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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Safo is a huge town and commune in the Cercle of Kati in the Koulikoro Region of south-western Mali. As of 1998 the commune had a population of 6920. Mali, officially the Republic of Mali (French: République du Mali), is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with a population more than 14 million. Its capital is Bamako. ... Read more

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The river Niger, a source of life and danger for the people in impoverished eastern Mali, is also the origin of elaborate mythology.From his travels through Mali and down the Niger in a dugout canoe, Jean-Marie Gibbal has created a personal documentary of the cultures of the region.The result is at once an ethnography of cultures in crisis and a poetic evocation of the environment and people he encountered.

Gibbal portrays the river as the dominant, cohesive force among people in the face of social and environmental strife. He focuses on the Ghimbala healing cult, which centers on the river, and how the cult structures social relations in the region.Gibbal vividly recreations the Ghimbala rites, nocturnal ceremonies of spirit possession and seance which animate the water spirits, or genii, that inhabit the river.The genii, he finds, provide the strength of social identity in a world where famine and competing versions of Islam threaten to overpower traditional culture.

In its original French publication, The Genii of the River Niger was honored with an Alexandra David-Neel literary prize in 1989.Its powerful lyricism, combined with fascinating ethnographic depth, will delight general readers and specialists alike and will stir debates among specialists in African studies, the anthropology of religion, and literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Anthro-poetry
There is an underground constellation of spirit possession centers that stretches around the globe.Here we find people in trance, dreams moving to the first rank of importance, and known spirits, gods, and ghosts taking possession of living humans, speaking from their mouths.I'm not asking you to believe in all this.It happens in such places, right before your eyes.You will make of it what you will.That's how we understand "reality" every time, isn't it ?You can read about such things among the Mehinaku of the Amazon rainforest, in the candomble centers of urban Brazil, see it happen at the temple of Balaji in Rajasthan, India, or as I have, at many sites in Goa, or at Kataragama in Sri Lanka.The vision experiences of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, Vailankanni, Guadalupe, Medjugorje, and Fatima are closely related.These are but a few of the myriad places where it occurs.Local spirits seize control of the mind of participants, they go into a trance and speak with another voice.Such persons may also indulge in violent physical movement.Music may accompany such events or not.Jean-Marie Gibbal recorded in great detail the atmosphere and mythology of such a spirit possession cult in a remote region of Mali, along the waterways of the inland Niger River delta.While the detail may be overwhelming for a reader not concerned to learn such things, the writing is extremely poetic, the text free of the indigestible jargon of so many French (and other modern) anthropologists.

As Gibbal's description proceeds, we realize the economic distress of the area in the 1980s: dessication was eating up the land, the water was slowly disappearing, people forced to migrate or die.On top of the ecological/economic pressure, fundamentalist Islam was on the rise, after centuries of another, more mystic Islam that tolerated far more variation in patterns of worship and belief.The strict interpretation of Islam labelled the Ghimbala cult, the cult of the water genii, "a work of the devil".Yet the gaw, or healer-priests, persisted.Gibbal traces some history of the cult, describes the ceremonies, tries to understand the different levels of gaw and how they train their successors, and the connection of musicans to gaw.In this aspect, it was pleasingly astonishing to come across the familiar name of Ali Farka Toure, the great Malian musician, who paid homage to the genii and the river cult.You meet him far from the covers of CDs sold in urban music stores or on the net.

What makes this book a 5 star one for me, however, is not the wealth of detail supplied about the river genii and the ceremonies conducted with their participation.Nor is it even the poetic nature of the text.I admired this book because of the honesty and thought of the author.He puts himself in the picture to a great extent.He does not hide beside some curtain of "objectivity".He admits that he too was influenced by the spirits he studied, thereby---I felt---admitting his common humanity with the people he studied, not trying to laugh off their beliefs with a superior European shrug of the shoulders.Above all, I liked his comparison of anthropologists to artists.The painter allows himself to be penetrated by the surrounding world, then tries to interpret that relationship for others.A true anthropologist does the same.A work of anthropology, like a work of art, is not a piece of reality---it is an attempt to interpret reality.You cannot express a dream or Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in words.Nor can you do the same for a culture or even a small part of a culture.So much is lost in translation from one world to another, from one language to another.Gibbal argues this point wonderfully well.This is a rare book.
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Les nomades du Nord Mali ont longtemps récusé lapolitique de l'Etat considérant la sédentarisationcomme la base de leur intégration et développement.Elle résulte de deux faits majeurs qui affectent lefonctionnement et la structuration de la vie socialeet économique des nomades. Il s'agitd'une part, deseffets néfastes de la sécheresse de 1984 et d'autrepart, de la réalisation, avec l'appui des ONGs etdes projets de développement, de nombreusesinfrastructures socio-économiques pour accompagnerla paix dans une région fragilisée par la rébelliondes années 90. Si la sédentarisation se justifie parun impératif socio-économique, la réalitéenvironnementale contraint à la mobilité, gage dudéveloppement de l'élevage qui reste encore lesystème de production dominant et le plus viable.Mais, la priorité du développement socio-économiquepar rapport à la question environnementale poseindubitablement des risques pour l'avenir desnomades. Cet avenir devra aussi faire face auxincertitudes de l'insécurité récurrente et desgrands chantiers de développement, notamment lebarrage de Taoussa ainsi que l'exploration etl'éventuelle exploitation pétrolière ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sahel is a commune in the Cercle of Kayes in the Kayes Region of south-western Mali. The principal town lies at Bafarara. As of 1998 the commune had a population of 8,739. Kayes Cercle is an administrative subdivision of the Kayes Region of Mali. Its seat is the city of Kayes, which is also the capital of its Region and its largest city. The Cercle is further divided into Arrondissements and Communes. Kayes city is subdivided into Urban Communes and Wards (fr. Quartiers). Kayes Cercle's population as of 1998 was 350,082 people. ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sokoura is a small town and commune in the Cercle of Bankass in the Mopti Region of Mali. As of 1998 the commune had a population of 26,478. Bankass Cercle is an administrative subdivision of the Mopti Region of Mali. The capital lies at the city of Bankass. The Cercle is divided into Rural and Urban Communes, and below this, quarters/villages. As of 1998 the cercle had a population of 213,348 people. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from The Geographical Journal, published by Royal Geographical Society on March 1, 2005. The length of the article is 13450 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the author: KEY WORDS: West Africa, Mali, cotton, political ecology, poverty, soil degradation

Citation Details
Title: Global cotton and local environmental management: the political ecology of rich and poor small-hold farmers in southern Mali.
Author: William G. Moseley
Publication: The Geographical Journal (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2005
Publisher: Royal Geographical Society
Volume: 171Issue: 1Page: 36(20)

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Customer Reviews (2)

Flat and Disppointing
Maybe there are two ways of writing about travel.First, you write about startling things or things that other people normally might not notice.Second,you present a somewhat ordinary world but you do so in high-flown prose that---because of the quality of the writing---carries the reader along no matter what.This journalistic travel book seems one that a publisher might have picked up ONLY because the writer is well known.It is neither well written nor particularly acute in what it sees and reports.Too often there is a grim habit of stereotype, and always there is a languid sense of a prose style that suggests little more than some jottings in a loose-leaf along the way.A Graham Greene brings heart, keen perception, and inspiration to his "Journey without Maps" into Africa, and may other writers encounter people who remain in your mind.Celati just putters along.

Adventures in Africa
After reading Adventures in Africa, we think that this book was not the best book ever.We thought that it was rather dull throughout almost the whole book.One reason that we might have thought that it was dull is because, the book is written like a journal.We haven't ever read a book written like a journal before, and I don't like that style of writing. That could have had an impact on us not liking the book, or just simply because we didn't like the way it was written. Also, the story line was not too interesting.Each journal that he would write each day would just tell about what he did that day.It is like reading a book about a person that sits at home all day.The main character was a tourist in Africa, and would meet new people and travel to different places.Most of the day's he would do the same thing.We found this book to be very repetitive, and we find that pretty boring about books.He would always tell about how he would go to this river and watch all the people bathe.He would do that everyday for a long period of time, and it just got old.After that he would go to a cliff and climb it everyday.Most days though, he would take a tour bus somewhere.While he was in Africa he made many friends, sometimes it was hard to keep them straight.His friend Jean, was his best friend, they went almost everywhere together.This book isn't the best book, and we wouldn't recommend it unless you like to read other peoples' journals.We just didn't find it interesting at all.It didn't grab my attention or make me actually want to read the book.The only reason why we read it was because we had to for a grade. ... Read more

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Most people in the industrialized world have heard of Timbuktu, even if they could not find this ancient centre of civilization on the map. In fact, it is in Mali, a West African country which is rapidly coming to terms with the modern world. In 1991 the people of Mali overthrew a military dictatorship; democratic elections were held; a free press is flourishing; the nation is struggling with the effects of an economic structural adjustment program and inter-ethnic tensions which brought it to the brink of catastrophe. This book looks at the lives of ordinary Malians and asks how they are surviving the changes which are transforming their nation. It also celebrates the culture of Mali, from village story-tellers to world-famous film makers and musicians like Salif Keita and Ali Farka Tour. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

informative but academic
This book is a good resource for students of colonial economics or agriculture. The author thoroughly searched through old French documents, probably hand written, to chronicle the economic history of why cotton never caught on in what used to be the French Soudan. Opposing the stereotypical image of a subjugated colonial peasantry, Roberts reminds us that colonial West Africans created their own identity and exerted their own economic power. Unfortunately, if you are looking for the African point of view, look someplace else. The author couldn't access much from one of his "worlds", the indigenous Mande cotton farmers. ... Read more

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This close-up portrait of daily life in cattle herding communities in West Africa illustrates a number of parallels with life in the UK. A 25 minute video is supported by a full-colour magazine and teacher's handbook with activity sheets for photocopying. Themes explored include similarities and differences in lifestyle and environment, basic needs for water, food, shelter and homes, and learning about the rights of the child. ... Read more