Dancing and drumming in Sanankoroba

Sananoroba is a small village south in Mali, close to the border of Guinea. It’s the home village of Sidiki, and during the workshop he arranges every year one of the weeks is spent in the village of his family. Its about 2000 people in the village, and they live in traditional mud huts. During the weeks we lived in the traditional huts, trying to adapt to their way of living.

My first night in the village I had the best sleep since I arrived in Mali – so quiet and nice, and I was so tired after three days of festival with music ending four or five in the morning. We were a group of about 15 which joined the workshop for either dance or drum classes. It was a good group of nice people – all the Europeans who were there to learn and the Malian dancers and musicians. I was excited about the dance classes, since I had missed one week. We learned different dances, so I managed to kind of hang in – but it was difficult choreographies, and I had never danced the traditional dances of Mali before. But it was lots of fun! We danced to the drums under under the shadow of huge mango trees, and the whole experience is very exotic. We danced two hours after breakfast and two hours after lunch, then a bucket-shower followed by dinner, some music and entertainment in the evening – and it was already time to sleep! Everything in africen tempo off course, with enough time to rest in between. The week was over in what felt like no time – and we headed for Bamako again. A bumpy journey to the ferry, followed by hours of waiting for new tires for the bus – but we reached Bamako without any big complications!