Timbuktu
ByAfter a good breakfast which included Timbuktu bread we met Mohamed, now dressed in his guide’s clothes, as a Tuareg, and set out to explore the town. He wore magnificent white robes and a white turban wrapped around his head and mouth leaving only his bright intelligent eyes sparkling out. The effect would have been impressive if it wasn’t for his designer trainers. There were three mosques, all mud brick, two museums and three ‘explorers’ houses.
It was interesting to note that Timbuktu was at its zenith when the gold and ivory was shipped through the town from Ghana and the south across the Sahara, north to the Middle East. It was in 1324 that Masa Musa made his fabulous pilgrimage. The fabled wealth of the town springs from this period. According to the history books the European “explorers” only reached the town less than two hundred years ago, in 1812 , by which time it was already well into its decline. Yet Portuguese ships explored the River Gambia and River Senegal and set up an Embassy in Timbuktu in 1565. There were also Moroccan traders who regularly visited Timbuktu in the eighteenth century and travelled to Germany to buy cloth. They must have known that Timbuktu was even then a down at heel trading town and not the golden city of European imagination. Evidently the information never reached the right ears.
Now the town is definitely threadbare and propped up only by tourism. Still, there is 24hour electricity, water and an underground sewage system was being installed while we were there. The town used to be all mud brick which were constantly repaired and replaced. Now these are being replaced by sandstone blocks and modern engineering bricks. As the sand drifts in the town looks a bit dejected and dependent mostly on its mystique as a tourist destination. We thought it was not as picturesque as Djénne.
Mohamed led us through the narrow dusty streets to see the three mosques. The first was the Djingareiber Mosque. It was the oldest and said to be the most interesting. It was built in 1325 by an Andalucian architect and poet, El Saheli, on the orders of the famous Kankan Mousa who had just retuned from his pilgrimage to Mecca and his momentous visit to Cairo. Its high castellated mud brick walls had a conical tower in the centre and was frankly not nearly as impressive as the great mosque at Djénné. Apparently it used to be open to the public but Mohamed said that due to disrespectful tourists, entry to all but the faithful was banned. He didn’t seem to know the details but we wandered if it was a spin off from the desecration perpetrated by the French photographer in Djénné.
The other two mosques were built in the 15th Century. The Sankoré Mosque was small and simple and according to Mohamed was built by a Berber woman. This looked much more interesting with a magnificent 30 foot mud brick pyramid shaped tower, studded with toron, or sticks, regularly arranged on the surface. During the 15th and 16th centuries the famous University of Sankoré was also based here. At its height the university was an important centre of learning specialising in law and theology and attracting 25,000 students.
The Sidi Yéhia Mosque, perhaps the least attractive externally has magnificent wooden doors decorated with exquisitely cut metal plates. We were so interested in the Moorish or Moroccan style of the doors and windows we had seen in Djénné and here in Timbuktu that Mohamed took us to one of the many carpentry shops which produce these. Here we saw the famous doors being put together and chatted to the craftsmen who were justifiably proud of their work.
After a fire in 1512 which destroyed much of Timbuktu the houses were rebuilt in traditional style producing two or three storey, flat roofed, mud brick buildings. As a tourist town there are innumerable plaques to the good and the great. These include the foreign explorers driven by the greed of their sponsors toward an evident myth of wealth. Major Alexander Gordon Laing arrived in Timbuktu on 18 August 1826 and stayed in the city for about six weeks before joining another caravan heading north. Two days after leaving the city he was killed by a spear through the heart delivered by Tuareg tribesmen. A Frenchman René Caillié spent nine months living with a Muslim tribe on the banks of the River Senegal in preparation for his trip. He learnt Arabic and studied the Koran so that he would be able to pass himself off as a Muslim. So he was able to to visit Djenné unmolested in March 1828 and arrived in Timbuktu in April. After a month in Timbuktu he safely travelled north through Tuareg country to be the first European to reach the city and return safely home to tell the tale, apart from the Portuguese some 250 years earlier. In 1853 Heinrich Barth, a German, employed by the British Government arrived in Timbuktu having travelled overland from Niger, disguised as a Tuareg. He had previously led a five year expedition across the Sahara to Lake Chad.
Near the Sankoré Moque, Mohamed took us into a Tuareg tent made from camel hide stretched over a hemispherical frame of wood. Clearly this was actually a retail outlet aimed primarily at tourists, but it costs nothing to be polite and the goods on display were interesting. The two men inside, dressed dramatically as Tuareg desert wonderers, offered us green tea and showed us craft work they said they had made in desert encampments. As we sat cross-legged on a carpet, we were offered a wide range of bracelets and necklaces which were said to be Tuareg silver, which is actually nickel. Occasionally another man would join us to show us knives and ornaments and other crafts. We had seen goods like these, some with much better workmanship, all across West Africa. Most of these are produced in the workshops of the towns. After a pleasant sip of tea and much praise for the articles on offer we thanked our hosts for their hospitality and efforts and explained that as we were carrying all of our belongings on our back we didn’t want to buy anything, tempting though the merchandise on display was. With honour preserved all round we departed, refreshed and rested.
We left Timbuktu about mid day to drive back south. At the ferry we were the only car. So rather than wait, we paid the full 14000 CFA and crossed the river immediately. We met, Kemo, a soldier who turned out to be in a signals unit in the Mali Army, and Halifa, a laboratory technician from Mopti hospital who was doing some work at the Timbuktu health centre, so we gave them both a lift across the desert to Mopti. Whilst the romantic notions of desert life and far flung settlements are compelling it is equally interesting to meet the modern face of Africa and talk to men who are engaged in maintaining microwave communications installations or calibrating sensitive medical equipment in the Timbuktu health facilities. About halfway back to Douéntza we stopped at a rest point where there was a rustic shelter so that people could get out of the sun. Incredibly they had a generator and a fridge full of cold drinks. A man with a camel walked out of the shimmering desert heat and allowed us to take his photograph. He couldn’t quite understand why we want to photograph an ordinary bloke travelling with goods for local shops, but he humoured us, without asking for anything in return. Halifa bought us all a soft drink, including our man with the camel.
On the way back we stopped to photograph another donkey train taking grain up to Timbuktu to trade for salt. As we were taking the photograph one of the donkey train drivers walked purposefully toward us. I thought he might have take exception to me photographing the scene without asking. Essa thought it was OK and I was glad to have Halifa and Kemo backing me up. It turned out he wasn’t feeling well and after describing his symptoms I gave him a course of penicillin and hoped that would help.
Back in Douéntza, Kemo, the soldier, bought us all roast lamb and Halifa, the lab technician, bought another round soft drinks to thank us for the lifts. We dropped Halifa off at a cross roads where he could get a bush taxi home. Kemo wanted to go to his barracks which was on our way back to Mac’s in Sévaré.
It was good to get back to Mac’s Refuge to meet the other travellers and have another marvellous meal. We met an American woman, Ann, who was travelling along the same route but in the opposite direction. She had just come from Ghana and Burkina Faso and was planning to head for Dakar in Senegal.
This article is part of a series describing our tour of West Africa
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