A Ginna, the ancestral adobe of a Dogon lineage, Ogol du Haut village, Mali

"In the village's wards, each clan and lineage has a central house, usually a very old structure, called gina [ginna (gin'na)], like the word for clan. On the cliffside they are usually simple; on the plateau they are decorated with rows of small holes. Inside this building, some altars and a small shrine form the focus of the clan cult. In most Dogon villages, the head of a clan lives in the gina until his death." [Hollyman S. and Van Beek W., 2001: Dogon, Africa's People of the Cliffs. Harry N Abrams, Inc.]. During his trip to Mali, Elisofon visited the Dogon people in Sanga (Sangha), a group of thirteen villages lying east of Bandiagara at the top of an escarpment. This photograph was taken when Eliot Elisofon was on assignment for National Geographic and traveled to Africa from January 19, 1972 to mid April 1972.