From Timbuktu, we take our jeeps eight hours on bumpy and broken roads to Mopti. We stop along the way to mix in with Tuareg boys driving a herd of cattle. We stop again later as a group of Felani women pound millet in their vibrant colored wraps. It is "women's work." It is hard work. Virtually ever "woman" can be seen with a baby swaddled against her mother's back as she works. Girls marry and begin having children at about age 15. It will become one of the extraordinary incongruities of this trip that the people live in extreme poverty in their mud hovels but the women are always dressed in bright, clean and colorful wraps. On the way to Mopti, we have three flat tires. The roads take no prisoners.
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