The goat was led out into the yard and forced down onto the dusty ground, amid much bleating. It was all over quickly. A knife glinted as a man in a white robe slit its throat. “Malick,” he called, repeating the name three times.

I was staying in the Malian village of Téli, which sits beneath the copper-coloured Bandiagara escarpment, among meadows of purple poppies and swaying millet. The scattering of mud huts is home for the Dogon people, who have opened their doors to intrepid tourists. Ichaka — the chief’s son and my guide and translator — had invited me to join the baptism ceremony of a week-old baby boy. I was the only woman present.

Once dead, the goat was strung up by its neck and two boys set about skinning it as prayers began for the baby to have a long life.

“We have big families,” Ichaka was saying, “to help in the fields, the village. A girl leaves home when she marries; a man stays.”

By now the goat meat was being cut up and thrown into a straw basket to be shared between the villagers. Eventually only the head was left swinging from the branch, a cluster of flies circling it.

“I was the fifth boy that my parents had,” Ichaka continued. “The rest died. I myself had two boys who died of malaria.” He said this without emotion. He was not asking for pity, but simply telling me the way it was.

THAT EVENING, we sat in a small courtyard, waiting for supper to be brought to us. The Dogon women eat separately from the men, the children separately from the adults, who in turn eat separately from the elders. I could see Ichaka’s first wife cooking outside her hut. She was a stocky woman with a large nose. Ichaka’s second wife sat on a stool a few yards from her, spinning cotton, holding it taut with her big toe. She was taller, leaner, almost beautiful, whereas the other was not. Both had been chosen for Ichaka by his parents. He had not met either of them until the wedding day.

The food arrived, rice and stewed goat, brought in by Ichaka’s first wife. I asked Ichaka what he felt when he first met his wives. He told me that he did not question his parents’ choices. “I must look for the good, because this is the chosen person,” he said, cupping a handful of food. I then asked him if he fell in love with either of them.

“There is not time for this,” he said after much thought. “You have to work in the millet field; you have to cook. There is no kiss, no caress.”

He finished the last mouthful of his meal, scraping the plate clean. “I have never had these feelings of being in love,” he said finally. “Some of my friends have, but not I. For my own children, I will not have the arranged marriage,” he concluded, as his second wife came in to collect our plates.

Ichaka’s world has been radically affected by Western visitors. Four years ago, the Tuareg owner of a Malian tour company employed him to escort tourists to Téli village. Ichaka had never even been to a city before that. Now he goes to Bamako, the capital of Mali, regularly. Already it is influencing his thoughts and ideas. Already he has decided not to inherit his father’s role as the village chief. Already he has decided against arranged marriages for his children.

I slept that night in a domed tent perched precariously on the mud roof of the visitors’ yard. The cracked escarpment above me echoed back the sounds of the village in an eerie, ghostly call: the low tones of men chatting outside their huts, the tinkling of bells as the goatherd boy brought in his flock for the night.

The following day I ate breakfast in the toguna, surrounded by old men, who sat crosslegged, beneath haloes of pipe smoke. “ Ou ni sigoma,” (“You and the morning”) they greeted me in Bambara, the Dogon dialect. Many an argument is sorted out in the toguna. It is the male meeting room, a thatched wooden structure through which the breeze filters. Its low roof is designed to encourage people to sit in a nonaggressive position.

“If you stand in anger,” Ichaka laughed, “you hit your head.” AFTER STRONG coffee and homemade bread, he took me up to the village’s circumcision site. The practice is now against the law in Mali, but enforcing the ban is difficult. We crouched over the circumcision stone. It was stained with spots of dried blood. Every three years, a group of boys between the ages of 12 and 15 come to this site for their initiation into manhood. (The female circumcisions take place at an undisclosed place.)

“Only the blacksmith has the right to perform the circumcision,” Ichaka told me. “No modern medicine can be used, no antibiotics. For one month, every day a cow is slaughtered. Every day is a dance, a feast, like the coming of Christmas — you are excited!”

“Will your sons be circumcised?” I asked. He nodded. “And your daughters?” (He has four.) He nodded again. A female will be circumcised much younger than a boy, some as newborns. Ichaka knows the West’s view of these things. “People say that it can damage a woman,” he said quietly, “but my mother was circumcised. She is not traumatised, and all her children have been circumcised. You have to go through this to be accepted in society.”

I asked if a mother would find it hard to watch her child go through something so painful. His response was passionate.

“Of course,” he said, arms splayed. “But pain is normal. Childbirth is painful. Life is painful. Only a dead person doesn’t feel pain.” STANDING THERE, as a traveller, free to come and go, I realised that despite the small amount of money that tourism brings into the community, the survival of the Dogon people is still perilous. A plague of locusts was sweeping across the country while I was there, and there were fears of another drought. Life expectancy is less than 50 years. Infant mortality is high. The infrastructure of their society is designed to secure their survival, but their world is changing.

As we wandered back to the village, we passed a woman with a tiny baby in a sling across her back.

“That is baby Malick,” Ichaka said, and I wondered how different his life would be in the years to come. Many places off the beaten track that have opened their doors to tourism find the balance between the old world and the new hard to sustain. For now, the cohesiveness of their society is seeing the Dogon people through. How long that lasts will be up to Malick.

Travel details: Linsay Hawdon was a guest of Cox & Kings (020 7873 5000, www.coxandkings.co.uk), which offers escorted group and tailor-made tours to Mali and throughout the region. Its 12-day Road to Timbuktu tour costs from £1,995pp and visits Timbuktu, the Sahara, Dogon country and the markets and mud mosque of Djenné. The price includes flights from Heathrow to Bamako, basic but comfortable accommodation and all meals, transfers and excursions.

Other operators featuring Mali include Tim Best Travel (020 7591 0300, www.timbesttravel.com) and Explore Worldwide (0870 333 4001, www.exploreworldwide.com ).