BOB HOLMAN

Last Sunset, Timbuktu

 I interview Lamont about Ted Joans. We are sitting on sofas in the middle of the desert. Bea is taking a long shot. The young man in a ski parka is bringing us our tea. Lamont is answering my question,

OK, if Ted was a surrealist—

What is surrealism?

Sana is saying good-bye. He won the sword vs stick dance and taught us an Ali Farka Toure song. He used Lamont’s cane like a ringmaster at the well. He is, like Laura described him in her letter, a tree planter. He knows the scientific names for all the species. (How surrealist is that?) Lamont wants to know if you can just get the material and build a house in the desert – who owns the desert? First, says Sana, you must build a well. Then you plant the trees.

Bea is shooting a mirror in the middle of the desert. We borrowed it from Sana, where Bea shot his Tabaski goat climbing the stairs. We send a postcard to Laura, signed by all of us, and Sana too. Lunch at the Poulet d’Or includes an interview with the chef Dedeo Maigre, whose luncheon, tukassou, boiled dough in sauce (think big African dumpling in cinnamon sauce) was totally M’yum-m’yum (Karamo’s compound nickname)! Dedeo believes in Timbuktu as a hometown village, nothing mysterious about it. After lunch, he pulls out a century-old tambour and plays a marvelous, wild, desert beat. Then his son takes over (www.timbuktumusicproject.com) and suddenly there’s a monster in the room. A scary mask, made out of a calabash of course, is dancing. It’s the nonmysterious but totally artistic, Dedeo behind the mask. Bea borrows the mask and shoots him through it.

We’re saying good-bye to Sana. He’s telling us that you can know someone for three days and it’s like you’ve always known them. And then, whoever they are, they always disappear. He has been offered three times to visit Europe and United States, but he only knows the desert and Timbuktu. They disappear, but they are still family. Ted Joans brought our family together. Now I’m an old cynic who plays with ideas as if they were words, working in all order, there’s always a punch line, LOL. But Sana Sibily opened up the mysteries of Timbuktu in a way that I understand. And believe. If it’s in the footage I’ll be happy. I want you to know this place. The end of the earth. The beginning of friendship. A mystery, a miracle, a story. Timbuktu.

Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/

Last Dreams in Timbuktu

Sana is going to let us scout his house. Good to have Abdul back —  we drive. Bea and Karamo hop out to follow Sana, I am slower and when I get out they’re gone. I ask Lamont where they went. He points across the street. I saunter into the compound, and when I see a woman with two children staring at me in surprise and fear I call out for Sana. Suddenly, a tough-looking guy steps out of the main house with a pistol. I say Je cherche Sana, je vous empris, and with a flick of his gun I get myself out of there. Next thing, he’s out on the street, sans pistol, and Abdul is trying to calm him. Sana comes out, tensions ease. I tell Lamont he almost got me shot. Sana says not to worry, “he is military man.” Seems like that’s good cause for worry to me.

This morning (December 8) is Tobaski, a major Muslim holiday. Lamont sees the military man cruise by the hotel in a truck marked Commissar Police. Bea calls her Mom in Sao Paulo to tell her about the nightmare she had last night, of a military takeover in Brazil. She helped an old woman over a bridge, basically carrying her. Everyone was calling the military “Crocodiles!” Her mother says not to worry – there will never be another military coup in Brazil. Because of the internet.

I am reading Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark, which posits an alternate universe where 9/11 didn’t happen and where the US is not in Iraq. Instead, there’s another civil war in the States. As always, ever-expanding writing enmeshed in great story. Please don’t kill the characters, kill the author! Etc. My headlight goes out, change batteries in light without light, man in the dark.

Over Tobaski breakfast, the same old instant Nescafe, powdered milk, round loaf of bread with butter and red fruit jam, I know something is different.

The grit is gone. How can there be a loaf of bread in Timbuktu sans sand? Must be time to head out. We’ll try for Dogon country tonight, but will probably end up at the crossroads in Douentza. Road conditions are impossible to learn in advance.

But then until last night we thought Tobaski would be two days from now, which is the date Papa Susso had told us, and we were looking forward to a Dogon el Eid (Arabic), Fete el Khabir (French). That turned our schedule around. Let me sleep in this morning. Anything could be going on in America. Last dreams in Timbuktu. 

Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/

Timbuktu

Timbuktu Bucks

It’s expensive here – dinner costs around $10, double the price of Dakar and Bamako. The jewelry hustlers are all over you all the time. And you understand it – a tourist arriving here is like Mali making a pact to export to Montenegro. It’s hard to get here: the pharmacist yesterday apologized for his lack of lip balm, and promised it would be on the next plane into town. Right. The only way to export your work is to get a tourist to carry it home. And the exchange rate is lower, too.

Big Day Shooting

Bea and I settle in for a Production Meeting and lay out a morning in town and afternoon with the Tuaregs. Sana introduces me to his brother, Sandi, who turns out to be his cousin, who turns out to be… etc. When Sana sees me looking at Bradt’s, he casually drops the news that it’s Sandi on a camel on the cover. Indeed.

Losing a Negotiation with the Tuaregs

No problem.

We go to the Tourist Office and shoot my passport getting the official Timbuktu stamp. Only took me thirty-five years. Shoot the outside of the 15^th Century Mosque that looks as much like Arizona as Timbuktu. Have a great conversation with Sana at the sacred Tim (well) of Madame Buktu, who lived alone but her well became the way station that became the stopover that grew into today’s Timbuktu. Karamo buys a homemade, tin-can mbira, and we have an impromptu jam ‘round the well. I fall in. It’s dry.

A Kilo of Salt

Buy a kilo of salt, one chunk, dug straight from the earth, two bucks. [NB - this purchase is destined to appear on the poster for LinkTV’s broadcasting of “On the Road.”] Stage the meeting of Sana and Bob at the Hotel Bouctou, another of the seemingly infinite number of places where Ted Joans lived. The owner, another friend of Ted’s, tells us he always stayed in Room 2. But we’d already shot in front of Room 1 – Ted’s number one room, according to Sana. Lunch, like all meals in Timbuktu, takes forever unless you’ve ordered in advance. Omelet clocks in at an hour and fifteen minutes. Last night we ordered chicken. We heard a squawk about half an hour later.

In the afternoon it’s Tuareg time – I ride a camel into town, Karamo and Lamont ride into desert. Bea and I scout the village – located in the midst of scrub and sand, a particularly unhappy piece of desert. Bea immediately asks for a dune, which Sandi conjures up and which totally makes the shoot. Camels, hypnotic music, the sword dance. Karamo sits in on kora. It’s decided professor Bob should ride his camel sans handler, which turns into a rich comedy of camel stubbornness and poet exhilaexasperation. The sun slides down. The women are wearing incredibly ornate silver headresses which mingle gorgeously with their deep indigo clothing. Bea requests a woman to dance. She moves away from her drum, settles on the earth, and subtly moves her hands. Waves of sand. An hourglass without the glass.

Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/

Timbuktu the Mysterious

Why we come to Timbuktu is a mystery. It’s the furthest away from everywhere if you’re speaking English. But there’s plenty of French, Bambara, Songhay, Peul (Fula), and Tamashek spoken here as well, more than English bien sur. But it’s only in English that we say, “It’s as far away as Timbuktu.

Mystery Tour Guide

Coincidence or fate? One reason we’re here is because US Black Beat poet Ted Joans, who died eight years ago, had a house here in the 60’s-70’s (rent $25/year, so the story goes). Laura Consiglia, his widow, had written us a letter if inspiration and info. One clue was the name Sana Sibily, a man who had put them up on his roof when they were last here, in the 80s. Coincidentally, the Bradt Guide to Mali (I like this British series, and so far as I know it’s the only guidebook to Mali – the Rough Guide to West Africa has an excellent chapter) mentions one Sana Sibily as a good contact for desert culture (Tuareg (the “blue people” – from indigo-dyed clothes, nomads of the Sahara) and great roots-rock Tinariwen).

So when I ask at the desk of La Colombe Hotel they say Of course, Sana Sibily, he likes to hang out at the dibiterie (barbecue) next door. He’s not there, but the dibiterie owner calls him, and ten minutes later I am approached by a big sweet face covered with a shocking blue atell (desert turban). His first words, “un ami de Ted Joans,” come complete with tears  – his good friend is my good friend, so we are immediate best friends. Say hello to the King of the Short Cut, the Tree Planter of the Desert, Sana Sibily, friend of Ted.

Where Ted Joans Lived

On the other hand, Sana doesn’t have a house in town, let alone a roof. He takes us to Ted’s house, but unlike Laura’s letter, there’s no good wooden door with brass details, the hallmark of old Timbuktu architecture – #22 111 St. (also known as Omore, Omo’s Street, in Djengeri-Ber), has a corrugated tin door. And the layout’s wrong. And the “good people” who were living here when Laura and Ted were here have morphed into a single, poor blind woman who appears to be 80. The photos of Ted that Sana raves over, promises to bring to us, which will be so great for the film, seem to  have been put in a suitcase that disappeared in the sand. The mysteries expand and contract with language difference – Sana’s English is focused and right off the tourist trek. On the griot trail, there’s a marvelous disconnect. Who’s whose what?

And meanwhile everywhere we go we get a back route tour of town that’s breathtaking, full of dailiness, mud brick buildings, open sewers, kids playing soccer. Sana books us for what turns out to be a terrific interview with the Director of Ancient Manuscripts, who, when prodded, takes us back to la tradition orale and a wonderful story of three stars colliding – one for salt, one for limestone, and the one in the middle, sand. Fine, warm sand.

Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/

Last Night on the Niger

It couldn’t be. But it looked like a rainstorm ahead. The river got choppy. Whitecaps appeared. The temperature dropped. The air turned to milk. I had Beatriz and Lamont start shooting and they shot for an entire tape, an hour. We were moving through memory. Inside a cloud. The trees along the river were shaking. It was the last night before Timbuktu.

The sun came down like an iron cover on a pot. Suddenly darker than dark. We huddled around the table for warmth – no food till new land. The Captain’s flashlight revealed nothing but swirling wisps of fog. The moon ghosted up, and the familiar two stars that have been her accompaniment on this trip, but otherwise the sky and river merged into a black tunnel. It was very late, we were very hungry, very cold, freezing, a few miles from the Sahara.

But the Muse calls. I turn on my headlight to jot some words. “Fermez la lumiere!” bellows the Captain. “Turn off your light! It’s dangerous!” “What’s the danger?” I reply, trying to get some perspective. Silence. Crocodiles? Hippos? Are we lost? I see a flashlight on the left shore. “A gauche!” I shout, half a joke, half hoping the Captain will heed my advice and pull us in to safe haven.

This is supposed to be the time to travel by water to Timbuktu – the river at its highest. Much of the year the trip is impossible – the Niger dries up as it bends (“le boucle,” the Buckle) south at the Sahara. Thirty years ago the Niger flowed through Timbuktu. Now it’s almost twenty kilometers away. Desertification for real.

But tonight the river’s height has changed the shoreline. The fog cloud has turned things around. The high water has caused some of the riverfront villages to be abandoned. Where can we put in for the night? Where is the shore? We cross the broad river, searching. Our jokes have subsided. For almost two hours the Captain stands at the prow, making small hand gestures to the man at the wheel. This way, that.

Suddenly we are ashore, a lonely sand spit, wind blowing mercilessly. The lone tree explodes in a cacophony of scolding and we name the place “Monkey Island.” As the crew sets up the tents, Karamo goes ashore to record the madness. It’s not monkeys but egrets, huddling themselves, reproaching us for invading their sorry dune.

We take dinner on the boat. Last night had been full of stories and imitations of each other.  Tonight,  our last night on the Niger, is full of tent-shaking monsters – grit teeth to stay on ground. Sand blowing everywhere, somehow getting inside the tents. Frantic dreams. By morning, my sandals, left outside,   must be dug out.

We break camp. Two tents blow into the Niger and are fished out with poles. We cast off at daybreak. We’re too cold and tired to shoot.

The blankets we’d bought in Niafunke became our outerwear. All we can do is make time downstream. We are promised a Tuareg village; the one we find is deserted. Filled with loneliness. Finally, late afternoon, we enter Timbuktu like most: tired, dusty, bumping along in an open bache (small truck), wrapped in rags.

Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/

Films w/in Films

Love that Bea. She also came up with a third movie this morning. OK, retracing memory as usual: we’re making a movie, “On the Griot Trail,” about Papa Susso and I searching for the essence of the oral tradition, the living meaning of the oral historians/musicians we call griots, as part of a larger project I’m working on to bring to light, via poetry, the plight of the world’s endangered languages. But deaths in the family and a broken camera have changed our modus operandi: Papa has returned to Banjul to spend time with family and celebrate Tabaschi (L’Aïd el-Kebir), leaving his son, the marvelous griot and sound tech, Karamo Susso, to carry the torch. And because the price of DHL-ing another camera costs as the same as flying here, the wild and wonderful Philadelphia poet/photographer Lamont Steptoe has joined us with two cameras, as second camera/still photographer/jolt of energy.

The second film is a short, stand-alone we’re going to shoot in Timbuktu. A “Heart of Darkness” where Kurtz is a poet. In fact, he’s the Beat poet Ted Joans, who divided his time in the 60s-80s between US-Paris-Timbuktu. The Niger becomes a river of time – I’m traveling back to see Ted like I tried to do in 1975 while working on a play, “Bicentennial Suicide,” in the middle of the Sahra. I came down from Morocco through Algeria and made it into Mali at the desert outpost Tessalit where I spent the night in jail for having no visa, and then was shipped off for Tamanrasset, Algeria. But that’s another story.

This short “film within a film,” will be based on Ted’s poem, “Timbuktu Tit Tat Toe,” about the gentrification of the town (circa 1968!)*. Ted’s widow (he died in 2003), Lenora Castiglia, sent us an  incredible poem epistle detailing her trip with Ted back to Timbuktu around 1986. We’ll also be using a piece I’ve written, “Once Upon a Place,” a bit of Georges Simenon’s “Tropic Moon” about Gabon in 1933. And I’m sure some of Lamont’s work will get in there too – he’s Ted, morphing from Karamo (who morphed from Papa!) (Got it?). I love films!

Bea’s new film idea (hereby copyrighted, as are the poems above) is “3 Ghosts” – all subjective POV and “signs” of the speakers – footprints or cushions puffing back up as they stand up, etc. Finally the three come together in the desert, approach a mirror, Finis. Throughout the film, everybody uses “We” as in “We’re hungry” and “Where are we going?” even though there are no Others. We learn that the word “I” has been lost from the language.

It’s been so hot the last couple days that we even used the AC for the last hour to Mopti – Karamo has been battling sinusitis. He started antibiotics yesterday and seems better today. I have no idea how the heat is affecting us, except to say, like all of Africa, it is. No one knows what day it is. As Janis Joplin said, July 4, 1970, Calgary, the day she kissed me (again, that’s another story), “It’s all one day, man.”

(* You can find this poem in Ted’s last published work, Teducation, published by Coffee House Press – shout out to founder Allan Kornblum.)

Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/