Travels With Palin

Sahara: Destination Timbuktu (6x2)

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The episode starts with Palin crossing the Sénégal River, leaving Mauritania and entering the town of Saint-Louis in Senegal. He has left Arab Africa and entered Black Africa, and the French influence, from the colonial past, is strongly felt here. He interviews the artist Jacob Yakouba and his soap-opera-star wife Marie-Madeleine, talking to them about polygamy, which is prevalent here. Palin also visits Gorée Island, the main departure point for black slaves sold to America. Palin moves on to Dakar and watches (and takes part in) a late-night wrestling match, and then talks to the owner of a jazz café. Then he takes the Bamako Express train to Bamako in Mali, talking to a native woman about polygamy along the way. In Bamako he talks to the musician Toumani Diabate. Palin visits the town of Tirelli on the Bandiagara Escarpment where the Dogon people live. The Dogons are a tribe of people who kept themselves isolated from the rest of the world until fairly recently, and have a culture unlike any other. While with the Dogons, Palin experiences getting gunpowder blown into his face from the Dogon hunter's old blunderbuss, eats a meal in a sweltering 56 degree (134 degree F) location, witnesses a funeral dance, and is introduced to the blacksmith, whose secondary job is to circumcise the boys (his wife performs female genital cutting on the girls). Countries visited during Sahara. In Djenne Palin talks to a local man whose nickname is Pigmy and experiences the Muslim Tabaski ritual of slaughtering a sheep, first at the huge mosque and later at Pigmy's house. At the town of Mopti Palin tries to get ferry passage up the Niger River, but the low water level makes this impossible. Taking a smaller and very primitive boat instead, Palin meets Kristin, a Norwegian Christian missionary who has lived in Mali for six years, and they talk about female genital cutting and Kristin's attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity. Then the boat runs aground, and it is unsu