Word: bers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...manuscripts has filtered out over the past few years, another group of visitors has begun arriving: antiques collectors and dealers looking to snap up rare and valuable treasures at bargain prices. Locals say the number of collectors has increased markedly over the past year. The village of Ber, an hour's drive from Timbuktu across the blazing sand and past boys leading donkeys that haul spindly thorn branches home for firewood, might seem remote and protected. But when I arrived there in May, collectors had recently visited in search of manuscripts, according to locals. "Since April, people have descended...
Preserving the documents in normal times is not easy: a flood flattened one house in Ber last October, obliterating more than 700 manuscripts. Mahmoud says his family's collection of thousands of manuscripts include many with termite damage. One of his sons, Omar Ag Mohammed, shows me about 30 of the books, which are kept stashed in a rickety wooden closet in his small house. The most cherished volumes are not here, but buried in the desert. "We use ashes to protect them from the termites," he tells me. "Then we build a dome on top of them...
...real threat comes from people - both outsiders and insiders. Ber might at first seem unchanged by modern life. Tuareg traders still arrive on camel, bearing giant bricks of salt which they transport across the Sahara for weeks - just as traders did centuries ago when the area's manuscripts were originally written. In Mahmoud's mind, too, local attitudes remain unchanged. Locals remain fiercely distrustful of outsiders, he says, including Mali's government in Bamako, with which locals have been at odds for years. Many people still jealously guard family heirlooms as a tangible form of security. "We won't sell...
...brisk trade in Obama T-shirts, buttons and posters. Obama love reaches even remote communities with no electricity or television. One day in May, a driver took me 30 miles (50 km) into the Sahara Desert from the northern Mali town of Timbuktu. There in the tiny village of Ber, he unfurled from his trunk a rolled-up poster of Obama smiling under the slogan "Change we can believe in." "It's the most important thing I have," he said, as a group of mostly nomadic Tuareg tribesmen gathered to admire his prized possession. (See the top 10 attempts...
...sweeping views of the Pacific, Hotel La Mariposa in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica, is a popular destination (satisfied guests include TIME.com's deputy photo editor), with rooms starting at $150. You can go zip-lining through the rain-forest canopy, sport fishing or whitewater rafting. Not an über-outdoorsman? Then head down to the beach, order cocktails at the hotel's three pools or take a free shuttle to the crown jewel of the region: Manuel Antonio National Park, where the jungle is brimming with howler, white-faced and squirrel monkeys. Try a guided hike to get the most...