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.