Timbuktou

I made it to Timbuktou.

I made it to Timbuktou and a swarm of hawkers, guides, and scoundrels met me with a big smile, my white face drawing them out, they met me like miners meet an ore of gold. I made it to Timbuktou and a guy tried to sell me a shirt that said 'I made it to Timbuktou.' I made it to Timbuktou, and the sun was hot and the wind blew sand and dust and trash. I made it to Timbuktou, I stayed a little while, and then I turned around and headed for home.

It was a bit of a disapointment. I snapped a few picturs in front of the various European explorer's houses, noted the mildly interesting architecture, some yellowed manuscripts in a museum, and then I found a guide, or rather I should say he found me, who put me in touch with his friend, who talked to his brother, and soon I was off into the desert with a camel named Ajoumar and a sly Taureg camelherder named Alhalifa.

Or at least I thought I was off into the desert. I had wanted to see the Sahara, stand on a hill and see nothing but sand and rock around me, but mile after mile the remnants of the Sahel continued. There were sand dunes for sure, little wind-ruffled hills of sand, but they stood in an ocean of dry prickly grasses and little thorn trees, goats and goat herders, and I was told to my great frustration that the real desert was a seven-day camel ride north. I had two days, so you could say I made it to the fringe of the Sahara, but the real thing I did not see.

Desert or not, the landscape around Timbuktou is interesting, low hills, light yellows and ochres, sand, and riding a camel is fun. You sit with your feet bracing against its long neck, in a v-shaped wood saddle strapped to this very tall animal's even taller hump. Riding along rhythmically from this considerable altitude, with a straight back and dressed in a turqoise Taureg gown and turban, I felt royal, like a king on my tall horse surveying a grand conquest. The illusion broke when I dismounted --rather clumsily -- and found myself completely helpless. The prickly 'kram-krams' in the grass ate into my feet and sandals, slowing my walks to a crawl as I stopped to pick them out; the heat was awful, the gown felt silly and akward, and nausea welled up from a diet of couscous-in-sick-brown-sauce with gristly goat meat.

The Taureg people, also called the Tamashek, are the main ethnic group around Timbuktou and across the southern fringe of the Sahara, from Niger to Mali and beyond. Half of them look Arabic, the other half look like other black Africans, but they all speak the same harsh-sounding language, and the men are easily identified in their long gowns and face-covering turbans. They're a tough, desert-hardy people. Traditionally nomadic, many still live in semi-permanent straw-mat huts across the desert fringe, and make their living as sheperds and traders, and now also as hawkers of tourist trinkets. In the past their grand camel caravans criss-crossed the Sahara to trade gold, salt, and slaves, and to this day caravans make long expeditions, usually to gather salt from mines near the Algerian border. Traditionally they kept slaves, and from what I gather a strict social hierarchy still exists. Slavery, or a kind of unfree indentured-servitude, is reported to still exist in some parts. The Taureg are also the least integrated ethnicity in many of these countries; a Taureg rebellion in northern Niger still simmers, and one in northern Mali was resolved just a few years ago.

Anyway, Alhalifa, who is Taureg, and Ajoumar the camel and I spent two days and nights outside Timbuktou -- one night resting in a small Tuareg encampment, the second night on a sand dune. The desert is at it's best at night, when the blinding heat of the day gives way to cool and then cold, when the stars come out and a powerful silence holds sway. It's common for the larger camel caravans to travel by night and rest by day, navigating by 'bel-haadi,' the north star, and other constellations.

On the second day we rode past sunset and into the darkness, watching the stars appear one by one and the distant glow of the city rise on a stretch of horizon to the south. We made a little campfire, shared another awful meal of couscous and goat gristle, and I slept like I was awake, with vivid dreams under a cold clear sky, 'abba-raana-bakkar' (the Milky Way, literally the way of the blood of the sacrificed goat), and bel-haadi, and a thousand other stars shining above me. I had come two thousand kilometers over four countries, one month, sickness and homesickness, in overcrowded cars, buses, and boats, met good people and bad, and here, this here was the destination, my effort, my farthest reach. I had finally arrived. Even better, I was on my way back home.

The Road to Timbuktou, Part II

From mountainous Hombori I caught a five-hour pre-dawn bus to the town of Gao on the bank of the Niger. Gao, like Timbuktou, was once the center of a Sahelian empire, but now it's a miserable outpost of dreary mud-brick buildings, dusty streets, and mercenary tourist guides. After the last days of heat-exhaustion in Hombori and some days with a miserable guide in Dogon country, it marked a low point of morale. I spent two days here waiting to get out, and when I found out they had an airport I almost took an early flight home.

I decided to continue on to Timbouktou, however, but finding transport was difficult. Two locals finally 'helped' me book an overpriced passage on a transport boat docked in the harbor, which they assured me would leave the next morning. After I put down my deposit down I learned it was to leave the day following the next day, at 8am, by which time a more comfortable, cheaper, and faster passenger boat had come and gone. So, two days later, at 3pm not 8am, I left with a dozen passengers, five crew, two donkeys and a goat. I was told the journey would take two nights and a day, but, this being Africa, I knew that could mean anything.

The 60 foot-long motor boat was made of wide wooden planks and a rounded, straw-mat roof supported by saplings and tree branches. It wasn't designed for comfort, or really for any type of quality. The main job of one of the crewmen was to scoop water out the boat, water which continually seeped in from dozens of tiny holes. The holes were 'fixed' by pushing cotton rags into them with a special tool. Getting from one end of the boat to the other was an obstacle course over wooden beams, cargo, people, a cooking area, and the motors themselves; alternately you could trust your climbing skills and mount the outside of the boat to the roof, then walk along the (rounded) roof to the other side. Still, the boat stayed afloat, and I on it, and slowly but surely we made our way against the current of Niger towards Timbuktou.

How do you pass five days and five nights on an uncomfortable boat? I slept, I painted, I ate, I decoded a French spy thriller using a dictionary (CIA agent looks for two Irianian terrorists, but mostly just finds sexy women), I spent hours staring at the shoreline, watching sand dunes and river grasses and egrets and little fishing villages pass by. I thought about what I would do when I get home (I'll spend a day on the couch with the Sunday Times, a cup of real coffee and a toasted sesame bagel with cream cheese, tomatoe, and a pinch of salt; after that I'm not sure). We stopped at a village one night to load over a hundred huge sacks of white flour, which left the porters covered in a fine white dust, white dust against their black skin in the moonlight, a terrific sight. We stopped to visit the family of the captain (which ended in an argument), and we stopped at other villages for smaller loads and passengers, and each night we pulled ashore for a few hours to give the pilots some rest. I slept on a wooden board next to the grumpy captain, who spat and coughed and mumbled all through the night.

The Niger River must be over a mile wide in some parts, and it's really peaceful, really beautiful. The days were hot but the evenings cool and serene, and at night the moon came out, turning towards full, so the river glittered in silver light. I eventually made friends with the other passengers and crew, I painted portraits of several of them, and when on the third day I got really sick, Umu, the mother-figure of the boat, gave me some medicine and some comforting looks of concern. The boat had begun to feel like home, especially in the central cooking area where the women kept up a good banter. But a strange kind of home. The cavernous roof, held up by rib-like supports, was shaped much like the rounded bottom and I felt like I was inside a big whale, traveling slowly on my way to nowhere. The motor kept up a constant hum, the scenery passed effortlessly, the sun rose and fell, the moon rose and fell, I lost track of time. No one could tell me how far we'd come or how far to go -- one kid spoke a halting French and he had no clue -- so I just relaxed and trusted that things would work out.

Now I'm in Timbuktou.

The Road to Timbuktou, Part I

I wrote last from Sevare, just outside of the Dogon Counrtry of south-central Mali. To elaborate a little, the Dogon live along a big, flat-topped cliff that marks a welcome rise from hundreds of miles of flatlands to the south. Traditionally they lived in mud-brick and stone houses built right into the face of the cliff, which you can still see, not unlike some Native American dwellings in New Mexico and Arizona. They still bury some of their dead in fissures high up on the cliffs, little cracks in the rock that they reach with rope made from baobab trees. Today most Dogon live near their fields of millet on the plains below and on top of the cliff, or in nearby towns, and although many still practice their traditional religion, others are Christian or Muslim. I visited Dogon Country with a native guide, who drank bags of pre-mixed gin and tonic as we walked, and who hung out with his raucous African buddies at night, so what is considered one of west Africa's most extraordinary places became in fact a bit tediuous. But the trip continued, thankfully alone.

In Sevare, a tranport link at the edge of Dogon Country, I had the choice of a day's direct ride to Timbuktou, or taking the long way to Timbuktou.

In centuries past, Timbuktou marked the end of the trans-Saharan caravans that linked Europe, the Arab lands, and Sub-Saharan Africa. It grew on the riches of the caravans -- slaves and gold going north, salt and other goods coming south -- and was the capital of an empire when Europe was a mess of sqwabbling, pest-addled kingdoms. For the Muslim world, it was a center of scholarship in astronomy, religion, medicine, and other fields before a series of armies ran it into the ground. Trade with Europe eventually dwindled as European ships brought trade goods to Africa's coast, circumventing the caravans, and Timbuktoo fell into decline, retaining only a whisper of its former glory. Dozens of Europeans tried to reach it over the centuries, but the first ones didn't arrive until the 1820s. Today you can fly here, or take a day's ride from Sevare as I might have, but the place retains its allure and I didn't want to spoil the fun by getting here the easy way.

So, from Sevare I took a bus east to a town called Hombori, and spent four days there and in the nearby village of Daari. This is a mountainous part of Mali that looks a lot like New Mexico, with an arid landscape and huge mesas rising out of flatlands. I hiked to the near-top of the 'Cle de Hombori,' picking thorns out of my flip-flops along the way, and watched hawks and eagles flying below me and a spectacular view of Tondo Hombori, Mali's highest peak at 1155 meters, and a vast plain that dissolved into dust-laden air. I spent another day climbing around the 'Main de Fatima,' a formation of five giant rock spires farther down the road, but I got caught hiking in the mid-day sun, and despite plenty of water and sunscreen I got completely slammed by the heat. I spent the rest of that day in my hut praying for evening and the coolness that comes with it, sucking down water and craving salt. I have some watercolors from this landscape that I hope to use as studies for a painting of a vast, silent landscape, starting with thorns and brambles and yellow grasses and continuing with little dots of paint into infinity.

At the base of the 'Main de Fatima' is the Fulani village of Daari. Traditionally semi-nomadic goat and cattle-herders, the Fulani live across Sahelian West-Africa, and often look different from other Africans: thinner, somewhat lighter-skinned, the women often with hair braided in long strands across their heads. Of the many overlapping ethnic groups in west Africa, I somehow like the Fulani the most. My friend in Benin was Fulani, and I stayed with his Fulani family in Niger, and the town of Dori where I stayed with a Peace Corps volunteer is mostly Fulani. The village of Daari, however, was one of the most miserable I've seen, and the villagers, being used to tourists, ran up to me demanding gifts and showing me hideous infections and deformities.

As in many other villages, the women of Daari used a small, seasonal water hole for washing, bathing, and drinking and cooking, and this water was the most putrid, foul-smelling, nasty water you could imagine. It was shared by their animals, cow droppings everywhere, and I saw a kid going to the bathroom on the shoreline, but I don't think they've made the connection between water quality and illness. It's ironic, because generally people really care about hygiene, they wash a lot, wash their clothes a lot, wash their hands and feet before praying, and use only their right 'clean' hand to greet people.

In Africa, people really do get sick more often, children die in infancy, adults die younger, accidents happen, and there's no welfare, no health insurance, no protection from the uncontrollable forces of nature and man, only the comfort of family and religion. In the cities, there are sewers with enormous sections of concrete missing, so one misstep and you've either broken your leg or you're soaking in a nasty brew of urine and trash. In restaurants, the metal fans behind refridgerators often face common areas, ready to cut the fingers of anyone walking too close. Traffic is a terror, malaria comes with the rainy season...if I lived here, I would also become superstitious and religious.

This first week or so in Mali was interesting, but it was exhausting, and it felt good to finally catch a bus and be on the move again.

Congratulations America!!!

'America is second to heaven'
-Ghanian street vendor in Cotonou (a few weeks ago)

Congratulations America!!! I woke up this morning on a rooftop in Begnimato, a small village on top of the Bandiagara Cliff in Dogon Country, southern Mali, to hear the good news...I couldn't believe it at first, but some guides and other travellers had listened to the radio and yes, we will have a new presdient, Obama won, it's time for a change, it's amazing!

Over the last two months, every single African I've talked to has been hopeful for Obama. They've followed the election over the radio, and they were excited that someone with African roots might make it to the top of a country they regard as the most powerful and wonderful in the world. They truly see the US as a land flowing with wealth and opportunity: even if the real thing might not live up to the fantasy, America really is a symbol of hope and liberty, and I am so glad that we now have the chance to live up to that symbol. People here love America despite the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, and despite these countries being up to 90 percent Muslim.

I'm in Mali, just passed through the Dogon Country, where the flatlands end abruptly in a huge mesa, and where some people still practice their traditional religion. It was harvest season, and it seemed like entire villages were outside cutting millet, then hauling it and pounding it for storage, even the smallest little kids were out in the fields. I went with a guide, but as far as I can tell the only good a guide does in Mali is keep other guides off your back. Mali is perhaps the most-visited country in West Africa, so people see you as a cash machine, which is rather unpleasant. I painted some really bad watercolors here the last few days, plus one I like, it's a baobab tree in the evening. Niger and Burkina were much more intersting, with friendly people, or people who just left you alone.

Right now I'm in Sevare, about 200 km south of Timbuktoo.