Where do they go? By water or

by land. There was sunshine

everywhere. Every day. And

stars too. Sometimes mothers collected the

stars in wooden vessels and gave them to their

children.

To the north was the River Niger, and it

seemed to the oldest Dogon that at the time of

his brother’s funeral Nomo was whispering to

him and making it known to him.

There, in the north, lies Bandiagara. On the

river bank the crocodiles are waiting to carry

you across to the other side. To the chaos on

the steep, stony bank. There are the rocks of

the Tellem, the bird people, the great wizards

of the realm of spells. Indeed, they appear

from time to time as a sandstorm with a herd

of wild animals or with the white fox.

That’s how the Dogons got to Bandiagara.

Here in the massif of the Yugo, the first

Sigi began, in honour of the first one to die.

Masked dancers danced every sixty years recalling

the moment when death was first born.

Olobolu, a dancer with a big snake mask,

leaped about with marvelous lightness while

his soul was full of Ama, Nomo and the eight

ancestors.

It seemed as if the prayer of the oldest

Dogon was issuing from the great mask as he

lifted up his arms towards Nomo and the other

ancestors. He prayed for rain, to water the

fields sown with onions, rice and corn to ease

the births. They believed in the power of the

almighty, who had succeeded in uniting space

and time. He knew, as his grandfather had told

him, that only the body can die, the spirit cannot,

as it was a part of Ama. It could not die,

or be born. He gazed at the sacred paths. The

spirits are here, around us. They see us, they

love us, but they also punish us for our sins.

That’s why one must always be careful. Everything

has a soul. Even death. Life and death

live side by side, like the earth and the sky.

He went barefoot all his life. He felt neither

stones, nor sand, nor thorns. His skin

was as hard as the drought. The eight totems

protected him from everything. Even from

thirst. Less and less rain fell. Sometimes, in

Bandiagara, in the time of the Tellems, the

great wizards, there were herds of antelopes,

lions and leopards. But they had all vanished

because of the drought. As had plants, insects

and birds. The sand had become their graveyard.

Everybody prayed for rain. Even the

dead. From time to time the Tellems would

appear as a sandstorm, accompanied by their

vanishing herds, or in the company of the

white fox. But the Dogons remained here,

their spirit survived. Rice continued to grow

and ripen to harvest. The onions too. The

skilled hands of the Dogons went on fashioning

figurines and masks.

In the mornings, when the darkness still

clung to the landscape, the infants, grown one

with their mothers’ back, in silence watched

the first blows of the mattocks. Fields had to

be sawn. The first rains had only just fallen.

And their older brothers and sisters were still

sleeping without a care in the world under the

mantle of the stars.

Then his grandfather went on with his tale:

Before the time of Doyogu-Seru, the first man

to die, death had not existed. That was why

the Dogons made the great snake mask, to

honor the birth of death. When you were born

– continued his grandfather – rains dried up

for three years. The sun grew bigger each day.

By night new stars emerged. It now seemed to

the Dogons as if they slept on stars, there were

so many of them. Women stopped wailing

over death and instead of weeping over it they

wept over thirst. But the dancers were here, as

were the masks, the figurines with their arms

raised to Ama, to Nomo, and the dead ancestors

whose spirits, living here beside them

together with the eight living totems which

protected them – the living power of Nyama.

Thirst gave way in the face of that protecting

power. So plants did not wither, infants

grew, only birds didn’t fly, the air was too hot.

Soon heavy rains fell. Lifestock were watered

after a long time of not even a drop of rain.

Dolo remembered his grandfather’s death.

It was May. Masked dancers wove in a spiral

around their house. The dead body of his

ancestor was placed in a freshly hollowed-out

tree trunk on the verandah, and in a trance the

oldest Dogon explained, by means of mime,

the symbols and the genesis of the cosmos.

Night had long since fallen and it was as if the

almighty Ama rode on its shoulders. At one

moment it seemed to him that the eight totems

were sitting on his grandfather’s body, exchanging

greetings with the spirit that had not

yet left his body.

Dolo was captivated by the dancers, the

masks, the figurines, by the mannequin of

death, and when the sacrifice was brought

P I S H TA f i l m , r u n n i n g t i m e 1 3 m i n

DOGS AND TRAINS f i l m , r u n n i n g t i m e 3 4 m i n

Wat er and Fire f i l m , r u n n i n g t i m e 6 0 m i n