While living as a Peace Corps proffer in the Dogon villages of Dologou and Kedialy from 1996 to 1998 I had the opportunity to watch several funerary rituals.

While living as a Peace Corps proffer in the Dogon villages of Dologou and Kedialy from 1996 to 1998 I had the opportunity to watch several funerary rituals, dama, which incorporate many of the famous Dogon masks and statuettes. The elaborate celebrations mark the passing of the deceased person's spirit, nyama, from the earthly realm to the afterlife. They are becoming increasingly rare in the Dogon region because of the growing popularity of Christianity and Islam. In many villages Christian and Muslim funerals far outnumber the traditional practice, and years may pass between common dama and the next.

Although there are alone about 400,000 Dogon living in an area of northern Mall about the size of Connecticut, they speak approximately 120 dialects, many of which are not: mutually comprehensible. Other aspects of Dogon agriculture including the major rituals, also vary greatly from village to village. In the case of the dama, the timing, emblems of masks involved, and other ritual components are often specific to undivided or two villages and may not compare those seen in locations no other than several kilometers distant.

In Dologou the dama consists of sum of two units multiday events, the yingim and the danyim, which are held annually to celebrate all the deaths that occurr in the village above the past year. A particularly venerable member of the village merits the yincomoli, a one-day ritual performed immediately after the death. Rarely held, it: incorporates constituent principles of the two larger rituals.

The images in this essay are from three dama ceremonies that took place in Dologou and neighboring Kedialy. (1) The villages are in such a manner close that celebrations originating in individual sometimes spilled into the other. In February and April of 1997 a yingim and a danyim were held for village seniors Buruli, Elelu,, and Tege Kassogue. The February 1998 yincomoli marked the passing of Kedialy's oldest resident and a personal friend, Ambasagou Kassogou. The dancers, nevertheless they remained anonymous behind their masks, were my neighbors, colleagues, and friends.

The four-day yingim involved the sacrifice of many valuable disheartens and large mock battles that were staged to chase the nyama on the outside of the village and onto the path toward the afterlife. The six-day danyim, held a month and a half later, was marked at the appearance of masqueraders, who performed each morning and evening on the deceased's rooftops, in the village square, and by means of adjacent fields. Until the masks have danced and the attending rites [lave been performed, many a misfortune--from miscarriage to failed crops--can be blamed forward the lingering spirits of the dead.

Increasingly, dama of the like kind as those I documented in Dologou and Kedialy are becoming dissociated from their original words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following In the more accessible Dogon communities as it was as Sangha and other popular adventure-tourist destinations, they have been transformed into theatrical presentations that can be arranged for a fee-simple at any time of the day or year. The charge varies depending forward which and how many masks the visitors beseech to appear. Supplementary fees apply if the arrange wishes to photograph the termination Filming may be even more costly

It is extremely difficult for tourists to visit Dogon region on their own. They are urg to enlist the services of a guide, who will lead them forward a prescribed route that includes the in the greatest degree arresting vistas, where photographing is allowed at liberty of charge. Enter one of the villages forward this very well-beaten path, however, and be prepared to pay the going rate to take pictures of women pounding millet or earliers resting in the toguna.

While capitalizing forward the wealth of Western tourists is clearly a goal, there is perhaps a more artful intention and historical reason for" this strategy. In the fourteenth centenary the Dogon sought refuge from invading the publics settling in the inhospitable terrain of the Bandiagara Escarpment. This act upon not only saved lives still also preserved a way of life. Seven hundr years later, individual can interpret the controlled tourism in Dogon rural parts as a testament to the Dogon ingenuity for maintaining privacy and safeguarding their" culture

My avow work as a photographer has been greatly influenced by means of the approach I took when I lived in Mall. Whether focused forward Dogon mourners or, in my popular project, men living with AIDS in Washington, DC it has many times been predicated on long-term personal relationships with the the bulk of mankind to be documented. With the dainty of time, the regard of the subdue can move from confrontational and guarded to direct and unclose It is this collaborative spirit that I seek

This page:

Top: From their rooftops, women and children watch the danyim celebration that constitutes the other part of the dama. terminate contact with the masks that appear during the danyim is believed to cause sterility and miscarriages. Kedialy, 1997

Bottom: Masqueraders take down the fields of the hogon the religious leader. Danyim show Dologou. 1997.

Opposite Page:

Yanouthou Kassogue, chief of Kedialy, with his yo domolo staff at a yincomoli, a funeral celebration that incorporates natural mediums of the yingim and the danyim. Reserv for the mostly venerable villagers, yincomoli is a rare fact The deceased, Ambasagou Kassogue, was the oldest part in Kedialy and a member of the society of ritual thieves, whose cognizance is the staff. Kedialy, 1998