I decided to go to Timbuktu to visit the South African Timbuktu Manuscripts Project, with the grant of the LIASA SABINET Librarian of the year award. The plan was to accompany the team of South African Conservationists whose initial plans was to leave on 26 November 2006. Their travel plans did not quite work out. So I found myself alone in Bamako, capital of Mali, on Sunday, 26 November 2006, relying only on my Collins Easy French phrase book: the essential companion for hassle-free travel to help me make myself understood.
I sort out my Bonsoir’s and Bonjour’s, and learn to say very early on Je ne parle pas français [I don’t speak French]. The French phrase book does not help me very much to speak to the hotel’s driver, who speaks Bamara, as 80% of Mali’s population does, and French as an additional language. I do manage with help from Nico Pretorius at the South African Embassy in Mali, to sort out my travel arrangements to Timbuktu.
I arrive in Timbuktu very early on Tuesday morning, 28 November 2006. Ali Baba, as he introduces himself, appoints himself my guide. Most people speak Arabic in Timbuktu, and the local language Songhay. Timbuktu is located on the edge of the dessert, and where two arteries of the Niger river used to flow. Mali sits on the West of the African continent and is in the northern hemisphere, so its winter during the time of my visit. It is also tourism season in Timbuktu. The Touareg Arabs dressed in the traditional blue robes are selling handcrafted camel leatherware and handcrafted silver jewellery and other silverware.While I wait for the South African conservationists, I visit some of the private family libraries of manuscripts. The collections date back to when the Sankore mosque was a university in the 15th century, having in its hayday up to 25 000 students. The collections include manuscripts on astronomy, maths, science, medicine, correspondence, trade agreement, social, cultural and political relations with other parts of the region. Some of the families have built libraries with funding received through the work of a consortium, headed by Abdul Kader Hadeira, previous director of the Ahmad Baba Centre. Some of the families have a lot further to go. Many of them have a small collection which is on exhibition, but most of the collection has not been brought to the newly built libraries yet. Some have begun cataloguing the collection for publication; none seem to be creating a searchable database.
The Ahmad Baba Centre is the public library of manuscripts. This does not mean that you can get easy access though. You still need a letter of introduction from a reputable place of study for access. The South African Timbuktu Manuscripts Project is run under the auspices of the Ministry of Art and Culture, but funded by the Foreign Affairs Ministry. The project was initiated by the President Thabo Mbeki after a visit in 2001. It involves the training of Malians as conservationists. Alexio Motsi, Mary Minicka and Ossie Cupido, the team of South African conservationists have been training in Mali and have also brought the Mali trainee conservationists to South Africa. The project includes the building of a new air-conditioned and humidity controlled Ahmad Baba Centre. Before preservation of the manuscripts can be done, a physical facility is needed, hence the building of a new Ahmad Baba Centre. The conservationists need a laboratory environment to do this work and the current Ahmad Baba Centre is not equipped for that. The collection also has to be properly housed. Having seen how and where some of the family collections are held, a building to house these valuable manuscripts is a priority. Hence the building of libraries by the families before any further work on cataloguing and preservation can happen, and also the priority of the South African Project. However, whilst the new Ahmad Baba Centre is being built, the Mali trainee conservationists are continuing with their training with the SA team. On this visit the latter introduces acid free paper to be used as folders and enveloping of the manuscripts, before they will be put in custom made boxes by the trainee conservationists for each manuscript.
As I reflect on my visit, I become more amazed that these manuscripts, have survived hundred’s of years in this sandy and often humid environment. It is a credit to the people of Timbuktu and the value they placed on knowledge and learning, that these manuscripts have survived from the 15th Century. All of the rest of Africa and indeed the rest of the world benefits and learns from the content of these collections. It proves that Africa not only has oral knowledge transfer traditions, but also a writing culture; that it was not dark and devoid of intellectual and scholarly activity, until the west ‘discovered’ Africa. There is much in Africa that must be re-birthed so that Africa takes her rightful place in world history.
Fatima Darries,
LIASA SABINET Librarian of the year 2006
Compiled February 2007
