hour, we waddle out, burping our thanks and goodbyes. There’s a long walk ahead to the next village on trek around Dogon country. Not a happy thought after putting down the closest thing Malians get to Christmas lunch.