Drawing tradition: Dogon children's art in the age of tourism

African Arts, Spring, 2004 by Enid Schildkrout

Today the villages along the Bandiagara escarpment are listed among the endangered UNESCO World Heritage sites. This means that the government of Mali has to take steps to preserve the cliff side dwellings. In the Dogon area, the scenery, the historic architecture, and the living culture constitute the site. Tourism, of course, is both part of the solution and part of the problem. Tour groups to the Dogon area are taken to one or more villages. The most common tour is of Lower and Upper Ogol, near Sangha. Here visitors wend their way along narrow pathways to see the houses and granaries, various kinds of shrines, and the men's toguna, or meeting shelters. Most also stop at Songo, where they climb the cliffs and gaze at the wall of circumcision paintings and also peek into the cave where musical instruments used in initiation ceremonies are stored. Finally, all groups see a masked dance performance, based on the third part of the dama funerary cycle (Figs. 10, 11). Some visitors have a meal or stay overnight in the guesthouse at Sangha; others sleep on the roofs of houses in other villages; and many of them buy art and souvenirs, including masks, before they leave.

[FIGURES 10-11 OMITTED]

How children relate to global tourism is not a trivial issue: children not only present their society to outsiders but also learn something about what the outside world values in their culture. To what extent, then, do these kinds of encounters shape their lives, and how do they affect the way in which they apprehend and identify with their own cultures? In the Dogon area, interaction with children is a notable part of the tourist experience. Children sing and dance at the base of the caves that tourists visit, especially at Banani, where a children's chorus sometimes assembles. They grasp visitors' arms, attempting to serve as guides for those climbing the cliffs and ledges into the villages. Some of the elderly tourists welcome this assistance if the approach is not aggressive; others try to push the children away, usually without success. Children hawk small items and souvenirs, sometimes working for the vendors who have stalls in Sangha near the guesthouse. And in Sangha, although not in the smaller villages like Tireli, some beg for money, candy, paper, and ballpoint pens. Sangha has the highest concentration of tourists, since that is where the day visitors stop, and children there are often seen as a nuisance, so much so that the official guides have attempted to work with elders to keep them at bay.

In the smaller villages the children are more reticent. In Tireli they help visitors climb the steep cliff up to the dance area. They stay nearby during the performance, even though they are not supposed to see the masks. Children allow the tourists to take their pictures, and they offer to sell them their small notebooks with drawings (Fig. 12). (9) Boys make all the drawings, signing them and noting their ages. They seem to be between about age 7 or 8 and 11 or 12. I am not certain whether specific artists were pre- or post-initiation, but the children who surround the tourists almost surely include both.