Final Paper

Architectures as a remembrance of history :

an exploration of the relationship between indigenous architecture and traditional cults in Dogon

I. Introduction

With the miraculous booming economies in our modern day era, commercial buildings and financial centers top the most highly-demanded projects in urban cities; simultaneously, modern aesthetics and space-maximization appear to be the foremost priority in these everyday buildings. This was evidently exemplified during the recent World Expo 2010 in Shanghai, in which every country showcased their best architectural concepts and technology with respective pavilion. Thus, one might be marveled when exposed to a Dogon village, where traditional religious beliefs dominate others factors in most, if not all, of the public and private constructions. In this following paper, I will focus on the three major architectural constructions that form a Dogon village : the Ginna, which is associated with the Wegem cult; House of the Hogon, which is associated with the Lebe cult and finally the Binu Shrine which belongs to the Binu cul . Moving forward from the analysis of these landmarks, it will become apparent that they do not solely function as sacred sites for cult-related rituals, but more critically, they serve as an objectification of the historical past, to remind the Dogon people their ancestors, their past, and their roots; which all in turn contribute to the formation of a structured society based on collective knowledge.

II. The ever-changing History

Prior moving into the various constructions of the three cults, it is necessary for us to firstly gain an insight of the Dogon area in general as well as its founding myth. The Dogon are found in the administrative region of Mopti in the French Soudan; they inhibit the cliffs of Bandiagara and Hombori and spread out on to the plain which lies to the south of these cliffs (Tait, 1950). While the total population figure of Dogon is not certain, the region of Sanga, in which the Dogon-exploration pioneer Missions Griaule were concentrated on, is comprised of fifteen villages of which the largest contains approximately eight-hundred souls (Tait, 1950). Of these fifteen different villages, nice practice Islam and six practice other religions, including Christianity and the unique animism, which is less main-stream to us. This scattered geographical and social pattern of Mali is exactly what makes this area so captivating to anthropologists : while there is little documentation of Dogon history, countless stories about past fills the brick huts as colorful tales are passed on orally from generation to generation. Here, based on Oosterling's article, “Oedipus and the Dogon: the myth of modernity interrogated”, I will give a shortened summary of Dogon's most prominent creation myth which surrounds a god called Amma, which will not only be useful in the context of understanding Dogon cult's architects, but also in analyzing the significance of these physical buildings due to the ever-changing Dogon “history” : it all began with a supernatural power called Amma and his creation of the Earth as his wife. As he laid her in the sky with her head to the North and her feet to the South, Amma wanted to mate with the Earth; but the Earth refused and “stood up” her sex organ – in form of a termite hill. However, Amma insisted and forcefully removed the hills so that the union can take place, which is socially reproduced as female circumcision in present day Dogon. Due to the fact that this act was a violation, the Earth did not give birth to the expected twins Nommo, but to a cursed Fox. Disappointed with the Fox, Amma alone created the Nommo twins, who since then had been acting as the ultimate authorities for the human population to follow (Oosterling, 1989). In accordance with this principle of twin-ness, Dogon villages are built in pairs, with one referred to as the Upper and the other as Lower; a pair of villages of this sort is regarded as Heaven and the Earth united (Griaule and Dieterlen, 1954). This story, like many Dogon customs, has been told As demonstrated with this creation myth, has been diffused in many different accounts : for instance, some say that Amma actually split into two Ogo – a representation of disorder – and later created Nommo to restore order. As illustrated by the creation myth, in an exclusively oral community like that of the Dogon people, history is never fact nor consensus. With each passing of the story, words and interpretations are bound to change, even if ever so slightly, and after eras can be meld into completely different chronicles; this notion of the historical uncertainty leads itself to this essay's argument : that Dogon cults' architectural constructions will reveal themselves to be more than solely sacred rites, but furthermore, they serve to objectify selected parts of the Dogon people's past; and in particular, the past that details the journeys of their ancestors.

It is crucial for one to acknowledge that in Dogon, architecture, social organization and religions can never be dissociated; they are all intertwined in the process of a village formation. Before analyzing the three major buildings in a Dogon village, here is an overview of the major themes of the three cults that this paper will address : the Wagem cult focuses on the ancestors of the extended family; the Lebe cult operates the renewal of the land and of the Dogon people and lastly, the Binu cult focuses on maintaining harmony between the human community and the supernatural forces of the forest and the bush (Blom, 2009). Therefore, we will see that the various types of buildings that form a Dogon village go together with the local cults that govern religious life.

III. The Ginna

The first major cult that holds a Dogon community is called the Wagem cult. Membership of this Wagem cult is transmitted from a father to his children and every pregnant woman before labour sacrifices to the Wagem ancestor shrine in oder that the child she is about to bear will become a Wagem i, i.e., child of the ancestors (Tait, 1950). In totality, it is more appropriate and realistic to consider the Wagem cult as a blood-connected familial community as opposed to the modern religious concept that we perceive. Ancestral relationships are immensely emphasized in the Wagem cult and each person's respective relationship to the ancestor defines one's living area in the Dogon village. “Ginna” refers to the house of a village's founder, which is placed at the center of an extended patrilineal family. Here, the system of choosing a successor is driven by blood-connection : the most senior member among the successors in direct descent of the territorial founder will become the lineage elder and is entitled “Ginna Banga”, which means that he is now the head of the extended family and is in charge of the Wagem cult within his village (Blom, 2009). In situations where a village is made up of several ancestral quarters, each quarter will then have its very own Ginna. Each quarter or group of people that are related to a specific Ginna is called tire Ginna; each tire Ginna functions as a more or less independent unit of production, consumption and reproduction; and as such can be said to constitute the basic domestic or household group within Dogon society (Lane, 2006). Moving onto the actual architectural aspects, Ginna is a two-storied building in which the Ginna Banga habitats on the ground floor; the second floor is a granary storage space for the extended family and most importantly, the Wagem, i.e. the ancestor altar, is placed on the Ginna's roof terrace. This Wagem altar is the foremost defining characteristic of a Ginna; it is made up of a set of bowls where each bowl represents an respective ancestor. The founder, his successors and the other elder men of the village all have their own bowl in this altar, they believe that these bowls serve as a receptacle of their souls (Blom, 2009). The Dogon society is gerontocratic; elders are the intermediaries in the Wagem cult of the ancestors, since they are the future ancestors themselves. This male-dominating ritual reveals that the purpose of the Wagem cult is for men to stay in contact as well as to maintain a emotional dialogue with their ancestors, whom should never be forgotten.

The Ginna's altar function as the ritual site of the cult, in which family members will make sacrifices during different occasions. As documented by Blom, the “Gorou” ritual tops the most essential ceremony in each Wagem cult. The “Gorou” takes place once every year in either December or January in which each Ginna commemorates all the ancestors of the extended family by making sacrifices; it is believed that the ancestors' souls would come back and drink from their respective bowls. To satisfy the religious faith of the Dogon people, this “Gorou” ritual is not only limited to happening at the Ginna; each family actually maintains an altar, called the Tire Kabu, at home for their own deceased family members. As mentioned previously, the Ginna's altar is also where the new born infants are presented to the ancestors; this patrilineal kin group is thus held to be a “reflection of the first mystical family from that part of the world egg in which all events unfold in order, the generations following one another in normal fashion” (Griaule and Dieterlen, 1954). Moreover, “Gorou” is also the time when the elders in charge of the Ginna decide whether it is the right time to start preparations for Dama, which is an elaborate mask festival that enables the recently deceased to attain the formal status of being an ancestor. If the Ginna's elders decide to launch a new Dama, they will ask the village's political leader – Hogon (will be discussed in details later) – to obtain permission from all the other tie Ginnas in the village; in cases where other tie Ginnas reject the offer, a new request can be formulated at the next annual Gorou (Blom, 2009).

4. House of the Hogon

In the Dogon society, the Lebe cult is devoted to Lebe Serou, the first ever ancestor of the Dogon brought to earth by Amma. Lebe Serou was a god-like snake creature that was “responsible for the integrity of the cultivated land”(Griaule and Dieterlen, 1954). He guided his people to their new homeland but was later cursed and sacrificed on earth via death; he was buried in the Mande and returned to the sky to live with God, Amma (Boyd-Buggs and Scott, 2003). It is believed that the physical earth from his grave in the Mande was taken on a journey eastwards to a village near Kani Bonzon; there, a first altar was erected by mixing the Lebe Serou's earth and the ones of the new land which marks the beginning of the Lebe Cult. From then onwards, each tribe took a part of the Lebe's earth and built an altar that contains some of this ancestral earth in each new found village (Blom, 2009). The oldest man in a village automatically becomes chief priest of a Lebe cult, called the Hogon, lives in this altar. According to Blom's field visit in Dogon, he noted that the Hogon must observe all the local taboos : any traveller passing through will find out soon enough that it is strictly forbidden to even shake hands. Once enthroned, the Hogon is no longer allowed to have physical contact of any sort with anyone, including his wives and children. While his first wife will continue to prepare his meals, chastity remains obligatory until death. Moreover, the Hogon is not allowed to leave this Lebe compound at all; when necessary, reunions with guests will have to be held at the Hogon's house.

Interestingly, this Hogon's house, or the Lebe altar, is actually built in a way to present the Dogon's model of the universe; exemplifying this essay's focus on the objectification of Dogon's historical creation myth using rigid architectural constructions. Griaule recorded his observations of the Lebe altar in detail in his famous collaboration work with Dieterlen, “The Dogon”: With either figures made of millet pulp or in reliefs of puddled earth, the altar itself portrays the beneficent Heaven. On the wall behind the platform where the Hogon officially “sits” is painted the Northern Stars to the left, the Stars of the South to the right; simultaneously, facing the platform, the Sun is painted on the wall between the two doors of the East. Zooming out, the Lebe House is entered a flight of eight stairs which represent the first eight chiefs of the Lebe cult, thus symbolically speaking, the present Hogon follows in the steps of his predecessors; once again proving the cruciality of historical past in present day buildings. This connotations of the eight ancestors does not stop here : to the left of the compound's entrance is the Hogon's own hut, also known as Toguna, which is also approached by eight steps; right besides the Toguna lies once again eight stones which serve as seats when the Hogon sits in judgement; on the other side, to the right of the entrance is a row of eight stones which represent the eight Hogons of the future instead of the past. By the side of these eight “future” stones sit a hallow stone, which functions as altar where the spirits of the deceased chiefs would come to drink from. Here, one can deduce that Dogon architectures do not only try to contain the historical past, but furthermore, they connect and intertwine the past, present and future together within one space, all joint together by the same cult's faith. Through the Lebe compound's careful design, not only is the Hogon's daily life set against that of a background which showcases the world in miniature, but the compound is also ingeniously positioned in a way that his daily movements actually symbolize the motive and sacred power that animates the universe. For instance, beginning at dawn, seated with his face towards the East, the Hogon is present and responsible for the rising of the sun; towards the end of the day, he will then take his new seat facing towards the West, controlling the arrival of the dark. Thus, to be precise, the Hogon participates in the universal and natural rhythms of the world simply by his movements about his compound.

V. The Binu Shrine

The Dogon creation myth that was explained earlier in this essay is indeed the foundation of m­most, if not all, cults in Dogon. The Binu cult finds part of its fundamental faith in the primeval myth of death, which is actually related to the Nommo twins of the Dogon creation myth. This Binu myth explains the discovery of death by the ancient ancestors: shortly before the physical appearance of death, when the elders were becoming too old, they would transform themselves into a large python snake and dwell in the country's ponds and rivers. Through this act, they are believed to start a new life as a water spirit called Binu, which assembles the water spirit, Nommo, in the creation myth (Bouju, 2003). For instance, in “Graine de l'homme, enfant du mil”, Bouju gives the following encounter : In the village of Sibi-Sibi the Karambe clan's totem is a snake. One day an inhabitant of Sibi-Sibi was saved from drowning by a water serpent. It was through the animal's intermediary that the Binu manifested its alliance with the Karambe clan. Since that day, it is strictly forbidden for the Karambe to hunt, kill or consume snakes. The formation of a Binu community is closely connected with the Wagem cult that was mentioned earlier on: several patrilineages, i.e. Wagem or domestic unit, will join together to make a Binu clan(Blom, 2009). Thus, every individual is attached to the Binu cult of his father and therefore belongs to an exogamous agnatic group wider than his major lineage; this affiliation is indicated by the name of the Binu which is given to him by the priest at his birth (Griaule and Dieterlen, 1954) Each Binu clan's leadership belongs to the Binu priest, whose mission is of extremely different nature as that of the very political Hogon : The Binu priest is responsible for maintaining a harmonic co-existence between the supernatural forces of the Bush and his clan members; members will go to him for all kinds of problems with a mystical nature, such as unexplained diseases and divination.

The defining architectural work of the Binu cult is undeniably the Binu Shrine. A Binu shrine contains the altars dedicated to the clan ancestors, it is also where the Binu rituals or festivals take place. Binu shrine is a single-chambered constructions decorated with reliefs and geometric designs; its facades feature rounded turrets, inset niches and mounds. Running down of front of this shrine are white marks and streaks indicating that animal blood, millet porridge and other substances that are being sacrificed during agrarian rites (Bickford and Smith, 1997). These agrarian rites are to ensure the coming of the rain, the regeneration of nature as well as the abundance of harvests of the Binu cult. As we have seen earlier, the Binu cult honors the mythical immortal ancestor who never experienced death and this theme is portrayed throughout Binu shrines with the use of wooden statues : a carved human figure can represent one of the immortal ancestors prior to being transformed into a snake or it can represent a real person, the one who founded the cult in the village and created the local Binu shrine (Grunne, 1988). This wooden statue is also vital during Binu rituals, for example, during his investiture ceremony, the future priest of a Binu cult would climb up to the roof of the Binu sanctuary wearing only a white apron and his head completely shaved; simultaneously, a former priest would sacrifice a chicken over this new priest's head. The blood is poured onto his skull and over a duge stone which is worn around his neck, which symbolizes a miniature altar in which the Binu's soul can visit the new priest(Grunne, 1988). During this whole ceremony, the new priest is considered to be possessed by the vital force and soul of the Binu ancestor captured within the wooden statue. Once again, we see here that most representational cult architectures revolve around the attempt of linking the past (Binu ancestor represented by the statue), the present (the ceremony) and the future (the new priest and his duge stone necklace which the Binu ancestor could possess in the future) together with a tangible object which solidifies the mythical past.

VI. Conclusion

Combining the analysis of the three major Dogon cults of Wagem, Lebe and Binu, we see that Dogon culture contains complex knowledge systems based on an understanding of a sacred universe sustained by a synergy of individual, ancestral, communal, natural, spiritual and cosmological forces that animate all of their everyday physical reality. For thousands of years, Dogon's life was organized and evolved around the manipulation and balancing of all these forces. While myths and fantasticals have no place in main-stream Westernized scientific and philosophical development, a new framework to interpreting Dogon's “notoriously” religious system of knowledge is necessary. As translated by Griaule and Dieterlen, the Dogon uses four divisions of knowledge: girl so, benne so, bolo so and so dayi. Girl so, which translates to “fore-word”, means simplified knowledge; events are simplified and fantasized and so includes visible things and rituals. The benne so, which translates to “side-word”, contains the words of the girl so with deeper explanations; yet, it does not become clear until other levels of knowledge are revealed; the bolo so, “back-word”, proceeds further to complete the knowledge of girl so and benne so, but it still does not reveal the very secret parts; finally, so dayi, “clear-word”, is knowledge in its ordered complexity. We can conclude that these divisions of knowledge represent a multidimensional and holistic approach towards knowledge. The challenge of Dogon scholars now is to find an epistemology inclusive of the phenomena that transcend time, space, circumstance and the supposedly “logical” five-sense reasoning, just like how the Dogon has already been practicing for centuries : by employing architectural constructions to link the uncertain past, present and future all together.

Bibliography

1. Bickford, Kathleen E., and Cherise Smith. "Art of the Western Sudan." Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 23.2 (1997): 104-19
2. Blom, Huib. Dogon: Images & Traditions. Paris: Bernard Dulon
3. Bouju, Jacky. "Nommo: The Spirit of Water: In the Dogon World." Leonardo 36.4 (2003): 279-80.
4. Boyd-Buggs, Debra, and Joyce Hope. Scott. Camel Tracks: Critical Perspectives on Sahelian Literatures. Trenton, NJ: Africa World, 2003.
5. Griaule, Marcel, and Germaine Dieterlen. "The Dogon." African Worlds: Studies in the Cosmological Ideas and Social Values of African Peoples.London: Oxford University Press, 1954. 83-110. Print.
6. Grunne, Bernard De. "Ancient Sculpture of the Inland Niger Delta and Its Influence on Dogon Art." African Arts 21.4 (1988): 50-55
7. Lane, Paul. "Household Assemblages, Lifecycles and the Remembrance of Things Past among the Dogon of Mali." The South African Archaeological Bulletin 61.183 (2006): 40-56.
8. Oosterling, Henk. "Oedipus and the Dogon: Myth of Modernity interrogated." I, We and the Body. Amsterdam: Grüner, 1989. 27-45.
9. Tait, David. "An Analytical Commentary on the Social Structure of the Dogon." Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 20.3 (1950): 175-99

MyMap

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http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=210082685792529220522.00049769046f92f7f9a2f

An evaluation of Africamap

In this week's blog entry, I will talk about how Africamap has helped me regarding researching work and understanding Africa in this course so far. I remember that I joined this class a little bit later than other classmates, I missed the first 2 lessons of the class. So, when I decided to add this course, I spent quite a bit of time doing research work on Africa's landscape to make sure that I will enjoy the content as well as catching up with the classes that I missed. During this period of time, I did not know about Africamap yet so I was just using other websites as my courses, thus making this a great opportunities evaluate Africamap. 


Before Africamap, while there are existing data on the internet regarding Africa,  they were all very spread out . I.E. different organizations and groups tend to have different interests in Africa, such as political, environmental or female-related work. As a result, all these different "interest" africa data turn out to be very spread out across different websites instead of a distinct statistical data base comprising all the useful informations. Moreover, I realized that a lot of the existing data are in either book or journal formats; even when there exists computer data, they tend to be either table or essay format; comparatively, Africamap provides a much more "spatial" data base in digital format that could be easily interpreted and shared amongst classmates; I thought this "sharing" ability will turn out to be vitally important in further developing Africamap because there are many courses on Africa here at Harvard, so it would be great if everyone could have a space to collaborate all their research work! 

Overall, I thought the most important characteristic of Africamap is the fact that we could combine Africamap with GoogleEarth and Map. It is amazing how we could download 3D data directly onto GoogleEarth; this is because that some people might be reluntant to learn a new program (I.E. Africamap), but the fact that we could directly download data onto GoogleEarth allows entry-level user to still manipulate it pretty well by using the GoogleEarth interface instead since we are already very familiar with this program. In addition to GoogleEarth, we can also re-import googleearth-edited maps into Google Map, this is also very important for me because I could then share edited work with my friends, creating another "inner-interface" for people with similar interest to share their research productions. 

Challenges that Mali is facing.

This week, I would like to focus on the environmental issues that Mali is facing at the moment. Under this umbrella, the major problem in Mali is actually its increasing desertification. In addition, there are of course also soil erosion, deforestation as well as the loss of pastureland that follow. Apart from the woods, Mali also faces a very inadequate supply of water : with only 74% of the city dwellers and 61% of those who live in the rural areas have access to pure water. While the country has 60 cu km of renewable water resources, a large majority (97%) goes towards farming and 1% is used for industrial purposes, leaving very limited amount for actual drinking. Although Mali has large reservoirs, another problem is that they are distributed very unevenly. During the great droughts in the 70s and 80s, hundreds of thousands of animals died of thirst at the edge of the Sahara. The sustainable utilization of water reserve is actually one of the 9 programmes of the National Aids Programmes (NAP) for the United Nations Convention Combat Desertification (UNCCD implementation). Here is an interestingly ironic photo that combines the two environmental problems that Mali is facing:

Well in Mali inside a dessert: The battle for water threatens the peaceful future of the world.

Returning to the readings this week, some of them actually document some interesting environmental issues rooted in Mali too. Starting with "Climate Patterns and Land-Use Practices in the Dry Zones of Africa" by Ellis and Galvin, they noted that the interannual CV recorded at the arid zone stations in Mali is approximately 39%, which is a much more clear and consistent trend than the one observed in East African arid station. From this observation, we learn that shifts in rain-fall between wet and dry phases are clearly discernible in the West Africa, with a very serious 20-30 year periods of above-normal rainfall level. This problem actually caused large scale livestock morality, human migration as well as transitional shifts in ecosystem structure, thus requiring sustainable actions from international aids organizations. 

Secondly, moving onto "Indigenous use of Wetlands and sustainable development in West Africa" by Adams, he talks a lot about the wetland problem there. We learned that there exist major wetlands in the Delta Interieure of the River Niger in Mali; this Niger Inland Delta is vital because it supports 550,000 people, and more importantly, in the dry season provides grazing for about 1 million cattle and 2 million sheep and goats. There are also 80,000 fishermen there, and the Delta also supports the farming of 17,000 hectares of rice, which amounts to half the total area of rice in Mali! We see that these floodplain wetlands provide important pastoral resources for habitants in West Africa. In the Niger Inland Delta in particular, there are about half a million people, including farmers, fisherman and two groups of pastoralists. Interestingly, the productivity of the Niger Inland Delta depends on the fact that the period of high flood is different from that of the local rains because the Niger actually draws water from the Futa Jallon far to the south-west. The rains fall on the Delta between June and Sept annually and fall between January and March - resulting in a dry delta between April and June. From then on, the Delta will be extensively used for grazing between December and July, this period actually supports over 1 million cattle and 2 million sheep and goats, which represent a 20% of the total numbers of livestocks in Mali! This way of living creates much more options for people living with scarce resources, and more livestock assets mean more security for the poor. 

A very nice photo showing livestock grazing on an island in the River Niger. 

Fortunately, from my research, I realized that a lot of international organizations are taking many initiatives in Mali for environment preservation, most notably the PEI-Mali (Poverty-environment initiative) carried out by the UNDP. PEI-Mali started in April 2005 and had been scaled-up in 2007-2008 as a joint initiative between the Mali Government, UNDP-Mali and PEI-Africa. It focuses on capacity building for a better articulation of the environment policy with the national development planning processes. Here I would like to end with two major activities of the PEI during years 2005-2007: firstly, they spent a lot of time on training of academics, policy makers, economists and CSOs to the techniques of Integrated Ecosystem Assessment( IEA), which will in the long run lead to a better understanding of the links between Poverty and Environment in the country-decision-making level. Secondly, during their "Identification of the geographical areas (priority intervention sites)", they found that the linkages between Poverty and Environment is the most critical in Mali! They then conducted a follow-up in 12 districted located in the 3 most poverty-environment vulnerable regions in Mali, and identified potential small-scale poverty-environment community projects that could be carried out by the local government. 

 

Finding the “Past” in the Dogon Country

Continuing my blog post from last week, I will explore how the “past” or history has marked itself on Dogon Country (land of legends and mysticism)'s landscape this week. Let's begin with a simple skeletal time line of the Dogon Country, which should then reveal itself how the past actually has heavily influenced the present landscape or architect of the Dogon Country.

3200 BC In Mali, West Africa, lives a tribe of people called the Dogon. The Dogon are believed to be of Egyptian decent and their astronomical lore goes back thousands of years ago.

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Approx 1300 The Dogon people migrated here from the surrounding plains in about 1300 AD as a refuge from other groups entering the area introducing Islam. Today 35 per cent f Dogon people are Muslim but most still follow their traditional religion. A small minority are Christian.

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1490 AD Around 1490 AD, fleeing invaders and/or drought, they migrated to the Bandiagara cliffs of central Mali. The concentration of Dogon villages of the Bandiagara escarpment are one of the most recognizable sights in Mali.

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1862 AD Doors of grain-stores are decorated with carvings and paintings of figures that represent the celestial ancestors of the Dogon.

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1893 AD After the French arrived in this year, slave raids ended, and the Dogon expanded into the plains around the plateau. This migration severed the Dogon from their religious sites, paving the way for Islam and Christianity.

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1920 AD The invading French colonial powers finally managed to 'pacify' the Dogon in 1920, but thereafter almost completely ignored this tiny, isolated, resourceless , semi-desert patch of the vast territory of French West Africa.While their distinctive civilization was able to withstand these military onslaughts, modern tourism is proving to be much more powerful than any invading army, as a force for change.

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1931 AD They gained the attention of the Western world through the publications of Marcel Griaule, who traveled through Dogon country during the famous Dakar–Djibouti mission in 1931.

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1960 AD Formerly known as the Sudanese Republic, Mali finally gained independence and became the Republic of Mali in 1960.

I think the best starting point to record the “past”'s footprints on the Dogon landscape is their escapism from the Islamic spread during the 1300s, approximately 700 years ago. Originally, the ancestors of the Dogon came from Mande, an area in southwest Mali and northeast Guinea that was home to the thirteenth-century Mali empire. The Dogon people migrated after the empire's collapse to the cliffs of the Bandiagara plateau – resulting in the nowadays striking images of villages perched along the escarpment. As I mentioned last week, Mali’s Dogon tribe as a race fled southward into their current home, the Bandiagara Escarpment, to escape slave raids from Muslim kingdoms to the north; because the Dogon were on the run from the physical spread of Islam, they wanted their new settlements to be highly secured; therefore, instead of constructing houses at the base of the cliffs or on the flat lands of the hill tops, they built their villages into the cliff faces directly! - resulting in today's prominent architectural landscape of the Dogon country, a direct example of how the past influences the present day. An interesting fact is that the Dogon people weren't actually the first ones to do this type of “built-in” houses. Before the Dogon arrived here, the previous inhabitants – the Tellen, had already built their own villages into the cliffs, and the remains of these ancient dwellings can still be seen high up on the falaise. Nobody is quite sure how the Tellem actually reached their houses, but it's possible that the escarpment was forested back in the days, so they could have climbed trees, or they could have dropped ropes from the top of the escarpment and climbed down! Whatever it was, these Tellem houses definitely built another layer of “past” full of weird mystique to a landscape that's already quite strange.

Moreover, the complex Dogon cosmology is made materially manifest in both villages and house form. The Dogon House, for example, is described by historian Zahan as repsenting a human being, stretched out on his right, his procreative side, a position which is equally that of the man on the conjugal bed and of the corpse in the tomb. Increasingly, more and more Dogons are converting is Islamic religion, which results in mosque being a new feature of many Dogon villages, once again an example showing how the past connects to the present in Dogon landscapes.

A site in Mali : the Dogon Country

My region of focus is Mali, and regarded today as the peak tourism area in Mali, the Dogon Country is an area surrounding the famous Bandiagara escarpment cliff, comprising a number of indigenous villages. After the lectures and readings on trying to establish a more-closely-linked relationship between landscape and humans, I thought that The Dogon Country is the perfect site for me to discuss due to its richly religious and indigenous culture, in which almost the most banal objects, carry a sacred value and a symbolic meaning. For example, I was surprised to find out that even the shape of the humble Dogon Basket is symbolic to the locals: its square-shaped base refers to the cardinal points while the circular-shaped top symbolizes the celestial vault.

When one talks about Mali, Timbuktu and Djenne are often what pop up in the mind; whereas these two places have been to known to the Europeans for centuries already, The Dogon Country has only been studied from 1931 onwards. The appeal of the Dogon Country is an intertwined two-fold : the landscape and the culture, “intertwined” because the landscape is heavily influenced by its culture. The escarpment is dotted with the unique villages of the Dogon people, who migrated to this area approximately 7 centuries ago to escape the Islamic attack into West Africa. Fortunately, it's an area that has managed to remain relatively untouched by tourism's effect, its still full of donkey tracks and people speak Dogon instead of French, which is a rather refreshing sight in Mali. To tackle the seemingly overwhelming architecture style in Dogon, it is crucial for one to study the “Dogon Comosgony” first. This brings me back to our previous readings on “Glimpses of Ideology and Cosmology in the Iconography of Tombstones from the Loango Coast of Central Africa” by Denbow; while the cosmology employed is different in Central Africa compared to Dogon, the underlying intention remains constant. Dogon Comosgony explains the deepest secret of the Dogon people, which is their faith : it accompanies every aspect of their daily life and most importantly, leaves its footprints on Dogon architecture.

Let me begin with a more physical overview of the Dogon village before moving into the cosmology. As mentioned before, the Dogon were on the run from the Islamic spread, so they wanted their new villages to be secure; as a result, instead of building at the base of the cliffs or on the flat cliff tops, they unconventionally built their villages into the cliff faces themselves. Another level of protection comes from the villages' “protective color”. Dogon villages are initially hard to spot: the escarpment is of brownish red color and since the Dogon built their houses out of mud, these houses blend into the background perfectly.While building space is obviously scarce here, no settlements will be built on the plain/plateau since it is considered as “dangerous” (due to its easy-to-spot feature) and also reserved for crop-cultivation.

Going into the Dogon Cosmogony now, each respective village in the Dogon country is a montage of familal dwellings called the “guinna”, which has square terraces and granaries for millet storage with pointy roofs made from straw. Here comes the extraordinary part : regarding its organization, each village is arranged as to represent a Human Figure, which from my perspective, can be a perfect amplified application of Guerts' anthropological senses “Seselelame”. Furthermore, each village is concentrated with temple-like places, you can hardly walk 100 m without seeing a rock statue or an altar with traces of animal blood for sacred purposes. Most of the temples here are used for rituals for the Bunou Cult and worshipping of Amma (the creator of all things. These shrines' fronts are seasonally decorated with symbolic geometric signs, which are equivalent to our actual writings.
There are also the “toguna”, which are buildings for men to hold their councils and women are strictly forbidden. An interesting fact is that “tongua” all have very low ceiling on purpose, this is to prevent any discussion from turning into stand-up arguments. Another captivating observation is that there are special houses built solely for menstruating women since the community ought not to have any interaction with these “impure” women; these houses are differentiated from other houses with their round structure. These two incidents are example showing how Dogon landscapes are a result of their religious faith.

A Toguna in Mali, with low-ceiling

Overall, I would say that entering The Dogon Country is almost similar to discovering a temple, a visitor will have to accept, and appreciate, all the seemingly radical yet strange traditions of this cultural universe, whose values rest almost entirely on an extremely complex combination of philosophy and religion. Last but not the least, here's an amazing video that I found from the official Dogon Country tourism site, it precisely features all the signature architecture of Dogon, enjoy!

Architecture Video from the official Dogon County tour website

2 Book Reviews "The Language of landscape" & “Imagining Serengeti: A History of Landscape Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Times to the Present”

Re-definition has become a very important concept to me in this class, so far, as re-visiting my previous entries, I have learnt to re-define “mapping” and “senses”. This week, however, Spirn's “The language of landscape” hits the spot for me, a re-evaluation of what landscape could mean. Doing a bit of research on the word “Landscape”, I learnt that the American understanding actually derived from the German geographical term “landschaft”, which means a restricted piece of land; on the other hand, in English, it has a double meaning, which extends to mean “appearance of a land as we perceive it”. Spirn precisely tackles this aesthetic side of landscape to structure a new way of understanding landscape. Beginning from the very first chapter, I was already captivated by her unique analogy between landscape and language : landscape has all the characteristics of language – basic grammar structure and formation, pattern, shape and function. I thought it was ingenious how she refers elements such as wind, rocks, water and trees as fundamental grammar, while additional man-built environments as the combination of words to make sense and meanings of the grammar and phrases themselves. She succinctly points out that landscape is “pragmatic, poetic, rhetorical, polemical. Landscape is scene of life, cultivated construction, carrier of meaning. It is language” [15]. It was great to see that she mentioned the sacred garden at Ryoanji in Japan as I have been there myself and have conducted a study on the Zen elements of rock garden in my Japanese History class before. The intentional exclusion of trees and water in a garden was prominent in Zen garden, which strives for simplicity, this proves Spirn's reference to how garden design could be a way of interaction between human and the environment.

Growing up in a condense city Hong Kong, Spirn's writing also provokes me to ponder upon the idea of urban-planning which is based on the merging of man-built and natural elements; Spirn points out “it is a radical theory [that landscape is language] in the sense of … demanding and enabling radical change in how we choose to think and act... to call some landscapes natural and other artificial or cultural misses the truth that landscapes are never wholly one or the other” [8]. Not only does this reflect that our modern thinking has advanced regarding urban-development based on ecological measurements as well as sustainability, moreover, people are more aware of the knowledge that urban and natural environment, nature and cultural structures are in fact forever interwoven entities that depend on each other. After reading this book, I truly believe and experienced that it is not enough to study landscape as a scenic text, a more substantial understanding would require not only focusing on the country or in the city, but must incorporate the mutual definition and interdependence of both.

Returning to the way of narrative that we discussed in class last week, Sprin's way of narrating is highly effective for me : firstly, her intentional emphasis on employing description to provoke emotional thinking in us readers ingeniously make the process of reading this book parallel to the actual experience of being in a landscape; secondly, Spirn inserts into the book many of her own photographs collection and landscape plans, which allow us to be in direct contact and engagement with different landscapes across time and locations.

The next book that I read was “Imagining Serengeti: A History of Landscape Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Times to the Present” by Jan Shetler, in which she tries to re-discover human history in this Eastern Africa area. To me, Serengeti is a more familiar sounding area in Africa due to current media's constant portrayal of its abundant wildlife environment, as well as countless international green organizations' focus on the human rights and wilderness conservation debate. Due to this common image of Serengeti as a wilderness, it was surprising for me to learn from Shetler that this signature wilderness is actually part of the colonial conservation policy, which entirely neglects this area's indigenous social and ecological history. For example, Shetler mentions that the colonial legal authorities' power to criminalize local hunting in the Serengeti as a way to preserve this nature, however, until it was fully renationalized in the 1950s, all the hunting laws were actually unenforceable and that natives in the western Serengeti would hunt for the sake of both food-provision for the households and to earn their own wealth, which makes perfect sense for a community living in such wilderness. It was more horrifying for me to learn that by the end of the 1950s, strong political power forced the National Park to become an ideal untouched wilderness, resulting in the Nyerere government's involuntary acceptance; due to Tanzania's large-scale relocation project in the late 1970s, the government was forcing all these indigenous people away from the National park's western boundary, completely erasing the shared historical memory of this sacred space. All these references by Shetler remind me of our last week's discussion on Mcgregor's “The Victoria Falls 1900-1940”, just like how Mcgregor ended the article by showing improvements shown by the government in conserving indigenous history, especially that of the people who lived there, Shetler focuses on learning the oral history of the forgotten population that lived in the Western Seregenti, which namely are the Nata, Ikizu and Ngrome people etc which brings to another feature that I found intriguing in Shetler's writing : her very refreshing way of narratives by a bulk collection of oral histories of the elderlies.

“Core spatial imagery” is crucial to Shetler's way of re-telling these elderlies' stories, this notion places emphasis on the preservation of landscape health, which leads to the everyday life of food security. Here, this very idea proves to me the importance of landscape or border conservation for the people as, since as hedge against possible famines and droughts, people would root their religious belief and spirituality in certain areas, which they faithfully believed possess the power of fertility and stability. Together, along with the well-known natural disasters such as drought and disease epidemics in the Western Serengeti, territories protection and claims of landscapes became a much more priority for people living there, constantly striving to pronounce their ethnic boundaries. Going back to Shetler's narrative of story-collecting, it was amazing how she revealed to us indirectly what is the supposedly “natural wilderness” form of Serengeti by using these elders' stories to revisit the abandoned ritual sites and hunting groups, which are now legally and forcefully incorporated into the greater Serengeti “man-made” wilderness. Her methodology in composing this book seems to ingeniously parallel her critique over the Colonial authorities : the book could not reveal the whole truth without the addition of these indigenous elders' stories, just like how the Western-style conservation of the Serengeti National Park could never be truly successful without incorporating the collective social memory of this sacred place.