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TRAVELLER
oung Malian children enjoy themselves on a stone slide at Djiguibombo, a small village on the outskirts of Djenné. Despite its size, the village has two beautiful mosques and is a place with a warm and intimate family atmosphere. The temperature is soaring, but the narrow streets of mud-built homes and shops are busy with craftsmen working hard to create a multitude of wares. The village’s children, meanwhile, race around excitedly. Outside one of the village’s mosques photographer Musa discovered a group of local youngsters demonstrating that Western luxuries aren’t key to having a good time. ‘I spent about an hour watching them scurry up and then slide down this groove etched into the mosque’s foundations,’ he says. ‘They kept at it until their fathers called them back to help them at work. I found myself wondering how many thousands of times their fathers and those before them had helped form this “slide”.’ Djenné’s Great Mosque is the largest mud brick building in the world and has been a Unesco World Heritage site since 1988. Every year a festival takes place during which local people repair the walls of the mosque which have endured wind, rain and scorching sun. It’s an event that encompasses the whole of the local community, with men scaling scaffolding to smear on new mud-plaster. TRAVELLER
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