Finally the aircraft has come to a complete halt and the engines are switched off. The door opens, and a warm, humid breeze flushes through the aircraft; there’s no doubt we have arrived in Africa. As we walk across the tarmac to the arrivals hall there is no mistaking that scent of the tropics, very distinct yet hard to describe. We are about to start out on our ‘Journey to Timbuctoo’.

A trip to Africa more often conjures up images of open plains and wildlife than of culture, but this region of West Africa is steeped in fascinating history with some exciting local architecture to marvel at. The inherent quality of the local buildings is enjoying a resurgence of popularity owing to the ‘natural’ construction techniques and efficient, environmentally friendly designs that we are all taking a fresh look at.

Perhaps most famous building in Mali is the huge mud-built mosque at Djenne. The triple minaretted structure was built on the site of a royal palace as long ago as 1240. There have been several rebuilds along the way, and the current building was mostly constructed in 1907. The walls are made of mud bricks, and coated with a cured mud plaster. Palm fronds were inserted at regular intervals to add strength to the structure, and with the branch ends left protruding, they provide an instant scaffold for the annual repairs.

Apart from an electric megaphone, the building does not use electricity, yet the thick mud walls and cunning design for ventilation ensure that even on the hottest Sahel days the building is deliciously cool inside. Hot air is drawn up the towers, bringing fresh air in through special corridors at ground level.  Every year after the rains, the building is replastered with mud, a task that is woven into a festival so that the whole community is involved. Women fill large pits with water and earth several days before the event, and young boys play in the resultant mud which ensures it is thoroughly mixed. Young men hold a race to see who can be the first to deliver the mud to the builders, who start the re-plastering in front of an audience which includes past master plasterers, eager to ‘advise’.

The mosque is made of local materials with local labour yet could not really be improved upon for design or functionality. A true marvel and environmental masterpiece!

We were not allowed into the mosque on this visit (hospitality had recently been abused by some photographers taking inappropriate images), but the east facing prayer wall faces Djenne market and the building forms the natural and cultural centre of this busy town on the Niger river.

Our trip then took us further into the desert to the Bandiagara escarpment, home to the Dogon peoples. The Dogon are a tribe who went to live in caves on the steep Bandiagara escarpment in order to escape the drive to Islamification that swept this region about 600 years ago. Since that time, the Dogons have settled into villages at the base of the escarpment and have developed their own unique architectural style. The huts and granaries are square sectioned (unusual in Africa) and have pointed and sometimes crenellated roofs, but my favourite buildings here were the village courthouses. Each village has it's own courthouse with unique carvings on the roof support pillars. These pillars are about 3 feet high, and would be spaced about 5 ft apart so that they break up the floor spaces. The roof sits on these pillars, making only 3ft of headroom inside, yet these thatched roofs can reach up 15 feet in layers of thatch bundles sometimes 15 layers deep. I enquired as to why so many layers, and why such lack of headroom inside... Apparently the roof gets a new layer of thatch for each new village chief. This makes it easy to roughly date the village by the number of layers. The matter of limited headroom was very pragmatic, it means that the accuser and accused have to sit bent doubled while their case is argued in front of the chief, and there is no room for fighting! The pillars are decorated with carvings of the Dogon cross that represents the link from sky through to the earth via man. Snakes and lizards were also common. The result is a practical and attractive courthouse building that is very fit for purpose.

As we drove from place to place, we often passed interesting villages where there was obviously more to house building than simply creating a dwelling. Great pride and artistry has clearly played a part in village construction. It would be great to revisit the area and find out more.