The Brightest Diamond in the Roughest Mine
After a sleepless night scheming and a sweaty day spent plotting with black market bankers, I had to admit defeat.
I was stuck in Mopti, Mali with a pitiful cache of cash – and facing a country that lacked functioning international ATMs, would not touch travellers checks and didn’t “do” credit cards. And so I found myself emailing home: “Hey Mom, did you know Western Union wires money to Timbuktu?”
This trip is nothing if not humbling.
Having sent my electronic SOS, I used my last few dollars to buy passage down the Niger River on a small wooden pinasse with a thatched roof, a sad outboard motor and a hole off the back for a toilet. For four days our small crew meandered towards Timbuktu from sunrise to sunset and camped on the cold banks of the river at night: Impoverished me, two very nice, laid back French women, our shoeless captain and his prepubescent co-pilot. 
I have a hard time believing I will ever find a more peaceful location than on the roof of that quiet boat, under Mali’s giant skies. Daytime brings an IMAX globe of creamy blue, the night wide expanses of inky black, stitched with the thickest show of stars I have ever seen. On the banks of the Niger at 10 pm, when the only other light in sight is the distant campfire of nomadic shepherds, the stars are three layers thick. It is dizzying to even try to take them all in. 
Eventually, our little ship rolled into Timbuktu, which is actually an incredibly friendly, cool little town. After VERY gratefully collecting my allowance from WU (I owe you one Mom!), my French cohorts and I spent a couple of days wandering through the dust-choked streets enjoying the surprisingly outgoing locals and rather odd historic sites. And then we began the journey home.
The “funny” thing about Mali is how difficult – yet utterly rewarding - everything is. I quickly learned that people come to the country not because of its tourist infrastructure, but in spite of it. Getting anywhere costs an arm and a leg, is always cramped and uncomfortable and is certain to take three or four times longer than originally estimated. 
Fittingly, I guess, there is no real road to or from Timbuktu. For hours, there is nothing to rely on but random tracks through the desert and the mental maps of experienced drivers. In between breakdowns, running out of fuel and stopping to reattach the goods that repeatedly slid off the roof, our 4×4 driver spent a good hour expertly finding a way out of a dry lake bed around which local farmers had built a surprisingly sturdy brush fence.
After successfully trekking back south from Timbuktu, I spent the night in Sevare and the next morning paid a teenager $8 to drive me two hours to Dogon Country on the back of his motorcycle - which was probably the cheapest, most enjoyable and safest ride I had in Mali. 
I found a guide named Mamadou in Biandiagara who - though accustomed to rich French tourists and vocally disappointed in my budget – agreed to take me out hiking and camping for a few days. As my weird and wonderful luck would have it, on the first night out we ran into a 4×4 piloted by two eccentric, incredibly nice Italian men in their 60’s who invited us to hop on and join them in camping out on top of a cliff near the village of Dijiboumbou. 
While they prepared a feast of imported olives and cheeses, sausages and breadsticks, pasta and chilled wine, Claud and Carlos told me of their three decades of travel through Africa. Lifelong friends, the pair have for thirty years kept an old Range Rover - fully equipped for comfortable survival – parked in Nigeria or Mali. Whenever they can make time, they high-tail it out of European civilization and back down to explore more of the continent. Their stories of auto accidents and machine gun encounters wound from Libya to Mauritania, stopping everywhere in between. Eventually they retired to the tent that pops up from the roof of their truck and I to a spare blanket smack on top of a cliff overlooking a long stretch of Dogon, under the moonlight, happily kept awake for hours by the incessant warm wind and thoughts of the guys’ down-to-earth perspective on balance in life. It was an absolutely perfect night.
All the highlights and challenges of Mali would take too many pages to detail, but suffice it to say it was an amazing time and is easily one of my favorite places in the world. 
It gave me the chance to hike down breathtaking escarpments, watch hippos play in the Niger, visit otherworldly Dogon villages, talk to countless Peace Corps volunteers about their work, eat pancakes with a Malian born American who opened the world’s greatest hostel in Sevare, sleep outside almost every night and learn to hitchhike like a pro.
For every luxury and modern convenience they lack, Malians are absolutely rich in respectful hospitality and enthusiastic friendliness. You literally could not walk down a street without calling out and answering “ça va” a dozen times and shaking the hands of every bright eyed, dusty haired child you passed. And unlike Ghana, Morocco and even Burkina Faso, I have to say the Muslim culture really fostered respect – you could say hello to the men without initiating a marriage agreement or a sales pitch and the women watched over you like mother hens.
It was a truly difficult, barren country that offered great lessons about patience and finding comfort and joy in unexpected places. Even with its utter lack of chocolate and real coffee, I would go back in a heartbeat.
And if that’s not high praise, I don’t know what is.
Tags: Travel
March 29th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
“Fittingly, I guess, there is no real road to or from Timbuktu.”
Brilliant
March 30th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Incredible!!! I wish I were you. Can’t wait to hear more from you. Your writing is mesmerizing! Keep it up.
April 1st, 2006 at 2:12 pm
Love the pictures Erica! Wish I were with you. (I’d bring chocolate and coffee grounds)
April 8th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
Amazing pictures, Erica. Coffee and chocolate should be available in EVERY country! I felt the same way about Nepal- I’d go back to Kathmandu, even with it’s Nescafe instant coffee and no chocolate. Keep up the amazing blog!
April 11th, 2006 at 9:46 am
Great pics! Eagerly awaiting more featuring your latest visitors.
Take the lessons you`ve learned on your journey & turn them into a ” Best Seller” Sharing makes life much more fun.Our thoughts, love & prayers are with you. Big Hugs!
Mam`ma & Pap`pa