What would you do if could guiltlessly take a month off? Europeans do it all the time, but for North Americans, a month untethered from a Blackberry is a mean feat. I can’t comprehend the terror of deciding how I would spend my time. What if I blew it on some thumb-sucking search for vortexes in Sedona or inadvertently booked a cruise to nowhere with a convention of top-performing insurance agents?  But then, what if I did something truly exotic, as Rick Antonson did:  hitch my fate to a lurching train, a riverboat, a camel, a sputtering four-wheeler, and a dodgy tour arranger for a journey to Timbuktu. Oh, and what about those ancient manuscripts?

Kathmandu, Kalamazoo, Timbuktu…all aboard!

The title “To Timbuktu for a Haircut” derives from what Rick’s father answered when the boy asked, “Where ya goin’ Dad?”  Little did little Ricky know that he would eventually go to Timbuktu and, as a well-known tourism executive, other exotic outposts off the map of the typical travel duffer.

Tin means well, as in water well, in Berber and bouctu means woman with a large navel, so Timbuktu literally means “well of the woman with a large bellybutton.” Beginning as a Tuareg desert oasis, Timbuktu emerged as a hub of the salt trade. Before the European Renaissance it was a center for Islamic scholarship, giving birth to some of our modern concepts of mathematics and science. Books from that age can still be found in Timbuktu and preservation of these crumbling manuscripts, which some say rival the Dead Sea Scrolls in importance, is part of Antonson’s raison d’voyage.  In the 18th and 19th century, blustery tales of a golden city made expeditions in search of Timbuktu the rage in Europe. But, like other outposts that lived and died for a single commodity, Timbuktu, Mali declined to what is now a rather sad, sand-swept outpost. Adventurers have been replaced by NGOs, trying to deal with its extreme poverty.

But there was joy in this trip for Antonson.  Like other good travel authors, he weaves history and myth into his tale of a lumpy journey by rail, road, river and foot and the characters he meets along the way. Forget Bill Bryson and Paul Theroux and the other grumps on the travel writing circuit.  Antonson entertains without boring us with his inner demons and without the “us and them” cynicism of some travel writers.  His storytelling is, at times, loving as he describes interactions with his traveling companions, his guide Zak and cook Nema. He even cuts Mohammad, a tour arranger from hell, a bit of slack.

I have known several people who have made the trip to Timbuktu, including a wealthy man for whom it was just a hard-earned notch on his walking stick, and others there on community development projects. None found it to be even moderately attractive. But Antonson found gold amidst the slag when he visited Timbuktu’s Salle des Manuscrits, a trove of Islamic texts dating back to the first century. Their topics were a course catalog of modern scholarship:  history, chemistry, mathematics, pharmacy.  If I were to hold one of these crumbling books in my hands, to experience an Indiana Jones moment as Rick did, I would probably fantasize about some tidbit of forgotten wisdom within that even today might change the world or melt some bad guys.

And, although Timbuktu itself may have been a bit of a letdown, the story goes on.

Antonson’s trek, via goat and donkey trail, to his guide Zak ‘s home region of Dogon is a sweet story of bonding and cultural discovery. Introducing Rick to his grandparents, Zak summed up the ethos of his homeland and culture: “We live not only this century, Rick, like you. We live Last. Even one before. All at once.”

And yes, Rick did get his haircut.

To Timbuktu for a Haircut is a good read.

A portion of To Timbuktu for a Haircut is being donated to the Timbuktu Educational Foundation to assist in its Preserve a Manuscript Campaign

The University of Oslo maintains a web resource about the manuscripts.