The tree I am hugging above will soon become a post for one of the four-poster beds at hotel Djenné Djenno. Each post will be surmounted by an ostrich egg, naturally.
When Mungo Park passed through these regions over two hundred years ago, he marched for days through wooded plains and his journals give the impression that he was lulled to sleep each night by the roaring of lions. Big wildlife is now sadly all but gone from West Africa, and the forests have been cut down for firewood, a important contributing cause to the climate change here.
But I am happy to announce that the four-posters are being made from a renewable source of eucalyptus in a little commercially grown wood next to Djenné.