Djenne
Long hot drive up the Niger but lovely scenery. Just before Djenne there is a little 3-car ferry and its great fun watching the colourful clamour of people and overloaded vehicles doing the 5 minute trip and getting on and off with us.
Djenne is renowned for its mud architecture and has the largest mud building in the world - the Grand Mosque. And sure enough it is grand…..and made of mud.
The real highlight today is wandering around the maze-like warren of narrow streets and watching the sun set over the river. Here we get absolutely mobbed by dozens of grubby little kids who are playing on the rubbish that makes up most of the river bank around the town. They love seeing photos of themselves and when we video them and then let them watch it back they can’t get enough of it, demanding more and more as they simultaneosly scream, laugh and dribble snot. They must be incredibly poor by any standards, but bizarrely are some of the most vivacious and smily kids you could meet.
Later on we find a group of barefoot street kids playing football with what at least looks like a semi-inflated dead rat. We ask one of them to show us a shop that has one football to sell (our stock to give away having ran out). By the time we get there we have about 20 of them in tow…….for the princely sum of one whole euro we get the ball and hand it over to a chorus of merci, merci and massive grins. The rabble then run off screaming and dancing down the road holding their trophy aloft.
Its quite moving really - There is an awful lot of poverty here, and yet the people and kids in particular are so open, warm, so so friendly and full of life.
The night is spent under a mosquito net on the open roof of the hotel. Bright stars and swooping bats!
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