Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world. Its people is famous for their generous hospitality and their love for music and soccer. Mali has been under conflict for more than a year, after an ethnic Tuareg uprising in the north caused a soldier rebellion in the south that overthrew the government. The Tuareg rebels supported by a coalition of jihadist fighters took the North of the country, terrorizing with a sharia law the moderate people of Mali and almost splitting the country in two, causing a humanitarian catastrophe, with massive displacements and refugees fleeing to nearby countries and to the capital, Bamako, in the south. In January, a French-led intervention liberated the north of the country. 7/28/13 marked the elections to re-established some democratic order.
We continue our work in progress with our new blog. We're narrowing down our theme... we're looking at AIDS around the globe, in the last 20 years through the perspective our Dr. Robert Murphy, a pioneer of Global Health.
Hope you join us in this new episode of our epic journey.
As soon as the brutal heat of the afternoon sun starts to recede, the kids of Mali take to the streets with their soccer balls and bright soccer t-shirts, and the party gets started !
What a joy to see them play, oblivious to the tragedy of their time.
Anywhere, where you can find enough space to run, you see them wearing the official t-shirts of the soccer stars from Real Madrid or F.C. Barcelona, the two most important teams from my native Spain. One can play soccer barefoot, or train in flip flops, but the important thing is to sport Barcelona’s number 10, the t-shirt for Argentinian superstar Leo Messi.
Last year, when the jihadists took control of the north of the country, they committed a huge faux pas, when they tried to force Malians NOT to play soccer. That may have been the turning point for many people in Mali… the straw the broke the dromedary’s back. (Yes, dromedaries are here everywhere but I didn’t find one camel) Malians have a lot of patience for all kinds of takes on Islam, but a world without soccer, well… that is way too much to ask.
Mali has given to the world some great soccer, no doubt. Malian stars in the French League include Salif Keita, Jean Tigana, and Frédéric "Fredi" Kanouté, the biggest star of today, who plays for the Sevilla FC in Spain.
Important P.R. lessons for extremist fundamentalists: do not mess with people’s soccer!
We leave Timbuktu very early in the morning. As soon as we reach the “no-bridge” to Timbuktu we are faced by the heart wrenching situation of international refugees and internally displaced people.
Only a few trucks and families dare to come back… The crisis has forced 174,129 people to look for refuge in neighboring countries. On top of that, 300,783 people have been internally displaced, running away from the conflict, the bombs and the brutality of the jihadist.
Those numbers confirm the feeling of ghost city I felt, at times, in Timbuktu.
The humanitarian mission lead by Dr. Murphy and the International AIDS Education Project is especially concerned about the effect that the displacement has had in HIV-infected patients. Healthcare providers have now even a harder time tracking their patients and following up to make sure they’re receiving their lifesaving medications in a timely and consistent manner.
(Before coming to Timbuktu, we visited in Bamako the refugee clinic, created to support the influx of displaced people from the North, to the South. )
Our man in Mali, Almoustapha Maiga tells us how his apartment in Bamako hosted, at one point, more than 25 family members from the north. Most refugees and displaced people are not that lucky, and they wander freely looking for refugee services and camps, and trying to gather enough mats for adults and babies to sleep overnight.
Still, the United Nations Mission to Mali will not deploy until July 1st. At that point, hopefully more people will feel safe enough to return their home.
Now, we’re back on the road. We run into a few villages that are completely abandoned. We’re again in the no-road from Timbuktu to the South of Mali.
There is no doubt that the disgraceful isolation of Timbuktu is going to make the long road-back-home very difficult to both to the displaced and to those humanitarian activists who will be helping rebuild the country.
I can’t help but wonder…
If the rich countries were more intelligent about the fight against terrorism, they would start by supporting the basic infrastructure (roads, water, and power) to assure that important moderate cities like Timbuktu are not so vulnerable to the invasion of radical extremist.
Investing on creating a real road and a real bridge to Timbuktu, should be an international priority for peace and safety.
Five months after the French intervention in Mali, the town of Timbuktu doesn’t have an ambulance.
The only ambulance functioning in this town was totaled by the alliance of jihadist and other rebels who occupied the town from April of 2012 to January of 2013, time of the liberation of northern Mali by French troops. First, they stripped it of all its life saving equipment…then they used it to transport rebels and weapons….then they crashed it. It’s totaled, useless. Now there is no ambulance in the largest geographic region in Mali.
This is one of the many unsettling discoveries made by Dr. Robert Murphy, Director of the Center for Global Health at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, during his “humanitarian action” to Timbuktu. Dr. Murphy visited Timbuktu Hospital to assess the damages inflicted during the on-going conflict to the healthcare delivery of this key town in the north of Mali.
“Timbuktu Hospital and the population of Timbuktu are in desperate need for help to match the level of hospital care to the very special, historical circumstances they’re suffering,” commented Dr. Murphy. “Many of the interventions to improve the only local hospital could be quick fixes that should have not been put on hold for these many months.”
Having a town like Timbuktu deprived of ambulance service is especially shocking considering the vulnerable situation of civilians in the town and the potential for terrorist attacks. The United Nations is gearing up for an operation that will start July 1st.
Dr. Murphy also toured areas of the hospital where equipment had been looted by jihadist rebels. At the same time, the surviving equipment lacks the necessary supplies to be properly used. Among other areas, Dr. Murphy visited the laboratory services, a key area of the hospital where he has pledged his help and support to the local healthcare and political authorities.
One of the big challenges facing the hospital relates to the power generators, fundamental due to the devastating power shortages in the
city. (Power only runs from 7pm to midnight).
The ambulance that was taken and totaled by the rebels played a prominent part in one of the darkest moment of Timbuktu under harsh Sharia Law. According to the New York Times, the ambulance was requested from the hospital after the public hand amputation of a young man accused of stealing. You can read this disturbing account of what Timbuktu endured under Shara Law in this article:
If you would like to get involved, or if you know of potential donors and patrons to assist The Timbuktu Hospital, please contact me, as soon as possible at emiliow@aol.com
We arrive at Timbuktu. I have a great sense of gratitude for our driver, Oumar, who I honestly believe has saved our lives knowing the terrain and his car so well. I feel an immense sense of camaraderie with Dr. Murphy and Almoustapha. I have on my side two individuals that are extremely intelligent, and as anybody truly intelligent, they’re also very funny. They know the land, too. All that helps. I seem to be more concerned about danger then they are. And that helps me, too. The city is almost abandoned, and reminds me of one of those ghost towns in Western movies. The security seems to me very limited, considering how vulnerable this location is. Other than a convoy from Burkina, I’m shocked not to see any major police or military force, no sight of the French troops, and very limited Malian armed forces. And, of course, no blue helmets from the United Nations, yet. Apparently, the United Nations is once more taking its time. Driving to the hotel I get no sense that this is a safe, protected city. During and after the conflict many people fled their homes, and that only adds to the sense of abandonment. It’s estimated that 175,000 Malian are now refugees in neighbouring countries and more than 300,000 are internally displaced. Still, we do see people in the streets, they watch us pass by with big, opened eyes. There is no doubt, they have grown unaccustomed to seeing foreigners.
Residents continue with their daily lives
The hotel has no electricity. Right now, power is only available in Timbuktu from 7pm to 12 midnight every night. Running water is restricted, too, and it runs at random times. They bring large buckets of water to our rooms, for washing and the toilet. The heat is dry, well above 40ºC or 104ºF, and relentless. We’re in the Sahara dessert. Because there is no power, there are no working refrigerators, and therefore nothing cold to drink. I order a warm beer. Africa is the great lesson on the little things we take for granted. This time, we’re not alone in the hotel. A delegation from Bamako came by plane, sponsored by UNESCO, to do an assessment of the damage to the famous libraries of Timbuktu. From May 2012 to January 2013, abandoned by the Malian authorities and the world community, the people of Timbuktu suffered unspeakable atrocities at the hands of fundamentalist jihadists who imposed a strict Sharia law. Our first meeting is with Meiga, a young tour guide, who lived in Timbuktu through those dark months. Before showing us some of the sites, he tells us first-hand, in a broken but impressive English, what happened here in 2012: “There were many things they were doing…like terrorists were here. After four, five months, they cut the hand off a boy of 24. It was hard for us to stay here. We’re Muslim but we are tolerant. If someone steals we say, don’t do that, because maybe they had to steal to eat because they were poor. They bring the girls to market and beat them. One time, a 16 year old girl was taken by the Islamic religious police to jail…she was raped throughout the night by five jihadists. She cried all night. (…) In the morning she was released. Her family complained to the ruling authorities but they responded only by saying that jihadists would never do such a thing. There is no Malian security and nobody to help us. So we have to accept what they say, but we don’t want to follow them, we don’t want to be like that. I was here all the time.” Little by little the jihadist imposed on the people a strict, fundamentalist Muslim law: women had to be covered, men could not shave. Three of the most important things in Malian culture were made unlawful: soccer, music and dancing. They destroyed the mausoleums of the venerated local saints, a sense of enormous pride and religious significance for the people of Timbuktu . Many of the manuscripts were feared to be destroyed, but apparently, the most important were smuggled out of town into safety. They destroyed monuments, and covered any depiction of human or animal faces in the traditional local murals and paintings that decorate storefronts. Even an AIDS prevention billboard still has the face of a human drawing and the face of a dromedary covered in brown paint. They killed all the dogs in the city, which only adds to the eerily silence of it all. Five times a day, the silence of this town is broken from the local mosques by the beautiful call to prayer. It is very soothing to the ears. We visit a few of the sites of the conflict, including a jihadist training camp bombed by the French. We also visit the now abandoned mansion of a local drug lord. The collaboration between the rebels and the narcos is frequently brought up in conversation. Many times, the descriptions of crimes committed during those dark months in 2012, point at both fundamentalism and people who seem to be old-fashion Mafioso thugs. Escorted by members of the Committee for the Crisis, we pay visits to both the Mayor, Halle Ousmane, and the Governor, Mamadou Mangara. They all express their gratitude for Dr. Murphy’s brave visit, and pledge support during tomorrow’s mission to the local hospital. In official meetings, you can still notice the sense of confusion and uncertainty in all their faces. The Mayor scorns the insistence of calling for elections in July. “We’re not ready”. Both the Mayor and the Governor seem impressive and brave figures. We’re grateful and comforted by their hospitality.
The Mayor, Halle Ousmane
It’s time to get some rest.
The air conditioner will work tonight but only until midnight so I go to bed as soon as I can. My body is sore from the tough ride. I manage to pass out for a few hours. In the middle of the night an asphyxiating heat wakes me up. My mouth is dry and tastes like the sand of the dessert. It’s pitch black. I open the French doors of the room that access a small balcony. A nice breeze comes in. Thousands of frogs croak outside my window: it’s a loud, violent, very disturbing mating sound… In my sleepiness I wonder if it would be dangerous to keep my balcony open for the rest of the night. Could somebody reach the first floor and kidnap me in the middle of the night? No doubt, by now a lot of people know we’re here, and the hotel has no guard. Is it safe for me to sleep? Or should I stay up the rest of the night? I feel my heart racing. I catch myself falling into an anxiety attack. I force myself to stop the feeling of spiralling down. I take a deep breath. My heart slows down. I look out the window, and for the first time, since I came to Africa, I cry one single tear. I don’t cry for me. I cry for the amazing people of Timbuktu who, for over a year now, have lived night after night like this, not being able to sleep in peace. (For security reasons this blog entry was not releases in real time)
We’re finally allowed to cross the internal border from Southern Mali to Northern Mali.
The crisis started in March of 2012 when a loose coalition of rebel movements threw out the official Mali State from Northern Mali.
The alliance of groups such as al-Qa`ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Ansar Eddine, and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) managed in the following months to take town after town, all the way to Konna, only 100 miles north of Mopti, the hinge that separates north and south.
This advance prompted the intervention of 4,000 strong French troops. We don’t need to follow the news or the maps to know where we are. Every few meters we find cars and trucks that apparently were bombed by the French while the jihadist were trying to retreat back north.
Oumar, our driver, shows us on the side of the road the bombed truck that the jihadist had taken from a local business to carry the bodies of death rebels. Almost as disturbing, on the side of that truck, we find a pile of bombs from the French air-strikes.
We also see a bombed jihadist training camp.
From March 2012 to the French liberation in January of 2013, the legendary Timbuktu was victimized by these fundamentalist groups, that imposed a strict Sharia law, including killings, amputations, and other atrocities. We’re traveling by road to Timbuktu, on a humanitarian mission to establish the needs of the local hospital. Apparently, the few foreigners that have visited Timbuktu since the liberation, mainly journalists and a humanitarian first responders, have traveled by air, but the airport is now close and it’s impossible to get on the limited flights. (The multinational mission from the UN will not officially land in Timbuktu until July 1st.)
As we drive north, we’re also getting closer to the dessert. The strong, hot winds are so sandy, it looks cloudy. It’s about 107 Fahrenheit, 42 Celsius. The landscape is drier and the density of population has fallen dramatically. We finally reach Douentza, a town on the skirts of some beautiful rocky mountains.
And here is where the most dangerous part of the ride starts. To go from Douentza to Timbuktu, we must drive 195 kms (120 miles) through something that resembles more a path than a road.
The photos don’t do justice to how bad the path actually is, because we didn’t think it was safe to stop to take video or photos, and we couldn’t risk to waste a minute and arrive too late to Timbuktu. But most importantly, the path to Timbuktu is deserted and too wide-open, and we have been warned against bandits and the possibility of kidnappings. Our man in Mali cautions: “No matter what happens, we can’t stop, for nothing, for nobody.”
We were warned also that the “road was not good”. I would call that the understatement of the year. Considering that for many refugees and displaced people from Timbuktu, this was the only way out, or back, makes my heart sink.
For the first 100 kms (60 miles) we don’t see anything or anybody, other than another 4X4 from the Red Cross driven by one Malian man. No people, animals or cars. The isolation of Timbuktu becomes more and more clear.
Our 4X4 barely can make it on this road. Last night, it rained, which made the soil more dangerous and unpredictable. We have a couple of near misses. One in particular is pretty scary: we have to speed and jump over a bump that was much higher than expected on the other side. We have a dramatic landing, but we’re not hurt. We inspect the car and it seems to be OK. Needless to say, this is the last place on Earth where we need to be with a broke-down car.
Half way down the road, we encounter semi-abandoned mud villages and we see people for the first time since Douentza. The worse of the trip is yet to come in the second half. We run into several trucks and vans stranded in the muddy potholes, or with destroyed tires. The vehicles seem to be driving back displaced people. There are also some abandoned cars of people who never made it.
We finally get to the Niger River. Timbuktu is on the other side of the river. There is no bridge. “The no-road to Timbuktu” followed by “the no-bridge to Timbuktu”.
We understand now the frustration of the people in Northern Mali, while in the South, the Capital Bamako spends millions in infrastructure projects: highways, parks, bridges… many of the towns in the North continue to be isolated, even those with the strategic, historical and potential touristic importance of Timbuktu.
We will have to wait two hours until the next ferry to cross the river. We are now at the receiving end of the famous Malian hospitality, in one of the tents, we discover something of a local restaurant, a place to eat and rest. We eat with our hands some fish and lamb innards. Those who miss the last ferry to Timbuktu can also spend the night in these tents. People are happy to see us. Maybe they think our presence is a sign that things will soon return to normal.
The owner of the tent tells us how hard is to even survive. Practically, no vehicles are coming this way anymore. In Songoy, one of the local languages, he tells us about the atrocities committed by the jihadists. I record the interview. Almoustafa will translate for me later. For now, all I need to understand doesn’t require words: the sadness in his eyes and his profound sense of desperation.
The sun falls, and we must stop for the night, on our way to Timbuktu. We didn’t make into Mopti but to nearby Severé, the furthest point north that the Malian government was able to control, before the French intervention.
Our first leg of the trip is now completed after an 11 hour drive in grueling, dusty, pot holed roads. It’s dark and we arrive to our hotel. It’s a very exotic establishment named Via Via. The place is eerily empty. Mali’s already precarious economy is hurting by the near total annihilation of its tourism industry.
The further we go north, the more surprised people seem to be to see white visitors. The airport in Timbuktu remains officially closed, and only receives military planes and a few flights from UN envoys. The airport first opened in 2006, as a way to overcome the historical geographical isolation of the city, but now that airport remains officially and indefinitely closed. And Timbuktu is once more isolated from the world.
So far, we haven’t seen any French or International troops, which doesn’t make me feel particularly safe.
My room at Via Via Hotel is called, sure enough, Timbuktu. It has a simple bed with a mosquito net over it, one more precaution against the feared Malaria. There is running water with only one temperature, lukewarm.
And, one may wonder, why does Timbuktu matter so much?
When I was growing up, the name Timbuktu represented for me the furthest and most exotic of places. In Spain, we call it Tombuctú. My dad tells me that growing up in Chicago, they used to say: “I’m going to kick your us from here to Tickbucktu.”
For centuries, it was a place from where white explorers didn’t return alive. The first adventurer who reached Timbuktu and lived to tell the story was René-Auguste Caillié in 1827. He narrated his adventures in a three volume work published in 1830.
Timbuktu may be one of the most legendary cities of Africa. It historical importance is so vast that in 1988 it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Unfortunately, in response to the recent abuses committed by jihadist, UNESCO added Timbucktu to the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger. The city is, no doubt, an invaluable inheritance from our ancestors.
In the 1300’s, Timbuktu became a flourishing center for Islamic culture. An architect from Granada, now Spain, was commissioned to design the Sankore mosque, around which the University of Sankore was built. This is one of the many historical mud buildings that still stand.
It was a land where gold and salt were traded, but it was also a land of knowledge and universal wisdom. The manuscripts of Timbuktu are a true treasure for the human race and more so for the muslin world; a surviving proof of the powerful intellectual past of Africa.
You can see a BBC documentary about the libraries of Timbuktu here.
The history of Timbuktu is a history of invasions and attacks, alternated with long periods of abandonment and isolation. From the invasion by Morocco in 1591, to the attacks by many of the regional ethnic groups, to the domination by France between 1893 and 1960.
That is the story of Timbuktu, a precious legacy of enlightenment and knowledge, dismantled and abandoned, time after time, century after century, to the comings and goings of invaders, mercenaries and ideologues.
But the mud buildings and libraries of this town, still speak volumes, and the people who live here are the keepers of that flame.
As I read in an African magazine: “As long as we pass our heritage, our history will never end.”
Timbuktu is rich, in many important aspects, and it matters. Even if it doesn’t have oil. (One can’t help but wonder if the international community would have allowed this city to be tortured by fundamentalists invaders for nine long months, if it had oil.)
We wake up at Via Via and encounter a nightmare trip of security, bureaucracy and red tape. As expected, nobody wants to be responsible for our access to Northern Mali. We come and go to the internal border, three times, each time we are requested to have a different, more difficult to obtain paper, even if we have an invitation to exercise an “action humanitaire” in Timbuktu.
First, we are requested to obtain a special permit from the local police to travel into the northern territories. Then, the Malian Army chief at the last check point doesn’t want two westerners to travel to Timbuktu without military escort. This requires us to receive permission from the military authorities and the green light from the commanders in charge of movements within the northern territories. While not exactly easy, we gather the necessary documents and permissions.
This takes one day.
Between our comings and goings to the border, Dr. Murphy has a chance to give medical advice to a Malian soldier suffering from back pain. Dr. Murphy gives the soldier a referral to a specialist in Mopti, the advice to drink a lot of water, as well as two pain killers, “to use only at night, at home, and when you’re not carrying a gun”.
We overcame every obstacle. But now it’s too late to leave for Timbuktu. We’re asked to wait one more night. We do.
We check-in into another beautiful, empty hotel. There is only another group staying there. Five American civilians driving impressive white SUV’s. They didn’t exchange a word with us. Didn’t seem to us that they were free to chit chat about why they were there. If was to shoot a film about the Iraq war, I would cast all of them as employees of Halliburton.
The hotel faces the river Niger. The sunset is beautiful. Long boats cruise the silver, glittering water. Local groups of kids swim naked, playing and screaming, while their mothers wash their cloths in the river.
A beautiful moment of grace, before tomorrow we face the ugly gravity of war.
(For security reasons this blog entry was not releases in real time)
Today, we left the relative “quiet and peace” of Bamako, the capital of Mali, to travel north, to a land banned for security reasons to practically all foreign visitors. By all accounts, going north, only four months after the French military intervention aga'sinst the jihadist rebels started, is a difficult and dangerous enterprise. Four months is not a long time to create the secure conditions to start the rebuilding process in a country with limited resources, suffering a devastating economic crisis and a lack of basic infrastructure: safe roads, for one. The UN support troops will not arrive until July 1st.
We are going on a medical, humanitarian mission to the legendary Timbuktu. We will be driving through the very unstable areas that French and Malian troops liberated from rebel Tuareg and their Taliban-minded partners. The government of France has declared this area a no-travel Red Zone. An estimated ninety percent of Malians are Muslim. This country has been long recognized as a model for tolerant Islam. The state is officially secular and the constitution protects the freedom of religion. The pride Malians take in their religious tolerance made the abuses perpetrated by the fundamentalists even more shocking: killings, amputations, secret and public beatings and destruction of art and monuments, all in the name of Allah. I’m traveling with Dr. Robert Murphy, founder of the International AIDS Education Project. He is also a faculty member at Northwestern University, and the director of its prestigious Center for Global Health. The goal is to assess the damage caused by the conflict to the local hospital and how support could be expedited to help the health delivery system of the remote Timbuktu. No matter how needed and welcomed Dr. Murphy’s help may be… somehow, we could also become a thorn in the side of the authorities, both national and international. The last thing authorities need in preparation for the now official elections July 28th, would be something happening to two US citizens in Mali. Being from the West and white makes it even more difficult for both of us to travel inconspicuously. The nightmare scenario would be a kidnapping. We’re being told that the danger is not only to be kidnaped by an Al-Qaida affiliated group, but also to be kidnapped by any thugs or sympathizer who could sell us to Al-Qaida. Unfortunately, in a situation like this, the ransom for a US citizen could be a coveted price. During the last two years the north of Mali has witnessed some extremely dramatic killings and kidnappings of western visitors. Last year, four tourists were kidnapped gunpoint from a restaurant, when one of the tourists refused to enter the kidnapper’s van, he was shot on the spot. An artist from the UK delivering a truck full of books for the kids of Timbuktu was also kidnapped. According to the US State Department: “On November 20, 2012, a French citizen was kidnapped (…) and terrorist groups have stepped up their rhetoric calling for additional attacks or kidnapping attempts on westerners (…)” And kidnapping is not the only serious risk ahead of us. On the plane to Bamako, an employee of the United Nations told me that there is a growing fear of Al-Qaida sleeper cells in Mali, car-bombs or unrest north of Mopti, the city considered the hinge between the south and the north. And that is precisely our next stop: Mopti, the Venice of Mali, the town that the rebels were very close to take over, only a few months ago. But first, we have ahead of us 625 kilometers, on treacherous roads. Although there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about this trip, Dr. Murphy feels confident that the residents of Northern Mali will welcome and protect us. His long experience working in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa, among many other countries, is always reassuring. There are two additional and very important encouraging factors for both of us: Almoustapha and Omar. Almoustapha Maiga, a PhD virologist and pharmacist from the University of Bamako. Almoustapha is our man in Mali. He speaks English, French (the official language), Bambara (the main language of the south) and Songoy (the main language of the north). His expertise as a medical researcher and his language skills will be essential for Dr. Murphy to complete his humanitarian mission successfully, and for all of us to return to Bamako safely.
Almoustapha Maiga, our man in Mali
We also have with us Omar, a very stern and quiet driver who knows the roads like nobody does. He has been driving people across Mali since 1980. He drives us in a 13 year old blue four wheel drive Toyota Land Cruiser. The vehicle has “only” 443,000 kms on it. That is 275,000 miles. The goal is to get as close as possible to Mopti before night falls. The roads have so many holes and bumps that it is and actually dangerous driving, and adding to that hazard are the hundreds of cows, goats, sheep and people that wander into the driving lanes all day and night long. The pavement is very uneven. At times, Omar has to drive half way on the shattered pavement, half way on the dirt shoulder, often located 6 inches or more lower than the hardtop. I have a sinking feeling that the driving conditions may be as dangerous for us as Al Qaida.
The road-trip of a lifetime
On a map, Mali looks like a tilted bowtie. Mopti is precisely the knot on that bowtie, the point that separates south and north. The lower side of the bowtie has greener landscapes, the capital Bamko and the center of power of a majority who speaks Bambara. The upper side of the bowtie is a very large area about the size of France inhabited by an increasingly alienated population, who speak Songoy and Tamasheq and live in an area colliding with the south side of Sahara desert. Northern Mali covers 66% of the national territory but its population accounts for only 9% of the total population. Every other kilometer, we find another little village with sheds made of mud. They remind me of the Christmas nativity sets I grew up with in Spain. In one of the villages, we pay a visit to the locals.
Dr. Murphy and my camera are welcomed with great enthusiasm. Dr. Murphy notices a skin infection in the scalp of one of the babies, and leaves behind a prescription for his mother, and money to buy the medicine.
The villagers send us off, laughing and cheering.
A couple of villages along the road celebrate colorful local markets. People from nearby villages gather in the market to sell, trade and meet with others.
The markets along the way
We stop in one post and at a butcher, Almoustapha buys lamb for his brother in Segou, another of our stops along the way.
A visit to the butcher
Mangos are in season, and women dressed in bright, traditional dresses sell fruit on the side of the road. The people of Mali are stunningly beautiful and friendly. And the landscape is breathtaking, too.
Between villages, you see the magnitude of this flat, endless land. We are still south, and the landscape is not quite as deserted as we are expecting it to be up north. The most common trees are the balanzan, as the rest of the country, they’re huge, beautiful and haunting.
(For security reasons, these blogs are not being posted in real time)
