Monday Market Day
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The Campement Hotel has air-conditioned rooms with great showers, flush toilets: it’s all too much for any of us. We’ve been sleeping five on the floor in a single room with a rock-covered hole and warm water in a bucket for over a week. Over dinner, we’re treated to two wandering griots, one playing the jangly 6-string hunters’ kora, the simbi, and the other joining him in singing and dancing a hypnotic welcome song. It’s lovely. This is when Albert the Guide shows up so he’s put to work immediately — book the hunter griots! OK, tomorrow at the market at 10am. Yes, the two hunter-farmer griots are a father and son and now they have a manager, Johnny.
The Monday Djenne Market, one of the most famous in the world, was the touchstone date for the whole 6-week shoot. Had you asked me a week ago, I’d have said, maybe we’ll make it on next Monday or the Monday after. But we have caught enough recent breaks to get back on schedule, a sense of drive and passion is with us, so we are at the market by 6am to catch sunrise and the market set-up. That’s what all the guidebooks say to do, and I’d say most of the tourists in town were up and at ‘em by seven or eight. The market itself, however, is a might slower, and still had empty stalls when we pulled out at 2 – I told Albert that he should talk with the latecomers, that the tourists were getting up early expecting them He said he would.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/
The Monday Djenne Market, one of the most famous in the world, was the touchstone date for the whole 6-week shoot. Had you asked me a week ago, I’d have said, maybe we’ll make it on next Monday or the Monday after. But we have caught enough recent breaks to get back on schedule, a sense of drive and passion is with us, so we are at the market by 6am to catch sunrise and the market set-up. That’s what all the guidebooks say to do, and I’d say most of the tourists in town were up and at ‘em by seven or eight. The market itself, however, is a might slower, and still had empty stalls when we pulled out at 2 – I told Albert that he should talk with the latecomers, that the tourists were getting up early expecting them He said he would.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/
