More about Mali

After describing her 1975 visits to Timbuktu in Visa 107, Janice Booth moves on to Bamako

Back in 1975 the Grand Hotel in Bamako was impressively palatial, with masses of marble, a huge gleaming foyer, glossy reception desk and wide staircase leading up to a balustraded balcony. It was the first hotel built in Bamako in the colonial era, in 1952, just eight years before Mali gained independence from France; it had been part of French West Africa. We’d flown in late from Belgium – I was with the MD of a Belgian charity whose husband liked her to have company when travelling – and were glad to arrive. Our room (opening off the balcony) was large and opulent, with king-size beds and thick black curtains. My companion took a strong sleeping pill and went straight to sleep.

         

As I turned off the shower I heard a clunk; and on returning to the bedroom saw water pouring from a sleek fitted wardrobe – which turned out to contain a water tank so old that its bottom had finally rusted away. I piled our bags and shoes up on a chair, then phoned reception. Two impeccably dark-suited, white-shirted Malians appeared, and looked sadly at the flood. I suggested in French: ‘Perhaps one should turn it off at the mains?’ and they brightened.

         

‘Indeed, Madame, one should turn it off at the mains. One will do it.’ And they vanished.

         

Ten minutes later they were back. ‘Very unfortunately, Madame, he who can turn it off at the mains is at his home tonight. We must await the morning. Meanwhile we will transfer you to another room.’

Transfer? At midnight? With me in my nightie and my companion dead to the world? Anyway, the room seemed to be on a slight slope; the water was collecting along the wall furthest from the beds, and running out under the door rather than getting deeper. I declined their offer and went to sleep.

When I woke at 8.00 the flood had stopped and the floor was fairly dry. For almost six hours the water from the tank had continued flowing: under the door, across the balcony, through the balustrade and, in a gentle waterfall, down into the foyer, which surely had never been so well washed. I went back to the Grand Hotel nine months later, and as I checked in I could swear I heard a murmur of ‘cîterne’ (tank) from among the reception staff.  In 2004 it was refurbished and is now the Azalai Hotel Salem – presumably with better plumbing.

On my second visit, an American with a lurid, roughly dressed gash across her forehead came to sit with me in the restaurant, asking me to translate the menu. She’d been knocked down by a 15-year-old on a scooter (her fault, she readily acknowledged: she’d stepped out straight in front of him) and had had the wound scrubbed clean without anaesthetic (ouch...) in the city hospital. The boy then appeared with a huge bunch of flowers – he knew no-one blamed him but was still terribly shaken – and I translated his heartfelt and very well-spoken regret. From the menu, the woman chose hare while I had my favourite grilled capitaine. She received a massive haunch, enough to feed three people, which probably the leftovers would have done back in the kitchen; but to my great embarrassment she asked me to ask the courteous but puzzled waiter for a ‘doggy bag’ so she could finish it later in her room. The experiences of travel...

Bamako in those days was a lively, chaotic, very African capital, with some dramatic architecture, vibrant local restaurants and fantastic live music. The French influence lingered in the food, and the trays of fresh baguettes hawked in the streets each morning. Nearly four decades later I’m left with impressions rather than precise memories – of tall, graceful people, many shades of colour and types of bone structure, from fine, pale Tuareg to much darker and chunkier Moors and Mali’s numerous other ethnic groups; veiled faces, turbaned faces, open faces, stylishly dressed women in rainbow colours and dangling jewellery; dust and noise and the feeling of a confident city at ease with itself. Poor and rich areas, shabby and flamboyant buildings, sleek new-builds and chunky traditional homes, smart shops and outdoor markets all somehow rubbed along amicably together.

The wonderfully atmospheric  Marché Rose, a huge, pink, circular mud-brick market in neo-Sudanese style, with increasingly exotic items on increasingly dark stalls as you wound your way inwards, was destroyed by fire in 1993, but was so popular with both residents and visitors that it has been rebuilt. I bought dress-lengths of printed cotton there, and had them made up and embroidered by a tailor in Timbuktu. There were some pleasant parks and gardens – dusty, but with flowers and birds – and I remember a peaceful walk beside the River Niger, the city’s water-source. All along its sloping banks were small fruit and vegetable gardens, growing well in the irrigated sand. Bamako means ‘crocodile river’ but none appeared...

Traffic was bad, pollution worse. Traffic lights did work – mostly – but the vehicles on either side confronted each other like adversaries, revving fiercely and hell-bent on being first away. I remember once, opposite me across the lights, the nearside wheel of a stationary 2CV gently detached itself and rolled slowly into the cross traffic, causing  no small amount of braking and blaring of horns.

Djenne Mosque

We were heading for Timbuktu, and sadly I’d no time to see more of the country. Borders have changed over the years, but the area of today’s Mali, with the River Niger at its heart, has been for centuries a crossroads of races and civilisations. Many prehistoric remains, including some vivid cave paintings and finely made artefacts, have been found, and first European accounts of its history start around the 3rd century AD. I should have loved to see Djenné, with its massive mosque – the largest mud-brick structure in the world, designated a World Heritage Site in 1988 – and excavations at nearby Djenné-Djeno, possibly the oldest-known city in West Africa, dating from about 250BC.  

Also I missed the Bandiagara area, so-called ‘Dogon country’ and probably the part of Mali most visited by tourists, with its intriguing culture, distinctive art, burial caves and characteristic cliff villages clustered below a towering escarpment. (Remember Robert Temple’s controversial ‘The Sirius Mystery’ in 1973 and the African tribe that apparently knew more about the Dog Star than astronomers did? Rightly or wrongly, they were the Dogon.)

In fact art and culture are fascinating throughout Mali, very often specific to particular areas, and I returned home with far too many souvenirs which, thirty years later, I still had. Through editing Ross Velton’s Bradt Guide to Mali I’d discovered a small charity, the Joliba Trust, based on Dartmoor that was doing useful work (farming, health, livestock, children...) among villagers in central/southern Mali; in 2009 they held an exhibition-cum-sale of Malian handicrafts to raise funds and, as I live in Devon, I filled up a box and drove over. It was lovely to see a display of the bright colours, fine weaving and characterful carvings that I remembered – and even better to see mine being sold to Joliba’s profit! They work on a narrow shoestring. As I watched, a small, carved wooden door from a Dogon grain-store went for £75...

Joliba have kindly provided some of these photos and some updates about the present situation: life in the south of the country seems tense but fairly normal, while in the north prices of everyday goods are rocketing and there is still sporadic violence – today a suicide bomb has killed a Malian soldier in Timbuktu, and Gao is a target of rebel attacks. The Joliba website includes a heartfelt letter from a Timbuktu inhabitant, written during last year’s ‘Islamist’ occupation. In Bamako and other towns there’s suspicion now among the inhabitants, as lighter-skinned and darker-skinned wonder who may be supporting whom. Although the French intervention in January did (vitally) drive the insurgents from the northern towns and prevent their further advance, not much is solved in the long term by killing a few dozen ‘Islamists’ and destroying some of their hideouts; it’s the very, very rich pickings offered by drug trafficking in the desert that need to be tackled, internationally. Meanwhile, the insurgents will simply return and the country can’t stabilise; also its tourism income – particularly important in Djenné, Timbuktu and Bandiagara – has been stripped away.

As always in wars, it’s the ‘little people’ who suffer, and Mali is already a poor nation. Some governments have withdrawn much-needed  development aid from the north but NGOs such as Joliba are plugging away throughout the country – and Mali is so rewarding in that respect because, as I’ve seen for myself, its people are happy to organise themselves and work energetically on projects that provide the basic finance or materials they lack.  It’s a beautiful, fascinating and very varied country, well worth considering as a destination once the unrest is over. In fact – Mali needs you!

First Published in VISA 108 (April 2013)

Remembering Timbuktu

By Janice Booth

By the time you read this, we’ll know how much of Timbuktu’s priceless heritage has survived; latest news is that thousands of irreplaceable ancient manuscripts, some dating from the 13^th century, may have been burned by the retreating “Islamists”, and historic shrines have been brutally demolished. The manuscripts have a value far, far beyond that of just their ink and parchment; they hold nine centuries of West Africa’s cultural and intellectual history, and the people of Timbuktu are intensely proud to be their guardians. Resourcefully, they seem to have smuggled some into safety before the insurgents struck; but the destruction of others is a great tragedy.

Bread Oven and Mosque

I was there in 1975. My memories of Timbuktu and its people evoke words like dignity, history, pride, grace, intellect, wisdom, honour and tradition; and recalling the immensity and emptiness of the surrounding desert still tingles my skin.

“Salt comes from the north, gold from the south and money from the

white countries; but the word of God, wisdom, history and the telling of

good tales come only from Timbuktu.”  (Sudanese saying, 16^th century)

A long straight sandy road stretched southward from the town, mud-brick buildings on either side giving way to a straggle of beehive-shaped huts made from woven mats attached to wooden frames. As I walked down this road at dusk, small fires or braziers glowed red in front of the huts and my mouth watered at the spicy smell of cooking. Children played and women crouched over their pots, preparing the evening meal. African music throbbed into the twilight from a transistor radio.

A kilometre or so to the west, a canal built by USAID carried water from the river port of Kabara to the edge of Timbuktu; the busy little market at its terminus was known as the place “where camel meets canoe”. All manner of market-garden crops – tomatoes, beans, gourds, pulses and leafy vegetables – grew on the canal’s steep sandy banks. I remember the plump juiciness of the tomatoes, and piles of colourful produce on market stalls.

On a street corner, a wonderful smell of fresh baking wafted towards me from one of the town’s domed bread ovens. A woman was extracting flat loaves with a long spatula. I bought one, dusted off the ash and bit into it: tough, tasting of wood-smoke, and my teeth crunched on the desert sand that invades every aspect of life in Timbuktu.

Walking on sand is like walking on snow: footsteps are deadened and sounds don’t carry. Timbuktu’s streets, with their mud-brick buildings, distinctive mosques and heavy studded doors, echoed the silence of the surrounding desert. Men’s robes swished up flurries of dust as they walked, and their leather sandals scuffed through the sand. Tarmac hadn’t yet arrived. I visited a workshop where the doors were made, using hardwood imported from Ivory Coast. The smell of fresh wood-shavings is universal! Doors in various states of completion were stacked on the sand. I’m comfortable speaking French (it’s necessary in Timbuktu), so got chatting. The grizzled maître of the workshop grumbled benevolently: “You can’t get serious labour nowadays, these youngsters just want to be off having a good time. And as for the price of wood...!”

There weren’t many organised tourist activities back then, although the tall and impeccably robed tourist-board representative for Timbuktu, Mr Moulaye Sidi Yahiya, was full of plans. He was so proud of “his” town, and had painstakingly typed out information for visitors. Five houses that had been used by explorers (Laing, Caillié, Barth, Lenz and Berky) were marked with plaques. Several traditional houses with their characteristic architecture (decorative pilasters, oddly shaped windows, heavy wooden doors with metal studs) were on the “tourist trail”. Some say (although others don’t!) that the style dates back to a Muslim architect of Spanish origin brought to Timbuktu by its ruler Kankou-Moussa in 1325. There was just one “hotel” – a plain and rather bleak building crouched on the edge of town, with a breathtaking view over the desert. Looking out into the space and silence of the dunes at dusk, I felt no bigger than a grain of sand.

'Gold' Straw Necklace

In the narrow streets of the old town I found traditional craftsmen – jewellers working intricately in gold and silver, tailors clacking away on old manual sewing-machines, weavers with hand-held wooden looms, and makers of various decorative items (bracelets, amulets, masks, sandals, carving...) in bone, wood, leather or metal. One style of sandal had a strip of leather at the toe like the prow of a boat, for cutting through the desert sand. I was intrigued by the straw jewellery: necklaces, bracelets, anklets and rings made of straw, sometimes dyed yellow, on a base of wax. In olden times it was said, from a distance, to look like gold, so that visitors approaching Timbuktu, and seeing women wearing it, would be impressed by their wealth.

 I remember the buzz and activity at the river port of Kabara, about 8km south of the town: pirogues loading and unloading, traders bartering, fishermen bringing home their catch. Long-legged Malian lads in patched shorts and faded t-shirts, white-robed merchants, turbaned Tuareg tribesmen, the smell of fish, the cacophony of chatter, sunlight bouncing off the water... Among the crowd were also tall, graceful Malian women, like gaudy desert butterflies in their multicoloured boubous and stylish headdresses; their enforced drab clothing during the recent months of Sharia incursion must have been a bitter pill.

 “These people have very singular customs, the men are not jealous of their

wives, and the wives do not seem to be embarrassed by the presence

of other men.”  Ibn Batuta, writing about Timbuktu in 1350.

Out in the desert (I was on a camel!) a Tuareg boy of about 12 was trying to sell me some silver bracelets; I said that I’d think about it and let him know later. He drew himself up to his full height. “That’s quite right Madame, I know one should always reflect before taking action!” I said: “That’s very good – where did you learn it?” “I learnt it at school, Madame. In Morals.” In Timbuktu, so many of the people I spoke to showed the same dignity and intellectual poise.

The history of this sand-choked, desert-coloured town is extraordinary. It started in the 11^th century as a Tuareg campsite, a stopping-place for merchants and caravans crossing the Sahara, and by 1300 was a market town with several thousand inhabitants. Under various rulers it prospered and expanded. By the early 16th century it had up to 180 Koranic schools and an Islamic university, teaching literature, theology, Koranic jurisprudence, history, maths, geography, astrology...  Its fame spread to Venice, Geneva, Cairo, Rome and Spain. Students and scholars flocked to the town; one scholar had a library of several thousand books, while in Europe most could rise to only a few dozen.

“More profit is made selling books in Timbuktu than from any other

branch of trade.”  Leo Africanus, 1525.

 But – a wealthy town is coveted: it becomes a prize for marauders. Timbuktu had already known many rulers, and in 1591 a destructive Moroccan administration seized power. The town’s glory began to fade; its scholars and students drifted away. Further destructive régimes followed and by the 19^th century it was in a sorry state, full of sand, dilapidated buildings and an impoverished population. When the French explorer René Caillié reached it in 1828, he spoke of “a mass of ill-looking houses, built of earth”. Timbuktu’s inhabitants, however, have remained immensely aware – and proud – of their early history.

*********

Twenty-five years after my visit, I edited the first edition of the Bradt Guide to Mali (by Ross Velton, published in 2000) – and discovered how much had changed. Ross’s Timbuktu was very different from mine. It had more hotels and restaurants, more shops, more stretches of tarmac, more libraries and museums, more tourist facilities and attractions (and thus more hassle from tourist touts) – but less water. The desert was creeping in. The “camel meets canoe” canal from Kabara to Timbuktu had dried out two decades before; and Kabara itself had been unusable as a port for several years, until the silted-up 3km canal linking it to the River Niger (originally built by a benevolent emperor in the 15^th century) was dredged and reopened. The straw jewellery no longer exists, and there are fewer traditional craftsmen.

On my first visit, in March 1975, I was accompanying the MD of a Belgian charity whose husband didn’t like her travelling abroad alone. The charity (Iles de Paix; www.ilesdepaix.org) subsequently set up nursery schools, women’s co-ops, health teams and agricultural activities in and around Timbuktu – which in 1994 were handed over to Malian management. It has since had smaller projects elsewhere in Mali. Then in December the same year, captivated by the town and wanting a responsibility-free visit, I returned to spend Christmas with friends who were working there – and that’s when I fell under Timbuktu’s extraordinary spell. I so badly want it, its people and its amazing heritage to survive.

First published in VISA 107 (February 2013)