Mission Accomplished

Sitting by the Christmas tree in the vast Swedish Residence all alone. I am leaving for the airport and Europe in an hour. Eva has left already a couple of days ago, but kind as always she allowed me to stay.

I arrived from Timbuktu yesterday courtesy of the UN flight. It has been an intense month here. One always has the feeling that at any moment the precarious structure that has been built up over the last ten months with our library project in Timbuktu could collapse like a house of cards. I had some time in Timbuktu before my collegues arrived: Father Columba who was with me when we were evacuated in August, and this time also my friends Dmitry Bondarev and his wife Klara: he a linguist and manuscript expert who has been associated with the work in the Djenne Manuscript Library. Before they arrived, our new staff had time to air their views to me. I was struck by the difference between the Timbuktu staff and those in Djenne. These are much more demanding, and to be fair, are also much better educated. They have worked well and after the difficult beginning they are now well on their way and have digitized more than 300 manuscripts already. I was bombarded by requests for pay rises, for swivelling office chairs, for refrigerators and mopeds and, curiously, for MILK. There is some sort of idea  that the manuscripts harbour bacteria and dust that can only be counteracted by the drinking of milk.

I tried my best to explain that when a project is put together the budgets are fixed and that there is not much lea way for the increase of salaries. Certain things we could help with such as the milk request and perhaps the refrigerator. They became quite stroppy with me, and I couldn’t help thinking of the time I had interviewed them in July, when they were so keen to get their first job that they made no demands at all. As far as the pay rises went, I was pleased to be able to refer them to my collegues who were to arrive shortly...

The negociations that followed when Columba and Dmitry arrived were tough for other reasons also, and there arrived a moment when I needed to bring out the spectre of the project being closed down, but in the end I believe we rode out the storm and we came out on the other side with our feathers ruffled but intact. We made a courtesy visit to Imam Essayouti , an experience which  Fr. Columba describes  as similar to  having an audience with the Pope or the Dalai Lama. It is true, he has a great aura.

We also visited the Imam  of the Sankore Mosque (below) and his family library the Al Aquib, an important library which remains in Timbuktu.

Nothing is easy and everything is extreme in Timbuktu and regarding this project. To get on the UN flight is never certain, culture being Priority number 5 on the list of importance. And yesterday I was on standby only. Fortunately there is my friend Joau, the Spanish UN employee who has the last word at the airport on who gets on a plane and who doesn’t... and somehow he always manages to squeeze me on in the end. 

Back to London now. A different world... I have received continual emails about a Christmas dinner I am invited to in London. These messages keep talking about turkeys and Christmas trees and what games we shall play and films we shall watch, whether there should be Christmas presents (of course!) and whatnot. I have had difficulties  relating to these problems but no doubt the Spirit of Christmas will descend on me once I put my bandaged foot on English soil again...