Mali Part 3: The search for part two

So, the Japenese. They helped us get inot Djenne, and we eventually made our way to a freezing cold roof. Seems alot of toher people had the idea of coming to Djenne the night before a really big market day. Huh. Anywho, instead of sleeping on the roof, we went and slept on the floor of the kitchen area where it was much warmer.

We had sorta arranged a guide, Guru, supposedly the son of the cheif, and he took us on a two hour walking tour of Djenne. All the strucutres are made of mud with wooden planks as support. There a three different styles, depending on the time and momey you have. Also, on the top of house, they put these little bumps to indicate the number of children they have. not sure why. But the reason we came to Djenne was for the market, which was colorful, flavorfuly, noiseful, and wonderful, and for the largest mud strcutre in the world, the grand mosque. And the mosque is huge. it crakcs from the sun and drynes each year, and everyone from the village helps each year to put more mud on it for repairs. children take Quran classes where they leanr verses in arabic one at a time, on these wooden little planks, and when they learn it, they wash off the writting and move on to the enxt one. these schools are free i think for all kids. Anywho, we walked around the entire day, ate spagetti out of plastic bags, had mushy red bread which rocked, mushy fried rice cakes which rocked, balled up peanut butter, etc etc. It was a really nice place, and while everything was brown, it still seemed colorful and alive.

The enxt day we were off with some frech canadians and our new guiide, Phillip, to Mopti. It was aonly about a three hour ride in a station wagon, and when we got to Mopti, they even had an atm that didnt work. Twas sweet. Mopti was our staging area for our drive to Timbuktoo the enxt day. In Mopti, we walked around the very busy, colroful, smelly port, where traders in boats bring, sell, buy, transport, etc all types of goods, food, calabashes, and other thigns. They also make the boats here. Across the river form the buys city are the sleepy fishing bozo vollages who dont want to take part in the city at all, and hence are traditinal villages. They might come once a week to trade some goods, but they live thier life.

Had dinner on the street in Mopti, potatoes, spagettie, and unfortunalty rice with what seemed to be only fish bones. I threw some very wierd green, thick, woody sauce on it all, and well, not the ebst dinner i had in Mali. Anywho, we were up and out early the next day as the drive to Timbuktoo was estimated to be about 10 hours.

And it took that long. First, you drive to the town on the amin road, Douenza, and we swtiched to a hardcore 4x4 car. And ate the ebst spegettie wiht tomatato suace in the world there. Anywho, then it wa sa bumby, dusty, bumby long drive on dirt, broken roads, sometimes just sand, to get to the river crossing. This normally takes 8 hours to get too, but our driver drove on the fast side, and we hit it, and our heads many times, in four hours. of course, since we were heading here to make our way to the Festival in the Desert and so was everyone else, when we got ot the ferry, there were over a 100 4x4´s waiting. and one of the ferries had broken down. so there was one ferry taking about 10 cars, and each trip took two hours. so we waited, and waited, and waited another 4-5 hours. finally made our way into Timbuktoo about 12 hours after leaving Mopti. And we slpet on the cold roof in Timbuktoo. and the bathroom was the goat house. which was kinda cool, till all the cockroached came crawling out.