Home
>
Outdoors
>
All the Way to Timbuctu

All the Way to Timbuctu

Yes, it's real. There is a place called Timbuktu and it is not just an imaginary figment at the end of an exclamatory statement. What child has not muttered at some time that he, or she, was "going all the way to Timbuktu!" What adult has not dismissed it as "some far away place," not knowing quite sure where it actually was, if it did exist at all.

It does exist and grown up people do go there and an occasional child with them. Situated between the southern edge of the Sahara Desert and the great bend of the Niger River, Timbuktu is the best known and the most remote city in Mali, the crown jewel of West Africa. Nine centuries old, it abounds with legends of wealth and power, culture and learning, conquest and intrigue.

Due to the writings of Leo Africanus, a sixteenth century African who had been there and who spoke of the plentitude of gold, wealth and learning, Europeans pictured it as Eldorado and Eden enveloped in a mysterious dust cloud in the desert. Rewards were offered to adventurers who could find their way there and back alive. The first European to do so was in 1828 and he found Timbuktu deep in decline. There's no gold in those dunes, he reported when returning home, and you can get there from here, but it's damn hard to do so. Disbelief was his reward. The European had believed in the legend of Timbuktu for so long that he and she refused to believe this disappointing news. The legend of the far away place of wealth and gold persisted, then gradually dissolved in time, to just far away Timbuktu.

It is far away and it's still damn hard to get there and other than charter aircraft there is no reliable, direct route for pilgrims to take to Timbuktu. There are ways more interesting than others; one such is through Ouagadougou, entry port to Burkino Faso, and trekking northward for four days into Mali and the Dogon lowlands in Bandiagiara. The Dogon, a tribal nation of 250,000 people, are rich in history, tradition and mystery, with a culture of ancestor worship, animist cosmology with astrological inclusions and unique architectural skills. They also have talents in both the decorative and abstract arts, the latter reportedly an inspiration to Picasso.

Dogon villages are perched on a broad expanse of cliff and escarpment and this interested pilgrim and a few companions, undertook a three-hour climb upward. The reward was a myriad assortment of villages with cone shaped buildings with whimsically constructed thatched roofs, pillared dwellings carved in the hillside, an insane asylum in one of those pillared dwellings replete with animal skins and religious sculpture and a circumcision cave festooned with graphically illustrated symbols. Decorative carvings, prized today by western art collectors, are everywhere. The pilgrims were fortunate enough to enter a village during the completion of a mourning period when the Dogon mask dance occurred. The Awa, the mask cult of several dozen adult males adorned with masks, some fifteen feet high, of animals, religious symbols and elements of nature, wove its way through the village to a pounding syncopation of drums in celebration of both death and life.

After spending five days with the Dogon, then returning to sea level and moving westward to Mopti, a commercial town on the River Niger, the pilgrims boarded a pinasse, a forty foot, thatched- roof canoe powered by a forty horse-power outboard motor and began a three day journey to Korioume, the gate city to Timbuktu, twelve miles distant.

The river, Africa's third greatest, teems with the great fish capitain. Here and there, a hippo peers from the water and on the banks, Bozo and Songhai villages, white and clay buildings centered by the ubiquitous mosque, (for this is a largely Muslim country), are alive with activity, and children and overseeing mothers swarm to the river's edge when the pinasse pulls ashore for a visit.

It is a curious time for the adults and a happy one for the children as they take the pilgrims' hands and scratch the white skin with their little black fingers and laugh hysterically when the white doesn't come off.

Nighttime, the pilgrims sleep as guests in one of the villages, then move on, Timbuktu always ahead. Then one morning it is there.

The wind governs Timbuktu as it does the Sahara. Sand is everywhere. Pilgrims entering from the south see Timbuktu as the end of the world. The desolation of the desert is ever present in the sand-strewn streets, and the ever-decomposing clay buildings. But it is a town that has lived with the desert and survived and even thrived in spite of it and because of it.

But some of its past still lives. It is still a terminus of a camel caravan route across the Sahara that brings salt from the mines of Taoudenni four hundred miles in the desert and Tuaregs, the sword and knife-wielding romanticized nomads of the desert, still swagger through the area wielding sword and knife. The culture of the past lives as well at the Ahmed Baba center for Historical Research, a repository of seventeen thousand ancient books and documents undergoing translation from Arabic to French, the national language of Mali, to English, for placement on the internet. Yes, the past is moving into the future for there is now one computer in Timbuktu.

North of the city lies the Sahara, an area larger than the contiguous United States and through it come visitors from the north: cameleers with their caravans from Taoudenni, nomads from their wanderings, pilgrims on their explorations.

In January, Harmattan, the hot dry wind of the winter months has its way with them. The pilgrims returning to Timbuktu see a horizon of three hundred and sixty degrees, a vast ring of desolation in which Harmattan hurls sand and dust upward, the perimeters becoming a circular translucent veil of grayish purple rising toward the pale blue sky. Overhead the noontime sun is ablaze. By two o'clock it is a lunarlike globe having slipped behind the veil leaving the pilgrims in a land of total desolation.

To the pilgrims returning from the desert, Timbuktu is the beginning of the world. The greenery of trees and shrubs, the strain of a flute, the smiles and talk of people, the movement of a car or truck greets them with the color and music and life of civilization.

It is a long way to Timbuktu from any direction, but if one is not a cameleer in the salt business or a native of Timbuktu why would one go there? The question put to one pilgrim brought him to a pause, "Well, when I was a kid, I used to say that when I grew up, I was going to go all the way to Timbuktu. Well, here I am. "

Don Bracken is Senior Editor of History Publishing Company, LLC and is the co-editor of the Civil War Historyscope Series, which has been hailed by educators and Civil War experts and can be seen on http://historyscope.com. He is also the author of the forthcoming book Times of the Civil War dealing with the coverage of that war by the New York Times and the Charleston Mercury. Don Bracken traveled to Timbuctu in 2002 with four other individuals as part of an adventure travel team.

disinfecting cleaning services Winnetka ..

In The News:

Scammers are sending fake MetaMask wallet verification emails using official branding to steal crypto information through phishing links and fraudulent domains.

Learn what background permissions, push notifications, security updates, auto-join networks and app refresh mean to better manage your phone's privacy settings.

Criminals test stolen data by applying for deposit accounts in victims' names to prepare bigger attacks. Learn why banks won't share fraud details.

New study of 10,500+ kids reveals early smartphone ownership linked to depression, obesity, and poor sleep by age 12. Earlier phones mean higher risks.

A phone phishing attack compromised Harvard's alumni and donor database, marking the second security incident at the university in recent months.

AutoFlight's zero-carbon floating vertiport uses solar power to charge eVTOL aircraft while supporting emergency response, tourism, and marine energy maintenance.

A new phone return scam targets recent buyers with fake carrier calls. Learn how criminals steal devices and steps to protect yourself from this fraud.

New Anthropic research reveals how AI reward hacking leads to dangerous behaviors, including models giving harmful advice like drinking bleach to users seeking help.

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

Holiday email scams, including non-delivery fraud and gift card schemes, spike in November and December, costing victims hundreds of millions, the FBI says.

Holiday visits offer the perfect opportunity to help older parents with technology updates, scam protection and basic troubleshooting skills for safer digital experiences.

Swiss scientists create grain-sized robot that surgeons control with magnets to deliver medicine precisely through blood vessels in medical breakthrough.

Researchers exploited WhatsApp's API vulnerability to scrape 3.5 billion phone numbers. Learn how this massive data breach happened and protect yourself.

Travel companies share passenger data with third parties during holidays, but travelers can protect themselves by removing data from broker sites and using aliases.

Xpeng's humanoid robot moves so realistically that crowds believed it was fake, marking a major advancement in robotics technology ahead of 2026 commercial launch.

Researchers discover phishing scam using invisible characters to evade email security, with protection tips including password managers and two-factor authentication.

iPhone and Android users can reduce battery drain and data usage by restricting Background App Refresh to Wi-Fi connections instead of mobile networks.

Scammers nearly stole an Apple account by exploiting the support system with authentic-looking tickets and phone calls, users can protect themselves with safety steps.

FoloToy restored sales of its AI teddy bear Kumma after a weeklong suspension following safety group findings of risky and inappropriate responses to children.

Threat intelligence firm Synthient uncovers one of the largest password exposures ever, prompting immediate security recommendations.

Viral video shared by Elon Musk shows Tesla's Optimus humanoid robots performing tasks from cooking to construction, garnering over 58.5 million views on social media.

Chinese hackers used Anthropic's Claude AI to launch autonomous cyberattacks on 30 organizations worldwide, marking a major shift in cybersecurity threats.

Apple's new Sleep Score feature gives you a rating for your nightly rest quality. Learn how to set it up on your Apple Watch and iPhone today.

Essential phone settings to enable before losing your device, including Find My network, location services and security features for iPhone and Android.

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

All the Way to Timbuctu

Outdoors