Part 7 - From there to Timbuktu

Getting from Kiffa in Mauritania could have been a problem. There is public transport but it's pretty bad - even by African standards. So, I was extremely grateful to be offered a lift by the Afrikaners, as far as I wanted - or as they put it 'as far as you can put up sharing the back seat with the kids'.

I ended up spending about a week with them, and would have continued but thought that I had better give them some space and that arriving in Timbuktu in an air-conditioned Land Cruiser would be just too easy. Also, I may do this trip again, but driving myself, and I would not likely have another easy chance to do the river trip.

From Kiffa we took the piste instead of the main, tarmac route - another advantage of going in a private 4x4. Although it took about 8 hours to drive 200km it was extremely enjoyable. At the first village across the Malian border we were advised that there was trouble ahead; a couple of locals had been robbed at gun-point on the road south. We were invited to camp out in the village school yard - I slept in the classroom, and we had a pleasant evening there. The Chef de Police for the village, came along and had a glass of wine and then mad his excuses, but he had obviously asked the villagers to respect our privacy, which we were extremely grateful. While it may seem to be missing the point of travelling, having scores of children crowding round at every stop, shouting 'cadeau cadeau', or trying to sell things all the time can be very tiring.

In the morning we were told that the way was safe - an army truck had gone through just beforehand - and we left for the final 80km to Kayes in western Mali.

The journey from Mauritania to Mali saw another change in the scenery and also the buildings. While most of Mauritania is basically desert, the far south, and most of Mali is greener. The buildins in Mauri were generally bland flat-roofed structures - presumably mostly concrete, but there were also lots of square tents - about 20ft long with vertical sides about 5ft high and a shallo pitched 'roof', the material - not sure what it was - is all sewn together and supported by two wooden posts in the centre in the form of an 'A'. The sides are held up by attatching ropes to trees, stakes and anything else that's handy.

Going towards Mali, the villages started to become more stereotyically African, with round mud huts and pitched roofs. Although the cities were still primarilly of low concrete buildings.

The other differents is in people's appearance; in northern Mauritania the people look mostly 'Arabic', by the time we entered Mali, we were definitely in Black Africa. In the desert regions, most men - Arabic or black wear turbans (howli - not sure of spelling) and over their normal clothes (shirt or t-shirt and trousers) they wear 'boubous' (again, I need to check spelling but pronouned boo-boo), which superficially looks like a large sheet with a head hole in, about 5 feet wide and ankle length. Obviously, it's a bit more stylish than that, and presumably it's effectiver at keeping out the direct sun - and dust. However, being the same width as outstretched arms, does mean that the men frequently have to flap their arms about to try and get them untangled. The women mostly wear muslim-type clothes, but not the all-over conservative chadors(?) seen in the middle east, they are usually brightly coloured as well. In the south of Mauritania, and into Mali, the women wear either western clothes or African dress; and despite being Muslim, these dresses do make the most of their figures.

Anyway, in Kayes we caught up with the German Unimog family and they seemed to be really grateful that their sone now had some other children to play with. From Kayes, we headed off to the capital, Bamako, and stayed there for a couple of days to catch up on washing etc, to give the children a break, and to get a Burkino Faso visa. The city is a vast sprawling mass and, to be honest we saw very little of it outside of the campsite located on the south back of the river Niger - which at that point is about half a mile wide.

We then continued east, spending one night camped out in an agricultural research station in the middle of nowhere. Drinking Morrocan red wine while discussing African politics, watching the shooting stars and listening to the jackals was one of the most pleasant evenings on the trip for me.

We drove through Ségou - a pretty town by the river, that seemed to be base for a lot of charity and NGOs. Oddly, in dusty less appealing towns there were markedly fewer such organisationsin evidence.

Travelling east, the building styles changed again - many buildings were made of large mu bricks that were then rendered each year with more mud. This thick covering gave the buildigs soft rounded edges and a very distinctive appearance. Mosques tended to be taller than one storey, and so had wooden posts sticking out of the mud for the builders to stand on to apply the mud each year, and the minarets of the mosques were more conical shape. Also, as we went east, we started seeing lots of small granaries - squat cylindrical huts, usually bulging outwards towards the base, and with straw 'chinese hats' as roofs. Very picturesque, but unfortunately the camera was not working properly.

Djenné is one of Mali's 'must sees', it's a small dusty town set on a sort of island in the middle of the Niger inland delta, but it's attraction is the mosque. It's the largest mud building in the world and is a world heitage site.

The final leg of my journey in the comfort of the Land Cruiser was to Sevaré, a small and unremarkable town close to Mopti; a large, interesting but chaotic town on the river that most people prefer not to stay in. The guesthouse in Sevaré was run by an English woman and her Dogon husband. It was a very pleasant place to stay - tranquil, with a courtyard with plenty of shade. The following morning I said goodbye to Jean and Hannelie, and to Gunnar and Sonja as they all headed off to Timbuktu in their vehicles. I took a local bus to Mopti and, after a bit of asking around and the usual haggling, I secured a space on a pinasse that was heading down the river the following day. Pinasses are wooden boats that provide most of the transport along the river, this one was was about 60 feet long had a beam of 12 feet, and a draft of about 4 feet - when loaded. The boat had a canopy, made from bamboo and tarpaulins, and the open sides allowed a pleasant breeze across the 'deck'.

The boat was carrying large sacks of cement, sand, rice, millet, and charcoal (on the roof) to Timbuktu and the villages en route. There were about 50 passengers as we left, and when we arrived in Timbuktu 36 hours later there were probably about ten remaining. At each village the boat stopped in the river and passengers and goods boarded and alighted by the local pirougues that were paddled or poled from the shore. Also, people selling bread, water, oranges, cakes and god knows what else came along to meet the boat to sell to the passengers. The passengers were mostly carrying large amounts of luggage as well, there were a few goats, a 'bunches' of live chickens, water canisters, an old blackboard, a huge pile of corrugated zinc sheeting, and dozens of bundles of belongings and purchases stuffed into the ubiquitous woven plastic sacks. Virtually everyone had a radio with them as well - a particularly good hawker had had a successful morning's work as the boat waited for departure from Mopti. The trip was actually quite pleasant - despite sleeping on a sack of cement, and having the same hideous tape of monotonous Islamic chanting being played back to back. While Mali produces some fantastic music, the person sitting next to me only had the one tape for his new radio cassette player and was determined to get the most from it.

The toilet consisted of a hole in the bottom of the boat (where the hull raises above the water line, in gondola style) at the extreme rear behind the engine and in a very inaccessible place. The men did the 'number ones' over the side of the boat, not sure what the women did. Food consisted of rice cooked with spices and whatever fish they caught. Which for the first three meals was very little, I had a small fish head on the first night, which I discretely gave back to the river. For the last meal I did actually have a whole fish - only slightly larger than the average goldfish, but a pleasant change all the same. Tea - short, strong and sweet as in most of north Africa was in plentiful supply.

We finally arrived in Kouriome, the port for Timbuktu, at two in the morning. I'd been prepared to sleep on the river bank, but there was actually a 'bus' waiting. As the bus was an ancient land-rover, I decided I'd take this and arrive in Timbuktu in some style. The car was loaded up with about a ton of rice in huge sacks, and half a dozen passengers and our luggage, and driven very slowly long the causeway through the rice paddies to the old city. I reckon we were doing about 20 miles an hour, difficult to say as the spedo wasn't working (very few do in Africa), and as the steering wheel didn't seem to work very well either I was happy that we were going so slowly. After waking up the security gaurd of 'Hotel Camping de la Paix' I dragged a foam mattress ontop the roof and slept under the stars for the few remaining hours of darkness.