By the time I woke up, Katrin and Lea had already been gone. Quite uncharacteristically for me, I had not heard them leave. I must have been that tired. The night before Guele had promised to send me someone both today afternoon, as I had expressed a wish to have a camel ride into the sunset, and tomorrow morning for the final leg to Essakane. He said everything would be arranged and I had no reason to doubt him.
Morning in Tombouctou was gorgeous. As sunny as you can expect it in Africa, and yet, the closer you got to the desert – or farther into the desert, for this was desert already – the fresher and cooler it grew. Right now, if you closed your eyes and forgot about your surroundings, you’d be excused to forget you were not home farther up north.
Luckily, with a brief exception of taking a leak, this morning I didn’t have to spend time in the loo. I washed myself and cleaned my teeth in the yard where they had another vertical pipe with running water. As soon as they saw me up, they started preparing breakfast for me. But in this part of the world, you are not in such a hurry, no matter what you do or what your plans are. So by the time the breakfast was ready and I finished eating it, it was already past ten.
Rested and refreshed, and in the best of cheers, I was now ready to start my exploration of this ancient, legendary town.
I stepped out of the sand-covered inner yard through the door in the wall and found myself outside in the street. Which was every bit as sandy as the yard I’d just left, only more so. More in the sense that my feet – my shoes, that is – dove in deeper. The street scene on the other side of the wall was different than anything I’d seen before. In spite of that dry sand, the street was lined with a fair number of trees, two things that hardly went hand in hand. At least on the face of it. But what was there and, sadly, fully fit into the picture of West Africa was a row of low, makeshift dwellings out of wooden poles, canvas and cardboards, with a lot of garbage around. And half-naked, barefoot, dusty kids playing with whatever make-do toys they had on hand.
And goats and donkeys in handsome numbers.
I had no idea where I was. Relative to the town centre, I mean. It was clear I was somewhere at the edge of Tombouctou and desert must have been around the corner. Only, which corner? There were three or four possible directions I could go from where I stood, and for all I knew, each one of them could get me both to the desert and downtown with equal probability. I had my „Lonely Planet“ with the essential Tombouctou town map, but how could I know where to go in order to get there? I had no idea where north and south were, to begin with. OK, you could always consult the sun in the sky, but then again, if I was at the edge of Sahara, I was not deep inside it. So who on earth would have thought of that?
Not that I saw it as much of a drawback. Under no circumstances was Tombouctou going to be of any outrageous size. No matter how badly I might miss the downtown direction at first, there was no way how I could fail to see all of it today. The town simply couldn’t be that big.
So I just turned the nearest corner and went right. That direction brought more of the same. OK, markedly fewer trees, but more of those low, mud-brick houses with walled-off inner yards and flat-roof dwellings. At first they were kind of clustered together, but the farther I went, the more they just dotted the undulating ground. There were those pole-and-canvas huts, too, with piles of garbage nearby where donkeys and goats browsed for food. It was pretty much obvious that I was heading away from the downtown and into the desert. Which was as well. I might have chosen to go precisely the same way even if I had known exactly in which direction lay what.
I was an attraction even here at the far outskirts of Tombouctou. Or perhaps precisely for being that far out. It might well be that all of foreign tourists were concentrated in the town centre hotels. Very likely just a few were put up privately as I was. By the looks of it, they didn’t venture all the way here.
In no time I got myself a nice entourage of local kids who dropped off whatever games they’d been playing up to noticing me, and swapped them for this new diversion. The adults, women mostly, eyed me with interest, and didn’t seem to mind the kids swarming around me. I guess I didn’t come across as suspicious.
I marched on until the last houses fell behind me. As well as most of the children, except the most persistent three. They doggedly stuck with me and so we headed on into the landscape of only sand and sky, with just an odd parched shrub here or there. Only God knew what they survived on.
I felt great, finally feeling like in a true desert, pretending that I was wading through sand up and down Saharan dunes. Of course, I knew those were no real dunes but merely some sand-covered undulating terrain. However, it felt good and that was a taste of Africa like you couldn’t have anywhere else. Kids were right upon my heels and after a while I decided to employ them in a bit of photographing business, both as models and photographers. They applied themselves to this new task with great enthusiasm and it evidently added a new dimension to all the fun they were having by just tailing me. When I decided we had enough of it, I took out my purse and produced smallest coins I could dig out of it. I seriously wonder if any of them separately could buy anything back home in Europe. Perhaps a single match?
But kids were so overjoyed upon receiving one each, as if I had given them the Captain Hook’s casket. On our way back into the settlement again, and after they had reached their homes, they rushed off to their mothers, proudly showing off this newly acquired wealth.
Having shaken the kids loose, and on my own again, I headed back to where I slept. Still on my way there, in front of one house there was a white 4x4 and next to it an interesting hybrid of a man, with a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers on, but also this unmistakeably Tuareg turban on his head. He watched me, I watched him. As I drew near, I nodded:
„Hello,“ he smiled and said. I stopped.
The guy was a Tuareg, all right. But he spoke English and was obviously quite comfortable with western world and westerners themselves. So we shook hands and started chatting. It turned out he was married to a Belgian woman and together they ran a travel agency, offering package tours across Mali. With an accent right now on Tombouctou and the Essakane festival, of course.
He introduced himself as Buba.
Naturally, being ever a businessman, he asked me about my plans and arrangements. I told him that my arrangements had already been made and that same as everyone I was going to Essakane. So his attempt to bag yet another client right there on the spot foundered, but we nevertheless chatted amiably for a while. Eventually, I told him I would like to go downtown, but needed a pointer or two:
„Just go straight that way,“ he stretched his arm and pointed exactly in the direction opposite to where I had just come from. I thanked him, we shook hands again and I headed the way he’d told me.
And true enough, even if streets were still more or less after the same fashion like the one I was staying in, you could tell that, yes, the things gradually thickened in every way. I noticed first shops, albeit small, and had a glimpse of first taller houses on the horizon. There were goats and donkeys all around, same as ever, but now also school kids going to or returning from their class today. I was still wading almost ankle deep in the nearly white sand, but now, at least occasionally, I was in a company of an odd, but increasingly frequent 4x4, passing me by in both directions. I felt that soon I’d come to a point which I’d be able to identify on the „Lonely Planet“ makeshift map.
Even if people tried not to let on as much, not a move I made passed unnoticed. The proof that it wasn’t just my inflated ego speaking easily found its confirmation whenever I visibly fiddled with my camera. And it was not only when I wanted to shoot something within the reach of my hand. Already aware that for some reason locals were more often quite shy than not whenever I found them as a potentially interesting photo target, I sought to avoid openly taking pictures of them as much as I could. So I would either resort to shooting from my waist or zooming them in from a distance. And that distance sometimes easily amounted to fifty or even hundred metres. But no matter how far I was, as soon as I held my camera in front of my eyes, as if on a cue, it started everyone within the circle of hundred metres on a mad dash for cover. Whoever had two legs to run, made a beeline towards the nearest wall or house corner.
One such group was a bunch of five or six school kids, most of them girls, either in the highest elementary grade or at the beginning of their secondary schooling. They were following me, perhaps coincidentally, and I don’t even know why I turned around to cast a look back to where I had come from. Anyway, I did, and I spotted them bang off in their long African outfits of all existing colours and imaginable pattern designs. They were quite a way back and appeared as if completely engrossed in some of their own private conversation.
But it was just an appearance. The moment I raised my camera, they suddenly dropped off whatever they had been talking about and were like a bomb was falling from the sky right amidst of them. I laughed. When they realised I brought my camera back down to my waist, they re-emerged from their covers, gathered again and started advancing towards me.
I brought my camera back to my eye again. And as if ejected from their position by a push of a button, they dashed each one in her own direction once more. I laughed again. They eyed me and returned to the open street again. And then they too started laughing.
I decided to wait for them.
Now they were cautiously watching my every tiniest move, so I decided not to send them running away. Instead, I left my camera hanging off of my neck and just waited. Timidly, they eventually got up to me and grinning broadly, I said:
„Hello!“
Some smiled, some laughed, and some hid their faces. They were really funny.
„May I take a picture of you?“ I asked pointing at my camera. But even the motion of pointing at it, got one or two running away. Only the bravest one managed to say „no“.
However, I had that irresistible argument up my sleeve, i.e. my wallet, which opened every door and clinched every argument or discussion in my favour. I produced a 500 CFA coin, held it high up in the sunshine and said:
„I’ll give you this.“
Enchanting gloss of this worthy piece of metal did instant wonders and transformed those shy and coy girls into practical and pragmatic citizens of the twenty-first-century Earth. The moment I flashed it, one of the outstretched hands reached out for it and I elegantly dropped it. Once in their possession, we became excellent friends and all there was left to do for me was to start taking pictures the best I could. Fear and timidity fully gone, the girls appeared to get quite of kick out of it all, and you would never guess that only a minute or two ago they were as ready to bolt not only from the spot I had seen them on, but from entire Tombouctou if necessary, only to avoid having a picture taken of.
Money created miracles. Even such paltry sums as 500 CFA francs.
When the photo op was over, I chatted amiably with the girls for a while, as best as we could. They knew just a few English words, roughly the equivalent of my French, but it was more than enough for them to show me their school books and what they had been doing during the class that morning. When I had reviewed all their schoolworks and homeworks, I thanked them very much, waved good-bye and headed on towards the downtown which by now was almost at hand.
The town of Tombouctou is today, probably not least on the strength of its fabled, nearly mythological past, on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list. Now at the beginning of the 21st century it is mostly just a rather desolate, out-of-the-way administrative centre of the largest, namesake region in Mali, basically still living off its former glory. Because from what I could see, whatever Timbuktu had once been in the centuries gone, it now just seemed to be a shadow of its former self, existing as a sprawl of low, often shabby, flat-roofed buildings. With streets filled up with sand blown in from the desert and no paved surfaces that I could see yet, were it not for occasional four-wheel-drive vehicles and an odd mobile phone base station tower protruding high up from the low-line horizon, you’d be excused to believe that through some uncharted time warp you had slipped back into past.
And past is what begot a legend of Mansa Musa, a fourteenth-century ruler of Timbuktu, who in 1390 went to Mecca on a pilgrimage. On his way there he was said to stop over in Egypt where he allegedly eclipsed every single local nobleman into looking like a beggar by throwing so much gold around that the Egyptian currency back then plummeted to instant devaluation. What happened afterwards was hardly surprising – with a speed of light, rumours started flying around that there was this city deep within the heart of Africa wherein there was more gold than one could imagine - roofs and streets of gold, and probably even animals with gilded hooves.
Everyone seemed to set out on a journey in search of this fabulously wealthy station on a desert camel-caravan route. And the fact that it was so much out of the way, accessible only with so many difficulties, after many had never even made it there, only added to its allure and mythical attraction.
Perhaps no one really knows what that ancient Timbuktu looked like. When I say no one, then I mean no one in the west. There may have been gold indeed. Or may have not. The city may have generated so much wealth in its heyday that the good Mansa Musa really didn’t have to lose any sleep over the gold he spread around on his pilgrimage to Mecca. Or maybe that was not so. But when the French finally and unmistakeably located it in the late 19th century, it was just an impoverished desert outpost and it hasn’t recovered much ever since.
If there’s any real wealth left there today, then it’s not in gold but rather in the prestigious Sankore University as well as other Islamic schools. Perhaps its greatest contribution to the Islamic civilisation, and the world in general, is its indisputable scholarship and scholarly tradition as arguably its strongest legacy.
In any event, in minds of many modern travellers, Timbuktu remained synonymous with Africa’s mysterious inaccessibility, a destination at the “end of the road to nowhere”, a place you proudly show off somewhere towards the top of your list of the cities you visited.
As for me, the farther I went down the dusty road, making sure not to step on an odd goat which lay lazily right in my way, navigating between brick houses on one side and a cluster of shabby shacks on the other, watching the motley crowd of people, cars, donkeys and carts, I was gradually approaching downtown. The commercial activities were visibly picking up and this now looked to be where it’s at.
I was now passing down a proper downtown street with a long row of shops and stalls on either side and through what could pass for a solid crowd. The name of the street was Rue de Nations Unies, the first one I discovered on my “Lonely Planet” map. On I went and it brought me to the first paved road in Tombouctou I laid my eyes on, the Boulevard Askia Mohamed, the main drag of the town, named after one of those ancient local rulers.
This road was going to get me to the post office and Internet café, the places I was always going to visit, and for starters I thought it best to check what town had to offer along the way there.
Walking in that direction, I spotted an entrance gate to what seemed a secondary school. Second Cycle Yehia Alkaya Ibrahim Tombouctou, it read above. On a spur of the moment, I swung by and decided to go in. I’ve never been in a Malian school, I said to myself. So why not go in and check it?
And that’s precisely what I did.
I climbed up a short flight of decaying, almost makeshift stairs and found myself in a rather spacious schoolyard. I must have arrived at the time of a break between classes, or right after they had finished altogether, as the whole spot was rather crowded and noisy. Just the way such places always are, in every corner of the world, when you have a bunch of kids running around and laughing. The schoolyard was surrounded on two sides by low and long buildings, which probably housed both classrooms and offices, and on the other two by low stone walls. It boasted two mostly flat, concrete basketball courts, but also – to me quite unaccountably – its own share of huts, barefoot kids, chicken and goats, just as any of those side streets out there in town.
Again, I was an instant sensation. I suppose few foreigners ever venture inside. If they ever do. That itself probably merited all the attention I garnered. And when I started using my camera, the whole place transformed in an instant into a sudden flurry of screaming kids, scurrying in all possible directions, seeking to avoid my lens. I laughed and they all laughed along with me. That was an excellent introduction to some very friendly and memorable chat.
Few pictures later, I dropped my camera. The moment I did, many of those teenage kids started leaving their covers, gathering around me, laughing, teasing and in general having a good time. I enjoyed myself immensely and all in all, we all seemed to have a pleasant time. In two nicks, this bunch of teenage kids that flocked around me grew to a respectable size, including some stunningly pretty Tuareg girls. They started saying things to me, but I had to excuse myself, explaining that I didn’t speak French.
And then, a young teacher who could muster a few words in broken English joined us, and that’s when we really started talking. He told me he was teaching math there and was in his early thirties. While he was explaining it, another teacher joined us, a lady probably in her forties, who – as he explained – was a French teacher. She was dressed in a true African fashion, in a long dress of sky blue colour with a matching piece of cloth on her head.
And then one of those girls around us said something. You need not understand the language to nevertheless get it when someone speaks to or about you. Whatever she had said, everybody laughed. I turned towards her, we smiled broadly to each other, and then I asked the math teacher what she’d said.
„She asks if you want to marry her,“ he explained, beaming.
I looked at her again. This young Tuareg girl was pretty. But I swear to God, she could not have been more than seventeen. Giving her eighteen would have probably been a stretch. Anyway, what can you say to such a straight marriage proposal? I guess you take it the way you see it. As a joke. So I decided to play along and said:
„Of course, I would marry such a beautiful girl any day.“
I thought that would take care of it and we’d move on. But as it went on from there, for me just as a joke, before long I realised the crowd wouldn’t mind at all if I was serious about it. This woman, the French teacher, pitched in, saying something in French. The math teacher explained:
„She’s the girl’s aunt.“
„What did she say?“
„She says ‘give five million francs and you can have her’.“
I was astonished. The whole thing suddenly took a very different turn. I still couldn’t make up my mind as to what to really make of it, but by the looks of it, the woman was actually trying to initiate a real trade with me. Before I could say anything, she said something else.
„She asks if you’re married,“ the math teacher offered, this time even without my asking him.
„I’m not,“ I said.
Aunt the French teacher motioned towards my left hand and even if I didn’t understand her language, it was easy to understand she wanted to check it. I offered it to her and she examined me for wedding rings. After she had ascertained that I met all the conditions and that indeed I seemed to be a bachelor, the talk went on. She asked what my plans were in Tombouctou. Through the math teacher I explained I was going to the Essakane Festival in the Desert. She nodded. That was what everybody was doing.
„And then?“
„Then I come back here and head south to Mopti.“
„When will you return to Tombouctou?“
„On Sunday.“
„Good. Then we can talk more on Sunday.“
I couldn’t believe my ears. The woman was dead serious.
Everyone – and thereby I mean at least fifteen people - was listening with the utmost attention. As far as they were concerned, a marriage arrangements were being made right then and there. I knew I was now treading on an entirely different ground. I turned to the girl and asked:
„Would you go to Europe?“
Without missing a beat, she vigorously nodded and said „yes“.
I turned back to the math teacher and exclaimed:
„But how can she say so?! She doesn’t even know me! For all she knows, I can be a maniac, a criminal, a rapist. I can beat women to unconsciousness! She has no idea who I am.“
„Well, you know,“ he said, „for us here Europe is what Saudi Arabia is for Muslims“.
And that was the explanation? Is that why she would be willing to risk everything and go away with a man whom she’d known for ten minutes or so?
„OK, I may understand that,“ I said. „But in my part of the world, we at least try – or pretend we try – to marry out of love. I was brought up believing that when you marry, you should do that with a person you fell in love with. So what about love?“
The math teacher translated it to the aunt. And she just waved her hand, pragmatically dismissing the whole love thing. What she had said, the math teacher interpreted for me as:
„You can’t eat love.“
So that’s it? Was the poverty so rampant and widespread, and to such a degree, that they were willing to sell off their daughters? And those daughters were apparently quite in agreement with that? Was it a ticket out of it all?
While I was musing over it, the young teacher added:
„It’s Africa. Women here don’t have a say in whom they will marry.“
While I was giving him a dumbfounded look, the aunt was giving me the rubbing of her thumb and index-finger sign, in the universal sign of traders, which everyone understands, underscoring the whole thing with:
„Cinq million francs.“
“Give me the money, and you can have her” would be the spirit of translation.
And since this was Africa, only a fool paid the first price. So if she was serious, even to an extent, about the whole transaction, these young girls can obviously be had for much less than 8000€ that five million CFA francs convert into. As if you buy a cow.
I knew that for me this was certainly an anecdote I’d remember forever. But in general, it was outright sad.
„We’ll talk more about the price,“ I winked at the aunt eventually.
„Non!“ she said after the math teacher translated for her.
„Oh yes,“ I grinned. „After I return on Sunday.“
She gave me a serious look, as if inspecting me again and then nodded:
„OK. Dimanche.“
Since I was now a groom-to-be, I decided to take advantage of my new status and ask to have a picture taken with my future bride. In those fresh circumstances nobody could refuse me and I acquired myself one of the most bizarre photo souvenirs from the trip. A picture that even in those not at all rigid Islamic societies of Sub-Saharan Africa would otherwise be nearly impossible to get without suspicion. When it was done, it was now time for me to leave the school and move on with my sightseeing. We parted best of friends with greetings along the lines of „see you on Sunday“ and I was again on my own.
Well, having narrowly escaped the traps and perils of getting hitched, and having had a close shave with the loss of freedom to a Tuareg girl and ensuing bondages, and all that with the ominous damage to my bank account, I left the school. Having the whole affair still very much on my mind, I continued down the Boulevard Askia Mohamed.
For a few short minutes I could enjoy just a simple sightseeing as to my left I saw another sub-Saharan style mosque, the Dingerey Ber Mosque. It looked very much like some of those I’d already seen in other Malian, and Burkinabe, towns. I thought for a moment to make a slight detour and have a closer look at it, but then I decided I’d do it on my way back. So I just passed it by and headed on.
I was fast approaching an intersection between the Boulevard Askia Mohamed and Rue de Korioumé with a modest roundabout, which in fact created Place de l’Indépendance. When I arrived there, I noticed two colourful Tuareg guys on the opposite side of the street and took a picture of them. They both sported those long desert robes, covering everything on them except feet, hands and faces. One of them was all in sky blue, and the other one in a mixture of dark brown and violet. Of course, they both had those indispensable indigo turbans on. And each one carried a long wooden stick, as if they had just parked their herd of camels around the corner. So I stopped and took a picture of them. I don’t know if they had noticed. Either way, they appeared completely unfazed.
But all of a sudden, to my right, someone materialised who viewed it all much less benevolently than those two guys. A soldier riding a motor-bike.
I didn’t even notice him at first. But he pulled up right by my side. And started addressing me in French right away. For all my lack of knowledge of the language, in no time I knew he took exception to my photographing business. Why exactly, I had no idea. I couldn’t imagine why he should be offended by my taking a picture of those two Touareg guys. After all, Tombouctou was right now lousy with tourists and I would bet my ass that all of them photographed an odd Tuareg on an occasion. But that reasoning didn’t help me much.
I tried the cool approach. So I extended my hand and said „hello“. We did shake hands, but then he again rattled on whatever he had on his mind.
I pretended a total incomprehension of what he wanted.
„I’m sorry,“ I said with a friendly and apparently blithe smile. „I don’t speak French.“ I wouldn’t as much as venture into that little sentence that I could by now say as fluently as any native French speaker – „je parle français seulement un peu“. Feigning a total misunderstanding, I went through the motion of listening hard, but for all my best efforts, it yielded no results, so as it was the case, I’d best clear off. That was the theory, at least.
However, this turned into one of those cases when theory doesn’t exactly translate into practice. When the soldier saw that I was about to bolt, he gave me a stern sign to stay. Then I raised my eyebrows in wonder and surprise and asked:
„Why?“
But he just repeated his sign, produced a mobile phone, dialled some number and started a conversation. It didn’t last long. After he’d hung up, he told me once again to stay here and we waited. A minute or two later, across the street, a gate opened in a long wall and two more soldiers appeared. And now I got it. I was standing right in front of army barracks. Those two Tuareg guys who I had taken a picture of where in front of its outer perimeter wall. Inadvertently, it appeared as if I had been taking pictures of a military installation.
Now, things didn’t bode well any more. To my credit, I really had no idea I was in front of the barracks. In all truth, I can’t swear by everything in this world that – if I had known it – I wouldn’t have succumbed to a temptation to take a sneaky photo or two. Just for the hell of it. But as I had not known, I just didn’t do it. That was the argument in my favour.
And against me was the sheer fact that I was in Africa and authorities in all countries here were notoriously leery of camera-toting foreigners. The fact that the rules had been relaxed in recent years didn’t apply to things like army barracks. So what now?
Two soldiers crossed the street and at first hardly paid any attention to me. There was a short consultation between them and the soldier boy who had found me out - at least that’s what he seemed to think - and only then they coldly motioned me to follow them into the barracks. The guy on the motor-bike rode away.
So, on into the barracks it was.
With a bit of an apprehension I followed them in, even if on the outside I tried to maintain my cool. When we entered, I found myself in a large yard, not unlike the one belonging to the school just a short time back, only a bit bigger and without basketball courts. And what was most important, without Tuareg underage girls wishing to make a beeline from Mali by scoring a marriage to a stray, single European westerner. Instead of those girls, here I saw a number of uniformed soldiers, loitering around in scorching Malian heat – even if they say January is the coolest month of the year in these parts – investing basically most of their efforts into finding the thickest possible shadow. I was conducted into a chamber that you enter directly from the yard, which seemed to serve both as a kind of office and a lounge for, probably, middle-ranked officers. There were two or three guys inside, but you could clearly see who was in charge. A well-fed character lying on the only couch inside. The rest just sat on chairs.
An exchange ensued and soldiers who ushered me in tried to look as mean-faced as possible. Or at least that’s what they looked to me. I had a feeling, and maybe I was just seeing things, that they were seeking ways to paint my crimes and transgressions in worst possible colours and thereby, hopefully, impress their officer. The fact that they were no witnesses to anything, and had been merely called out by the soldier on motor-bike hardly seemed to play any role.
The officer heard them out and then dismissed them. Then he turned to me. He pointed at my camera. I tried in English, even if I knew as well as he did that he wouldn’t understand a word:
„I’m sorry, but I didn’t take any pictures of your barracks. Here.“
I handed him my camera with activated display. The guy took it in his hand and my instant impression was that he was more interested in my Nikon in general than whether I had taken some pictures of his barracks or not. He fiddled a bit with it, but without much success. So I gave him a crash course on how to view pictures on the display, and when he had mastered it, he enjoyed himself for a few minutes by simply having a look-see at what a dippy foreigner might find interesting in his own country. When he saw those shacks, goats, donkeys, turbaned Tuareg characters and things in the same strain, he must have wondered who on earth could find such things interesting.
He was either too bored to go on any further or came to a sane conclusion that the whole thing was just a lot of fuss for nothing. One could tell he could not be bothered to waste his time and energy on me any longer, and had more pressing duties to perform. Taking a sound nap not being the least of them. He just waved his hand, instructed one of the guys to let me go and as far as he was concerned, consigned me forever to oblivion.
Having twice narrowly escaped with my life inside half an hour, once from the clutches of marriage and then right on the heels of it from the grip of suspicious army, I was now ready to move on. Tombouctou had not yet offered way too much in terms of landmarks – even if, again, the sheer fact that I was here felt great – but my day was more exciting than almost anything I’d experienced on this trip so far.
At the Place de l’Indépendance and its roundabout I turned right, down Rue de Korioumé, where according to the „Lonely Planet“ town post office was located. Being in Tombouctou and sending out no postcards would be tantamount to a sacrilege. But the post office building must have been quite unprepossessing and I simply missed it. Soon I realised on the basis of some local pointers and signposts that the post office had to be already behind me and I would have to double back part of the way. This thing called for some information from the locals.
To that purpose, I entered a small shop at the corner between Rue de Korioumé and some unpaved, dusty local side street, with its fair share of rickety, shabby shacks, which looked so decrepit that you could hardly call them shacks at all. Maybe justice would be better served if they were termed just shelters from the scorching sun and nothing more. But there were also a handsome number of parked motor-cycles and people who were apparently merely watching the day pass by in the most leisurely manner one could imagine. Not exactly the activity with the highest degree of suspense in the air.
The shop was in a solid, brick building, though. It sold drinks, basic foodstuffs and all sorts of trinkets and other inexplicable goods. It was run by a young woman in her late twenties or early thirties.
I was sweating buckets and thirsty. So I decided not only to ask for the post office, but to buy myself a drink or two. And on top of all that, the coolness of the shop interior looked so enticing that I was in no hurry to get a move on.
And the young woman seemed interested in quite a bit more than just selling me a drink or two. True, I first picked a can of cold coke and a big bottle of water. And then I asked in a combination of as simple English as I could muster and my more-than-broken French where the post office building was. But the lady seemed to have her own agenda. She briefly answered my enquiry by telling me that, indeed, the post office was a few metres back, just round the corner. And then she asked what I understood as:
„Are you married?“
Just like that. No introduction. Flat out.
„No,“ I said.
„Pourquoi?“
I shrugged.
„I’m not,“ I said as if it should be an explanation in its own right. And then, equally cold turkey, she added:
„Neither am I.“
As if I had asked. However, she didn’t seem to need my questions. She just marched relentlessly on:
„And I don’t want to marry.“
Now I thought it would be polite of me to ask:
„Why?“
„I don’t want to,“ she repeated for emphasis. Her explanation was of the same strain as mine from less than a minute ago. Well, respecting the concept of choice, as democracy and personal freedom is bedrock and cornerstone of my life philosophy, I aimed to leave it off there, pay for my drinks and go to the post office. But she wouldn’t be dismissed that easy.
In stride, before she would accept my money, she asked me to buy something else. To pump up my bill, of course. A shampoo? No, thanks. I was well stocked on it already. A pair of thongs, maybe? Or a screwdriver? I explained to her that I was wonderfully stocked on thongs and screwdrivers, as well, and that right now I honestly didn’t need any additional ones. Then, would I buy her a „cadeau“?
It was a very interesting approach to customers, I must observe. I know that every merchant has their own tactics how to foist things on people, particularly those they don’t need. Because if you need something already, you don’t need anyone to prod you. But I’d never seen this sales technique before. It almost resembled a war of attrition. Where she was clearly convinced that I’d be the one to give ground first.
And she was right. Eventually, I settled for the mobile phone credit. The cheapest one, but a credit that I didn’t need. She did.
I paid for it and when I wanted to go, she told me to wait. She disappeared for a few minutes from her shop and during that time I drank my coke and took shelter from the sun. When she returned, she explained that she had had her credit added to her account.
„Why?“ I was confused. „Why couldn’t you do it here?“
To my surprise, she explained that she was illiterate.
„You can’t read!? I don’t believe that,“ I said flat out.
But she claimed she couldn’t. Now, I couldn’t get my head around how someone could really be illiterate and yet supposedly successfully work as a seller in a shop. Could those two things be really squared? But then again, what reason did she have to lie to me? None that I could see.
And then she began asking me about my plans. It seemed to me that she just wouldn’t let me go. I explained to her, as several times already today, that I was going to Essakane. Was I going to return to Tombouctou?
„Yes, on Sunday.“
„Le dimanche je vous faire un cadeau,“ she said. Or something like that. Whether she said so word for word, I couldn’t swear, but in general that was what she said. And I understood it right.
„Cadeau? Pour moi?“
„Oui. Le dimanche,“ she confirmed.
For some reason, I had an impression, and a strong one at that, that for all her pompously self-proclaimed vow to celibacy, she would have dropped it right on the spot if only I had dropped a hint that I might be interested in her breaking it. Not necessarily because I was any more special than any other guy around. Bur rather for the same sad reason that this teenage girl in Tombouctou lycée an hour earlier had proposed me. Just for my being a foreigner from Europe. Tombouctou seemed a fertile ground for unmarried Tuareg ladies who were out to angle for a potential foreign husband.
But much as this one was no slouch at all, either, and could easily pass as quite attractive, this was just not the ladies’ day. At least when I was concerned. I wouldn’t commit myself that I would come, of course. Instead I gave her only a vague promise that I’d do all I could. Knowing full well that I wouldn’t come. I thought it more polite like this.
While I was finally settling my bill, she told me her name was Arafa Touré. And reminded me again of a present she’d give me if I put in an appearance on Sunday. Then we said bye to each other and I left, going back to where I had come from in search of the post office.
In my second attempt I finally found it.
Indeed, it was just a block or two away, back up the road. But there were no signs of any sort to mark it and even if I just could not miss it any more, I was not sure the building I was looking at was what I was looking for. But there was a soldier there, with a machine gun slung on his shoulder, on guard, I suppose. Not that I could really get a fix on the reason as to why a post office needed an armed soldier to patrol in front of it. But then again, how could I know? Or maybe it was not a post office after all?
Just to make sure I wouldn’t end up in the hands of military again for no reason, I went up to the soldier and asked him if this was a post office indeed. He nodded and pointed to the door, in effect letting me know that I was free to go in.
I found myself in a sparsely equipped space, with hardly anything in sight other than a small table, a chair, a counter and a clerk behind it. I greeted him and asked if they had any postcards. Miraculously, they did. The guy produced a bunch of them from somewhere below his desk and gave me all of them to choose from. While I was at it, a few more westerners came in and in fact it turned out, this place was rather busy and obviously easier to find than it looked to me at first.
After the post office it was time for Internet which I also found along the main road. And then, all those things behind me, the day was quite advanced and I realised I’d best return to my room. There would be lunch for me, and in Africa you don’t get it exactly right when you show up. And after lunch, I was going to take a camel ride into the desert. As the night before I had expressed a wish to do that, Guele had told me to just stay put with my hosts and wait. Someone would pick me up.
So I wouldn’t be late.
Retracing my steps from earlier today, somewhere near the Dingerey Ber Mosque, I suddenly saw two familiar faces. The French couple from the bus to Mopti. This was really a small world. They recognised me, as well, and smiling at each other we stopped for a small chat. They had arrived by boat from Mopti.
„Did you visit Djenné?“ the lady asked me.
„Yes, I did,“ I answered.
„And? What was it like?“
„I liked it very much,“ I said. „It’s probably one of the best things I’ve seen here. So if you have time, I’d suggest you go there and visit it.“
Then, of course, there was the next inevitable topic, where everyone would go next.
„I’m going to Essakane tomorrow,“ I said. „To that festival. Are you going there yourself?“
„No, we won’t go there,“ they both answered.
„We just came to Tombouctou,“ the guy added. „We’ll return to Mopti from here.“
Who was calling the shots on that decision, it was not up to me to speculate. In any event, they seemed to be the only westerners in Tombouctou who wouldn’t go to Essakane these days. Well, we wished each other all the best, safe journey, a lot of fun along the way and that was it.
Now that I knew exactly my way back to my room, I realised the town was not that big at all. Just a fifteen minutes or so later, I arrived for lunch. I thought I had calculated the time well, given that preparation of meals here took a bit longer than we tourists were used to. Dishes were usually cooked on fire and it took time. So I didn’t want to be in any hurry before they would pick me up for the camel ride, as Guele had promised.
But with all the time that it took for lunch to get prepared, it came and went, and then I waited some more, but nobody was coming. I was taking my time with the household members, women and kids, as same as yesterday night no men were in sight. We took pictures and chatted to the extent that we could. They even had a blackboard with chalk in the yard, so it facilitated our communication since we could write on it whenever we didn’t understand something. All in all, it was fun.
And still no one came.
Until at one point I realised no one would come at all. I felt a bit disappointed, but what could I do? So instead of going for a camel ride into the desert, I had to find a way to make sense of the rest of my day in some other fashion. The logical choice was to go downtown again.
I went the same way as in the morning, to the Rue des Nations Unies. The town did look different, though. Now at almost five in the afternoon, it was all in the golden afternoon glow, with long shadows gradually encroaching upon the territory held by retreating sun. When I arrived at what looked like one of the main squares in town, or at least one of its apparent trading knots, in one of largest buildings I noticed a place called „Dubai Boutique“.
I entered. It was a kind of general store, where all sorts of everything were on sale, from food to pans and pots to blankets. And it was precisely those blankets that the store owner, an Arab, was offering me right after I had come in. He correctly assumed that I would be going to Essakane and by experience expected me to need such staff over there in the open desert. But Guele had promised me everything as part of my arrangement, so I reckoned that there was no need for me to additionally stock up on things. What I really wanted to buy was, as usual, some water and – sun glasses, maybe?
He didn’t sell sun glasses, but a young guy, who was at the time in the shop, offered that he would get me some.
„Where?“ I asked.
„Just wait here,“ he said. And disappeared.
And indeed, just a few minutes later, he reappeared, holding some four or five different pairs of sun-glasses in his hand. They all cost four thousand CFA francs. And it probably meant that wherever he had fetched them from, they could be had for one, two thousand at most. Maybe even less. But I was not in a mood for haggling, I needed sun-glasses pretty badly. And truth be said, much as they might have been overpriced, they were still a heavy bargain. I picked a „Ray Ban“ knock-off, meticulously branded „Ray & Ban“, probably just to make sure no one would ever chase the manufacturer, or faker, down the legal mazes in search of fines.
Ready for Sahara now, I thanked the guy, paid and left the Dubai Boutique.
When again I reached Boulevard Askia Mohamed, I didn’t follow the direction of earlier today, past the secondary school where they had wanted to palm off some Touareg teenage girls on me, but I just crossed the street instead and went on towards the Maison des Artisans. It was open and I suppose you could go in. But the day was drawing to a close and I wanted to see at least a bit more of the town. More or less, this was probably my last opportunity for it.
Rue 306, a relatively narrow, but rather busy street, lined on both sides with comparatively tall buildings, led me to a large opening and eventually I found myself on the Grand Marché. I’d seen grand markets before and next to this one, they were really grand. This one seemed smaller than, say, the Petit Marché in Djenné. But I must add that I arrived at its location only when things were already in the stages of folding up for the day. There were donkey carts and goats, lorries and four-by-fours, butchers and fruit sellers, but it was obvious that in order to see the Grand Marché in its full size, one had to visit here earlier in the day. Not like this.
I took my pictures anyway, from the waist, of course, so that the people who were eyeing me with suspicion could not pinpoint anything on me, and headed on up to Rue 277. That one led me to Rue Heinrich Bart and the Heinrich Bart house.
Heinrich Bart was, of course, one of the greatest European explorers of Africa, a German who spoke Arabic and distinguished himself as someone who, for a change, didn’t seek to exploit – or aid exploitation – of the regions he visited. Instead, he respected historical, traditional and cultural values of the places and peoples he got in touch with, and people there duly recognised it. Even to this day, the accounts of his travels and explorations command respect.
There, in the vicinity of his house, I met a bunch of local guys and we started a chat, as it often happened whenever a lone westerner like me veered into corners which usually only locals inhabit. One of the youths asked if I was interested in buying a T-shirt. In fact I was.
“How much?” I asked.
“Five thousand CFA francs,” he said.
“With Tombouctou inscription on it?”
“Yes,” he confirmed.
“Where is it?”
“My cousin sells them. Let me show you.”
So he led the way and took me through a maze of narrow side alleys where occasionally two people would almost have a hard time to pass each other by. Eventually, we came up to an obscure metal door, he opened them and we entered a dark and narrow passage leading to some house. There were two more guys there, and a conversation ensued partly in French and partly a language unknown to me. One of the guys told me:
“You want to buy a T-shirt?”
“Yes,” I said.
He went inside and brought out a stack of T-shirts, each one neatly packed in a nylon wrapper. It took me some time to select the one that I liked most and that suited me best in terms of size, and when I did, I asked:
“How much?”
“Six thousand,” he said.
“Six?!” I acted surprised. “He told me five,” I pointed at the guy who’d brought me there.
“I can’t give you for five,” the guy said.
I gave him the T-shirt back.
“Sorry,” I shook my head. “He told me five and that’s why I came here. I’m not buying it for six.”
I must’ve played my part well as right after that the two of them engaged in a rather fierce argument. The seller was obviously furious at the youth who’d got me there for price he was very unhappy about. On the other hand, he wouldn’t lose a potential customer, that was obvious. So with the Master Profit evidently dangling in front of his eyes, he eventually gave in:
“OK, give me five.”
Back out in the street, and with a T-shirt in my knapsack, the young guy remained in my company. He told me his name was Sabri, and he was a student. Right now he was spending his vacation in Tombouctou. He wanted to know what I was next up to. As the sun had set by now, and it was twilight, I told him that I would go back to the place where I slept.
„Hotel?“
„No,“ I said. „A private home.“
„Can I walk with you?“ he asked.
I had a feeling he didn’t quite believe me and was thinking that I just wanted to shake him loose. But as I was really returning to my hosts, I could freely let him come. So we walked the distance together. When we left the downtown and I led the way up the dusty road to the outskirts, I felt that his suspicion even increased. But as we arrived in front of the house and the kids there recognised me and greeted me, the young lad stopped, almost surprised, and I thanked him for the company. However, he didn’t lose the presence of mind that much and was quick to ask me for little „help“. I gave him three hundred CFA francs and bid him good night.
All in all, I could say I’d had a very interesting day in Tombouctou. Sure, now it’s just a town at the edge of desert which most certainly lives off of its name and glorious past and almost nothing else. Without marriage proposals and run-ins with the local army, it basically merits half a day of vigorous roaming around and then you’ve seen it all. Unless you talk to people.
And if you do, then all sorts of things can happen and you should brace yourself for most incredible adventures along the way.
