Tuesday and Wednesday of last week were spent doing preliminary reconnaissance of the area around Djenné, including the area in which we want to do a more detailed survey. The three of us piled into the backseat of the Mission Culturelle’s dented and dusty old pick-up truck, with Fané and his driver up front. Then we spent four or five exciting hours per day careening around the not-quite-roads of the lush floodplains and sandy highlands to the north and northeast of Djenné, looking for sites. The truck would weave among thorny acacia trees, avoiding the occasional donkey cart or bicycle, until we rounded yet another bend and one of us spotted the telltale mound and dark pottery scatter of an ancient settlement. Most sites here are very easy to recognize. If it was an area of long-term habitation, the site will be a raised tell created by the collapse, reconstruction, and buildup of old mud brick buildings and walls. Sometimes – as in the case of Djenné-Djeno and several of the sites we found – these tells can be truly enormous, and visible from miles away on the flat plains. The surface of these sites – as well as smaller sites, without a visible buildup of material – are scattered with potsherds and artifacts of varying densities and types. Wade and Kirsten and I spent many a happy hour walking across the surface of these sites, examining beautifully decorated sherds, clay beads, human mandibles… We must have seen thirty or more sites, but the excitement never wore off.
These artifacts are not just pretty objects. You can roughly date a site simply by looking at the designs and the craftsmanship of the pottery you find. During the actual survey, diagnostic sherds will be taken and recorded from each site in order to give it a general age. Each site will be plotted into a map using our two GPS’s. We hope that this map, showing the location, size, and age of every site in some specific areas will help us see a settlement pattern, and assist in further research in the area. These expeditions were only preliminary searches in order to get a sense for the terrain and the logistics of conducting a survey there, but Kirsten and Wade still took GPS points of every site we found. I went around like a nerd and took pictures of everything – pictures that, of course, cannot be uploaded here. Damn.
After much debate and budgeting discussions, Kirsten and Wade decided that they aren’t going to start the intensive survey until January, when they return to Djenné after Pete’s excavations. Because of the high waters which surround the city and turn it into an island, and which turn much of the landscape into a swamp, it’s very difficult to get out to the survey area. Also, it’s extremely expensive to pay for the use of Mission Culturelle’s truck, along with gas. Therefore, Kirsten and Wade plan on being driven out to a village near the survey area once a week. They will live there for 3 or 4 days, do a section of the survey area, and return to Djenné for the weekend. It sounds exciting, I wish I was going to be here for it!
Since we’re not doing the survey, we have offered our full-time work to the construction and planning of Djenné’s new museum. The building that I am sitting in right now has been under construction for two years. The lot on which it is built, right down the street from the Grand Mosque, was bought for a new museum more than a decade ago. Masons are still constructing the archways, the stairs, the lights, painting the walls, laying down concrete floors… Under the supervision of Samaké, we are planning the contents and layout of the archaeology room, and translating almost thirty informative tapestries from French to English. I have no idea who is planning the other rooms – those for ethnography, architecture, and modern art. All I know is that the European Union representatives who funded the whole project are coming to inspect it in a week, and the museum is slated to open to the public on December 15th. HOLY CRAP. We’ve got a lot of work to do.
We have some really cool ideas for the archaeology room. We want to make a model of a trench, showing people the stratigraphy of Djenné-Djeno (the layers of different soil that you dig through during an excavation that indicate the timeline of human occupation in that spot). Our plan is to construct three walls, so that you feel as though you’re actually standing in a trench at an excavation. We also want to create a map of Djenné-Djeno with pictures of certain areas, revealing and explaining the features of the ancient city that are visible right on the surface.
We spend about four or five hours every morning at the museum. Then we come back to the house, have some food, and hang out. Our lives are terribly exciting. Yesterday, Kirsten and I cleaned our room and watched five episodes of The Mentalist. The day before that I read four chapters of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and took a nap. Sometimes we shower. Most of the time we are chased out of the bathroom by the cockroaches and hornets that live there. We eat a lot of rice. A LOT of rice. Sometimes there is spaghetti. We saw a man hacking a cow head apart with a machete on Monday at the market, and it put us off meat for a while. Twice a week we go to the Campemente (one of the hotels in town) and get cold sodas. HEAVEN. We have decided to start a list of things that we will appreciate more when we return to the United States. It is quite long, and includes such things as ice-cold water that you don’t have to filter to avoid getting cholera, supermarkets, toilet paper, laundry machines, salads, and Skittles.
This past Sunday we went to Mopti. The conjugated verb “we went” does not properly describe the epic journey. We went to the bus… area… at 7 am, and waited there until about 11, when there were enough passengers to make the trip profitable for the driver. About 30 men, women, and children crammed into a van designed for about 16. Luggage was haphazardly strapped to the roof. The back door kept flopping open while we were driving at top speed down the narrow road. We stopped often to let even more people in. Breathtaking scenery flashed by the open window that Wade was practically falling out of. It was a hot, frustrating, long, hilarious, and unforgettable ride. We got to Mopti at about 2:30, and had to be back in the van at 5 in order to return to Djenné. We went to the ATM (the purpose for our journey), and got PIZZA at a restaurant on the shores of the port. Mopti has the largest port in Mali, because it is right where the Niger and Bani rivers meet, and therefore it has the largest amount of water year-round. It’s a beautiful, fascinating city – I only wish we had had more time to appreciate it! After thoroughly enjoying our Malian pizza, we returned to the van and began the long drive back. The return journey was much more fun, however. There was hardly anybody in the van, so we were able to drink in the sights of this beautiful country passing by in the fading light of evening, feeling the cool wind on our faces, spitting out the occasional mouthful of sand. This place is truly amazing.
We have tentative plans to go to Dogon Country for a few days during the last week in October. If that happens, we have another week and a half here, then Dogon, then two more weeks here, and then Bamako yet again to meet Pete and wait for him to get his own Order du Mission for the excavations. Wow, time flies fast when you’re having fun in Africa.
Yay!! After about twenty minutes of thinking, the internet stick thingy has managed to upload a picture!! This is our house. We eat underneath the covered area on the left, and our rooms are directly underneath where this picture was taken. I'm standing on the roof right now. The rest of the family lives on the other side of the compound. That's Hawa in the green - she's Fane's niece, and she cooks for us. You can't see the goats in this picture, but they live in the bottom left corner of the compound, right next to Kirsten's and my door. They make funny noises.
Loving your blog Helen. I've subscribed.
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