The trek in Dogon Country was (as expected) one of the most distinctive experiences of our trip in West Africa. Despite the fact that it's entirely touristy and everyone does it, it was an opportunity to experience life in villages and try to learn something about one of the many cultures we have passed through.
In addition, we got to spend four days talking to our guide, Gabriel. While he was clearly an experienced guide, he was also a bit rough around the edges and would tell us what he thought about all sorts of things, which could be interesting, hilarious, or quite disturbing. Jo and Hannah certainly quizzed him quite a lot about various things.
We had a lot of conversations about women, wives, and jigi jigi. Most of these issues are quite confronting for us - arranged marriages, polygamy, excision, isolation in the menstrual house. Gabriel generally seemed to think that all of these things were normal. For example, he asked us if women in western countries had to go and stay in a particular house when they were menstruating, and was pretty surprised that they don't. He insisted that there are more women than men in Dogon villages (thus making polygamy a natural state of affairs), but we could never understand why this would be the case. On the other hand he was himself a bit of an outcast as he had refused the marriage arranged for him by his father, (and apparently had been through a dreadlocks and alcohol phase), so he was surely more open-minded and worldly than your average young Dogon guy.
Finally, as the resident linguist,* it was my job to notice a few really interesting things about the way Gabriel spoke (in English). It seemed to me that almost every sentence involved the hedging expressions "try to" or "almost": for example "they will try to boil some water", so we can have tea. (Surely you either boil some water or you don't; it's not that hard). Or, "are you almost tired?" (No, I'm tired right now!). Once I started noticing this, the sheer vagueness of these statements became increasingly amusing.
Of course English was probably Gabriel's fourth or fifth language, and I can only wonder what the equivalent expressions in Dogon language would be. But this must be an insight into Dogon society. If even basic statements are this unspecific and indefinite it's no surprise that everything seems confused and vague to us, especially when we ask people for specific, concrete information.
I guess this is just another things I don't have time to investigate properly, but then this sort of thing would take years, if not a lifetime.
*Actually, I have managed very little linguistic understanding during my travels in Africa, and I certainly didn't have any insights into the Dogon language. As usual, I would have much preferred to have a resident geologist, botanist, or anthropologist.