Turning 26 in Timbuktu

Summary: Timbuktu is not nearly as impressive today as it was long ago, but we still managed to find some worthwhile aspects including Tuareg wares, ancient manuscripts and ouijila.

After a violent windstorm, an ongoing bout of stomach troubles and a rapid initiation into Mali, I’d completely forgotten that it was the 6^th of August. Ready for another day on the river, one which would likely end with our arrival in the historical city of Timbuktu, I was reminded when Yuri piped up. Everyone immediately jumped in to sing me happy birthday as our usual simple breakfast of bread, jam and tea or coffee was ferried up from the kitchen. Being my special day, I treated myself and had a second cup of coffee before continuing with the spades tournament. The day previous had seen less than stellar play on our part, but Sarah and I were beginning to learn each other’s style of play and today would be our day, I hoped. We spent most of the morning battling it out with Josh and Gretchen, two formidable and cutthroat players with a knack for disrupting your plays and usurping the trumps you were sure you’d take.

We reached the landing about 15km outside of Timbuktu just after midday. With a heightened sense of excitement, we picked up our gear which the barefoot lads had offloaded onto shore for us and made our way up a small embankment to a waiting Toyota Land Cruiser. I wasn’t at all confident that it would be possible to fit 14 of us, plus a driver and Kareem into this thing, but the PCVs didn’t give it a second thought and after handing their bags up to the guy on the roof, began to pile in. With 2 guys on the roof and no less than 15 people in this Land Cruiser, we set off on a paved road heading to a city everyone’s heard of but very few people could tell you much about. After passing the gendarme, we made our way through sandy streets, past goats, children and a number of small corner shops known in Mali as boutikis before arriving at our destination. Kareem had arranged for us to stay at a house in town for some nominal fee. After some discussion about dinner and laundry, both of which were arranged, some of us headed westward towards the dunes that surround this hallowed city. Sunset in Timbuktu, we imagined, must be something to witness. After the obligatory photos, we sat on top of a dune and watched the sun fall beneath the horizon; had it been in any other place, it would have been just a mediocre sunset. With dark approaching, we headed towards a light in the distance which Yuri identified as the Flamme de la Paix. A monument to the end of the Tuareg rebellion, there is actually no flame here, but the edifice does indeed cast a yellowish glow on the surrounding ground. It was upon setting off from here that I realized that Timbuktu’s streets all look the same and although arranged in a grid, are numbered in a way that makes nearly no sense. Luckily, someone in our group had taken note of the street numbers near the house in which we were staying and after a 10 minute trek, we were back and ready for some dinner.

Of the options available to us, and with Sarah’s recommendation, we’d elected to have ouijila, a local type of spongy bread and sauce. Sadly, our hosts had gouged us on the price and we had to seek a second round of nourishment. An air of disappointment lay over the entire situation and complaints were whispered, to the dissatisfaction of our guide Kareem who had a reputation to uphold with our hosts. There are different dynamics in Africa that many Westerners find difficult to understand and work with. As we paid for the trip, we feel entitled to some customer service and getting ripped off (albeit by just over $1) is not at all appreciated. We don’t have many qualms about being openly upset and even complaining, but this, in this situation, was frowned upon. Furthermore, the tone of the evening was quickly becoming spoiled and on the eve of my birth, I had hoped for something different. There was, however, a saving grace. Though, poorly timed as I’d already had my one piece of ouijila and was full, Yuri appeared from inside with another piece with a candle planted in the middle of it and began, yet again, to sing happy birthday to me. There, in the very basic accommodation with inadequate food and tired, frustrated PCVs, Yuri managed to restore the mood and, in a simple way, made a lasting memory of my birthday. What a guy. We finished the night with a few beers that we’d had brought in from a local hotel and a few rounds of a game called “would you rather” in which you get to give players a simple choice of one or the other and they must select what they’d rather. Some of the harsher questions included “would you rather kill your mother or your father?” while the seemingly straight-laced Tamara seemed hugely conflicted when I asked her if she’d rather shave her head or pierce her tongue. Yuri, once again, rocked the night when he broke out the Crunchie Bits that I’d brought him from England and generously shared them around. Having grown tired, I set up my cotton sleeping sack on a thin reed mat, tucked a folded shirt under my head and gave thanks that, as there are no mosquitoes in the desert, tonight would be a tent-free sleep. In one of the more remote places on Earth, on a thin mat with a shirt as a pillow, I slept the night through and awoke naturally just before sunrise.

We summitted the dune just as the sun was rising and played with the ultra-fine sand. We were soon joined by a Tuareg who, after greeting us in what I presume was Songhai, sat patiently with us as we took our photos before inviting us to his home. A dome made of sticks and covered with tapestries, 6 of us piled in and greeted an old woman who was working away in the corner of the dome. With a knife, she was putting finishing touches on a colorful leather bag, possibly made of camel skin. The Tuareg made tea and began to show us how he makes pipes. Using a small bench and one of his toes to hold the pipe in place, he carved designs into the small piece. After tea, we were invited into the building behind the dome where he and a few other merchants had a variety of necklaces, bracelets, knives and even a Tuareg sword or two. We all bargained hard and left with some fab souvenirs on our way to find some of the centuries-old texts to which Timbuktu is home. Once a thriving and scholarly city, Timbuktu has one of the richest concentrations of ancient texts in the world - some over a millennia in age. After a long walk through the city, we arrived at the Centre de Recherches Historiques Ahmed Baba and were shown to the one room display where locked cabinets held unknown treasures while two glass-topped cases in the middle of the room showed some of the more impressive finds including one book with painted and gold inlay from over 800 years ago. With the explanation from the aging curator all in French, I tuned out and most of the significance of this site was likely lost on me; nevertheless, it was impressive to see books more than 4 times older than my country. After the museum, we nabbed some amazingly refreshing frozen juice sachets (dobliney in Mali) and some frozen yoghurt sachets (nono) in the 3 story central market building. Therein lies another wonderful benefit of traveling with PCVs in Mali – street juice and yoghurt are almost certainly a no-go when traveling due to worries about all kinds of nasties including Hepititis A, but when you can confirm that it hasn’t made someone else deathly ill it makes it much easier to partake. In the heat of Mali (I want to call it sweltering, but it’s not quite at that level), a frozen sachet of nono tastes like the golden nectar of Zeus – and most travelers miss it fearing that the price tag is higher than the $0.10 you pay up front. Refreshed and feeling that we’d done as good a job of understanding Timbuktu as we would be able to, we arrived at the house to rest and prepare for more time on our pirogue. They would bring tales of spirits living in dunes, hoards of dung beetles and what can only be described as a river hurricane.