Further down the Niger River was Mopti, slightly smaller than Segou. It is located at the confluence of the Niger and the Bani River. It has a large industry catching, drying and smoking fish for export all over the area.

As we drove along, Kone explained the various tribes in Mali: the Bambara, traditional inhabitants of the Segou area; Bozos, the fishermen; Somono (Kone's tribe), who are Bambara that Bozo taught to fish; Fulani or Peul, nomadic cattle-keepers; Tuaregs, desert nomads; and others.

Kone stayed with his wife when we got to Mopti. He has two wives and seven kids. With his first wife, in Mopti, he has three sons and three daughters. He said he didn't ever intend to have more than one wife; but then six years ago his oldest brother died and it is the custom to marry the wife of your late brother. I think he said that he and his second wife, who lives in Bamako, had a daughter 3 years ago.

On the way to Mopti, a bunch of piles of dirt in the river.

Two representative baobab trees.

A large termite mound.

We visited another small village. This one was animist. I don't know which anima has possessed the boy in the foreground. Sights in the Bobo village...

This man looks happy enough but I can't imagine why. Perhaps he is winning at the game he and 9 other men were playing. He lives in a hardcore slum of Mopti. The occupants are the Bella people. His ancestors had been held as slaves by the Tuaregs up until 1848. Liberation had not supplied bootstraps to pull themselves up by. Not being anybody's property, there was no longer anyone in whose interest it was to keep their culture alive, and now they live in a collection of huts atop the city dump, which periodically floods just to make sure the repulsive pathos is top-flight. Kone, our guide, was barely tolerant of gamblers and idlers. The idiom of looking down your nose at someone — he can actually do that. He lifts his head back. I don't think I have a photo of it though. Kone said of a beggar he pronounced drug-addicted in Ouagadougou, "I would sooner throw my money down a well!" But he was quick to distribute charity to young children and old women. I tried to learn from him, having been so unsuccessful at giving alms in my own life. It is something we will need to know more and more as the government of the US retreats from governing.

Another gambler.

The village they live in. The houses, as you can see in the background, are built of straw mats and garbage. We were invited inside, and implicitly to take photos. But, not being completely lost to morality (as a photographer must be) I feel inhibited taking pictures which do nothing but exploit human misery, unless the lighting is really, really excellent.

Firewood. The fuel of most of the world, and it's running out faster than oil is.

We arrived at our hotel in Mopti, took another nap, and then walked around late in the afternoon. Here are women selling yams in the market.

A blacksmith turning large piles of recycled metal into parts for boats, and trinkets for tourists.

An old gear repurposed as an anvil.

Prayer mats.

We went for a "sunset pirogue ride" on the Bani River, up to where it joined the Niger. This man operated the pole, for the most part. Kone said he was a Sarai. The guide was a Bozo. The Bozo did most of the talking.

Fishing on the Bani River.

This fence where laundry was being dried reminds me of this fence in New Zealand.

We got off on a tiny island and walked around the village of Kakolodaga. We were greeted by a large crowd of kids. So large and crowded, in fact, that our guides didn't want to go there. They didn't say it quite out right, and it was on the list of places they were supposed to take us, but they had had it with the swarms of beggars who embarrassed their customers. The island is inhabited by a community of Bozo and a community of Fulani. It's astonishing how many languages ordinary citizens speak.

Kone can tell if all the people we see are Bozo or Fulani. This little girl doesn't have a bar code inscribed on her cheeks but I bet he could tell anyway.

Sunset on the Bani River.

The kids waving goodbye.

We ate in a restaurant operated by a man from Dogon country, who had murals of that area adorning the upstairs terrace.

A lizard with a bright orange head peers from under a pot at the Hotel Kanaga in Mopti. These guys were everywhere. Google suggests that it may be a Margouillat, or red-headed rock Agama, some places called Rainbow lizard, Agama agama.

On to Djenne