ABSTRACT
The northwestern tip of the Bandiagara Escarpment drops vertically 1,200 feet into a pile of sand and talus just at the outskirts of Fombori, a medium-sized village of about 500 inhabitants, located on the northern frontier of Mali’s “Pays Dogon,” 120 Kilometers south of the city of Timbuktu and the edge of the Sahara desert. When I first arrived in Dogon country in October of 1995, I had no idea that I would still be writing about my experiences there 17 years later. At 24 years old, a young Peace Corps Volunteer at the beginning of a three-year stint in Mali, I made the explicit request to be placed in Fombori when I heard about a nascent project that another volunteer, Felicity Cross, was implementing with two women’s groups to generate revenue for the community. Felicity had secured funding from the American Embassy to build a small museum to preserve local artifacts and to provide a venue to sell local crafts to tourists. I arrived to replace Felicity, who was at the end of her service, just as the work to build the Museum of Fombori was beginning.1
