Saving Africa's precious written heritage

   By Andrew Harding
BBC News, Timbuktu

   [image: Hands holding fragile paper]
Curators hope large numbers of at-risk documents will be preserved

*A drizzle of dust and sand falls over Ahmed Saloum Boularaf's fingers as he
gently lifts the ancient, camel-skin bound manuscripts from a wooden box and
puts them on a desk in his makeshift library in a mud-brick house close to
the centre of Timbuktu.*

"Termites, rain and mice," he said in an accusing voice, brushing a few
flecks of 15th Century parchment from his jacket.

"This was my grandfather's collection. It covers topics from science to
medicine, history, theology, grammar, geography - a little of everything."

*Threatened*

Across Timbuktu, in cupboards, rusting chests, private collections and
libraries, tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of manuscripts bear witness
to this legendary city's remarkable intellectual history, and by extension,
to Africa's much overlooked pre-colonial heritage.

"This is the proof," said Mr Boularaf.

"Africa was not wild before the white man came. In fact, if you will excuse
the expression, it was the colonising that was wild."
  [image: Ahmed Saloum Boularaf]
Ahmed Saloum Boularaf has been caring for documents for years

But this unique literary evidence is under threat, as time, the elements,
and a simple lack of resources take their toll in northern Mali.

"We are losing manuscripts every day. We lack the financial means to
catalogue and protect them," said Mr Boularaf, who recently rescued his
collection from the rubble of a mud building next door that collapsed after
a rainstorm.

Now a giant, new, state of the art library has landed - rather like a
spaceship - in the dilapidated centre of Timbuktu, offering the best hope of
preserving and analysing the town's literary treasures.

After several years of building and delays, the doors are finally about to
open at the Ahmed Baba Institute's new home - a 200 million rand
(£16,428,265) project paid for by the South African government.

"It's a dream come true," said South African curator Alexio Motsi, exploring
the underground, climate-controlled storage rooms that will soon house some
30,000 manuscripts.

On the ground floor, behind elegant colonnades and fountains, rows of empty
desks are ready for newly trained workers to begin repairing and digitizing
the documents.

*'African renaissance'*

"I feel proud… and nervous," Mr Motsi said as his team prepared to hand over
the keys of the institute to the Malian authorities.
   [image: Alexio Motsi]
 *There's a lot to be uncovered here. It's time we started relooking at the
history taught in school about Africa*
 Curator Alexio Motsi

The struggle to save Timbuktu's manuscripts has been gaining momentum for
many years.

When South Africa's former President, Thabo Mbeki, visited the town in 2001
he declared the documents to be among the continent's "most important
cultural treasures", and promised to help conserve them as part of his
vision of an "African renaissance".

Most of the manuscripts are in Arabic script, but contain many local
languages.

They provide unique insights into Timbuktu's emergence as a trading post,
and by the 1500s as a famous university town, full of students and scribes.

They also help refute the notion that sub-Saharan Africa produced only oral
histories, with little or no written records.

Some of the documents discuss social and political problems, usually in an
Islamic context, while others offer medicinal advice, including one 13th
Century herbal remedy to help treat women in labour.
  [image: Map]

"I think pre-colonial Africa had its own civilisation going on, which
matches what was going on in the west," said Mr Motsi.

"There's a lot to be uncovered here. It's time we started relooking at the
history we were taught in school about Africa."

The new institute plans to hold exhibitions, and open a souvenir and coffee
shop in order to translate interest in the manuscripts into tourist revenue
for one of the world's poorest countries.

But those ambitions will not have been helped by new travel advisories
issued by the UK and US governments, which are warning tourists to steer
clear of the town altogether because of the threat of kidnapping by
militants with links to al-Qaeda, who are now using the Sahara as a hiding
place.

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html

To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤