A Quiet Moment In Djenne

When traveling through the villages and towns of Mali, there's always some children interested in what you're up to. Foreign visitors to Mali, especially white ones like myself, are pretty rare these days. It wasn't often that I could look down a street or alley and see it empty, ripe for the photo-taking.

If this is the only photo of Mali you've ever seen, you should know there's more to Mali than just this street. However, you could still observe a few things that are common throughout the areas of the country I traveled.

For instance, the mud-brick adobe style building is the norm. While traditional in nature, it is still the overwhelming majority except in some larger cities. When you build your house out of mud, having some water runoff system is pretty key, so you see the pipes sticking out everywhere to prevent water from pooling on the rooftops. 

One thing that I didn't really see in the small villages so much as larger towns like Djenné are the open-air sewers. If you look midway down, that groove down the center of the street is a sewer. When walking around, it's always important to mind your step unless you want to end up having a shitty day. You get the picture, I hope.