Africamap and Senses : understanding the relationship between Landscape and Body in Dogon, Mali

After a few weeks of lectures and readings, things start to really make sense for me and get into pattern. Little did I know that last week's lecture would have a continuing and vital effect on my preparation for this blog. I am actually referring to our previous reading on Bassett's "Indigenous Mapmaking in inter tropical Africa". Now the question comes : how is Bassett's article in Mapmaking in anyway related to "Senses"? The connection is a fundamental one: my pre-conception of definition of westernized ideology. I remember being intrigued by Bassett's emphasis on understanding things from an African perspective, since the nowadays recognized and westernized "definition" of certain ideologies might not necessarily be the norm in certain indigenous cultures. Just like how Bassett points out that Mapmaking could extend to Rock Art and Body tattoos from an African perspective, I started to wonder what "Senses" could mean to them. Prior trying to search for these traits of senses on Africamap, it was vital for me to grasp a sense of African Senses, especially in Mali. Fortunately, this week's reading on senses by Geurts touches exactly upon West Africa, of which Mali and my focus area Dogon are located.

It was a very refreshing re-definiation of my knowledge of "senses" as Guerts describes what she calls the "sensorium" of the Eve, including their ways of classifying and attending to bodily sensory receptors with cultural meanings. I never knew that Anlo-Ewe people would consider abilities such as speaking and balance to be part of their "senses". What inspires me the most was actually Guerts' opening story of her bodily "bolt" experience with the "Rock"; enlarging this idea to my area of focus - Mali, Dogon, I can't escape the image of the prominent Dogon Cliffs. I start to question : what would be the best and most inclusive way to study the relationship between senses and Dogon landscape? I reached the conclusion of discovering the relationship between human bodies and landscapes there; while this cosmological relationship is a metaphorical one, I believe that it does parallel Guerts' notion of "seselalame".  In fact, this was slightly exemplified in Bassett's reading, which relates parts of a granary to parts of a woman, the parts of the house compound with parts of the body cosmological signs and the village explained in terms of an extended anatomical metaphor.

By placing my above ideas onto Africamap, the first thing that I find helpful in tracking these "senses" are "2. Cities, villages, populated places, etc" functions under the "Places" tab, it allows me to locate where the population lives, and since their homes often refer to important relationship between the landscape the the human body, it is vital to have these areas in mind. Here is a screenshot of what I got:

Cities, villages, populated places, etc. in Mali 

Moving on, another useful feature that I found is the "Settlement Patterns" function under the "Map Layers tap"; by downloading the 3D version of it onto GoogleEarth, I got to distinguish clearly between permanent and non-permanent settlement areas, which were useful as I would think that permanent settlements are areas which would reflect most cultural ideologies. The Dogon Plateau falls into the purple region, which denotes "Nom ad or fully migratory". 

Settlement Patterns, Mali

However, for some reasons, the references link for all the "References" under "Ethno-Classifications" are not working at all, I suspect it could be a technical problem. I wish to access them some time in the future because I would like to read deeper into how and what sources they use to determine the settlement patterns as well as the prevailing type of dwelling; once the references are found, it would be very easy and effective to locate the exact villages, as well as photos of them that could be useful to my study. 

One thing that I am not too sure how to function on Africamap is the "zooming-in" of the actual landscapes there, so for now, I decided to try to use MyMap on google to see if I could find any actual landscapes on the map there, by zooming into Dogon Plateau and using the "Photo" function, MyMap displays some landmarks around the area,

Dogon Plateau, MyMaps

I am guessing that the photos feature reveal the fact that I cannot actually zoom into physical size of the landscapes of Dogon, however, I will instead find certain villages that I would like to study, then post their photos up onto MyMaps, and can then combine the features of Africamap together via Google Earth. While this week I did encounter many technical difficulties with Africamap, I am glad that I got to pinpoint precisely what "senses" would mean to me, as well as Dogon's landscapes. I am pretty confident and happy that I will be studying the cosmological relationship between Dogon's landscapes (which in a large part is their living areas) and the human bodies; I am sure that Bassett's reading as well as Guerts' will contribute significantly to my final research.
Last but not the last, here's a glimpse of what my final project will be focus on,

Tiogou, Mali