Africa- Blog IX

Timbuktu
Written August 16, 2008

After I arrived in Mali and met with the Minister of Health, toured several facilities, and completed diplomacy speeches and media interviews in the capital city of Bamako, I wanted to get into the Northern portion of the country. Specifically, I was interested in the remote Northern region which has long been viewed as a safe harbor for Al Qaeda.

The only significantly populated area of this region is Timbuktu. Yes, it does exist. In fact, Timbuktu, at one time, was a cultural capital in the same league as Rome, Athens, Jerusalem, and Mecca. In the thirteenth century, it was a thriving trade center in Africa and remained such for nearly two centuries. Timbuktu began to fade because of geopolitical and trade shifts.

Two characteristics make the area surrounding Timbuktu attractive to terrorists: remoteness and lack of government resources to provide any significant presence. Our government has been attempting to help the Mali government in that regard. It is obviously in our mutual interests.

We flew about two hours on a United Nations aircraft and were met at the Timbuktu airport by a long line of community leaders. The length of the line appears to be an expression of the importance they place on the visit. It was a nice expression of their admiration for the United States. Each of the community leaders spoke appreciation for the way our country helps them. The welcoming party ceremoniously wrapped our heads in desert turbans, which I will say felt good as we walked around in the unbelievable heat.

The leader of the welcoming delegation was the new Governor of Timbuktu, Mamadou Mangara. Governor Mangara is a Colonel in the Mali military and former aid to President Amadou Toumani Toure. He has received extensive military training in the United States, speaks reasonably good English and has big ambitions to build the region.

Governor Magara and I toured a health center facility called Centre de Sante Coommunautaire, in Kabara, Timbuktu, just a few miles from a major city. The people were proud of the center and appreciated its presence in their community. They had obviously worked hard to qualify for it. The center reminded me of one of our Indian Health Service clinics in Alaska, only substantially less well equipped. They didn’t have electricity, let alone medical equipment. The only device I saw was a kerosene-powered refrigerator to keep vaccines.

The center had a medical technician who was trained to follow diagnosis charts that hung in his office. There was a nurse midwife, who last year delivered 160 babies among the population of nearly 4,000 they provide care for. The center also had health workers who proactively do out-reach, but I was not able to talk with them. Malaria is the biggest challenge they deal with, the technician told me.

After touring the clinic, I had the equivalent of a town meeting under a tent, attended by several hundred people. This is probably a good time to mention the most memorable physical characteristics of the area: heat and sand. This is the desert. It is blisteringly hot. The day we were there was cool- only 110 degrees. When my team arrived in advance to prepare for my visit, it was 126 degrees. Everything is made of, and surrounded by, sand. The homes and buildings are made of sand bricks, and the roads are compacted sand.

A woman speaking at town meeting in Timbuktu.

At the town meeting, we talked about the aspirations people have for their community. The main two are electricity for the clinic and a water system. A woman stood and made a passionate speech about the worries she had about the water. The more she spoke, the more the crowd of her fellow villages responded. By the time she had finished, she had worked the group to a pitch. It was interesting to see, and it helped me understand local dynamics.

One of the more important meetings I held in Timbuktu was with four members of an Army Special Forces unit that had been deployed into the area. They showed me a map of their 1,200 mile route through the sand, moving from small settlement to settlement. They described how desperately the people needed and wanted health care and the warmth with which they had been received. We talked candidly about the influence of various terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, who seek cover in the area. These organizations provide money, equipment and other needed assets in exchange for locals leaving them alone while they train and organize.

We are not alone in recognizing the need to be paying attention to these remote areas of the world. I discovered that while we send Special Forces units into the area twice a year, there are two teams of Cuban doctors and medical personnel working the desert year round.

In areas of Africa like Timbuktu, the people are essentially without government. They don’t have the resources to provide services, and the people have far more confidence in other institutions, like the church. I met with the leader of the church, The Grand Imam Abderrahmane Ben Essayouti, for about an hour. He is a very pleasant man who is clearly the most influential person in that part of Mali. We talked about the importance of the church teaching good health hygiene, like the use of bed nets for malaria prevention.

We had a good laugh together. The Grand Imam said, “most Americans don’t think this place really exists.” I showed him a text-message exchange I had with my mother about 15 minutes earlier, when I had greeted her from Timbuktu. She wrote back, “the real Timbuktu?”

At the conclusion of our meeting, the Grand Imam and I walked through neighborhoods of Timbuktu to the Djingery Ber Mosque, where he leads the community in prayer five times a day. The mosque was built in 1327. He walked our group through the mosque and then showed us a small library the United States had donated, which houses important Islamic documents. It was clear how much it meant to them that we had made the preservation possible.

One of my favorite parts of the day was walking through the neighborhoods on my way to and from the Grand Imam’s home. It was a chance to see up-close what the lives of the people looked like. We passed mothers caring for their children, men working to repair their sand brick homes, children playing games and curiously watching these strange visitors. Despite the scorching temperatures, the blowing winds, and the remoteness; it was home to them.

Comments

Secretary Leavitt,
Thank you for visiting the wonderful people of Africa. I travel every two years to work in the villages.
Thank you too for your recent work in slowing down the abortions in our country. You will be blessed for your courageous acts.
A North Dakota Grandma

Posted by: Connie | November 20, 2008 at 10:24 AM