Written in the Sand

is the title  of the article that Anthony Sattin wrote for Christie's magazine after his visit to Djenne last year:
pages 24-27.http://www.christies.com/zmags ?ZmagsPublishID=4a3dd2e8
It is a lovely article and my vanity is being pleasantly massaged, since it is almost unheard of that  I personally appear in  an article about the  manuscript  projects...

I think of last year with some nostalgia- the last six months at the hotel were full of happy times and visits by people I thought would never make it to the hotel:  Anthony came in the company of my old friend Nicholas and his drone flying camera man  Axel - their mission for surveillance of cultural heritage sites ran into trouble from the local authorities- but Nicholas came back in the company of  Alice Walpole, the British Ambassador (who is now in Baghdad) and two charming security staff. Then to my delight came my dear friend Eva Emneus, the Swedish ambassador in the company of Swedish UN officers.  There was also a visit from the US Ambassador Paul Folmsbee and his wife I believe, but they were looked after by my staff when I was away...
Then there were  Elisabet and Henri, the film making team who are now cutting an editing the film they made  on their two visits to the hotel during its final months. 
 I am sure I must have forgotten someone and something. It was certainly a rich few months before the end...

I am now trying to put in place my up coming Mali trip- UNESCO are being difficult about the length of time I need to spend in Timbuktu- they are worried about safety and they are right to worry, of course... But the digitizing material is being sent from Minnesota  this week, and we are setting up a new studio in Timbuktu- at the Al Wangara library, which is connected to the Sidi Yahia Mosque.
I need to do interviews for new staff and a million other things. We will follow on swiftly, inchallah, with the Al Aquib Library which is attached to the Sankore Mosque. Once that has been done, our project ELIT will be digitizing the manuscripts of the three libraries which are connected to the three most ancient Mosques of Timbuktu, built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries : we are already working on the Imam Essayouti library of the Djingareyber Mosque.  These libraries, together with their Madrasas make up what used to be called the University of Timbuktu. 

Now, this is something I am finding really exciting. There is a  pleasing symmetry and a symbolism in that these three venerable  libraries  have remained in Timbuktu and that they have asked for  our help. They are now finally going to be digitized and the fact that the work will be carried out  in Timbuktu itself is an act of defiance and hope.