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. The most important villages are Ogol-du-Haut and Ogol-du-Bas. This photograph was taken when Eliot Elisofon was on assignment for Westinghouse Film and traveled to Africa from October 26, 1970 to end of March 1971.