Timbuktu and Baboons

I woke up from my rest and went out to explore Timbuktu and find some food. It was early evening now. There were a lot of people out on the streets now. They were not very friendly with me. They were polite but there was clearly a problem with my looks or something that I was not aware of that they did not approve of. This was Muslim territory and I was clearly not conforming in some way to their expectations. Nobody ever explained to me what the problem was and I did not feel comfortable. I ate some great fresh bread and drank some tea. Then I ate some stew that tasted like goat or mutton or maybe more camel I could not tell. It was tasty and filling. I wandered around the streets but was not enthralled with the place. I enjoyed the exotic look of the town but the vibe was not good. I went back to my cramped little hotel and slept then packed up to leave in the morning.

I took a ride going south in the direction of Bamako but not all the way there. I should have waited for a through ride. The little village I was dropped at was out in the middle of the Sahara desert and consisted of a few buildings and a small store with a cafe. I spent the night in my tent. The next morning I bought some extra beer and some water before hitting the hard to see trail heading out of town in the direction of Bamako. I started walking which was probably not a wise thing to do but I did it. I just started hiking along the trail. I walked all day except for the early afternoon when it was blistering hot. I made myself some hot tea and waited for it to cool at least a bit.

It cooled ever so slightly and I started walking again. I saw something over in the distance. There was a tall termite mound and somebody was sitting on top of the mound. It was about five hundred yard away. I squinted to see who it was and then I saw them stand up on the mound and look right at me. That was when I realized it was not a human. I wasn't sure yet what it was but whatever it was, it was running right at me at fullspeed. I watched it intently as it came closer. Then I figured out what it was. It was a large full grown male baboon and he looked hungry with me on his lunch menu. I was suddenly pumped full of adrenaline. My mind started to race. I was out in the open with no trees to climb or anything to hide in on or behind. I had no gun. I did have a knife but it was small. I pulled it out and opened it. Then my time spent working with the monkeys at the University of Wisconsin came to my rescue. I pulled out the most dominant macho attitude I had in my bag of tricks and coolly kept walking down the trail with my back to the huge baboon with the gigantic canines chasing me to eat me. My balls needed to swell to the size of watermelons to be this macho. I walked and listened. He kept getting closer and closer and my heart was racing. I thought about where I should stick the knife when it came to that. Should I sacrifice my left arm to his huge mouth full of teeth while I stab him in the face or should I go for the kill in his heart or what. He was very close now but I kept waiting. Then when he was about fifty yards way, I turned around and looked at him and yawned my widest toothiest yawn I could and then I turned around and kept walking slowly with my back toward his charging jaws. When he was so close I couldn't take it any longer, I suddenly spun around and held my pack over my head and let out the loudest, most guttural scream I could muster from deep inside my primordial soul. To my relief and surprise the charging baboon slammed on the brakes and immediately spun around and took off running back in the direction he came from. I turned my back to him and walked on. I wanted to turn back and check to see what he was doing but to be truly dominant I had to show that I had absolutely no fear of him and his flashing canines by keeping my back turned to him. If I so much as glanced back it would have been a show of weakness that might have cost me my life. Even a single bite from a vicious animal like he was and I would likely die from blood loss and there was no help for a very long ways away.

He left me alone and I kept walking. I wanted to get a long way away from him before I set up my camp for the night. A couple of hours later I heard a vehicle coming. I got set to hitch hike and in about ten minutes a white Land Rover came bouncing down the road. There was a single white male driving it and nobody else in the vehicle. He stopped and looked at me like I was insane. I started to speak French to him but then I noticed that he was an American and we started to speak English.

He was a professor at an American University here to collect artifacts for his school. His Landrover was full of items packed into wooden boxes, wrapped in cloths or just in woven bags. He had a small item in his lap. He asked me to carry the small box and to be very careful with it. I took care of it as we headed down the hard to see trail. We made camp not too much later because it was going to get dark. Close to the equator like this the sun sets very rapidly and it goes from light to dark in just a few minutes with only the stars to illuminate the night until the moon rises.

We slept under the stars and I told him about my travels so far. He was peppering me with questions. Some of them were very personal but I answered them all. He pulled out some booze and we got hammered before we fell asleep. The next day we made it to Mopti. What a city that was, large, vibrant, friendly and loud. We found some food and a large group of people gathered and started to dance and play music around us. We just sat in our chairs next to our vehicle and watched it all going on around us. We finally decided that if we were going to get any sleep we were better off to drive out of town and sleep somewhere with no people. That is what we ended up doing.