In the morning light, I got to see the Hotel d'Masion Rouge.
The simple entry does not prepare one for the interior:
Arches! Adobe block walls tend to be rectangles with flat roofs; but these arches are made with them as well.
And then plastered with hard troweled stucco, or not so hard, thus the two textures in the stairway.
Why end a corridor with a blank wall, when one can do this!
Mopti? New Mexico?? The lanterns are used in the evening to illuminate corridors and courtyards and to urge guest to sit a spell.
All the rooms are different. This was my room....
...and its ensuite bathroom: the skylight is simply screens, with some shelter from the building above, but I do wonder what it is like in the rainy season.
And the dining room....pushing adobe arches to the limit I bet.
And a matching "petit dejeuner" to boot! Just who is behind all this?
Amede Regis MULIN. Architect, Builder, Hotel Manager. Born in Senegal to French parents, studied and practiced in France, but the "African bug" drew him back, when building with arches and with height interested him. So he designed for four years while seeking a builder. None would take it on, they thought it madness, tho he showed them using sugar cubes how adobe could be arched. So he built it. Another four years. And, now, four years after opening, he is still looking for a manager to run it so he can turn his attention full time to designing.
Look at their web-site for more views of the hotel:http://lesmaisonsdumali.com/SITE2008_fichiers/page0001.htm
Like Segou, Mopti is a bustling port town.
Great chance to look over pirogue bow decorations.
The number is obvious: the year it was built. But the upside-down American flag...the signal of dire distress? Mali's or our's or both??
It appeared to be goat-market day as small groups stood in the boats arriving on shore.
To join many other small groups...
...their owners hoping for a sale or two.
Not sure if the carrots were for the men or the goats.
And there was a calabash area. Tho plastic pails and buckets are making inroads, the half-calalbah gourd is still widely used for washing rice, drinking water, watering fields, and in many musical instruments.
Although Timboctou is the center of the salt trade, Mopti also is a destination of the large slabs coming from mines in the Sahara Desert. 
In the market area, a serrated edged knife is use to saw the slabs into increasingly smaller blocks.
If you ever on one of my 1980's bike tours, you will know why many aspects of Mali reminded me of China of that era, especially the roadside markets. A whole day could be spent in them.
If I were to buy a Malian hat, this would have been it.
And they are all made in China...
Here is how the inscriptions on the pottery are done: the thin dark slip is fired on the pot, then the decorator sketches the design/wording and then scrapes away the slip...
...revealing the lighter unglazed pottery below.
Meanwhile over at the port where pirogues were being built and repaired, an order for nails keeps the iron monger busy.
Maybe these twins are supposed to be watching their baby sibling, but the busy port scene is more interesting.
In the street-side entertainment world, the younger boys are playing food-ball, while...
older men are playing a fast moving sticks and stones game which made not sense to this casual observer.
Beside the Hotel Maison Rouge, Mopti has two other outstanding structures: Museum of Mud Architecture and the Friday Mosque.
The museum is newly opened.
...with exhibits of famous mud mosques or shrines. Ibrahim is pointing out the ostrich eggs on top of a tower, the meaning of which I need to study up on.
The main entry facade.
Detail of a tower with the eggs, tho these days they more likely are made of porcelain.
Although it may seem as tho the boy is holding the door open for me, he was actually making sure I did not follow him in.