Timbuktu

 A picture from Timbuktu two years ago. I am with Halimatou, the local manager of our project ELIT. We are standing by the Djingareyber Mosque.
Halimatou lost her father two days ago. Yesterday she lost her grandmother. The Essayouti family are in mourning, and I wrote an email of condoleance. I received a message back from Ben Essayouti, Halimatou's uncle:

"Yes, Sophie, he has died like so many others in Timbuktu, carried off these last weeks by the Corona virus which is killing more here than in Bamako, and which makes more victims than the armed Islamists here. The population is traumatised  in Timbuktu, the hospital and aid centres are saturated without any adequate equipment. Every moment people arrive to announce the death of yet another relative or close one. Some die in silence at home without medical assistance and are buried without any ceremony.  Tents are installed in the courtyard of the hospital with pitiful means  ...some of the  sick are fleeing the hospital and mixing with the population. It is an atmosphere of the end of the world. Columba should make a requiem for the dead and the orphans.."

This was all totally new to me- no one has  mentioned anything at all! The official figures for Mali are still very low. Today the Ministry of Health announce 70 deaths so far  in Mali. This is clearly not a correct figure.
And Djenne too- perhaps Babou's fears are correct? All those dead in Djenne- are they from Corona too, after all?
My old friend the neurologist Dr. Guida Landoure confirmed to me today my fears that the figures published are wildly under estimated. He also let me know his frustration with Ben Essayouti's message to me which I had passed on- the Essayouti family are in charge of the Djingarey Ber Mosque, which holds public prayers, like the other mosques in Timbuktu and elsewhere. This must stop- but is that not too late? Is it possible to impose any sort of isolation in Mali where people live close together in large porous families? 
Ala k'an Kissi...
 (MayAllah protect us..)