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..)

The Night of Destiny

This afternoon  I am writing on the 13th, last  and most difficult chapter of the memoir I am preparing about my life in Mali. I am downloading the parts of my blog DjenneDjenno to do with Keita's last year and trying to write about it. 

I was looking at the section which describes Keita and me together in Djenne under the stars on the Night of Destiny... and just then  there was a message on my phone- it was from Halimatou in Timbuktu who told me that tomorrow they are not working because it will be a national holiday in Mali.   Tonight is the Night of Destiny....

"When  the faithful break the fast at sunset on the 27^th day of Ramadan : (Laylatul-Qadr : Night of Destiny) a feast is prepared for those who have the means in order to sustain themselves for a vigil and prayer throughout the night.  It is said that during this night Allah sends his angels out over  the world; every soul is counted and everyone’s destiny is decided for the coming year.

Keita and I sat in our garden last night while the prayers and recitations of the Koran drifted across from Djenné’s faithful. The sky was filled with the sparkling abundance of stars which fill the firmament on some nights in the rainy season when the air has been washed clean and all is bright. Maybe Allah’s Angel of Destiny passed and counted us too. But his decisions are not known to humans, Alhamdillulah…."

Djenne phone call

 I had a lovely call with the Djenne Manuscript Library today (above). I spoke with them all on WhatsApp: it felt as if I was back in Djenne. I wanted to know from my old friend and colleague Babou Toure,  whom I have chosen as the local manager of our project at the library, what the situation was. He had worried me yesterday with his message regarding an unusual amount of deaths. Babou is one of Djenne's 11  kintigi (neighbourhood chiefs) and keeps a check on all the births, deaths etc. for his Sankore neighbourhood. Here, below right he sits by his ancient home which houses the Wangara sacred well, through which legend has it that it is possible to communicate with Timbuktu. According to  Yelpha, the Imam of Djenne, and our erstwhile mutual colleague at the library the marabouts used this means of communication during the Jihadist siege of Timbuktu. A bit like ZOOM for those under siege from the Corona virus, perhaps,  just with some extra magic thrown in?

Babou, as the kintigi of Sankore has been busy recently at an extraordinary amount of funerals to which he is obliged to make an appearance. The deaths are normally the old and those that may have suffered from illness in any case, he now told me. He did not think it was corona virus, but instead he thought it was a result of the very excessive heat this year- the temperature hovers in the upper forties right now. And this is also the time of the dust storms- a hard time for the old, especially since there are no air conditioners to speak of in people's houses.
I was relieved to hear that he did not think it had anything to do with Covid 19. But then again, who knows? People die in Djenne and no one normally knows the cause of death...there is no way of finding out, even at the hospital, said Babou.
Here below in the library is the gentle Ousmane Yaro, our manuscript expert and a descendant of many generations of  Djenne poets and scholars. I spoke to him too. I miss them all...!
Have optimistically booked my return to Mali  on the first available Air France flight, which start again in July.

More tea?

Lonely, busy days...

 Yes, the days are lonely but full, which is why I don't get to write much now in this journal. Now it is soon two months since everything closed down...
I am approaching the last chapters in the memoir I have been writing about my life in Mali. It is going to be hard, because I will have to write about Keita's last days and death, so I am procrastinating... Have spoken to my great friend Kathy about the subject of procrastination. She is an artist- and another dear  friend, Lucy,  is a writer. They both agree that procrastination is the scourge of the creative process, but it is inevitable and everyone knows it and does it.
I know I have to sit down to write, and in fact I know I will enjoy it once I start, but I find what ever reason at hand NOT to do it. I found myself dusting behind the books on the book shelves yesterday. I then phoned Kathy and she said she had just been cleaning out the toothbrush holders.

 Boris has just announced some relaxation of the confinement rules. We are now allowed to go walking with ONE friend not from our household, as long as that person stays two metres away. Well, so what? Surely all single householders have been doing that anyway? I have often walked with friends at a distance, here below is dear David. If I hadn't done that I would probably have gone potty by now- or MORE potty.

I am  also attempting to reach out to rather ambitious new  horizons, and this includes learning Arabic with Youssouf- below-  who sends me  weekly lessons from Timbuktu. The projects still go on in both Djenne and Timbuktu under my distant direction and I have, optimistically, booked my flight for Bamako on the 8th of July. On the way I will pop into Amsterdam to see my dear friend Birgit, who was so important to the hotel and figures prominently in my memoir...

 The Malian official figures for Corona virus deaths stands at 39 this morning. But how accurate is that? Extremely hard to tell. I had a chilling message from Babou at the Djenne Manuscript Library yesterday which told me there were a lot of unexplained deaths in Djenne...


And what else? I continue to explore my new passion: cooking but sadly there is a  lack of people to feed here now...and to impress...nevertheless on the weekends I  treat myself to something special:
 The below is a couple of little octopus I picked up at the fish mongers in Golborne Road to prepare Leonardo's Sicilian grandmother's splendid recipe.  A scary thing to prepare an octopus of course. It looks at one quite accusingly as one is about to slice it up...

Eleven Years later...

This was the first time I met Keita's sons: Moussa to the left and Lassie the youngest...I was stopping in Segou  on my way to Djenne to close the hotel down temporarily- Keita was in a wheelchair and our world had collapsed in just a few weeks. We  were going to Casablanca for radio therapy for his spine- there was a small chance that he might get some movement back in his legs...

I am spending some of this isolation time trying to write about our life in Mali, the hotel and the whole strange and wonderful time. To write about Keita's illness is not easy, and I am finding my way through it by trial and error, I hope. There was always so many extremes-everything always felt like teetering on the brink of catastrophy while at the same time there was so much to laugh at- even at the most difficult times.
I spoke to Keita's sons yesterday- they are now in their late teens and suffering from the Malian situation- first a year of teachers' strikes just when Moussa was supposed to take his baccalaureat and now the schools are once more closed because of the Corona crisis.
There are not many cases known in Mali yet, and everyone is holding their breath- will Africa somehow be let off the hook? Or at least less badly affected? It is not yet possible to tell, but  there are some signs that it may be so. Today the Ministry of Health announced  144 cases so far in Mali with 13 deaths. This is about two weeks after the first known case. Of course there  may be many more that are not recorded, but since I am in touch almost daily with both Timbuktu and Djenne I would certainly know if there were a larger than normal mortality in either place.

Please let that Angel of Death pass over Mali and Africa lightly for once...

Strange Days

 Yesterday morning I ate the mango I picked on my last walk in Mali with Karen, on the 11th of March. It was hard and green then. The experiment worked and it ripened. To say that things look much different both in Mali and here today would be the understatement of the day...

Mali was able to boast  for a week or so that it was  the last bastion of uninfected Africa, but  has now joined its neighbours and has 18 reported cases  of Covid19, but not any deaths as yet. The diplomats and other expats are being evacuated back to their own countries which all have many more reported cases.  The underlying idea  must be that to catch the disease in Mali would be disastrous should one need respirators or intensive care.
Today Mali goes to vote in the legistive elections which have been postponed for two years for security reasons. Some have now questionelad the wisdom of having the whole population queuing up next to one another for hours at the polling booths in the current state of affairs when the government are at the same time telling people to try and stay at home and keep away from each other... and the opposition leader Soumi (Soumaila Cisse) has been kidnapped on the 25th of March in the Timbuktu area, most probably by Amadou Koufa's  Macina group. His URD party nevertheless wanted to press ahead with their leader in absentia and with no communication received from him.

In London we are all told to stay in of course, and we do, listening to the ambulances passing on the streets below and tuning in to the press conferences and gloomy news. We hold onto the jealously guarded possibility we have of going for one walk a day. This walk takes me to Holland Park, which I am discovering in all its springtime glory: a romantic tumbledown  sanctuary where nature is carefully manipulated into fooling us that we are lost in a mysterious fairy tale forest where anything could happen..

 And there is the wonderful Kyoto garden where the Japanese have perfected their own variety of   strictly calculated formal informality.

A flight of  doves are enjoying a get-together amongst the apple blossoms in transgressive proximity..

While one of the  peacocks  is surveying the scene with some disapproval from his solitary perch ....

                                                                          

It seems like a long time ago...

Well, things are moving so fast here that it is impossible to say where we will stand tomorrow... this little film was taken by Jeremiah last Saturday at Pia and Henrik's jolly  and delicious lunch before we all went off to see the Marriage of Figaro at the English National Opera- something which would impossible today since all theatres and concert halls are closed...
 Pia and I are singing what we can remember of a famous Swedish folk song Visa Vid Midsommartid and Henrik is accompanying us on my father's somewhat cracked old violin! For another version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vvgv5tZeBg

Last night a depleted  Dante group did meet up here, but we were missing a few very important members so it all rather fell apart and we ended up watching Jeeves and Wooster instead to cheer ourselves up...
We came to a decision regarding the groups continuation during this time of trial.. We will put the difficult (and in my opinion frankly, boring...) last part of the Paradiso on the shelf for a while, and start meeting once a week for as long as it is allowed. The new reading matter will be LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA.  For those in the group who want to stay at home they can still contribute by sending in recordings of themselves reading or commenting or emails with their chosen sections of the chapter we are reading- next Wednesday the first chapter...some will still want to come here, but will they be allowed to, or will the police start to enforce measures to keep people in?

I am still going to my gym for my afternoon swim, at least tody..I am still planning a Sunday lunch here this Sunday, but there is no doubt is is all closing in on us... Tomorrow by this time we may be ordered to lock down. People are out buying groceries to prepare for the lock down which seems inevitable.. The schools are closing this Friday.
Unprecedented, strange times of course...

but Hey! it will be OK!
and here, again courtesy of Jeremiah who just sent it to me, is 
A LETTER FROM F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, QUARANTINED IN 1920 IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE DURING THE SPANISH INFLUENZA OUTBREAK.
Dearest Rosemary,
It was a limpid dreary day, hung as in a basket from a single dull star. I thank you for your letter. Outside, I perceive what may be a collection of fallen leaves tussling against a trash can. It rings like jazz to my ears. The streets are that empty. It seems as though the bulk of the city has retreated to their quarters, rightfully so. At this time, it seems very poignant to avoid all public spaces. Even the bars, as I told Hemingway, but to that, he punched me in the stomach, to which I asked if he had washed his hands. He hadn’t. He is much the denier, that one. Why, he considers the virus to be just influenza. I’m curious of his sources. The officials have alerted us to ensure we have a month’s worth of necessities. Zelda and I have stocked up on red wine, whiskey, rum, vermouth, absinthe, white wine, sherry, gin, and lord, if we need it, brandy. Please pray for us. You should see the square, oh, it is terrible. I weep for the damned eventualities this future brings. The long afternoons rolling forward slowly on the ever-slick bottomless highball. Z. says it’s no excuse to drink, but I just can’t seem to steady my hand. In the distance, from my brooding perch, the shoreline is cloaked in a dull haze where I can discern an unremitting penance that has been heading this way for a long, long while. And yet, amongst the cracked cloudline of an evening’s cast, I focus on a single strain of light, calling me forth to believe in a better morrow.