This is a hand-carved ebony rain-god, maybe ten inches tall. There was a story that went with it, which, alas, I have forgotten. In each town, they have a storehouse of artifacts, including masks and large carvings. They sell some of them to passersby (I think I paid $10).
Again the conflict - am I saving something that should be preserved, or fostering their downfall? I don't know.
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The following text is entirely and completely lifted from a copy of The Rough Guide to West Africa -- great travel guidebooks, which you can now find on line.
The pictures are mine.
"The Dogon believe in a single God, Amma, who created the sun, moon and stars. After wards, he created the earth by throwing a ball of clay into space. The ball spread to the four points of the horizon and took on the shape of a woman with an anthill for her vagina and a termite mound for her clitoris. Alone in the universe, Amma attempted to make love to the earth, but the termite mound blocked his path and he tore it out. Because of this violence, the earth could not bear the twins that would have resulted from a happy union and instead gave birth to a jackal.
Amma again had intercourse with the earth, and a pair of twins resulted, known as nommo. They were born of divine semen, the precious water found in everything in the universe. Green in color, their upper bodies were human and their lower bodies like snakes. The nommo are present in all water. Living in the heavens with their father, the nommo looked down on their mother and, seeing her naked, made a skirt into which they wove the first language. Thus the earth was the first to possess speech.
Meanwhile, the jackal was running loose. His mother was the only woman, and he raped her. The earth bled and became impure in the sight of Amma. It's for this reason that today, menstruating women are considered impure in Dogon society -- as they are in nearly all African cultures. When he forced himself upon the earth, the jackal also touched her skirt and thus stole language.
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Having turned from his wife, Amma decided to create a human couple form clay. The couple had elements of both sexes--the foreskin being the feminine part of the man, and the clitoris the masculine part of the woman. Foreseeing that problems would arise from this ambiguity, the nommo circumcised the male and later an invisible hand removed the clitoris for the woman (circumcision of men and clitoridectomy of women is still an important step into adulthood for the Dogon). The couple was thus free to procreate and produced eight children, the original Dogon Ancestors. After creating eight descendants of their own, the ancestors were purified and transformed into nommo, then went to join Amma in the sky. But before his ascension, the seventh ancestor was charged with giving the second language to humans. Using his mouth as a loom, he spat out a cotton strip form which the new speech was transmitted to humanity.
The eight ancestors didn't get along with Amma and the nommo and they were eventually sent back to earth. On the way, the eighth ancestor came down before the seventh, who was angry as a result. He turned himself into a snake and set about disturbing the work of the other ancestors. They told the people to kill the snake -- which they did. But this seventh ancestor -- whose name was Lebe -- held the third language, needed for mankind, since the second wasn't adequate. The oldest of the eight original descendants received the third language in the form of a drum and found it to be complete and perfectly adapted to the new times.
Traditional religion has a profound effect on Dogon art and symbolism to this day, and is incorporated into the smallest item. Villages are laid out in a human shape. They're frequently divided into twin parts -- as in Sanga [a village] which incorporates Ogol-du-haut and Ogol-du-bas and Sanga-du-haut and Sanga-du-bas -- that signify the original twin ancestors. Facades of the characteristic Dogon houses contain niches as reminders of primitive ancestors and granaries are divided into a complex series of inner compartments that represent the cosmos.
The villages are filled with "temples" -- maybe a simple rock or a clay pilaster, covered with sacrifices of chicken blood or millet paste. Carvings (such as on Dogon doors or locks), clothes and skin markings are all charged with meaning. It was formerly common to file the teeth in the shape of a weaver's comb, since speech is an action that weaves the world and should thus pas through a worthy loom. Even the baskets used by the Dogon are symbolic, the square bases representing the four cardinal points and the round top the celestial dome of the sky.
Symbolism from the story of creation also carries over into Dogon dances. Masks are an important element of the dances and the Dogon use over eighty different varies according to the celebration. The biggest ceremony is the Sigui, celebrated every sixty years to commemorate the passing of a generation. Th frequency of the Sigui is calculated by the periodicity of an invisible satellite of the "dog star," Sirius. Sirius itself appears brightly between mountain peaks exactly when expected, suggesting a level of astronomical knowledge which has long baffled outsiders. The even serves to venerate the Big Mask, made in the shape of a serpent in reference to Lebe, who is credited with leading the Dogon to the Bandiagara escarpment as well as bringing them speech and, simultaneously, death. The last Sigui festival was held in the 1960s; the next -- without undue optimism, should be in the 2020s."
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