Mali, fishing village, 2007
This village further down the Niger has the typical design of all fishing villages, which is very open to all sides, there are no walls between the different family homes, and the boats can land anywhere. In every village there are Marabous who can do many things, including healing people, but in this village many people died recently, so that several families are nearly extinct. They don't know what sickness they have, probably AIDS, but there are no doctors. When a village is completely dead, then nobody will ever build again a house on that island, therefore the best places are not used anymore. There are rice fields around their village, but they belong to farmers from the neighbour village, in one village live only farmers, or only fishermen, because each job is assigned to one tribe only, and they live separate, even though they have many friends in the other villages and tribes. Cattle herding is also a separate tribe from farming.

Mali, Family at the Niger, 2007
This villages is home of only one fishing family, in the dry season they are only 4 people, but during the raining season, when there are more fishes, the other family members come home, and people from another tribe come to live on that island too, because they are nomads who live in provisional houses, and their usual living area is this time under water. The nomads are also fishing, but have a different tradition. The family whose island this is, has lost all the roofs of their houses some months ago in a storm. At the end of the dry season, there are many very strong sand storms, in which it is very difficult to survive, not only because of the heat, but also because the soil is flying around everywhere, one can not even see one metre. People here have very little chance to develop anything in life, they live only day by day, without any change. But from travelling and working before in other West African countries, they have experienced different life.