There are guides and those who claim to be (From Hereford Times)

Guides

5:05pm Monday 10th November 2008

• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

As I followed the horse and cart with my luggage on it up a sand dune on the Dogon plains of Mali, I realised yet again, the value of a local guide. The great advantage was that he wouldn't disappear back to Bamako as soon as I refused to give him a ridiculous 'cadeau', as my guide had.

I had planned the trip to look at horses on the Dogon plains with the help of Boukary, the guide for the Tamana hotel in Bamako. He had been most helpful to start with, but once we were away from Bamako his attitude changed. Instead of seeing things I wanted to see or meeting people I wanted to meet, he kept saying we hadn't time and had to move on. He got angry when I met horse people in Djenne, because he said there weren't any; but then he produced an old horseman through a local guide he knew.

When we reached Dogon country he handed me over to a local guide whom he said was his brother; but in Mali it means someone with the same mother or father. Many men have four wives and as these seem to change quite often, so kinship is very wide. Susseini took me round the village to see the different horses. When I returned Boukary was speaking surprisingly good English to a Japanese girl tourist, for someone who professed not to speak it. Perhaps it was the beer that helped.

The next day he said we would walk to a village with a lot of horses, then, when we were on a deserted piece of track he demanded a 'cadeau' of over £100. I refused and the tense stand-off was broken by some locals coming round the corner. Immediately he was charming, but we went to a tourist village rather than search for horses.

After a forced march back to Teli, the village in which I was staying, he climbed onto a motorbike and departed. Susseini had no idea where Boukary had gone and as he didn't answer his mobile, there was no way of contacting him. We spent the next day walking to different villages looking for horsemen, but it was millet harvest, and most of the men were in the fields.

With still no word from Boukary, I hired a horse and cart to get me to Bankass, a town 12Kms away, where I was due to meet some transport to take me round some of the more distant villages to the South. The track was well used, but much of it was loose sand and it was necessary to walk up the hills and occasionally to push, where the sand was very soft.

Susseini suggested the Hotel Des Arbres, which had a beautifully shaded courtyard giving onto a row of rooms with a mural of village scenes decorating the outside walls. The only person about was a child of about six who was sweeping the verandah. We looked inside the rooms; bare electric wires hung from the walls, several beds had no matresses and on those that did, they were stained. Susseini admitted it was some time since he had been there and that then it had been good; however he knew another place that had only just been built. The Nommo was everything the Hotel des Arbres was not.

Susseini waited to introduce me to my new guide, who was to take me round the villages over the next few days. Issa was charming and although he kept having to ask the way, once we were well off the usual tourist routes, he did a good job. In future I will go back to my usual practice of getting there on my own and finding a guide once I am at my destination.