travel

Two Wheels to Timbuktu

Across Mali on a Bicycle.

‘You see, they are leaving their children a desert’ – said Melegue pointing at black expanses of burnt land and badly cut down trees, irreversibly damaged, near Saboussire in northern Mali.  Saboussire is the typical Sahelian village: isolated, self-sufficient, fully dependent on a good year’s harvest of millet and threatened by an encroaching desert – the Sahara – which is believed to creep southwards at the alarming rate of at least 1km per year. Gradually, for the last week and for the 300 km that separate Saboussire from Bamako, the capital, I had been witnessing from my bicycle saddle a deteriorating environment; balder, yellower and dustier, the more I approached the Mauritanian border. I kept asking myself why would anybody bother making an effort to live here. Was the Sahel was always meant to be part of the desert and thus the Sahara was now reclaiming it?

Africa’s Sahel (Arabic for shore) is a transitional zone, about 5000 km long and 300 km wide, between the arid Sahara desert and the belt of humid savannahs to the South. In the Sahel, global shifts of moist equatorial masses (Inter Tropical Convergence) create seasonal floods and droughts - 1973-74 and 1984-85 being particularly severe. Most of Northern Mali is covered by the Sahara desert. South of the desert, there is a semi-arid band one and a half times the size of the UK : this is Mali’s Sahel zone. In Mali’s Sahel, desertification is a reality. Potentially productive land is turned into desert by a combination of damaging land-use practices, lack of environmental education and climatic changes. The effects of recent droughts have been amplified by unsuitable farming patterns and an increase in livestock numbers. Deforestation also plays a decisive role in Mali’s desertification. 90% of the country’s energy needs come from the burning of firewood or charcoal. Every village along main roads and tracks sells bundles of freshly cut firewood. For the locals there is no choice: it is a way to generate income in a country where 70% of the population lives on less than 65p a day. Conservation is not a priority.

It was to have an insight into Mali’s environmental problems that I had set out from Bamako on my bicycle as part of a project funded by the Millennium Commission. During those 1200 km cycling on sandy roads I realised that in Mali’s Sahel people lead as dignified a life as it is possible in such harsh surroundings. They also have a willingness to put the words ‘sustainability’ and ‘conservation’ into practice. Melegue Kone, Stop Sahel’s co-ordinator in Northwest Mali makes a point: ‘They want to improve things…but they haven’t got the means or the know-how..’

Stop Sahel’s work, financed in part by Bristol-based Tree Aid, is making a difference in Saboussire. Sokona’s electric-green garden contrasts with the drab environment outside its protective fence. Sokona’s garden is alive thanks to a concrete well built and paid for by Stop Sahel. In a country where between 80% and 90% of the population are subsistence farmers, a £2000 well is out of the question. To put it in a nutshell: most people have no income-generating activities whatsoever. Stop Sahel diversify their activities catering to each village’s specific needs, from well building to tree planting. Locals are encouraged to contribute to reforestation by planting trees donated by international charities. Acacia Albeda is a favourite among Sahelian trees; a nitrogen-fixing plant that provides naturally poor soil with much needed nutrients as well as preventing soil erosion by wind and seasonal rains.

The long-lasting historical conflicts between pastoralists, who make up to 10% of the total population, and agriculturalists, are one of Mali’s chief environmental problems. Bambara, agriculturalist people who are the largest ethnic group in Mali, have to co-exist with semi-nomadic Peuls and Moors who seasonally visit the outskirts of Bambara villages in their yearly migration from the Mauritanian borders. The latter need Bambara’s wells and the grazing land around their villages for the survival of their cattle. Bambara farmers welcome the newly arrived cattle dung that enriches the exhausted soils. One or other of the groups very often upsets this symbiotic balance. Land is frequently burnt to make space for crops, to the dismay of pastoralists who see the remaining grazing land gradually disappearing. Herders in turn cut down trees and scrub to feed their animals, to the desperation of farmers who need the trees to protect their fields against sand-laden winds like the harmattan.

Traditional trades are no longer sustainable, according to local NGO workers. People need to diversify. This shift in historical occupations is nowhere more obvious than in Timbuktu. Which Timbuktu though? Bruce Chatwin made a distinction between the historical “tired caravan city where the Niger bends into the Sahara; the meeting place of all who travel by camel and canoe” and the Timbuktu “of the mind”…the back of beyond. Today, Timbuktu is neither the end of the world nor the enigmatic and charismatic town that flourished in the 15^th and 16^th centuries as a result of the gold, salt and slave trades. There is little left from the wealth of the past. It is just another Sahelian town, dusty, decaying and as someone said…..somehow bidimensional, where tourists come for just one night only to have their passports stamped by the local police, thus proving that ‘they have been there’.

I went to Timbuktu to meet Mr. Yattara and his colleagues from ARDIL, a local NGO, funded mainly by European money, that is determined to turn the desert green again. However, their projects are not free from controversy. One of the favourite trees among ARDIL’s programme is the eucalyptus. According to local experts the eucalyptus grows rapidly (albeit needing extraordinary amounts of water) and can be cut in 3 or 4 years in order for its wood to be sold as roofing timber, at 500 FCFA per metre. The tree will not die though, it will grow again thus fulfilling its dual economic and environmental role. These reforestation schemes are not favourably seen by some international organisations, advocates of treeless roof building.

However, the most revealing example of local people’s mentality change lies among the Tamasheq (Touareg) community in the outskirts of Timbuktu, actively involved in ARDIL’s projects. Tamasheq (as Touareg people refer to their ethnic group) are undertaking farming practices under the supervision of ARDIL. The Tamasheq from Bariz, just outside Timbuktu, are optimistic about their future after their very first crop. A UNICEF-funded solar pumping station guarantees enough water supply. The local school children are responsible for irrigating trees donated by Tree Aid and maintaining the vegetable garden behind the school building. It must not pass unnoticed that this is a remarkable achievement for an ethnic group who have always been nomadic and slavers – Bela people have traditionally been their slaves and are still amongst the poorest people to be found in Mali.

Similar challenges face Mali’s Dogon people. The ‘Dogon Country’, as it is internationally known, encompasses the districts of Koro, Bandiagara and Bankass. A population of approximately half a million people live in an area geographically divided into three distinctive zones: a 200km-long escarpment with an average height of 180 metres, the plateau above the escarpment; and the sandy plains at the bottom. Dogon villages, many of them built half-way up the cliffs, with their conical thatched roof huts, have a ‘fairy tale’ aura to them. However, there is little idyllic in a place that sees the encroaching sand dunes from the nearby plains advance inexorably, reducing the thin strip of fertile land between the sands and the villages. Walking around the picturesque sand dunes the annoying cram-cram announces itself as an unequivocal sign of imminent desertification. The cram-cram, a low tussock found in Sahelian environments, usually marks the boundaries between arid and semi-arid ecosystems. The cram-cram is abundant in between the few trees that somehow manage to slow down the encroaching sand dunes on their way to the village.

The heat was unbearable in Tereli in the middle of the day. Even a well-known British TV production team found it far too hot to do any work in the afternoon. The locals, thirsty for income in a subsistence-based economy, welcome foreigners and have embarked in an industry which is all but changing Dogon life forever. The village chief’s compound had an assorted collection of crafts for sale at an irresistible price for the short-term visitor, who, as many of us, cannot tell an ancient relic from a genuine modern craft. As a result of this there has been a gradual exploitation of Dogon’s cultural legacy. Dogon traditions are also suffering from the high number of tourists in the area. The Mask Dance, which probably is the most idiosyncratic representative of Dogon’s culture and beliefs, is becoming not much more than a ‘theatrical representation’ for an eager audience of visitors…..provided they pay the going rate. Anyone can have a dance organised for 50000 FCFA (£50). It might not seem a huge amount of money for an event that involves hard-learned skills. However, as Mamadou Kone, Director of Jeunesse et Developement in Bamako put it, ‘ in Mali if you earn £50 a month people respect you’. £50 is the average salary of a semi-professional person and twice the monthly wages of an unskilled worker. How can we be fair with local people when paying for something that involves training and unique skills without upsetting the local economy?

After six weeks and almost 1200 km on my bicycle my trip was almost over.  However, I had only staerted to understand the reality of the Sahelian country; the complex and understated relationships between peoples from very different ethnicities and their natural environments. I had also only begun to be fully aware of our responsibility as visitors to be adequately informed before we travel so that we can act responsibly in the host country. The world is shrinking they say. The Sahel is just seven hours away from Europe. We can ‘hop’ to the Sahel and back during a half-term week holiday and have enough time for a city break in the Mediterranean on the way. The developing world is becoming more and more approachable and with it a risk is clearly arising: the quicker and easier it becomes to get to places like Mali’s Sahel, the further away from understanding its reality the visitor is likely to be.

Maybe the world is not shrinking after all.