Dog Days

The news from Mali is likely to change. A few thousand years ago, the Dogon people chased the Tellem people from the cliffs of Bandiagara. The Tellems were short - pygmies - and they lived high in vertical cliffs. The only way they could have accessed these homes was either with vines or magic. This according to the Dogon. The Dogon were being pursued themselves by the Fulani. Hoping to escape aggressive Islam expansion, they ousted the Tellem from their vertical sanctuaries. The Tellem kept on running, pretty much to Uganda. The Tuaregs kept marauding the North-East, bent self-governance. Why wouldn't they?

A few thousand years later, the Tellem are still somewhere in Uganda. They are still viewed with suspicion - much like most human aberrations - but they are safe. To be underestimated, is their greatest strength - everyone knows short people rule the world. Think beyond the Chinese. The Dogon are struggling. After years of living a rather exciting and insular life in the cliffs, they realised that the Industrial West had slowly taken over the world. Their brief stint in tourism, showing these Westerners their extraordinary homeland - the Tellem may disagree - has been put paid to by the Tuareg. The Tuareg people, or 'rebels' as they are now known as, continued pressing for a chunk of the Sahara called their own. Tourists became nervous that the whole region would become unstable. They were right. Although no-one can offer confirmation, the terrorist group Al-Qaeda - the biggest cowards and most aimless of the lot - ask impressionable Tuaregs to kidnap tourists and hand them over so Al Qaeda can get some cash out of their governments.

This makes the Dogon hate the Tuaregs even more, even though it is a small minority of rogue soldiers, probably looking for employment after their boss called Gaddafi was deservedly shot in the head last year. While this is at least a legitimate threat, the Dogon are still wary of the Tellem. Why wouldn't they be? Magic and mischief always trumps fundamentalism.

We journeyed through this situation for a few nights. It was a mixed bag. Exhilarating for the most part, but never quite managing to shake that feeling of being a target. It's not a nice feeling. It encroaches on you through waking and sleeping hours, and sometimes manifests illogically in very strange times. On our final morning in Dogon Country, we awoke to three men huddled round a radio.

"The President has been kidnapped."

The one thing we dreaded and meticulously planned itineraries to avoid and spoke about into the small hours of the night, that ghastly concept of being kidnapped.

And so, of all the tourists, volunteers, aid workers, dodgy oil men, celebrities and, really, everyone else; the President was kidnapped. And, that's what the place throws you. Right in the bowels of the doldrums, you can have a little chuckle to yourself when it's truly made clear that nothing makes sense.