I’ve heard a lot of places accused of being the middle of nowhere, and Mali contains more than a few of them. None, however, quite compare to that most Middle of Nowheres, Timbuktu. In fact many people assume that the legendary Timbuktu is just that – a legend. Like Atlantis, if it ever existed it is surely long gone; existing only as an idea, a metaphor for the very essence of middle of nowhere.
It wasn’t until I learned that I’d be coming to Mali that I discovered that not only is Timbuktu a real place, it even has an airport. Why anyone should think it needs an airport I don’t know, but it has one all the same. This allows some people (I met a couple of them) to fly in from Morocco, meander around for two hours and fly back, just to say they’ve been there. This seems self-defeating to me: if the attraction of the place is that it’s impossible to get to then flying there and back in the same day would seem to defeat the reason for going in the first place.
If we ignore the airport, then, and the silly people who use it for tourism, then the city can re-establish itself as the Middle of Nowhere. There are no roads to Timbuktu. That is to say you can leave it on a road, go to the ferry crossing the Niger at Koriomé, and end up on the road on the other side, but somewhere in the shifting sands of the 200-some-odd kilometers between there and Douentza (on the main Northern road in Mali connecting Bamako and Gao), the road disappears out from under you and you’re left with a maze of 4x4 tracks through the sand and scrub, hoping your driver knows where he’s going.
But I’m getting ahead of myself! My story starts in Bamako at a bar with many other volunteers including L and her father J, who’d just arrived for a visit. It was early in the morning on November 5th – about 4am actually – and we’d just watched our country elect the first presidential candidate I’ve ever been proud of. We stayed (L, J, and I) just long enough to hear the victory address, then had to rush back to our hotel and out to the bus station by 6am as the bus company assured us was necessary to get on the bus to Sevaré at 7am. We arrived at the bus station at 6:15, bleary eyed but still wearing our Obama pins and too happy to care when the ticket official said the bus wasn’t even scheduled to leave until 7:30.
When the bus finally showed up at 8am we went to stand in the crowd gathering around it, which had gotten fairly packed and antsy by 8:30 when the guy standing behind me suddenly yelled “hey there’s a thief – this guy just tried to take my wallet!” I turned around to see the thief, who had just enough time to point lamely to the old man standing next to him and say “no, it was-“ before ending up on the wrong end of the fists of at least seven angry Malian men. There’s no justice quite like angry mob justice, and we were glad when the bus finally left at 9:30.
After sleeping in Sevaré we got up the next morning and made the short cab hop to Mopti to get a boat to Timbuktu. We had planned on taking the ComNav boat – a big passenger boat with a cabin for J, a restaurant, and a space on the upper deck for L and I – but were informed that due to engine trouble it was already running a day and a half late and wouldn’t be leaving until the following night. Since J had a plane to catch and lots of Mali to see we decided we couldn’t wait, and ended up getting places on a traditional cargo boat called a pinasse. We arranged for transport and food for the three of us, and they promised the boat would leave by 1pm. We were slightly worried about the bathroom situation – there was only one (a hole cut in the floor behind the engine with straw mats for screens) and access to it had already been blocked by a large pile of cargo, but they assured us that they would clear a path once the rest of the cargo was loaded. We only had to buy water for the trip and straw mats to sleep on.
By 1pm we were on board, with our mats spread out on top of 100kg bags of peanuts; while not exactly cotton, the peanuts had a bit of give to them and weren’t as bad as bedding as you might expect. The roof, which the boat guys had suggested we might be able to sleep on, was by now stacked high with bags of coal and it was looking like the boat might be completely loaded and ready to go.
The trouble started two hours later, still at the dock, when they started loading bags of sorghum on top of the bags of peanuts. We held out hope as they started loading from the other end of the boat but before long, sure enough, they asked us to move so they could place bags under us. Sorghum, being much smaller than peanuts and hence much more densely packed, has no give at all – we might as well have been sleeping on large concrete tubes thrown haphazardly aboard so that large crevasses between them at odd angles made any attempt to find a comfortable position futile. With the extra layer of bags we were now raised up over the lip of the boat, and the roof was now between three and four feet from the sorghum – enough room to sit up, but not enough room to kneel and certainly not enough to stand. Why we didn’t get off the boat and walk around more I don’t know, but by the time it left at just after 6pm we’d already been sitting on those sorghum blocks for five hours.
When dinner time rolled around L and I went back to the cooking lady and asked when it would be served. She informed us that it would not be served, not to us, until we paid her for it. Arguing that we’d paid the ticket guy extra for it didn’t help – he wasn’t on the boat, she didn’t know him, and he hadn’t given her any money or instructions to feed us. She didn’t work for the boat company, she was just on this one trip and collects her money from the passengers. While we could see her point, we were still a bit overtired from not sleeping all Tuesday night (this was Thursday), and the argument that followed was probably more heated than she deserved. Getting nowhere, we went to the front of the boat to talk to one of the boat guys and were pleasantly surprised when showing him our ticket (clearly marked with “food included”) resulted in a quick apology, a promise to take care of it, and the prompt arrival of a bowl of rice with oil. As you will see, this pattern (of someone taking responsibility and delivering on a negotiated agreement) was not to be repeated again on our trip. While we’d overpaid for food (rice with oil three times a day for the next two days), at least we got it as promised.
Soon after dinner came the next problem: I had to go to the bathroom. That a path hadn’t been cleared through the cargo turned out not to be the problem – behind it was the open engine compartment, a grinding mass of gears, smoke and axle grease. The only way to get to the back of the boat was a white-knuckle climb along the outside of the boat, with no hand-holds and covered in charcoal sifting down from the bags on top. I managed it a few times during the trip, but mostly we just did as the Malian passengers did – peeing in a cup as discreetly as possible within such close quarters and throwing it over the side. This turned out to be particularly difficult for L, as everything we toubabs did seemed extremely interesting to the other passengers. It seemed like every time L crawled over to the other side of the boat (a couple feet) to go, every eye on the boat immediately fixated on her. J and I were lucky in that we could go over the side, wind permitting, much more easily.
I had been hoping to get an even better view of the stars from the boat than I do at site, but this was not to be because it was approaching full moon so the moon was out until early morning. This wouldn’t have been such a problem – with sorghum sacks for bedding I spent more time each night trying to coax sleeping limbs back to life than sleeping my self – except that it was much colder on the river than we expected. Neither L nor I had brought a blanket or even long sleeves, so the only thing we could do was wrap up in the five meters of turbin fabric we had between us and any heat we managed to retain was too precious to be wasted on a trip to the side of the boat that wasn’t urgent.
The Niger Inland Delta is a cool thing to see – the river can’t be that deep, but it’s very wide and often has a false shoreline of water grasses that stretches far into the distance to the actual shoreline. For the duration of the trip we were continually passing tiny little sandbars just big enough to hold up a few mud houses – usually less than 5 – and often with the river flowing through the front door of at least one in each cluster. The houses themselves were often uninhabited, but just as often contained a family complete with chickens, sheep, and a dog, all completely cut off from the distant shore except for one small pirogue. I hate to think what would happen if the pirogue washed away one day.
A group of houses on a sandbar in the middle of the Niger
River dwellers who'd rowed out to meet us
The last unpleasant surprise of the boat ride, though by then it was hardly surprising, was that despite the ticket-seller’s assurances that we would reach Koriomé before sunrise on Saturday morning, we didn’t get there until after sunset that evening. We stepped off the boat at 7pm after lying on those sorghum sacks for the 49 hour journey plus 5 in port in Mopti content with the knowledge that whatever else happened on the journey, we wouldn’t have to spend another night freezing on those sacks. Standing strait up for the first time in two days was also quite satisfying, to say nothing of the shower, toilet, and bed (with mattress!) that greeted us at our hotel in Timbuktu a short while later.
We were already making plans to leave when we woke the next morning, having heard that it would be hard to do so quickly. Our facilitator Ali Baba (yes that was his real name, as far as I can tell), who’d intercepted us before we even reached the hotel the previous night, showed us a newish Toyota Land Cruiser he said would be exactly like the one we would be on for the drive out on Monday. We opted to buy all four places in the middle seats (behind the driver but not in the way back) to conserve some modicum of comfort on the trip. Those of you who are familiar with the layout of a Land Cruiser might quickly point out that there are only three middle seats, but when the seatbelts are removed and Malian logic applied, those three become four.
Ali Baba also helped us arrange a guide for the day and a camel trip into the Sahara to spend the night. We figured we didn’t want to freeze during our night in the desert, so we made sure to confirm with our Touareg camel guide that he’d have plenty of blankets for us
We spent the day walking with our guide, who showed us around the city – the old mosque, the old explorer’s houses, the market, etc. – it’s not hard to see the whole town in a couple hours. Our first goal was to go to the tourism office to get our passports stamped, but the guy who works there had gone out (this was Sunday after all) and said he’d be back in the evening before we left for our desert trip. I quite enjoyed the walk around after being confined to a few feet of space on the boat , and didn’t even start being annoyed at the Touareg craft vendors until after lunch. There’s a ton of them and despite all claiming to have something unique, they all sell the same things. That said, on the whole Timbuktu was far more peaceful and hassle-free than any other touristy place I’ve been in Africa.
The old grand mosque of Timbuktu
The city scape with Sahara in the background
After a late lunch it was approaching time to meet our camel guide but our city guide, who had disappeared for an hour to go check on the tourism office, returned to tell us that the guy couldn’t come in but promised to ride out to our hotel on a moto the next morning, between when we got back from the desert at 9am and when our car left at 10.
We were somewhat disconcerted when we met our camel guide and he remarked that we were going to be cold that night without blankets or anything. When we inquired about where the blankets he’d promised us were he didn’t know what we were talking about, but said we’d figure something out. We resigned ourselves to another cold night – whatever the temperature it couldn’t be as bad as the boat – but it wasn’t until the next day that we figured out that the guide who took us was only the cousin of the guy we’d made the arrangements with, and apparently hadn’t been informed about the blankets.
Our three camels
Blanket frustrations aside, the camel ride was a lot of fun. I’d been told by multiple people that riding a camel is the most uncomfortable thing you’ll ever do, and can now say with conviction that it’s not even close – try sleeping on sorghum sacks. When I came to Mali I had fantasies of living in the desert, owning a camel, and wearing a turban, and this was probably as close as I’ll ever come. We rode out during my favorite time of day (setting sun, as I’ve already mentioned), and the desert was gorgeous in the elongated shadows and dusk.
Our Touareg guide
We spent the night at our guide’s compound, composed of three tents with straw mats for roofs and an open fourth wall. Dinner consisted of more rice with oil, only this time we got to eat with big wooden spoons instead of our hands. The guide gave us hi family’s only two blankets, which we felt bad about taking but then again not too bad; after all we’d made our blanket need perfectly clear from the outset, and since the 52,000 CFA we were paying for the night is about half of the average Malian’s yearly earnings we figured that if he didn’t want to run out and buy an extra blanket before leaving Timbuktu then that was his fault not ours.
The view from inside our tent
The view from outside our tent
Early next morning, after a breakfast of dates and peanuts, we hopped back on our camels and went off at a good trot in order to make it back in time for our passport stamping and car. Our guide gave me the reigns and hopped on the back of my camel (the reigns of the others were tied to the back of mine), and while my camel didn’t really require much steering I was psyched about it anyway. At it turns out camels are much more comfortable at a trot than walking – their stride evens out so you go from big, slow lurches to quick shrugs, which are much easier on the backside.
Moody's Diner!
These beetles were everywhere in the morning, and their tracks crisscrossed over the sand making cool patterns everywhere we looked
L and J
The donkey carcass on the outskirts of the city was a bit foreboding, but by then our desert journey was over
Arriving at the hotel at 9am as planned (punctuality is another cultural difference between the Touaregs and the Bambaras, besides cutlery), we were informed that the tourism office guy was busy and couldn’t leave the office, so we sent J with our passports on a moto. He got back for our ride, which was late and significantly more well worn than the one we’d been shown, but Ali Baba promised that the engine was what mattered and that it had a good one. We finally left the city, with a French woman and Touareg sitting up front plus four Bambara Malians in the back at 11:15, arriving at Kouriomé to take the ferry across the river just before noon.
The thing about the ferry is that they charge 15,000 CFA per car to go across, but they won’t go until they’ve collected at least 30,000 CFA so if you’re the only one there you either have to wait or pay double. There was no one else there when we arrived so we opted to wait. Between us and the French lady (we didn’t expect the Malians to pay – Malians have a lot of time but very little money, while Westerners generally have a lot of money but little time) we could easily have paid, but refused to out of principle because A) the driver was already making a killing off of us four so if anyone should have paid it should have been him to deliver on the promise of a quick journey we’d paid for; and B) after days and days of getting raw deals, we weren’t about to get suckered into paying extra again. Ali Baba had promised that the extra money was worth it since we’d make the journey in seven or eight hours, but hadn’t said anything about having to wait for a ferry. Looking back now, we should have paid.
At around 2pm the next ferry passengers showed up: the Malian Civil Engineers, with a few large dump trucks and other heavy equipment. The first dump truck did a three-point turn and backed down the embankment onto the ferry, but the second was attached to a third by a steel I-shaped tow bar since the third apparently had no breaks. He drove a little ways down the embankment and stopped, at which point the truck he was towing crashed into him, bending the steel tow bar like a pipe cleaner. Now they were both stuck there and had blocked our Land Cruiser so we couldn’t get on the ferry. A fourth dump truck drove behind them, crushing a stairwell and scraping against truck #3, but successfully boarding the ferry which then took off. We’d have gone ballistic, having waited over two hours, except that by then a second, bigger ferry had arrived. It took another hour and a quarter to get the trucks moved and everyone loaded onto the second ferry, during which I had to jump in front of a newly arrived UN Land Cruiser that was trying to cut us in line. L flicked him off, which made us all laugh since the gesture doesn’t mean anything to Malians (it may have been a UN vehicle, but its occupants were Malian). By the time we crossed the river it was after 4pm we’d traveled a grand total of about 20 km and still had over 200 of desert to cross to Douentza, plus 167 from there to Sevaré. I tried to shut out the tales I’ve heard from other travelers of breaking down and having to spend the night in the desert (scheduled is fine, but unscheduled and without camels isn’t so cool).
The start of the road to Douentza is a (comparatively) wide, (comparatively) well-established dirt road with enough room for two vehicles to pass going in opposite directions, which was good considering the speed with which drivers barrel down it, plus seemingly random 4x4 tracks in the sand on either side of the road. Our driver either knew the road very well or was good at pretending he did, cutting off now and again into the sand tracks on either side to avoid a particular section of road that looked exactly like the rest. He only skid out and ended up traveling sideways in the sandy tracks once, and only for a little ways.
At around sunset we reached the half-way point town of Bambara-Maoundé, where we stopped for a pee break – no nyegens in the town, just go find a cow to use as a screen and go behind it. It wasn’t until everyone had peed and bought a snack of peanuts or a Coke that our driver sat down at the only restaurant there with a plate of food. Other than the breakfast of dates and peanuts plus some peanuts as a snack we hadn’t eaten anything all day, but were eager to get back on the road. After all we’d paid extra for a seven to eight hour journey, it had been eight hours, and yet here we still sat in the middle of the desert. The French lady agreed, but when she pointed this out to the driver he replied “that’s too bad, I’m the driver and I’m not in a hurry. I don’t have to be anywhere and I want to eat so you’ll have to wait whether you like it or not.”
I managed to nod off shortly after leaving Bambara-Maoundé despite the bumpy road (after all I’d only really slept one night in the previous four), and when next I looked we had left the dirt road and were bouncing along in the middle of the desert, following nothing more than faint wheel tracks in the darkness, which split off in different directions now and again. After a while a huge shape loomed out of the horizon off to the left, stretching as far as the eye could see. At first I thought it must be a storm front, but puzzled at this since we just don’t have clouds this time of year, never mind storms. We were getting steadily closer until finally it resolved in the light of the almost-full moon into a giant cliff face pushing up foothills covered in scrub brush. I thought it quite pretty in the moonlight and would have liked to see it in the day; at site we don’t have any topography at all, and except for the rolling dunes Timbuktu wasn’t any less flat.
Just then our headlights started flickering on and off. I was afraid for a second that they were going out, except that it was obvious that the driver was doing it. He turned them off completely, and kept rolling down the dirt road we’d suddenly found ourselves on just long enough for me to open my mouth to ask if he was crazy, then pulled over and got out. Wondering what was going on, I got out too just as the four guys I’d suspected were on our roof climbed down. I was still wondering what was up when the driver growled something along the lines of “what the hell are you doing? Get in the car, hurry up damnit!” at me.
I climbed back in, he flicked the lights back on, and after another 200 meters or so we were at a Gendarmes stop – like a police checkpoint. Why they had one way out here in the middle of nowhere, I can’t guess. By now I’d figured out that we weren’t allowed to have people on the roof, so we’d let them down and they were now walking around to the other side. The gendarmes checked our papers and waved us through, and after another couple hundred meters the driver pulled over again, flicked the lights on and off another ten or fifteen times, then shut them off. Subtlety was clearly not this guy’s forte and sure enough he was rewarded when a Gendarme drove up behind us on a moto and told him to get a move on. This put him in an even more foul mood than he’d been in already, no less because he was clearly looking for another place to pull over but couldn’t because the Gendarme was following us to make sure we didn’t.
After another hour or so we arrived at Douentza and the main road at last. It was just after 8pm at this point, and we were told it would be another three hours to Sevaré. We were not pleased when the driver pulled over again and said it was time to eat. When we protested that he’d just eaten two hours ago he threw a temper tantrum and stomped off.
At this point, as I have found myself doing many times here, I seriously considered climbing into the driver’s seat and driving off. It wouldn’t even require any McGiver hotwiring skills, since like all Malians do the driver had left the keys in the ignition. Also, one of the benefits of there being only one paved road is that it’s impossible to get lost – there’s simply no place to turn off. The only thing that stopped me was that I don’t know what kind of papers to show at the Gendarmes stop outside Sevaré and I figured I’d probably get kicked out of Peace Corps for grand theft auto. Still, it was tempting.
About half an hour later the driver returned from wherever it was he’d gone and plopped himself down moodily at a nearby restaurant. At this point J suggested calling Ali Baba. I wasn’t too hopeful – the last time I did something like that the guy said he’d be right over then shut off his phone and proceeded to ignore us for another four hours. Still, apart from commandeering the vehicle we didn’t really have any other options so we called. Ali Baba asked us to pass the phone to the driver. Another temper tantrum ensued, only this time with the French lady and I yelling back – hey, I was low on sleep, and it felt good. I haven’t yelled like that in a very long time, though I would exceed it the following day. After handing us back the phone it appeared that we were actually going to get going, but not before the driver stomped around some more yelling about not being a slave. Another passenger, a Malian, tried to placate us by telling us that the reason we’d stopped was to wait for the guys we’d left at the Gendarmes, and that they’d just arrived so we could go now.
By the time we reached Sevaré it was midnight. The driver pulled over in the middle of town and announced that anyone going to Sevaré would have to get out here as they were heading on to Mopti (they’re twin cities about 12km apart). We pointed out that we’d been promised a ride to our hotel which was on the outskirts of town a couple miles away – too far to walk and at this hour a taxi would be hideously expensive. This, of course, led to refusal. We called Ali Baba again, which resulted in another temper tantrum from the driver. He agreed to take us, but when we said we didn’t know exactly where it was he refused again. Ali Baba call number three of the night led to the driver agreeing to seek directions from one of the locals standing around (we were at a sort of unofficial bus stop) but when the taxi driver he asked told him it was far he refused again (so far he should leave us to take the taxi). This was of course supremely stupid – Sevaré is not NYC, nothing is far away from anything else. In the time we’d already spent arguing we could have driven there and back a couple times already. After Ali Baba call number four of the night we finally got directions and five minutes later were there. The French lady, who was going on to Mopti, decided she’d better get Ali Baba’s number from us.
Despite all the undelivered promises I have to give Ali Baba a lot of credit for not just turning off his phone and ignoring us, which he very easily could have done. We’d ordered dinner from the hotel that morning, stupidly thinking we might really arrive before 7pm, and they’d left it out for us – Moroccan couscous, which was delicious and unlike any other ethnic cuisine I’ve ever had, though it probably didn’t hurt that it was the first thing we’d eaten other than peanuts all day. The shower, cold though it was, was also sorely needed. After bumping along that dirt road all day I looked like Two-Face from the Batman comics, having sat on the driver’s side and so caught the brunt of the blast from cars passing the opposite direction.
I won’t describe our last day of travel here, except to say that despite it being on regular public transport it was no easier, involved more lies, more yelling, and even L crying. Through it all I was more than impressed with J’s patience and fortitude; both were well beyond what I would have expected from anyone, much less someone not used to the way things work in Mali.
I had a lot of fun in Timbuktu and am glad I went, though the difficulty of getting there and back certainly lived up to expectations and I’m not in a hurry to go again. In a way though, that was the whole point – what makes this most Middle of Nowheres so special.
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