Kirsten vs the Dogon

A guide for Dogon country (you need one) was recommended to me by a Canadian friend who did a One Sky internship in Mali; I'd been corresponding the guide (Dra) via email for a few weeks, and once we got close to where he works out of, I called him to meet. He asked me to come meet him at the hotel he was staying at, rather than coming to my hotel. This is an odd thing to request, as it was after dark and we'd just arrived in town...I said no, you can come to me, or we'll meet tomorrow- he started to get strangely pushy and aggressive about it all. The owner of the hotel we were staying at caught wind of the conversation (gregarious and take-no-shit german lady), and got on the phone with him, basically saying 'wtf, who is this, why are you asking my guests to go to a different hotel'...and then all hell broke loose. Seems Jutta (the proprietress) and Dra have a history, and long story short, Dra chased us down the street, into a restaurant, threatened Jutta's life, and told us that if we didn't take him as a guide, we'd better watch our backs in Dogon country. To which the obvious response was "we're not going into the desert alone with you, you crazy mofo!". He didn't understand. I suspect he was drunk or high or something, but maybe he's just crazy.

Within hours, the news of this altercation was all over town, Dra being very certain that he'd been cheated out of customers by Jutta. I ended up having to speak to the head of the Dogon in Sevare in a sort of tribal justice kind of way that night, and mum and I went to bed very freaked out. That night, we decided that terror warning or not, we should get the hell out of dodge and go to Timbuktu! Funny the way that logic worked, because previously we'd figured it wasn't worth the risk, but suddenly it seemed like the safest place to be! The next day we booked our plane tickets and I started corresponding with hotels upcountry under the name of Kirsten- news travels, we were told, and every Dogon was going to be on the lookout for Michelle and her mother. WTF?!

Happily, in the afternoon of the next day, we were tracked down by another high-up Dogon guy (the 'head guide', A.G.), who extracted our side of the story. I emailed him a thanks for hearing us out, and he emailed me to let me know that we were 'cleared', and now free to go to Dogon country. Yay! Thanks, Dogon kangaroo court.