I’m in Tomboctou!
10 comments February 8th, 2007
Hooray, Hemdullah, wooh hoo and shake your bootie, at the end of a 650km haul, many adventures, and a beautiful full moon, I am in a new country,and in a town that has loomed large in my mind for years.
For the statisticians amongst you: when I planned this walk in Australia, I estimated the following, BARRING PROBLEMS:
100 days in total from Nouadhibou to Tomboctou
2100km
70 walking days if no problems, 90 with.
This is what the reality has been:
102 days in total
2400km
78 walking days….
And, as we all know by now, just the ODD problem or fifty!
So, I guess you could say that all in all, I am feeling pretty chuffed with life in general. I hoped the zig zags and problems wouldn’t happen, but they do – that’s walking –and I am still on time and schedule, and in reasonably good shape, and that is all I really care about.
So that is my ego stroking out of the way.
Yet again, I am typing this in the vague hope that a connection will materialise sometime in the next couple of days. If you are reading it, then I got lucky.
On first impressions, Mali – and Tomboctou- are, put simply, great. From the day I crossed the invisible border – Ali, my guide, pointed at a tree and said, “now we’re in Mali” – life seemed to shift down a gear, become more colourful, and, best of all, immensely cheaper. We bought a lamb to slaughter from a passing nomad the day we entered Mali, and it was less than half what I am used to paying in Mauritania – and nearly twice the size. And this only ten km from the border! It never ceases to amaze me how totally different countries can be, with nothing but a currency and a bit of desert separating them.
Nomads are nomads, and the desert culture remains largely what I am accustomed to. But now instead of seeing blue robed men riding past on camels, speaking Hassaniya and gawking unashamedly, I see Tuareg and other nomads clad in colourful variations on the theme, daggers at their hip, who greet me disinterestedly in Tamashek and chat openly and without suggestion. Tomboctou is a mixture of Tuareg, Arab, Soorai and other African tribes, and the conversation shifts between a melange of languages. The African women here stride proudly through the streets, parcels on their heads and clad in beautiful printed fabrics, and they smile and laugh with me when we meet. After so many brown desert towns filled with Arabic women veiled in melekhva, it is refreshing and somehow uplifting to find myself in a place that, although still a desert town, is not governed by the same strict dress and conduct codes. It feels warmer and more vibrant, and I feel far less conspicuous. Best of all, I don’t need to wear melekhva.
I don’t mean to be disparaging either about Mauritania or Arabic culture; both have, as do all countries and cultures, their good and bad points. Unfortunately, my final stop in Mauritania – Nema, from whence came the last somewhat miserable post – did nothing to highlight the good points. I was never so glad to leave a place in my life.
It wasn’t an auspicious beginning to a stretch, actually, the day I left. Mohammed and I had arranged to meet Ali, my new guide, in the centre of town. This is a highly unusual thing to do with three camels in tow, and neither of us were overjoyed about it; the difference was, I could look at the map and see that there was only one way to the mountain pass on the other side,through which I had to travel. Mohammed was just bemused and unhappy, particularly as Ali had said we would get our water from the well in the centre of town –to Mohammed’s very good nomadic brain this seemed crazy – town wells are for house dwellers. Unfortunately we were also sharing the road and town on that day with the Paris Dakar. There is just nothing more enjoyable than holding onto three camels as quad bikes, v8’s, and every other imaginable thing on wheels, is roaring past.
So there we were, in the busiest part of the village, with four camels (including the one Ali had bought to ride), a gun strapped to the side, and a tourist in melekhva. And if you think the Paris Dakar might have attracted a bit of interest, you’d be wrong – I was,without a shadow of a doubt,the main attraction. Surrounded by a seething crowd of (I do NOT exaggerate) hundreds, all pulling at my melekhva and jostling the camels, I tried to calmly get the camels down and jerry cans unstrapped; the camels, predictably, were NOT impressed. But to their endless credit, bless them, they kept their cool, as did I –and only right at the end, when one stupid idiot actually kicked him, did Bolshy sod let fly with a rear leg. I could have cheered him.
I barely got a chance to say goodbye to Mohammed. Ali and I were hellbent on getting out of there, and I was stalking off at a hugely indignant pace, not quite trusting myself to have the kind of calm and friendly discussion that would make a good start to a new stretch, when I realised we were halfway up the mountain pass.
Now, normally I would stop at the bottom of every big ascent and check all the ropes, etc; but in the general mess, I had just started walking, not really taking in the fact that the path was narrowing and getting steeper. Suddenly we were halfway up and there was nowhere to stop, and I was eyeing the baggage uneasily and thinking: “I don’t like this”. Right at that point, Bolshy decided he wasn’t too happy either, and as I stepped up a trickybit, down he went.
Once a camel goes down on a steep ascent, there is no getting him up again – not loaded with baggage. So I grit my teeth and, cursing my own stupidity, untied all the ropes and got everything off, got him over the steep bit, and tied everything back on. In the middle of this Ali was trying to help and got very short shrift from me; I am at a point with baggage now where it is done my way, end of story, and I was in no mood to have someone making suggestions.
I got to the top of the rise and looked back to see Ali struggling up slowly. I took a few minutes to catch my breath, and looked back at Nema, which had just been such a horrific stop, full of so many stresses and expenses, and thought – okay Paula, it’s over now – time to chill.
And when Ali got to the top, I said, “look, I’m exhausted and I’m sure you are too –how about we just stop and have tea for a bit?” And his slightly worried expression –poor devil must have thought he’d taken on a madwoman – relaxed with relief, and he admitted he hadn’t had time for breakfast, his camel wasn’t saddled properly, and he was, in short fed up.
So we took the camels off to a nice shady tree and made a fire and tea, and had a bit of a laugh at how mad it had all been, and started off again – giving the hoons in their roaring vehicles a very wide berth.
If I was desperately sorry to say goodbye to Mohammed, I couldn’t have found a happier – nor more different- replacement than Ali. A camel man he is not; but I’ve sort of realised that doesn’t matter anymore, since after these three months, I am more than capable of handling my camels myself. And what I really appreciated was that after the second day, he worked out that I knew what I was doing, and let me get on with it, instead of trying to show me that he could do it better.
What he does know, and boy does he ever know, is the territory between Mauritania and Mali – every stick, tree, well, language, track and dune. Which was exactly what I was looking for.
It has been a long time since Ali has made a voyage by camel. Back in the day, he used to make the salt route, North up to the mines of Taroudenni, and across Algeria into Morocco to trade; but he has long since stopped. For the last thirty years he has worked as a guide, for petrol companies and, more recently, tourists, the kind of gigs where there is a cook to do the dog’s work and, if camels are involved, a chamellier to look after them. But he was straight up with me about this, and I told him that the cooking and camels were my job- what I needed was someone who could get me through the dodgy bandit bits – and through the worst of prickle country.
Oh, yes, the good old prickles, my friends – I am, FINALLY, through them, and never, in all my walking days, am I happier to see the back of a particular terrain characteristic than those nasty, insidious, painful little …. I better keep this clean, hadn’t I? THINGS.
And I couldn’t have got through any of it –the prickles, or the dodgy bits, or – well, any of it, really – without Ali. I have been truly blessed with guides, (yes, ok, except Harraba) and Ali, I think, may just be the king of them all.
He is a zig zag man; he likes his women, the odd bit of whiskey, and finds it virtually impossible to have a conversation without making a reference to boobs, bums, or sex. But he is also entirely harmless and extremely respectful – his zig zags are open for all to see, and he has no hidden agenda. But rather than ask me how I am, or if I am tired, he will ask how my ASS is, or if my ASS is tired, eg: “AH PAULA! Comment ca va le ZERFAL de toi?” (Paula, how goes it with your butt?) If he sees me struggling through the prickles and starting to swear just a little (all my guides pick up the F word pretty fast, I’m afraid), he will say, with a big grin, at my next water stop, “Le zerfal unti pas tranquil lyoom! Pas tranquil!” (Your ass is not happy and calm today!)
It is hard not to pick it up, and by the end of this stretch, I was enquiring after his butt as much as he was about mine. I am going to have to drop that habit very fast if I want to stay out of trouble.
Ali rode for the whole trip –he says he is too old and stiff to walk, and besides, he wanted to keep all his energy for his “medicament” – Malian women. But I actually found it a relief, as having him ride meant that A) he wasn’t totally wiped out at the end of the day, and hence didn’t mind collecting firewood (which can be a bit of a grind) and also that we could walk as far as I wanted to, without me having to consider someone else’s fatigue. Which was lucky, as in the end we detoured nearly a hundred km out of our way, to avoid the worst of the shoulder high prickle grasses. Trust me, I’d have happily walked a thousand to stay out of those sods.
But we did have something of a tense day about a week into the walk, just as I was feeling totally at peace with Ali, the walk, and life in general. It had to do with water.
Amongst other things, I have one minor obsession: I DO NOT LIKE running low on water. I don’t care if there are fifty wells coming up soon, or a lake around the corner. I don’t care if the guide knows every water hole from here to Tomboctou (ha ha). Once my water gets under fifteen litres I get tense, and I don’t relax until the jerry cans are sloshing again. I guess, most of all, that I just don’t see the need for it – wells are rarely more than four days apart, and if they are going to be more, I plan for it –use less. But actually walking PAST a well and not taking water, is anathema to me – I just don’t see why one would do it.
But here’s the thing – that is the difference between a “guide” and a “nomad”. Trained by MBarak and later, I guess, Mohammed, I tend to think like a nomad – mainly because when I watched them, it was just so obvious that they were totally at home in their environment. I have picked up their little habits, of fixing stray cords and picking prickles out of the saddles so the camels are comfortable, or always making a fire in the sheltered spot, and collecting wood as I walk. And those guys – they couldn’t walk past a well if they tried. In fact, they are far more likely to walk ten km out of their way just to visit one –even if they did two days before, a habit which can also do my head in!
But, as was Khabuss, Ali is a guide,, used to travelling in a car, or to making short trips with tourists on camels with vehicular backup. The incredibly great side to guides is that they are encyclopaedic about the region, excellent company, and appreciate the needs of a Western tourist (ie: I don’t want to take tea in every tent we pass, I have to stick to some degree to a schedule, and I have work to do). The downside is that they don’t like the dogwork, and they can be a bit laissez faire about practicalities – like water.
On this particular day we had, for the three days previously, passed wells – but all of them were a few km either north or south of the line we were taking. Ali would point them out – “oh, there’s a well over that hill” –and I would say, “so, let’s get water, and give the camels a drink,” and he would say: “no, no, don’t worry, there’s one right in our path a couple of days from here –no problems.”
I kept looking at the map, and I could see where he meant – but I wasn’t happy. Six days from our last well – too long, in my book, between drinks for the camels, who feed much better if they drink a little, and regularly – we were down to one five litre bottle – HALF FULL. I was slightly deranged, though doing my best to hide it.
We made a camp after walking. The well, Ali said, was four km to the North. It wasn’t marked on my map, but then most of them aren’t; I trusted him totally with the location. But I had battled through a hell thirty km of prickles, and was feeling pretty pissed at having to walk another four km to a well, when we had passed so many others, at better times of the day. Sensing my upset, Ali told me to rest under the tree with the remaining (half litre) of water, whilst he took the camels to drink.
I don’t like people going to wells alone. They can be tough to manage –no dramas if another nomad is there, but looking after three camels and filling thirty litre jerry cans solo is no party trick, as I learned when I walked on my own, and anyway, I feel happier if I am always with my camels.
But I wasn’t going to argue this time. Besides, I had looked at the map; I knew there was another well nine km South West of where we were, and this one definitely had water –we had spoken to nomads the day before who had watered their camels there. In the back of my mind I did calculations and figured that (given I didn’t know the exact location of the well Ali was heading too) if anything went wrong, I could make the other well on half a litre of water, if I had to. It sounds a bit over the top, but if I am going to be left on my own with limited water and no camels, I want to know that if anything goes wrong, I’m not going to be seriously stuck.
So off he went. And I lay down in the shade and felt pretty resentful, because after thirty km through heat and prickles all I really wanted to do was skull the entire half litre of water in one shot, and, of course, I didn’t feel safe doing that.
Luckily.
It was two pm when Ali left. At midnight, he hadn’t come back. Even if there had been no water at the first well, by my calculations, he could have made the second one and still been back by early evening. Something had to have gone wrong.
I ran through all the options – could he have done a runner with the camels? Didn’t add up –he’d left all his stuff in the camp and besides, the guy makes his living from his reputation as a trustworthy guide. He knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t die out there, which meant sooner or later I would turn up and cause trouble. No, he hadn’t done the dirty.
So that left a/ bandits had got hold of him and/or the camels; or b/ he’d had an accident. Both of which left my blood running cold, though for different reasons. To be brutally honest, I was just SO pissed off at the thought that less than 400km from my first big milestone, some sod had taken off with my camels, and I wouldn’t make it; that thought galled me more than anything else. But if he’d had an accident, it was doubly worse – not only were the camels gone, but I would need to a) find him, and b)find a way to take him back to Nema (nooooooo!!!!!).
The only thing keeping me sane was that the night was cloudy – I figured that meant that if he had got stuck in the dark, he would be unable to actually find his way without decent moonlight or stars to navigate, and that hence he might just have had to hole up somewhere for the night.
But it was cold comfort.
I kept the fire burning all night just in case. About three in the morning, I heard a large group of camels pass by, close, being driven hard; the nomads with them lit a brief fire to make tea on a neighbouring dune (I put mine out when I heard the camels) and then carried on. They were headed north, into bandit territory. Nobody legit drives camels hard over bad terrain on a moonless night, heading North. I started to get very tense indeed.
Dawn came and went, and then mid morning, and no Ali. Finally I had to make a decision; I wasn’t going to last too long with a couple of mouthfuls of water. I know, better than anyone, that you always, always stay put –but it is tough when you actually KNOW there is a functioning water supply an hour and a half away. I compromised that I would wait until late afternoon, until the sun dropped and to give him time to arrive, before I did anything. And then I did something I really hoped I’d never do, after a huge argument with my conscience, and called Dad to give him my GPS points and those of the well I was heading to.
It’s the call you really, really want to never make – the one where you say, look, yes, I am actually in the shit, you can’t do anything to help; but it would be irresponsible of me to take off without giving someone the location I am at and where I am headed.
And it is such a hard decision to make; I wondered even as I was dialing if I was being stupidly overdramatic. I wasn’t actually remotely worried about dying, what worried me was that something stupid would happen, like twisting an ankle or putting a foot down a rabbit hole, or the sat phone suddenly dying, and me being stuck simply because I was too proud to make a phone call.
But Dad was as calm and equitable as only someone can be who has not only raised teenage daughters, but also sailed solo halfway around the world; and, thank God, didn’t panic for a second.
I’d no sooner hung the phone up than Ali came riding over the hill – and not a second too soon.
We didn’t say too much; unloaded the camels and the full water cans, I made tea, and he finally said:
“thirty years ago I went to get water from a well and left my friend at the camp. I got stuck and didn’t come back for a day, and when I did, he had gone. They found him later, dead, two km from a well.”
His hands were shaking, and I suddenly felt so sorry for him –for all my cursing, imagine how it would have been for him, a guide, if he had managed to wind up with a lone, dead, female tourist, for whom he was supposed to be responsible?
Turned out the first well was dry. He turned back and went to the other one, just as I had thought; but he ran into what we worked out was the same mob I had heard the night before. Without it getting overly bolshy, they had suggested he do a deal with them for my camels, he had declined, they took off at a bit of a high pace with the unstated intention of unsettling my camels and hopefully acquiring them; in the ensuing melee, Ali took a tumble. Thank all the gods, my camels (of whom, I have to confess, I am actually getting exceedingly fond – NEVER thought I’d say that) were rock steady – Ali said as soon as he hit the ground they all stopped and just stood there, despite fifty odd camels racing about. He held on to them, and, after the crowd had passed, took off at speed for a nearby nomad’s tent to ask for help at the well, not wanting to be caught out alone again. Unfortunately he was pretty dazed after crashing down, and kept drifting in and out of consciousness. But he did get to the tent, the nomad came with him, and they got water. The nomad wanted him to stay in the tent for the night, which had now fallen, but Ali said his brother was back at the camp sick, and he had to get there. Thank goodness even sick, he had the presence of mind not to mention there was a lone female tourist camped up on the dunes (-something that had been worrying me).
So he had set off, only to run into the dark night; he was a long way North when he realised he must have overshot the camp, and lay down to sleep instead. It took him all of the following morning to backtrack and find the camp again.
I know this is a long story. But it was a really interesting, revealing experience for me; firstly because I think I realised, for the first time, that I am at home enough now here to feel comfortable –I was vaguely surprised to realise that I wasn’t scared, just seriously annoyed at the possibility I had lost my camels and hence my walk. I realised that without consciously thinking about it, I knew where I could get water, knew there were a few tents nearby and that I could find them, and knew also that I had stuff I could trade for a couple of camels to get me out of there. I guess I realised that I have learned enough to get by. But secondly, it made me think very seriously about making those final phone calls. I don’t know that I would do anything differently again; but maybe, next time, I’d wait until the very moment I KNEW I had to walk.
But, most importantly and relevantly, it made Ali understand exactly WHY I am obsessive about water. It isn’t, as I had kept on saying to him, that Ididn’t trust HIM; it’s that I don’t like leaving things to the last minute. It’s a bit of the boy scout thing: be prepared. If I had been stuck on that dune with twenty litres of water, I wouldn’t have given two hoots; I’d have camped up for a week and thoroughly enjoyed the rest, and just hoped that Ali would turn up sooner or later. You might laugh and think I’m exaggerating, but it’s actually true. I guess after day or two I’d get tense, but with water and my supplies, I’d be absolutely fine for at least a week, more like three, and by then, every nomad in the region would have turned up and be searching for Ali. I just don’t like being vulnerable.
So, a little chastened but with greater appreciation in the other, we carried on.
And look – despite the prickles (which really were trulybloodyawful) we had a really, really good time. Ali had a wonderful talent for knowing exactly where we would find a good dune amongst all the prickle country to camp on, so every night found us a truly lovely camp, on stark white, clean sand, great eating for the camels all around. Somehow in the aftermath of the water episode I discovered that my confidence had taken a huge boost, and it made me run my camp better –the best I ever have, I think. It was made easier too, by it being a long haul – 23 days gave me the time to really get my routine straight. Not that I hadn’t before –but this time, I was doing it all –Ali was there strictly in the capacity of guide and good laugh. But he was so worth it, incredibly interesting, and knowlegdable about the history, tribes, and desert in general. He even taught me a bit of Tamashek – although I think I’ll stick to my limited Arabic for now.
Best of all, here in Tomboctou, he has a legion of family and friends. Some are looking after my camels, and one of them will be my guide on the next stretch, past Gao to Menaka. I am taking a few days off here, though, as I have one seriously manky prickle infested foot, and am also waiting (yet again) for laptops and things to be sorted out (we fervently hope and pray – -without a great deal of confidence).
One thing that is a bit funny – I made it kind of a rule that I always go to the wells now, with Ali; but my compromise is that if we have made camp, then I have done my km for the day, and I get to ride. So now I actually look forward to going to get water, because I get to perch up on my swag on Bolshysod, and trot about like the Queen of Sheba. It makes for a pleasant change and gives me something to laugh about.
I have finally made it to Tomboctou. I can’t quite believe it; I am more than a third of the way through my desert crossing, and have put one of the hardest stretches behind me. I have learned more in the last three months than I did in all the time I walked previously. It has been incredibly tough – the hardest thing I have ever done, by far, both the walk and the logistical side of things –but I guess that just makes arriving here all the more rewarding. I sat up on a dune last night and looked at the lights that I would walk into this morning, and I felt incredibly triumphant; I wanted to throw my fists in the air and scream “I did it! I did it!” – but it would have scared the shit out of the camels, and Ali would have enquired why my zerfal was jumping up and down.
So instead I am going to limp out of here and go to the one bar, and by myself a cold beer. I am going to toast myself quietly in a place where no-one has any idea who I am, how I got here, or what I went through to make it. I am going to remember every day that I had to cut my way thorough shoulder height prickle bush with the machete, and every nomad who looked at me in aghast amazement and said “but why don’t you ride?” and I am going to laugh at the memory of me gritting my teeth and saying I-don’t-ride-the-camels, and of how the same mantra went through me head every day: I will walk every step between Nouadhib ou and Egypt…
And then I will totter around to get Ali, and we will have a drink or two, and cackle about our zerfals and how happy they are now that we can both enjoy our own particular zigzags, and then – my lord, and then, I am going to close my door, get into bed, and sleep, for at least twenty four hours.
Cheers, and apologies to the ADD types (Tom Mangan) who are ready to die or exhaustion at this point.