There are certain places that unchain your phantasy – the name Timbuktu is certainly one of those. The reality is – right there in Timbuktu nobody understands why tourists ever come here, what are they actually looking for?

 

It’s been a place of travel novelists of all classes, from Chatwin downwards, for people writing their diploma thesis – and for Donald  Duck.

So Timbuktu is a place that carries its past as a front page promise. But there is nothing really worth mentioning – or to be seen – from the past.

 

 

There are no surrounding landscapes – there is just dryness, nothing grows, there is hunger, and sometimes there is war. Tuareg-folks have fought time and again,  since 1996 they keep more or less peace.

 

 

The dream of all Mali- people is not adventure travels in the desert, but the dream is Paris, London, New York, Rome.  The place is so poor that it takes hours to change a 10 000 West-African Franc  bill – just nobody has so much money. The value of this bill is Euro 15 – a bit under US$ 20,-; so the tourist has no choice but to eat so much food and drink so many cokes until the sum of his consumption has been adding up to about this amount of money – !

 

The golden times of Timbuktu were about 500 years ago, in the 15th and 16th century. In that time it had 100 000 inhabitants – today a weak 3rd of this is still around. The city was rich then through trading salt from the North and gold from the South. It’s real fame founded on Timbuktu’s university and its professors,  that came all the way from Cairo and Fes, the famous library (which looks nothing today – inspite of careful renovations – where priceless manuscripts were kept – and the high number of students back then, reading Islam theology and besides this, also Aristoteles.

 

So Timbuktu’s fame only lasted 2 centuries, until in 1591 an army from Marocco conquered the city – and brought along with it the language – French – some architecture, and couscous.  The latter is really a blessing for any tourist, as you’d be at a loss what else to eat there. So Timbuktu is living it’s myth to be a constant victim – of foreigners – first the Tuareg – who came in search of water, the army from Marocco – who came in search of gold and brought fire arms,  and the French colonial occupiers, who came to erect a world empire, with Timbuktu somewhere in the middle.  In 1988 Timbuktu came on the list of UNESCO  world heritage.  First the city was left to rot, and once it was rotted for good,  they started renovating it to death – since today’s sightseeing highlights are not recognizable when compared to old photographs of the same buildings.

Something funny happened in 2007 – and if that is not typically African – then I don’t know it: Timbuktu appeared on the list of nominated places to be voted on as one of the 7 new age world wonders.  Now it took a very long time until Mali offcials even realized their city actually was on that list.  Then – politicians and uban-dynamic telecom managers and tourist marketers from Bamako took a while to digest that surprise and started a hectic voting campaign. They actually reached the finals and took pace 14. Not bad – actually.  They needed 100 million votes – the organizers said, to make it  to the top 7.  And Timbuktu was unable to establish a lobby big enough to follow through. Operation "a click for Timbuktu" started

And all inhabitants were steered towards the Telecenter to give their free votes. But finally, this was not enough to compete against the Colloseum in Rome or the Taj Mahal. Timbuktu’s dirt-structures stood no chance in this competition- but still, in a last minute action half the African continent was mobilized to vote for Timbuktu.  If the organizers had started just 1 month earlier, they would have made place 7 easily. It would have brought new fame, new sponsors to conserve the library and its manuscripts, more tourist, more development and money.

 

An ugly new city has been erected in the last 15-20 years – with foreign money, of course, and Libya has financed one runway for an international airport.  There is just one way NOT to be disillusioned when returning from Timbuktu, and that involves quite a lot of work. You’d have to read the travel adventure reports of Leo Africanus, Mungo Park, Reneé Caillié, and in between the Segu-Tales of Maryse Condé, BEFORE you actually depart for Timbuktu.  But even then you’ll have to give your imagination a strong boost – too see that myth that once existed. So whenever somebody mentions Timbuctu it is called: The Mysterious City. And a typical sentence of people in Mali  is the calling on all 333 holy and wise men to perform miracles – like- the soccer ball should  fall jam-smack into the goal,  the malaria-infection rate should  sink, and the votes for the world-wonder list should mysteriousely double. 

 

Yet, some miracles do happen there: last year, when 2 Austrian tourists were kidnapped in Petra, the islamic kidnappers brought them to Mali, and after a couple of months they were actually still alive and released.  Both looked about 20 years older at their return, caused by sunburn, thirst and hunger they were suffering during their captivity. They told an eerie story about their life in captivity with the Moslem fanatics in secret, far off  places.

 

This story can be credited to Ingrid Turner, an Austrian journalist,  and translated by B. Vetter , publisher of http://www.eerietravelsecrets.com;  B.Vetter lived in Africa herself for 10 years.

 

 

 

 

 

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