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Published: April 27th 2009
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The next morning Souleman had arranged for a vehicle to pick us up and bring us to Mopti. Once again it was an incredibly hot and crammed van on a terrible bumpy road, but we were getting pretty used to this by this point. While we were sitting there, Berkley and Jess talked with some guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who owned a 4x4 that he takes out to Timbuktu. Normally this would seem like a sketchy situation, but its pretty much how it works in Mali. There aren’t many transportation options like busses or trotros, its really just “I know a guy who knows a guy…” Once we got to Mopti and stopped by an ATM we got to the “station” where there were 4x4s to Timbuktu. The guidebook had warned us that it would be a difficult trip and finding a car out there would not only be expensive, but uncomfortable so we were prepared for that. After paying our painful 20,000 cefas ($40) to get there we loaded up on the 4x4. We met up with this guy Jacob who is from Oregon. He took a year off between high school and college and
has been living in Ghana and traveling around West Africa. He was alone and headed the same way as us so he just joined the team.
Getting out to Timbuktu was like nothing else I have ever experienced. We were in an old 4x4 and they put a new definition to SUV. We had several breakdowns and areas where we got trapped in the sand and would have to push the car out. We had a total of 14 people crammed in an SUV that at home would fit 6. It was a tight fit to say the least. Plus we were all so dirty from the dust, but I was the best off thanks to the turban and sunglasses!! My face was completely covered and you couldn’t even see my eyes and I looked pretty creepy. 12 hours later we stop at 11:30 in the dark and don’t really know what’s going on because no one tells us anything. We see our driver lay down on a mat and go to sleep. Then everyone else pulls out blankets and they lay down. Um ok.. guess we’re sleeping here. That’s cool, I have a blanket and sweatshirt (now its
really cold at night) in my bag… oh wait, my bag is tied to the top of the 4x4. So I ask the other driver if he is going to take down our bags. He doesn’t speak English, so I just point to the roof and then the ground. Then he points at the roof and just says in a blunt monotone voice “No.” great, I’ll just sleep in the sand I guess. Luckily one guy brings us all in this tent and laid out some mats and gestured that we could sleep there. FINALLY someone sort of tells us what is going on.
In the morning after shivering almost to death we realize there is the Niger river next to us and we couldn’t drive any further that night because we have to take a ferry across the river. We load on the ferry and watch the sun rise over the river. We drive about another hour and arrived in the mystical Timbuktu!
Once we got to Timbuktu we found a hotel that gave us a good deal if we agreed to sleep in the dorm style room instead of an actual hotel room. We also met Idrissa
Timbuktu means the "well of buktu"
buktu was this woman who built a well and everyone came to use it and she built the town around it so thats how it all started! who is the head of the board of tourism for Timbuktu. He was super helpful and helped us out the whole trip. He arranged for us to take a camel ride at sunset that evening, gave us a tour of the museum and library in town, and even put a cool Timbuktu stamp in our passports! He told us where to go to get some breakfast and introduced us to Abua who is a Toureg who normally lives in the desert and works in the salt caravans, but comes to Timbuktu when he’s not on a caravan. He was so much fun and taught us a lot about Toureg culture and life. For starters they’re known as the “blue men” because they always wear blue and/or have blue turbans. There’s a story why, it goes like this: there was this princess and her dad was trying to find her a husband. All these rich princes came to her and offered her everything from thousands of camels to tons of gold and she rejected them all. Then one day she was walking by herself and found a blue rock. She picked it up and said “oh I love the color blue!”
Well a slave was nearby cutting down a tree and overheard her. He went and bought all blue clothes and a blue turban and walked past her in town. She saw the blue man and pointed him out to her father and insisted that be the man she married. Her father protested because he was a slave, but she was adamant, and because he tried for so long to find her a husband he gave in and ever since then Toureg men wear blue!
At one point Abua said he made jewelry and that was the magic word for us! So we went with him to his family compound along with Jacob and another traveler Roger (who was crazy, he’s backpacking through EVERY African country and is almost finished so he had some intense stories). Abua’s “brothers” (probably most of them were cousins and uncles too) showed us how they make the jewelry and we sat down and shared tea with them. Having tea with them is a pretty big deal and was really cool. The tea is super strong and is like the espresso of tea. They say the tea leaves are “bitter like death, sweet like life,
and add sugar for love.” After sharing tea with them they all pulled out their jewelry for us to look at. It was pretty cool how they do it. They line up on their mats and we are on our mats. We go through and look at it all and they would tell us what all the symbols mean and we take what we like and put it on our mat. Once we were finished looking, then we bargain for a price we like. The jewelry is all so beautiful and really cool with the various Toureg symbols on it.
Later around dusk we went for our camel ride. I picked the light colored camel because someone told me he was the nicest. WRONG! The camel hated me! I would try to pet him and he would turn around and I think he was trying to bite me! Everyone thought it was funny, but I really wasn’t ready to get a camel bite! My guide was Mohammed and he of course was dressed head to toe in blue. He didn’t speak English, but Ibrahimag walking next to me played translator. He was telling me how they were in Timbuktu
for 3 days and then they were off on another salt caravan. All the guys were really fun and we joked around with them a lot. We walked a ways and then stopped in a desert “village” which was just a few tents made from wood sticks. We got off and shared tea with them again and then they all pulled out their little bags of jewelry. I just told them that I bought all I needed earlier and tried really hard not to spend even more money! I hung out with Mohammed while every one else was shopping and we had a really deep conversation (sarcasm, we didn’t speak a word to each other, thanks language barrier) but we did share more tea and I shared my granola bar with him which he loved.
On the way back we were a little hyper from all the sugar and caffeine in the tea so we were pretty silly. One of the guides kept trying to talk to us in “Japanese” which consisted of him just making random noises that sounded Asian I guess and we were laughing so hard I almost fell off my camel. We watched the sunset
over the Sahara desert on top of our camels and headed back to Timbuktu.
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