Word: deserts
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...Timbuktu; the journey required days of travel up the malaria-infested Niger River. Today, dozens of tourists arrive several times a week on small commercial planes from Bamako, the capital of the former French colony. Timbuktu has become a favorite jumping-off point to explore the world's biggest desert. As the modern world rushes in, attitudes among Timbuktu's youth - the generation who will take custody of all those precious manuscripts - is changing fast. Entertainment in Timbuktu these days includes sitting under the stars watching European football matches on satellite television. "This generation has the Internet, they see movies...
...Rush to Save the Treasures Sitting at a junction of the Sahara's historic commercial routes on a lazy bend of the Niger River, Timbuktu used to be a hectic crossroads where gold traders heading north met herders and salt merchants trekking south across the desert. The city's lucrative trade fueled Mali's empires as well as a rich ethnic blend of black Africans and Mediterranean people, and an intellectual ferment with dozens of Koranic schools. Refugees from the Inquisition in Spain brought their libraries with them, and soon began writing and buying more books. Timbuktu's literary output...
...pictures of the Festival au Desert in Mali...
...Isolation The flurry of projects and interest has boosted Timbuktu's tourism trade. The driver who meets me at the tiny airport introduces himself (in perfect English) as "Jack - like Jack Bauer [from television's 24]." Crowds of Europeans converge every January to attend the musical Festival of the Desert in nearby Essakane. And young locals - armed with French and English - ply their trade as guides for adventure tour groups. (See pictures of the Festival au Desert in Mali...
...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, so we know where to find them...