Unique Places in Region de Kayes

After we passed the mosque, we followed the wide track through the village. Except a mosque as landmark at one side of the village, the village has also a watertower as landmark at the other side.

The atmosphere in the village was very rural. A herd of sheep was coming in our direction at the dusty track at the moment we crossed the place. Around some compounds we saw fences of wooden sticks.

Most people of the nomadic tribes of the Fulani, Soninke and Black Moor in the area north of Kayes are muslim. In the villages we saw often mosques, even large ones, like this one at the picture.

There are hardly any christians in this part of Mali. Because in the eyes of muslims Jesus is a prophet with a great healing power, I heard the handful of christians north of Kayes goes by the name of 'followers of Jesus' instead of christians.

In the same village, where we met the women at the waterpump, we saw beautifully constructed and shaped buildings of red adobe architecture.

In front of the buildings, in the shade of a large tree, we saw a wooden bed. It 's the place where usually the elder men gather, but at the moment we passed there was nobody around.

At the edge of the village we saw a lot of women, beautifully dressed in their colourful African dresses. They gathered around the waterpump, fetching water for their families and households .

After driving for a long time through the barren and almost empty landscape we were surprised to see suddenly so many people. Maybe they were even more surprised to see us, coming from nowhere and going to nowhere.

In the small village north of Kayes, where we looked for the police post, we saw at the other side of the central place a few foodstalls.

There were couple of small tables with wooden benches. The people showed us they had tins with softdrinks and beckoned us to come closer. I don't know what they had to eat, because we decided to continue our journey to the border, to eat the bread, we bought in Kayes and to drink from our own supply.

In this village north of Kayes, we saw hardly any name of the villages we crossed, we stopped in the centre and looked for a police post.

We asked our way to the Mauritanian border and Kankossa, the first town or village in south Mauritania with border facilities. Also we had to look for a Malinese place to check out of Mali. We didn't find the place Aourou, halfway Kayes and the border, where they must have border facilities.

While travelling north of Kayes, the track was sometimes leading into a small village. The houses were all constructed of the local mud, so the colours of the earth and the buildings were the same.

Though it was hot, most of the time there were people around the buildings, sitting in the shade. The kids mostly ran into our direction and started enthusiastically to wave. Maybe we were the only car that crossed their village that day ?

Mostly it was rather easy to cross the dry riverbeds north of Kayes, but sometimes we had to have a closer look how to manage.

This was the case, if the banks were too steep, the crossing place too narrow for our car or the sands too soft. Then we had to search for the best place to cross the riverbed.