When I started writing this, I was sitting under a fluorescent light on a broken couch in the guest house at L’Institut des Hautes Etudes et de la Recherche Islamique Ahmed Baba (a.k.a. the Ahmed Baba Institute) in Timbuktu, munching on real Haribo™ gummy bears and waving the flies away from my laptop.
There were certain advantages to staying in the guest house: It was free. We cooked our own food on a tank of gas with a rudimentary stove attachment, intended for heating gilding tools, but perfectly handy for boiling pasta, sautéing garlic, etc. It was just a few sandy steps from the room where the training (the reason we were in Timbuktu in the first place) was held.
And there were disadvantages: No hot water except that which we heated on aforementioned gas tank. No water at all in the tank of the toilet in my room, so I had to use another toilet or fill buckets of water to flush. No screens on the windows, so we left the place shuttered and dark, or bright and open to sand and mosquitoes. No cold storage -- none of the three refrigerators in the house actually worked. And although there was evidence that the staff did clean before our arrival, let’s just say it was not a place for the fastidious.
The nights at the Institute were cool and very, very quiet. I was once kept awake by the buzzing of a fly trapped in a spiderweb.
The first morning, I absolutely had to have a hot bath, so I put a large bowl of water on our gas “stove” and used my bandana for a washcloth. I thought of what expatriate parents tell their children before their shipments of furniture and toys arrive at the new home: Pretend we’re camping! That, and distant memories of Laura Ingalls Wilder, made it seem fun, but it was still too much trouble, so the rest of the week I just took cold showers.
Each day after breakfast (hot tea, oatmeal and honey) I walked to Timbuktu’s only cyber café, looking both ways as I stepped into the street so as not to get run over by donkeys. (For some reason, they move a lot faster in Timbuktu than in Bamako.)
The town of Timbuktu sits on soft white sand, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was at the beach, someplace small and sandy and isolated like North Carolina’s Outer Banks. In the newer part of town, where we stayed, the streets are wide and the main one is paved. In the older part of town the streets are narrow and winding, just barely -- and sometimes not -- wide enough for a truck. When one walks in these parts of town, one walks in the middle of the street to avoid runoff from the pipes that jut out from the buildings. They are not storm drains --they’re sewer drains.
At the center of the old part of town is the grand marché: a few dozen women scattered around a few blocks selling produce, men leaning on bloody tables of raw fly-covered meat. In February there are potatoes and tomatoes, carrots and beets and lettuce. There was no fresh fruit. A month from now, when the hot season kicks in, the vegetables will be gone too. Garlic is always hard to find; we bartered for half a dried out head with a can of baking powder.
By noon, the sun stuns the people and bakes the town. One midday, Mohammed -- one of the trainers -- and I drove out toward the airport in search of a particular tree. Its nickname is the “Tamashek toothbrush,” because Tamasheks like him chew on its branches. I forgot my hat and after just a couple minutes out of the truck, searching for the tree, the sun hit my head and neck and back like an ocean wave, or a heavy animal pouncing.
The Tamasheks, or Tuaregs, have a violent history from centuries ago until quite recently, but you wouldn’t know it from meeting Mohammed. He wears a tunic similar to the boubous of Bamako men, but instead of being sleeved it’s big and square like a poncho. In the afternoon heat he pushes the cloth up onto his shoulders to cool his arms. He keeps his cell phone in a pocket on the front, cleverly hidden by embroidery. His phone is always out of credit so he always borrows someone else’s phone, or waits for his friends to call him. He wears a long blue piece of cloth wrapped around and around his head and the lower half of his face, covering all but his nose and eyes. He tugs the cloth down and uncovers his mouth when he speaks or eats, revealing large pink gums. He is tall and gentle. He laughs a lot, a surprisingly high, whinnying, almost girlish laugh. Where I come from, we refer to men like him -- fondly -- as goofballs.
Our last day, Mohammed invited us to his house for lunch. We drove to a part of town where they don’t often see 4x4s. Mohammed’s wife and daughters prepared the food in the courtyard; we went past them into a curtained-off room, and sat on foam mattresses on the floor. Mohammed took off his outer tunic and his head wrap. He looked completely different to me. His brother made us that strong sweet green tea I have come to love, pouring it from little cup to little cup to cool it. After a while, Mohammed’s wife brought in lunch: a traditional Tamashek dish consisting of boiled beef, and millet cooked in the beef water.
Before we went to his house, we told Mohammed we don’t eat meat, but that is not an idea that Malians understand. Meat is a treat. Guests eat meat. When his wife brought our lunch in, he explained that they had made it with not very much meat. That would be okay, right? We said of course, that was fine.
It was terrible. (To my American, formerly-vegetarian taste buds, anyway.) Gray and pasty and salty, with chunks of tough beef and a bit of gritty sand. We didn’t eat from the common bowl in the traditional way, with our hands, but used wooden spoons instead. I ate slowly and smiled and put down my spoon as soon as I politely could. Sweet relief came soon, in the form of tea.
See photos of the Ahmed Baba Institute and the town of Timbuktu.
