The best thing showing lately on my TV has been Michael Palin's "Sahara" and "Himalaya"

I've just finished watching the 2004 film of Michael P's epic 2003 journey through the Himalaya and surrounding regions. The map above should be intelligible enough (you should be able to click to enlarge it) to suggest the scope of the journey, except that the copy of the book covers over the early segments in Pakistan and India.

by Ken

I've written about my excitement at rediscovering the early Michael Palin travel-trek series on British DVDs. (Even now that they're actually readily available in U.S. editions, the U.K. ones are still way cheaper.) Of course you have to have a multi system DVD player, but there's an advantage there as well: For HD, my Panasonics (I bought a second one during my recent medically induced hiatus) up-convert from the higher-lined PAL versions, and look pretty darned good on my first HD TV, another product of that hiatus.

And I had the new TV just in time to go back and rewatch the first episode or two of Michael's grand Himalaya series, where the scenery is so mind-boggling. I mean, the show starts in the Khyber Pass! I mean, I never dreamt I would ever see the Khyber pass, and now here it is (video below), with Michael P standing right there talking about it, on my own TV!

Confession: I got stalled with the Palin videos some time back, when I ran into Hemingway Adventure. Even if one doesn't share that "thing" for Hemingway that Michael is far from alone in possessing, you'd think that locales like Key West and late-revolutionary Cuba would be interesting enough in their own right to get me through. And maybe someday I'll go back and find them so, but as presented, as reflections of this or that part of Hemingway's journey through existence, they drove me crazy.

And in this case, the accompanying book didn't help, because it's still imbued with Michael's Hemingway "thing." I find that not many people, even Palin fans, know about or understand the books that have been written and published to supplement each of his travel series. The books, based on his obsessively detailed diaries, are his own re-creations of the making of the journeys. Naturally there's overlap with the edited TV series, but usually even when the same visit or interview is present in both film and book form, there's information or perspective from one that amplifies the other. And there's a great deal in the books that doesn't appear in the edited series.

When I finally restarted my Palin-viewing habit, with Sahara, I was surprised to find that I hadn't acquired the book -- I thought I had them all waiting for me. But I found a really gorgeous hard-cover copy dirt-cheap on Amazon, and had it in time to supplement my televiewings, still on my old 31-inch Panasonic CRT TV, of course. (And the hard-cover version is definitely a plus. I've got paperback versions of some of the others, but for Basil Pao's photos, you want the better reproduction of the hard-cover.)

And Sahara is a fabulous journey. I had seen parts of an episode or two of the series way back when on the Travel Channel, but not enough to make sense of it. The series encompasses a staggering range of terrains and cultures, starting north of the Sahara -- starting in Gibraltar, where happily for us Michael had never been, then proceeding by ferry from Algeciras across the Strait of Gibraltar to Morocco, then across the mountains and finally encountering the Sahara (it fascinated Michael that this vast little-known terrain existed so close to Europe), spending time with the exiled Polisario rebels from Western Sahara and on southward, then swinging east and finally heading north through Algeria and Libya before Michael revisited the once place he'd been before: Tunisia, where Life of Brian was filmed, then across the then-still-highly dangerous northern coastal region of Algeria and eventually back to Spain.

As always with a Palin journey, the primary focus is on the people encountered along the way. The locals hired or pressed into service as guides are almost always fascinating, and nearly always Michael's own cultural openness and curiosity leads to glimmerings of contact with and understanding of people who live lives that seem, and sometimes really are, so different from our own. The people, however, aren't so different. And one couldn't ask for a better travel companion (or surrogate) than Michael, with all that gentle humor to go along with the insatiable curiosity about people.

When I finished Sahara, I was all primed for Himalaya, but despite the shock and delight at finding myself transported straightaway to the legendary Khyber Pass, I wasn't initially enchanted by the first couple of episodes. I mean, a grand gathering of locals from two fairly distant villages in, as I recall, the Pakistani Karakoram, for a no-holds-barred polo match? (The play without rules.) And then there was cricket -- or was it rugby, or soccer? Whatever the hell it was, who cares?

I applied a double rescue strategy. First, as noted, I now had the new TV in place, a perfect excuse to double back. But also, since I indeed already had the accompanying book (also in hard-cover!), and now I had the idea of reading the book ahead of watching the film, and I have to say, it did seem to give me a more involving sense of who the people encountered were and why we might care about them and their ways of life. And with the book under my belt, I was also happy to encounter a number of the "Extended Scenes" that are offered for each of the six episodes.

Indeed, I came to think that Himalaya represents such an enormous journey, encompassing not just the mountains to the west of the stupendous Himalaya, the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram, but a significant chunk of lowland Pakistan and India, and the pretty much the whole of the Himalaya range (with significant coverage of Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan), and the previously unknown-to-me far-eastern stretch of India bordering Myanmar (Burma), called Nagaland, leading naturally into the lowlands of Assam, and finally lowest-land Bangladesh, where such great waters of the Himalaya as the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers wash not just the water but the rock and soil of the mountains into the plain and delta emptying into the Bay of Bengal.

(In Bangladesh, the former East Pakistan, by the way, we get a vivid sense of how different the Bengalis are in their Muslim identity from their various Pakistani coreligionists. I should add that differences of and conflicts in religion and politics, which were rife in this region in 2003, when the journey was made, and of course still are, are handled with breathtaking evenhandedness and sensitivity.)

Do I have to add that virtually all of these are places I never imagined seeing? Tibet! (Everest is actually seen, not from the familiar south side in Nepal but from the far less known northern face.) And not just the Tibet Autonomous Region, as the former country has been known since it was annexed by the People's Republic of China, but additional portions of the massive Tibetan plateau in the PRC itself. It's such an immense journey that boiling it down to six hours of TV must have been agony.

It may seem contradictory to suggest that at the same time an awful lot of the people and places visited aren't all that memorable, and yet have to be represented to fill out the picture of the travel path -- and again the combination of book, film, and DVD extended scenes proves immensely helpful. One common thread is that in countries that are heavily Muslim, heavily Hindu, and heavily Buddhist, there is an enormous amount of religion, about which Michael is magnificently tolerant and inquiring, but a viewer may be a lot less sympathetic. The thought of visiting one more temple or one more monastery becomes all but unbearable. Ditto the assortment of pointless festivals we partake in along the trek. It is, of course, what people do to fill out their lives, and I don't mean to suggest that their versions of these things are less meaningful than ours. Quite the contrary. But it does take its toll on one's armchair-travel stamina.

In the course of watching these six packed hours I did a lot of backtracking, but I suspect that the whole thing may look very different the next time through, and the next. There is, by the way, an extended interview added to the special features on the third DVD in which Michael talks about the whole journey, including the story (also told in the book) of how they managed the final shot of Michael sailing off in a tiny boat into the sunset on the Bay of Bengal.

Already in Himalaya, filmed in 2003, Michael displayed a keen awareness of having turned 60, and of the group aging of his entire little travel family -- after all, by then he had been traveling and working with largely the same production team for decades, and none of them were getting younger. I'm cheered by the thought that still ahead for me is one more Palin journey, New Europe.

Do I have to add that it's unimaginable that American TV would ever undertake anything remotely like these journeys? There is, after all, no obvious commercial payoff to any of them. The BBC, however, has garnered not only strong audience response to these series, but continued income from sales of the books and now the DVDs. It's not the kind of money that would impress a Hollywood mogul. Luckily that's not the standard at the BBC.

Can Music Change The World... In Morocco?

It's very rare that I meet a Moroccan who has traveled more extensively through his country than I have. I started going there in 1969-- drove a van from Germany and went all over the country, from the northeastern kif-growing regions of the Rif down to Marrakech and Essaouira. After a dozen trips, I've long since lost count. But I've expanded my horizons and have traveled way south of Marrakech, from Tiznit and Sidi Ifni in the West to Ouarzazate, Zagora and M'Hamid on the edge of the Sahara sand dunes. And, yeah, we even headed out across the Sahara towards Timbuktu by camel... although we didn't get very far and eventually got to now-inaccessible, rebel-held Timbuktu a few years ago by jeep... from Bamako.

Anyway, I've been almost everywhere in the country and I really love it-- and always recommend it. And Morocco has always been especially alluring for bohemians, rebels, and misfits, including, of course, musicians. The first time I was in Essaouira it was with Jimi Hendrix. Many years later I was relaxing in the courtyard of an old friend in Tangier-- someone who had first introduced me to Gnaouia music-- when I realized that the courtyard was pictured in the Steel Wheels album. That's because they recorded part of it in 1989 right where I was sitting. But this weekend the Washington Post ran a story about musical trouble in the magic kingdom. With the Tuaregs in control of the Malian Sahara now, kidnapping tourists and enslaving anyone they can get their hands on, Morocco's music festivals aren't going to have any more competition from the Festival au Désert. But that doesn't mean it's all smooth sailing.

Morocco’s glittering Mawazine international music festival wraps up this weekend with performances by Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz, after nine days of showcasing the North African kingdom’s cool factor-- even as dissident Moroccan musicians are imprisoned for their anti-establishment lyrics.

The 11-year-old “Rhythms of the World” festival in the capital Rabat has always highlighted Morocco’s contradictions as the country spends millions to lure top world artists to perform at generally free concerts, while much the country remains mired in poverty.

In past years the festival has been attacked by Islamists for inviting gay performer Elton John in 2010 and by activists for the cost of attracting Shakira and other high profile acts in 2011, but this year the theme of protest is freedom of expression.

Just a week before the festival began, Human Rights Watch slammed Morocco for sentencing a rapper to a year in prison for lyrics deemed insulting to police-- a common theme in rap music elsewhere in the world.

“Morocco hosts one famous international music festival after another each spring, but meanwhile it imprisons one of its own singers solely because of lyrics and images that displease the authorities,” Sarah Leah Whitson, Mideast director of the group said in a statement. “Morocco should be known as a haven for world music, not for locking up singers with a political message.”

Moroccan rapper Mouad Belghouat, known as El-Haqed, or “The Enraged” was convicted on May 11 of “showing contempt” to public servants with his song “Dogs of the State” about police corruption. He is known for his political activism and vitriolic songs attacking social injustice, the monarchy and corruption.

A week later, dissident poet Youssef Belkhdim was convicted of attacking police-- a charge he denies-- at a sit-in he organized in support of Belghouat and sentenced to two years in prison.

The two men belonged to Morocco’s pro-democracy February 20 movement that last year brought tens of thousands into the streets protesting corruption and calling for political reform.

The extravagant sums spent on the Mawazine have been a mainstay of the movement’s slogans. Festival organizers maintain that the Mawazine’s estimated $7 million price tag is worth it because it improves Morocco’s image abroad and gives people at home access to music from around the world. The festival is funded largely by corporate sponsors with strong ties to the state.

“It’s a celebration. It’s a celebration of the city, a celebration of Morocco and it reflects a bit Morocco’s good life to the world,” said program director Mahmoud Lemseffer. “It is a vehicle to present the image of our country, of its hospitality and tolerance.”

Tens of thousands attend each of the festival’s eight venues which present Arabic music, Moroccan music, music from sub-Saharan Africa as well as international acts, which this year included Evanescence, the Scorpions, Gloria Gaynor, Nigel Kennedy and Jimmy Cliff.

Most of the acts have free sections open to the public and on Tuesday, families strolling along Rabat’s Bouregreg river stopped to listen to Beninian songstress Angelique Kidjo belt out classics from South African diva Mariam Makebe and talk about the struggle against apartheid.

But for critics, there is irony in punishing artists at home while hosting international ones known for their support of freedom of expression. Lenny Kravitz, for instance, has striven in song after song to confront America’s tortured attitude about race.

“I think that people should really say what they feel-- everybody has the right to speak their mind, you see how things change in places where people were once condemned,” said Kravitz at a press conference Thursday when asked about politics in music. “When I was in Brazil a couple of years ago, I was talking with (musician and activist) Caetano Veloso who dealt with that same thing, who did jail time-- and now he has made a difference.”

Salif Traore of the Ivorian band Magic System said that for African artists, speaking truth to power and freedom of expression is what their music is all about.

“We in Africa, we say that artists, musicians and singers are the eyes, ears, and mouths of the people,” he told The Associated Press, when asked about his views on the El-Haqed case.

Rachid el-Belghiti, who heads a national anti-Mawazine campaign, also contests the government’s assertion that it’s supporting culture in Morocco with this festival, countering that it’s really just about making the country look good abroad.

He said the Mawazine, which is run by a close confidant of King Mohammed VI, eats up the lion’s share of corporate sponsorship so that little is left for other festivals around the country.

As millions are being spent to lure in big name acts, local theaters and dance schools around the country are closing down because of a lack of funding.

“A country which puts its artists in prison simply for expressing themselves with their voice or their instruments cannot pretend to support culture,” he said. “That’s impossible.”

And, by the way, the Rabat music festival is totally commercial and strictly for squares and the one-percent. The hipster festivals are the Gnaoua World Music Festival in Essaouira and the newer Festival des Musiques Sacrées du Monde in Fez. When the king is finally overthrown, the last bastion before he flees to one of his European estates will be Rabat.

Timbuktu Falls To The Tuaregs... Burkina Faso Swamped With Refugees

Here I am in downtown Timbuktu, 4 years ago

These days I just want to go to Tuscany or Paris or maybe Bali. And Roland is always coming up with Mongolia or Mozambique or Burkina Faso. The whole time we were in Mali he was grumpy we weren't going to Burkina Faso. I don't know if he has a check list or just wants to add a notch to his belt or what. I know for sure none of his friends have ever heard of Burkina Faso. None of them had ever heard of Mali. And now that hundreds of thousands of displaced Malians-- eager not to fall into the slavery that the Tuaregs practice-- are fleeing in every direction, at least 20,000 of them have arrived in Burkina Faso, which was already having a major problem feeding it's own population and keeping the lid on things. Like Mali's, Burkina Faso's "democracy" is what the aftermath of a far off military coup is called as long as the putschists adhere to corporate-friendly policies.

When I would tell people I was going to Mali or I had gone to Mali they would look at me incomprehensibly. Maui? Bali? I almost never met an American who knew where Mali was. But when I would mention Timbuktu there was at least some comprehension that I wasn't taking about Hawaii. Four years ago, a topper of a month Roland and I spent in Mali, we finally made it to fabled Timbuktu. I had imagined it as the city in Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky, which it isn't, but we discovered a unique and fascinating, hospitable if remote town on the edge of the Sahara Desert.

This week Timbuktu fell to Tuareg rebels, savage desert nomads who fervently believe in slavery. Hundreds of thousands of Malians have fled south, as the Tuaregs captured Gao, Kidal and now Timbuktu, the entire northern two-thirds of the country.

Mali's army is reported to have deserted the military base of Timbuktu, the last town in the north under government control, as Tuareg separatists pounded it with heavy weapons. Coup leaders have reinstated the constitution after pressure from neighbouring countries.

Shells could be heard exploding at the base even though it was deserted, local residents told news agencies by phone Sunday.

The soldiers had fled, some shedding their uniforms, leaving Arab militias from the Bérabish community to defend the town, they said.

Al Jazeera television reported that the town, whose population is mainly ethnic Arab, had fallen to the rebel National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), which wants a Tuareg homeland in the north of the country.

On Saturday the army quit the largest town in the north, Gao, leaving it to the MNLA which has already captured Kidal.

The Tuareg rebels have been strengthened by the arrival of well armed fighters previously employed by deposed and murdered Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.

The military claims that they have links to armed groups connected to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which operate in the Sahara.

Timbuktu, a historic city that is on the Unesco World Heritage list, is 800 km north of Bamako and 300 km west of Gao.

Now I'm reading about looting in the captured cities and that Muslim fanatics are imposing their primitive and unevolved version of the Koran on the conquered people. And the rest of the world just sits around bitching that the military coup that overthrew the last military coup has got to turn over power to the former coup leader or no on will help out. The Tuaregs are among the worst lot I ever came across anywhere in the world. My heart goes out for the people who fall into their clutches. Anyway, best tourism advice for anyone thinking of going there-- see a psychiatrist.




UPDATE: June 6- Tuaregs Declare An Independent Nation, Azawad

While the rest of the world forced Malian coup leaders, ostensibly reformers, to turn power back to the old regime (former coup leaders), the Tuaregs have captured over half the country and just declared their independence. The Tuaregs are brutal and primitive slavers who live for war.

Tuareg rebels who captured the three main towns in northern Mali this week unilaterally declared independence for their state of Azawad on Friday, adding to turmoil in the west African country.

...Tuareg nomads have rebelled three times since Mali’s independence in 1960, protesting at their marginalisation and demanding more autonomy.

But leaders of the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (MNLA) were more ambitious when they started a fourth rebellion in January, seeking to carve out a new homeland in the Sahara.

...Jean Ping, chairperson of the African Union commission, rejected the independence declaration, and called on “the international community as a whole to fully support this principled position of Africa."

Algeria, Mali’s northern neighbour, also denounced the rebel claim.

France, the former colonial power, said other west African countries needed to see if it was possible to negotiate with the MNLA. Autonomy would be a more acceptable solution to the regional and international community.

France’s defence minister, Gerard Longuet, said: “A unilateral declaration of independence which is not recognised by African states would not have any meaning for us.”

The claim by the MNLA is not supported by all Tuaregs in Mali, let alone by other ethnic groups living in the north. It is further complicated by the fact that the secular rebels received help from another dissident Ismalist group, Ansar Dine, in capturing the three towns of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.

Ansar Dine seeks to impose sharia law in the north. Though it has fewer fighters than the MNLA, which has up to 3,000 men, Ansar Dine rebels were reported to have taken control of much of the ancient town of Timbuktu.

Mali Disintegrating Into Civil War

Normally when I say I've been to Mali, the only people who have ever even heard of it are tropical disease specialists. Even when I say "Timbuktu," and people recognize the name in a vaguely "Madagascar" sense, they don't know it has anything to do with Mali. And, as a matter of fact, soon it may not. When I visited Mali in December 2008, I had a few brief run-ins with the fearsome Tuaregs. We hired a guide in Timbuktu, Mohammed, who was a Tuareg, although he seemed more like a college student than a Tuareg. He brought us up into the Sahara to a Tuareg desert encampment where we could trade stuff we didn't need to bring back to the States-- everything from cans of sardines and rolls of toilet paper to my fancy REI trekking poles-- for the worthless junk they wanted to get rid of.

In one of my "How Safe Is?" posts from 2008, I talked about the Tuaregs a little.

Roland and I were traipsing around Sanga last week-- a place so foreign to the American experience that one would have to be on another planet to find something more exotic-- when we ran into a gaggle of American Peace Corp volunteers on holiday. They're stationed around West Africa, mostly Mali and Burkina Faso I gathered, and the State Department and U.S. Embassy in Bamako have decreed that no Peace Corp volunteers are allowed to venture north of some imaginary line (like around Mopti, I think), which means no Timbuktou. They said it is too dangerous because of Tuareg bandits on the roads-- and that the local airlines, C.A.M. and M.A.E., are too dangerous (i.e., non-compliant with FAA guidelines) for Americans to fly on-- so that their employees could not go to the northern two-thirds of the country.

We spent a few days in Timbuktu, which gets bad-mouthed by most tourists as not worth the trip. They're wrong. Timbuktou is fascinating and exotic and if it doesn't live up to your dreams of the 13th century or to Paul Bowles' Sheltering Sky, get real and open up to what actually is being offered there. As for danger... there's nothing remotely dangerous, other than a difficult road getting there, the bad exhaust fumes from motorbikes in town and the fucking mosquitos (we've just given up on not being bitten; it's not possible. Just learn to love the Malarone.)

We were waiting for a couple hours for the ferry to take us across the Niger on the way to Timbuktou and the settlement there is a Bella one. Until 1973's epoch drought nearly wiped out the Tuareg's camels and herds, the Bella had been their slaves. In 1973, basically because the Tuareg couldn't feed them anymore, they emancipated them-- although I have heard that there are still some small services that many of them still render to their former masters (like when there is a wedding or something). Anyway, this Bella settlement was all festive and bustling like all the villages we visited in Mali, when a couple of pickup trucks filled with Tuaregs pulled up to the bank of the river. Suddenly things got much quieter. Many of the little children seemed to disappear. It reminded me of a scene from Star Wars when some alien warrior people dropped by a space cafe. Anyway, the Tuaregs were pretty well-armed with swords and daggers and God knows what else and they don't seem to smile much; no chatty bonjours and they certainly don't ask you for a Bic or an empty water bottle or candy. The Tuareg War ended in the mid-90's though and they seem to be peaceable enough (except around Kidal) and way in the northern Sahara where Mali, Algeria and Mauritania share vast trackless wastes. In Timbuktou, they were certainly easy enough to get along with.

In fact, one of our most memorable adventures was when our guide, Mohammed, took us out into the desert one night to meet some Tuaregs who had just come from Araouane to trade for millet. They were also open to trade for the stuff we no longer needed-- mostly stuff Roland had picked up at the 99 cent store before coming here-- like a pair of cheap extra sunglasses-- as well as my REI walking sticks, half a dozen cans of sardines, shaving kits from Air France, a t-shirt, a roll of toilet paper, organic mosquito repellent that seems to attract mosquitos, etc. We got some nice Tuareg "silver" bracelets, a pipe and an agate necklace-- and had a long Tuareg tea ceremony before this whole thing got started... all by the light of the moon and stars. The Tuareg basically live their lives by the light of the moon and the stars.

At the end of last year, events in Mali forced me to reconsider and recommend that travelers take Mali off the itinerary-- too dangerous for tourists now. The Tuaregs are on the warpath. That was about random kidnappings of tourists. Now we're talking about a civil war. The problem is that Tuareg mercenaries who had been hired by Qadaffi have returned to Mali... with state of the art weapons, better weapons than the Malian armed forces have. And they want their own country, Azawad.

[President Amadou Toumani] Toure blamed freshly-armed fighters returning from Libya for attacks on military patrols outside the northeastern town of Aguelhoc, which has become a flashpoint in the struggle between the military and the rebels.

The military was "unable to enter Aguelhoc where elements of Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a group of former fighters from Libya and a group of deserters from our army were well positioned," Toure said, according to the state-run L'essor newspaper.

"The fighting was hard and we lost men, and equipment was destroyed."

The growing insurgency is also raising concerns in Washington, which sees the small, poor nation as an important ally against AQIM, the sub-Saharan al Qaeda group.

"The situation is unpredictable and instability could spread. Private citizens have not been targeted, but the MNLA has indicated via its websites that it intends to conduct military operations across northern Mali," the U.S. State Department said as part of a new travel warning issued last week.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland condemned the rebel attacks, saying Saturday that "the United States is deeply concerned by continuing incidents of violence."

The influx of fighters returning from Libya has re-energized the Tuareg insurgency, which seeks to wrest control of three northern regions, according to the global intelligence firm Stratfor.

"Mali has experienced perhaps the most significant external repercussions from the downfall of the regime of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi," it said in a recent analysis.

Gadhafi endeared himself to Malians by funding the construction of a popular mosque in the capital Bamako, and helped pay for a Malian government complex that remains under construction.

He is also accused of backing the Tuaregs in Mali and Niger during the 1990s.

So it came as no surprise that Malian Tuaregs willingly went to Libya to fight for Gadhafi as he fought to keep hold of the reigns of his regime which crumbled in August, Libya's new government has said.

After Gadhafi's death in October, heavily armed Tuareg fighters began returning home and launching attacks on the Malian army, Mali's government said.

The nomadic Tuaregs, who are considered an indigenous tribe in the region, are spread across Mali, Libya, Algeria, Niger and Burkino Faso.

In Mali, the Tuareg have long called for the creation of an independent state-- and have risen up against the Malian government a number of times since the 1960s.

The latest uprising began to take root late last year but gained momentum in January when the rebels began attacking towns in northern Mali.

The Malian army clashed with rebels in the Timbuktu region last week, killing 20 people, taking a dozen prisoners and seizing vehicles and weapons, according to the country's defense ministry. It reported no casualties on the government side.

But the rebels claim to have either attacked or seized at least six towns in recent weeks, including some in the Timbuktu region, according to its website. The claims appear to be supported by reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross that thousands have fled the region ahead of fighting.

So now Mali, one of the poorest countries on the planet, has 22,000 refugees feeling the latest Tuareg outbreak into neighboring countries, all of which are just as poverty-stricken. And if they capture one of the major towns for real-- a Kidal, Gao, or even Timbuktu, it will turn into a real catastrophe. Desperately-needed foreign aid groups are packing up and leaving. Meanwhile the tourists kidnapped in November... no one has heard a thing-- other than Al-Qaeda's north African branch threatening to kill them all if the military tries to rescue them. So, let me reiterate: no travel to Mali. Tuscany is nice and I bet there are some bargains to be found in Greece. And you can listen to Bassekou on CD or on YouTube:



UPDATE: Getting Worse

Officially the Tuaregs, the warlike nomadic "Blue men" of the Sahara, gave up slavery in Mali, where there are nearly a million of them (half the world's population of Tuaregs) in 1973. Supposedly. Whenever I came upon groups of Bella-- the former slaves-- and a bunch of Tuaregs came by, the temperature would drop precipitously and everyone would stop talking. Women and children would disappear. Something was cooking and it sure wasn't kosher. It appeared to me that the Bella in the Tuareg encampment we visited were slaves. I know Mali's neighbors to the east and west still have slaves. Neighboring Niger finally outlawed slavery in 2003 but something between 5 and 10% of the population are still slaves. The Tuaregs consider it their right to hold slaves and they don't tend to recognize national governments. And now they've declared their own country in northern Mali, Azawad-- already a human rights crisis out of control. In the best of times there's no actual rule of law. Republicans should move there and see how they like it.

The UN refugee agency reported Friday that more than 44,000 people have fled into neighbouring Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso.

The Malian Army is trying to fight back and it's looking more and more like a full scale civil war everyday. They are desperate to keep the rebels from capturing one of the larger towns in the north-- Kidal, Gao or Timbuktu-- but AP reported that Tuareg rebels attacked Hombori, a town in the south, killing the village chief and ransacking the town for weapons.

The 3 Scariest Things I Ever Did On My Travels

For those who think hopping on a plane for a trip to London or Paris or Mexico City is adventurous and dangerous, this post may be hard to relate to. I started hitchhiking across America when I was 13. I hitched from Brooklyn to L.A. when I was 15 and stowed away on ship so I could make a new, simpler life for myself on Tonga. I celebrated my 21st birthday in my home-- a thatch-roofed bungalow steps from the Arabian Sea in Goa. But this morning, after reading about the latest deprecation in war-torn Mali, I tried to recall what the most dangerous stunts I had pulled on my travels.

Because I was swimming when I was thinking about it-- and because I get really scared of crocodiles and alligators-- one that popped into my mind was a trip to Esteros del Iberá a swampy section of northern Argentina where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay all come together. They call it the Serengeti of Latin America because of the abundance of wildlife and, as I noted at the time, "the most important thing was to get the idea of "swamp" out of my head. This was easy because the place is not only gorgeous, it is fresh and even cooler than everyplace around it. The water is so beautiful that if it weren't for the alligators, pirhanas, capybaras and anacondas, you'd want to jump right in-- as many of the folks who live around there do anyway (and have the missing fingers and toes to prove it)."

Alligators-- they call them Yacare Caiman in the neighborhood, like the fella in the picture-- are something I usually go out of my way to avoid. So, for me, the scariest moment came when I agreed to go with a local in a dugout canoe for an afternoon of caiman, capybara (word's biggest rodent) and anaconda watching. And for hours that's all I saw... not anacondas, just a billion alligators and giant prehistoric rats.

Years earlier I had a run-in with an even scarier creature. I was bumming around Afghanistan in 1969 and found myself captured by a militia up in the mountains. I didn't understand a word of Pashtun at the time-- I learned a few months later when I got snowed in and stranded in a tiny Pashtun village for the winter-- but I sure understood the universal motions and grunts for "put your hands over your head or I'll unload this Kalashnikov into it." So I did. Maybe they wanted to go for a Ripley's Believe It Or Not Record, but they just had us keep our hands over our heads for hours. Eventually some Australian hippie who was with me-- and peaking on acid-- just started laughing and lowered his hands. At first the Afs all started screaming menacingly and made like they were about to shoot us. Then I started laughing and lowered my hands too. And then everyone else did-- and soon we were sitting around the campfire drinking tea with the militia all laughing away and smoking opiated hash like we were all best friends.

Most recently though, Roland and I went to Mali and wound up in Timbuktu on the outskirts of the Sahara Desert. It's not really the outskirts anymore; the desert is encroaching rapidly and the streets get covered in sand all the time. One night we decided to go with Mohammed, our Tuareg guide, into the Sahara itself. It's trackless; there's nothing but sand dunes and the light is the moon and stars and our flashlights. Our destination: a Tuareg encampment a few miles away where some nomads had come down from the desert to trade. We were leaving for America in a few days and there was plenty of stuff to trade-- from my high-end REI walking sticks to cans of sardines Roland had brought... and toilet paper, airline shaving kits, bits and pieces of clothes... all kinds of stuff we didn't want to schlepp back to L.A. It went pretty well. It might not have. As I've been writing in the last few months, a Tuareg rebellion was brewing and it's boiled over... big time. They've seized two-thirds of the country. And these are bad guys; they believe slavery is condoned by their religion, for example. And in the name of their primitive and ignorant concept of Islam, they are destroying Timbuktu, ironically a centuries-old center of Islamic learning.

Armed fighters of Mali's al-Qaida-linked Ansar Dine Islamist group on Saturday destroyed mausoleums in the ancient trading city of Timbuktu, classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site, witnesses said. 

The attack came just four days after UNESCO agreed to a request by the West African state to place Timbuktu on its list of heritage sites in danger following the seizure of its northern two-thirds in April by separatist and Islamist rebels. 

"They have already completely destroyed the mausoleum of Sidi Mahmoud (Ben Amar) and two others. They said they would continue all day and destroy all 16," local Malian journalist Yeya Tandina said by telephone of the 16 most prized resting grounds of local saints in the town. 

"They are armed and have surrounded the sites with pick-up trucks. The population is just looking on helplessly," he said, adding that the Islamists were currently taking pick-axes to the mausoleum of Sidi El Mokhtar, another cherished local saint.

Roland is protesting because I didn't include the time I was stranded on a coral reef in Sri Lanka and the time we almost drove over a cliff in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco south of Marrakech.

Cadillac Commercial Through Morocco's Atlas Mountains At The Dadès Gorges

I started visiting Morocco in 1969 and I've been there over a dozen times since. At some point it can't just be about laying around Marrakesh, Essaouira, Tangier and Fes. So some years ago I set out across the Atlas Mountains south of Marrakesh and discovered Taroudant, which is kind of what Marrakesh was like in the 1960s before it became so cosmopolitan. I loved it and kept going back. From there we'd set out for Tiznit and even Sidi Ifni further south and east and then, eventually for Ouarzazate, Zagora south and west and even Mhamid right at the edge of the Sahara, the last stop before the 2 month camel ride to Timbuktu.

I just saw the Cadillac ad above with the driver going through the Atlas Mountains at the Dadès Gorges. We did hire a camel driver and his son to take us out into the Sahara Desert... but not as far as Timbuktu, which we did eventually get to-- in a jeep. As for the curving passes of the High Atlas... oh yes; we did that, several times in fact. But once was a time I'll never forget. We weren't going nearly as fast as the Cadillac in the ad-- nor did we have nearly as good a vehicle-- but we were descending pretty briskly when... no more pavement. The asphalt suddenly gave way to gravel.

You know what happens when the asphalt suddenly gives way to gravel? It had never crossed my mind 'til then either. But we spun right out of control and headed for one of those drops you can see in the Cadillac ad. In fact, the bottom of that gorge is filled with cars and trucks that did go over during the years. I'd like to say it was my reflexes and skillful driving that saved us-- and it may have been; who remembers anything but the sheer terror? But I think it was just luck. The car came to a stop an inch from the deadly drop. Within seconds a dozen old Berber men appeared out of nowhere and were swarming all over us, as though they came out of the sides of the rocky crevices. Each one wanted to touch my heart. For luck I guess.

Nothing much in M'Hamid but flies, sand and camels

Is Royal Air Maroc Even A Worse Airline Than Delta-- The Worst Airline Of 2010?

I stopped using drugs decades ago. But Saturday I could have used some to start 2011 off on the right foot. I didn't have any, though, and I found a fine substitute, courtesy of Apple-- the new iPod, which is the size of a matchbox, only way thinner. The day started off dreadfully enough in London. I had a flight out of Heathrow at noon but I had noticed the night before that the city had just closed down all the main thoroughfares in the West End to muck things up on New Year's Eve. I had a feeling that the parade-- basically for Russian and French tourists-- on January 1 was going to also be a traffic mess. I was right. I thought the best chance I had of avoiding it would be to leave early. I was out of the hotel at around 7AM-- pitch black, freezing, wet though not raining... and all the streets around the hotel already closed to traffic!

I have a terrible cold I picked up from one of my friends in Morocco and I was a mess-- a mess who had to walk a mile to find a street with traffic and a taxi to get me to Paddington Station and the Heathrow Express. I had a 20 pound note. Paddington should be half that. Turns out the taxis have a 4 pound New Year's Day surcharge. I still made it on budget-- with enough left over to buy a couple of packs of tissues for the plane. The plane, of course, was late leaving and the two new B.A. business lounges in Terminal 5 are not very impressive-- unless the goal is to remind business travelers that there really is a big difference between flying first class and flying business class. Anyway, there were long lines that didn't seem to move everywhere and I was getting jittery. That's when I realized that my music would brighten me right up, the way drugs might have when I was in my late teens. And did it ever. I was soon singing and dancing, entertaining myself and everyone around me. Blink 182, Jesus and Mary Chain, Frank Sinatra, Black Eyed Peas, Bodeans, Libertines, Offspring, Andrea Bocelli, Depeche Mode, Sisters of Mercy, Velvet Underground... The battery ran down while I was waiting for my luggage at LAX. My bag was among the first half dozen to come down the carousel and life was good.

People were still getting off the plane when I was already in a taxi on my way home to a nice, long steam shower. L.A.'s "freezing," people say. It's 60. In London it was in the 30s. There's a difference, a big one. London's already a memory, although I just downloaded some photos Roland and I took of each other at the Tate Modern on Friday. Here I am in front of a triptych by my very favorite artist:


And here's Roland in front of a painting by Cy Twombly, who he really, really hates:


I know I'm always ragging on what a crap airline Delta is. But I have a new nominee for worst airline ever. Roland reminded me of how dreadful Timbuktu Air and Mali Air both are. On one of them a guy got on the plane with a gigantic sword and there was a big brouhaha over whether he could carry it or not. In the end a compromise was worked out. He handed it over to the stewardess, who gave it back to him after we took off. India's Sahara Air was even worse. They were selling standing room and the restrooms were filled with boxes of TVs and items like that that the crew was transporting for themselves. But Royal Air Maroc, considered one of the best airlines in Africa has got to be 2010's pig-in-the-poke. We've flown it back to various European cities in the past and never noticed how really bad it is. This time we did. And so did everyone else we talked to about it.

Back in the U.S. before the trip began they arbitrarily changed Roland's flight from Marrakech to London, meaning we wouldn't be flying together, even though we bought them at the same time with the same credit card. We called their 1-800 number dozens of times. No one ever answers. Never-- no time of the day or night. I asked my travel agent to try. He confirmed my experience. Royal Air Maroc doesn't take phone calls-- nor do they answer e-mails. Everyone in our party had bad experiences flying into Marrakech and in one case, home to the U.S. I'm guessing though that the cockroaches didn't mind.

Royal Air Maroc deteriorating customer service has resulted in some unexpected types of passengers on board lately, cockroaches.
These critters do intermingle with passengers in search for food, as shown in this video, and customers were forced to play exterminators. Customers have complained for some time that unless Royal Air Maroc recruits its personnel based on merit and not on nepotism, and works to instill work ethics in its work force, where good work is rewarded and mediocrity is punished, it will not realize its potential and become a trusted international airline with Casablanca as a major hub.

An analyst, M. Zakaria, said  "Royal Air Maroc prices keep going up while its service continues to go down. On the topic of high fares, Royal Air Maroc management's mistakes are causing the high fares and accentuating bad service.

RAM made four major mistakes. The labor agreement with their pilots, the bad investment especially when they purchased Air Senegal and also starting  low budget airline, Air Atlas (A flagship airline should not be in low cost business) and lastly the high price of Fuel (RAM pre-payed for the fuel back when the barrel was almost $100). So the customers are paying for RAM mistakes.

RAM pilots are amongst the highest paid pilots in the industry. They average is about  $100K/Yr where as EasyJet, Jet4U and Air Arabia pilots make less than $40K/Yr. It's not just the pilots that are burdening  Royal Air Maroc overall payroll, their higher Managers are also getting paid higher than average. So RAM need to charge more to pay the high salaries/benefits. Shipping with Royal Air Maroc is also problematic, their Cargo business has been in the red for many years.

I never begrudge working people decent salaries-- even though the landing in Casablanca was one of the worst I had ever been through. But I did watch the cargo being unloaded and it absolutely looked like the cargo handlers were competing with each other over who could break the most stuff. I should mention that the stewards on the flight from Casablanca to London were very professional and solicitous and that even the food was decent.

Morocco's King Mohammed VI, Our Next Door Neighbor

Last week our next door neighbor in Marrakech moved back into his place. He has homes all over Morocco and goes from one set of digs to another. There seem to be two or three just in Marrakech. He was here a couple weeks ago for the Marrakech Film Festival and I'm not sure why he's back so soon. I don't expect to see him-- other than on TV-- and I only knew he was back because of the huge number of heavily armed troops on every street and alleyway in Sidi Mimoun, our quiet little neighborhood. I had just been reading about him, thanks to Wikileaks.

You probably know me as a critic of conservatives but if you want to see me really get going, just start talking about monarchy. One of the highlights of the month was the video I saw of British students attacking the limousine of Queen Elizabeth's reactionary son-- purportedly the next so-called "king" of England-- and the ho he's shacking up with. The students were chanting "off with their heads," music to my ears.

But these immensely wealthy and powerful royal families are extremely committed to holding onto their positions at the tip-top of society-- and extremely dangerous. My friend Toon arrived in Marrakech a few days ago and he happened to tell me about how the journalists involved in the exposure of Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld as a Nazi were ruined and professionally destroyed. Bernhard, like England's weak-minded King Edward VIII, was a Nazi who conspired, in Edward's case, at the urging of his American Nazi wife, Wallace Simpson, with Hitler to bring fascism to his country.

[W]ith a belligerent new leader in Berlin threatening to rip up the Treaty of Versailles, those [Nazi] sympathies posed a serious problem-- particularly when King George V died in January 1936. Edward inherited the throne as a hugely popular new king-- and set about meddling in government policy. This was in defiance of all convention but that didn’t stop Edward. He took to calling the ­German ambassador directly-- a clear breach of constitutional protocol and one with serious practical consequences.

When Hitler made it clear he meant to send his forces back into the demilitarised Rhineland the government expressed its opposition. Edward should have stepped back. Instead he threatened to abdicate if Hitler’s advance was stopped, compounding the harm by phoning the German ambassador to tell him he had done so.

“The reassurances from Edward that Britain wasn’t going to fight were crucial,” says Professor Jonathan Petropoulos, author of Royals And The Reich. “Hitler had an ace in the hole, as we would say in American poker, knowing what he did from Edward at the time.”

In that context the abdication at the end of 1936 came as a godsend to the government. But even off the throne the Duke of Windsor posed an ongoing problem.

The FBI files show that at a party in Vienna in June 1937-- the month he married Mrs Simpson-- the loose-tongued Duke told an Italian ­diplomat that the Americans had cracked Italy’s intelligence codes.Four months later the Duke and Duchess paid a high-profile visit to Germany where the Nazi regime fawned on him. They met Hitler, who saw the value of ­cultivating an ally once so intimately involved with British affairs. Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels wrote of the Duke: “It’s a shame he is no longer king. With him we would have entered into an alliance.”

Even the declaration of war was not enough to make the Duke sever his Nazi connections. He was made a major-general and stationed in France but he continued to ­communicate with the enemy. In January 1940 the German minister in The Hague wrote that he had established a direct line of contact to the Duke.

This line of contact proved crucial to the tragic fate of France. From the Duke the Germans learned that their plans for the invasion of France had fallen into Allied hands. This intelligence allowed Hitler to change his plans and catch the Allies by surprise. France fell.

The FBI papers also reveal that the Duchess of Windsor was in ­regular contact with the Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, whom the Americans suspected of being her former lover. After the fall of Paris she and the Duke hopped from Biarritz to Madrid to Lisbon, shamelessly consorting with wealthy fascist sympathisers.

In Portugal Edward committed what may have been the worst act of his shabby career. In July 1940 the German ambassador in Lisbon passed a message to Berlin saying: “The Duke believes with certainty that continued heavy bombing would make England ready for peace.”

The former king was urging the bombardment of his own people.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill understood the danger he posed and was desperate to get him back to Britain, at one stage threatening him with court martial if he refused. In the end sending him to govern the Bahamas-- a humiliating posting which both the Duke and Duchess detested-- proved the most viable option.

But as Fulton Oursler was to discover the former king continued to plot from the governor’s mansion in Nassau, driven by a combination of his own Nazi sympathies and his belief that a strong Hitler could help him back to the British throne.

Shortly after he took up the post the Duke told one confidant: “After the war is over and Hitler has crushed the Americans we’ll take over. The British don’t want me as king but I’ll be back as their leader.”

Bernhard's p.r. machine always went to great lengths to portray him as a war hero and anti-Nazi fighter. But it was long whispered in Holland that the husband of one queen and the father of another, was a filthy Nazi traitor, member of the SS, and a member of the Nazi Party just before he married Crown Princess Juliana.

Back to my neighbor, Mohammed VI. He wasn't even born until 1963, long after Hitler killed himself. He became king in 1999 when his father Hassan II died and everyone says he's far more popular than his father. He inherited at least $2 billion but is said to have a piece on almost everything in the country. I have no way of knowing if that's true or not but I did notice another Wikileaks document that tarnishes Mohammed's patina pretty disastrously. Seems one of the things he has "a piece" of is his country's narcotics trafficking.

For the first time a U.S. official document speaks of the involvement of Morocco in matters of drug trafficking, citing officials of the Moroccan police working at Casablanca airport, who have been sanctioned in mid-August 2009 after they had arrested the son of the Senegalese president and the son of a Minister of the same country for drug possession.

• According to the report, King Mohammed VI had not appreciated the arrest of president's son and a Senegalese minister’s son without his knowledge and without prior consultation. The two Senegalese were released later and the police officers punished.

• The report also quotes an official of the Moroccan police in Casablanca, who was mutilated in the occupied city of Laayoune after he had implicitly accused the regime of being behind the drug mafia.

• Another report published by Wikileaks dated 2008 talks about the corruption that plagues the Moroccan army, especially among senior officials of the military institution. It says "the Moroccan army suffers from corruption, bureaucracy, lower educational level of officers and the continued threat of extremism of some elements." It added that "the head of the gendarmerie, General Hasni Ben Slimane "allegedly involved in corruption cases."

• Corruption, the report said, plagues the top military hierarchy in Morocco and General Benani turned into "a Baron of milk." the latter, taking advantage of his position as army chief in the occupied Western Sahara, manipulated markets to supply the army in milk, thereby making a fortune in billions of dollars, in addition to his involvement with other generals in doubtful markets of fishing permits on the coast of Western Sahara. He managed well, the report said, to build a palace for his family with money of corruption.

• Corruption also affects the officers who, to qualify for promotions, pay bribes to their leaders.

The Guardian reported earlier this month that the king's holding company, Omnium Nord Africain (ONA), "extracts bribes and concessions from real estate developers," something that no one familiar with Morocco would be surprised to hear.

Morocco's royal family is using the institutions of the state to "coerce and solicit bribes" in the country's lucrative real estate sector, according to a leaked report from American diplomats.

Information about high-level corruption involving the rulers of Washington's closest ally in north Africa was brought to the attention of the US consulate in Casablanca, Morocco's commercial capital, by a businessman in 2009, leading diplomats to describe "the appalling greed" of those close to King Mohammed VI.

According to the US report, decisions involving Omnium Nord Africain (ONA), a holding company owned by the king, are made only by the king and two of his powerful associates. "To have discussions with anyone else would be a waste of time," the head of the company is quoted as saying.

Royal involvement in business is a hot topic in Morocco but public discussion of it is sensitive. The US embassy in Rabat reported to Washington in a separate cable that "corruption is prevalent at all levels of Moroccan society."

Mohammed, who succeeded his father, Hassan, in 1999, is said to have cleaned up the royal family's act, but it appears he has not done enough.

"While corrupt practices existed during the reign of King Hassan II … they have become much more institutionalised with King Mohammed VI," one cable quotes a businessman as saying. Institutions such as ONA-- Morocco's largest conglomerate, which clears most large development projects – regularly coerced developers into granting beneficial rights to ONA, the businessman was quoted as saying.

I should add that almost every Moroccan I've spoken to says Mohammed VI is way better than his father, Hassan II, and that he's doing a lot for Morocco, even if he's also doing a lot for the family business. One guy I met even told me he can't blame the king for undermining Morocco's educational system-- illiteracy is still gigantic-- because how would anyone expect a monarchy to hand on to power if the populace was well educated.

Alabama And Mississippi Were Forced To Give Up Slavery... But Mali's Tuaregs Weren't

I don't know... maybe it's because my distant ancestors were slaves in Egypt, but to me slavery is the most horrifying thing that can be done to another human being. And when I was in Mali I saw it close up and personal. I've been wondering why there hasn't been anything in the western press about how the Malian rebels-- the Tuaregs-- were at least in part motivated by their unwillingness to stop using other human beings as slaves. The French, Brits and the U.S. just did not want that to be part of the conversation. There was speculation that the reason was because they had hoped the turn the Tuaregs against the al Qaeda Islamists by looking the other way on the slavery thing.

And then, out of nowhere, USA Today, of all places, blows the whistle on Tuareg slavery this week. They trumpeted that the Tuaregs fleeing the advancing French and Mailian troops have been "taking with them some of their most important possessions-- slaves." Until now all the coverage has been about how the mean Malians have been killing the poor innocent Tuaregs they get their hands on. No context whatsoever-- NONE. That might be just fine for the NY Times but USA Today just put the paper of record to shame.

The Tuareg tribes that overran Mali's military with the help of Arab extremist groups aligned with al-Qaeda have long held slaves and many of the captives are from families that have been enslaved for generations.

"It's no way to live, without your freedom," said Mohammed Yattara, a former slave who ran away from his Tuareg masters years ago.

"You depend on them for everything. If they tell you to do something, you have to do it, or they will beat you," he said as he sat with the chief of the village of Toya and among men and women who were descendants of slaves or former slaves.

"You can marry, but if the master wants to have sex with your wife, he will. Everything that's yours is theirs," Yattara said.

Tuaregs are a semi-nomadic people of North Africa's Sahara desert whose traditional land was divided into several nations, the borders of which were drawn by European colonialist powers.

They predate the Arab tribes that moved into the region centuries ago and in Mali, a former French colony, Tuaregs lived primarily in the north part if the country.

But in March, armed Tuaregs took control of the north from the Mali government and marched south with Islamists aligned with al-Qaeda. They took over the city of Timbuktu and threatened the capital of Bamako. The Islamists imposed strict shariah, or Islamic law, on inhabitants it controlled.

Some Tuaregs took advantage of their newly won control to reclaim freed or runaway slaves, mostly black Africans.

The French military arrived in January and retook Timbuktu from the Tuaregs, who fled into the desert or refugee camps in neighboring Burkina Faso and Mauritania, some taking slaves with them. Tuaregs and Arabs who failed to escape have been summarily killed, activist groups have said.

Human Rights Watch said the Malian army and black African civilians are holding all Tuaregs and Arabs responsible for the recent months of terror and human rights abuses, whether or not they participated in the crimes.

Yattara is one of the few accessible witnesses who was willing to discuss slavery under the Tuaregs.

Like many other residents of his village, Yattara is a farmer in the rice and hay fields in the river's surrounding wetlands.

Each of Mali's dozens of ethnic groups has a traditional occupation, and Yattara is one of the Bella ("slave" in the Tuareg language), the black Africans who have inherited their slave status.

Though slavery was outlawed in 1960, Mali is one of the countries in the world where the practice of human servitude flourishes, with as many as 200,000 Bella living a life of hereditary enslavement.

Not all Tuaregs own slaves, and not all slave owners are Tuareg. There are also black Malian ethnic groups who own Bella slaves.

But in the Timbuktu region, only Tuaregs own slaves. Not only were the Tuareg seen as supporters for the Islamist rebels' harsh rule over the last ten months, but their slave-owning ways fanned racial animosity in northern Mali.

Like all other slave children, Yattara never went to school, and to this day he is unable to read and write. "But my son is in school now," he said proudly.

Yattara said he believes he is in his early 40s but is not certain of his exact age because Tuareg masters do not file birth certificates. He fled his masters as a young man and during his travels to Senegal and Ivory Coast he discovered that slave-owning was in fact illegal.

"In my father's generation, slaves weren't thinking to be free," Yattara said. "But now there are many slaves who want to be free, and they try to find a way, but they are afraid."

In the Timbuktu region, slaves work on farms or as household servants or shepherds. Deeper in the vast desert of the north, inhabited by Tuaregs and Arabs, the slaves mine salt, a back-breaking task done under the Saharan sun.

Salt is the north's main economic product and black slaves deliver the giant grayish slabs by boat or truck to the black Africans, who then take it to markets in the south.

Yattara and his companions agreed that Tuaregs were the worst slave-masters in Mali.

..."In my life I will never forget what it feels like to be a slave," Yattara said. "Whenever I see Tuaregs I will be angry."

And, as we said a few weeks ago, it still isn't time to start planning a vacation in Mali. Seriously, I'd wait. A guerilla war looks likely... and, at least in the north, long-lasting.

Visit Ancient, Exotic Mali? Safety Revisited

Amanar restaurant, smack in the center of Timbuktu

Almost 3 years ago to the week, I posted a story I wrote from Mali, How Safe Is Mali For American Tourists? At the time, I concluded that it was very safe and I even made light of the State Department prohibition on Peace Corp volunteers traveling to Timbuktu or anywhere north of there-- not that really is anything other than the vast wastes of the Sahara Desert north of there anyway. But Timbuktu is one of the best destinations in Mali and a major reason to travel to that country. Turns out, though, the State Department knew what they were talking about. Four tourists were kidnapped from a central Timbuktu restaurant, Amanar, in broad daylight and one was executed when he refused to get into the kidnappers' truck in front of the restaurant. The dead man was German and the three now missing are from Sweden, Holland and South Africa. The government of Mali ordered a plane to evacuate foreigners back to Bamako, the capital.

Until a few years ago, Timbuktu was one of the most visited destinations in Africa, but it is now one of the many former tourist hotspots in Mali that have been deemed too dangerous to visit by foreign embassies because of kidnappings by the local chapter of al-Qaida.

Friday's incident comes after two French citizens were grabbed in the middle of the night from their hotel in the Malian town of Hombori on Thursday. French judicial officials have opened a preliminary investigation into their kidnappings.

Neither kidnapping has yet been claimed by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, whose members have kidnapped and ransomed more than 50 Europeans and Canadians since 2003.

If Friday's kidnapping is by AQIM, it will mark the first time they have taken a hostage inside of Timbuktu's city limits. Thursday's kidnapping would be another first-- the first hostage taking south of the Niger River.

In October the State Department issued a new travel alert warning against all travel to the north of the country due to kidnapping threats against Westerners.

The Department of State notes that the U.S. Embassy in Bamako has designated northern regions of Mali as "restricted without prior authorization" for purposes of travel by U.S. government employees, contractors, grantees, and their dependents.  Prior to traveling to these areas, U.S. government employees in Mali are required to have the written approval of the U.S. Ambassador to Mali. This designation is based on the presence of AQIM, as well as banditry in the region. This restriction does not apply to travelers who are not associated with the U.S. government, but should be taken into account when planning travel. The restriction is in effect for the regions of Kidal, Gao, and Timbuktu.

U.S. citizens are specifically reminded that these areas include the Timbuktu site of the popular Festival au Desert music festival, as well as the sites in the regions of Kidal and Gao where many other musical and cultural festivals are traditionally held between December and February. It should be noted that-- in addition to the potential terrorist and criminal threats-- these festivals are located in particularly remote locations, and the Malian authorities would have extreme difficulty rendering assistance should an emergency occur at any of them.

And it isn't only the U.S. State Department warning tourists away from Mali. European countries have been telling their nationals since April that Mali is too dangerous to visit.

• We advise against all travel to the northern provinces of Mali. This includes the provinces of Kidal, Gao, Koulikoro (north of Mourdiah), Ségou (north of Niono), Tombouctou (including the city of Tombouctou (Timbuktu)), Mopti, and areas bordering Mauritania east of Nioro in the Kayes province.

• There is a high threat from terrorism in Mali. Terrorists have been involved in kidnaps in the region, on a number of occasions leading to the murder of the hostages.  We believe that further kidnap attempts are likely.

• On 19 April the Embassy of France in Bamako (Mali) alerted its nationals of a “very high risk” of being kidnapped in Mali and Niger particularly between the city of Mopti and the border with Burkina Faso.

• There have been reports of kidnap threats against westerners attending festivals in Mali.  The festival in Anderamboukane, which takes place in an area of Mali that we advise against all travel to was postponed earlier in the year due to security concerns. In 2009 a British national who attended this festival was subsequently kidnapped and murdered. Bookings are already being taken for 2012 festivals in areas of northern Mali to which we currently advise against all travel.

Traveling And Living Abroad

Howie, into the Sahara Desert… with loafers

I don't recall there being any blondes in the part of Brooklyn where I grew up. When I got to college, one of my first girlfriends was blonde-- when her head wasn't shaved. She was from an aristocratic Alabama plantation family… but she had broken free-- got a job as a model, enrolled in a state university and dropped a lot of acid. I never have been able too figure out what she saw in me, but I'll never forget her. My first trip "abroad" was with her. We decided to hitchhike to the North Pole. We got as far as Montreal, which we both loved. The next summer I hitchhiked down to Mexico City; loved that too. And I've been traveling abroad ever since. After college I went to Europe for the summer... and stayed almost 7 years, 7 years that including a road trip by VW van to India, Afghanistan, Nepal, Iran, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Since returning, I've managed to spend at least a few weeks outside of the U.S. every year, these days a month in the summer and a month in the winter. This blog is meant to reflect on it. Some of my favorite recent trips have entailed renting houses in Tuscany, Marrakech, Phuket, Yucatán, Bali and Rome. Sometimes I still wander around and don't get all sedentary in one spot, like on recent trips through the Himalayas, one through Mali, and one through Cappadocia.

So, when I read Nick Kristof's Times column Sunday, Go West, Young People! And East!, I could easily relate. But not agree, not entirely. Of course, I agree with him when he explains how traveling as a student "changed me by opening my eyes to human needs and to human universals." Same with me. His travels led him to the career he has now as a NY Times globe-trotting columnist. Mine led to me becoming president of a large international record company.

Gap years are becoming a bit more common in the United States and are promoted by organizations like Global Citizen Year. Colleges tend to love it when students defer admission to take a gap year because those students arrive with more maturity and less propensity to spend freshman year in an alcoholic haze.

Here’s a suggestion: How about if colleges gave students a semester credit for a gap year spent in a non-English-speaking country?

There’s a misconception that gap years or study-abroad opportunities are feasible only for the affluent. There are lots of free options (and some paid ones) at idealist.org, which lists volunteering opportunities all over the world. It’s also often possible to make money teaching English on the side.

So go west, young men and women! And go east! Y al norte y al sur!

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! I've loved going west to Polonnaruwa and east to Aix-en-Provence and al norte to Reykjavík y al sur to Tierra del Fuego! So what's the beef? A parenthetical: "(A shout-out goes to Goucher College in Baltimore, which requires students to study abroad. Others should try that.)" My problem: "requires." Encourages, motivates, incentivizes… that's all awesome. Requires? Nooooo. One thing that I did learn while traveling and living abroad is that it isn't suited to everyone. My sister came to visit me in Amsterdam, where I lived for nearly 4 years, and stayed one day before boarding a plane back to Brooklyn. Two friends took my advice and flew first class to Bangkok, checked into a suite at the legendary Oriental-- the best hotel in town-- and called me up to scream that they didn't appreciate my practical joke, then turned around and flew home immediately-- not even one night in Bangkok!

Kristoff advocates for all young Americans to learn Spanish and offers a joke about people who refuse to learn any languages.

If someone who speaks three languages is trilingual, and a person who speaks four languages is quadrilingual, what is a person called who speaks no foreign language at all?

Answer: An American.

One of the aims of higher education is to broaden perspectives, and what better way than by a home stay in a really different country, like Bangladesh or Senegal? Time abroad also leaves one more aware of the complex prism of suspicion through which the United States is often viewed. If more Americans had overseas experience, our foreign policy might be wiser.

There's another perspective. When I traveled across Asia on the "Hippie Trail" and later worked in an international youth center in Amsterdam, people spoke all languages. Everyone seemed comfortable except Americans. Eventually I figured out that some Americans-- and basically only Americans-- have some kind of innate paranoia that if someone is speaking another language, it means they are plotting against them in some way. Force them to live abroad? I don't like that whole "force" thing if it can be avoided. Universities encouraging students to study abroad or, much better, take a year off to live abroad, that I totally concur with. It won't be a miracle cure for provincialism and small-minded bigotry, but it will definitely help move the ball down the field.

Howie, crossing the Golden Horn

Were You Thinking About A Trip To Ethiopia? Hold Up... It May Not Be Safe

Every time vacation planning time rolls around, Roland brings up Ethiopia. He's almost persuaded me a couple of times. I sure like the food and eat at Rahel, a vegan Ethiopian restaurant on Fairfax in L.A. very frequently. And I love all that mystic stuff about Ethiopia on the History Channel (like the video up top). But between the primitiveness, the extreme poverty, the corruption, and the culture of violence that has taken root there since 1974 when the DERG overthrew and murdered Haile Selassie, there has been a state of corrosive instability and questionable legitimacy for nearly three decades. Tourism, which had started developing in the 1960s, took a great leap backwards in the 1970s and is still very primitive now.

And now there's an outbreak of deadly homophobia. Crackpot U.S. evangelical groups are spreading anti-gay hate in Ethiopia causing a climate of moral panic, forcing the LGBT community to flee the country and making it unsafe for western tourists to visit the country. They've been encouraging the introduction of the death penalty for homosexuality.

A representative, from the Ethiopian Inter-Religious Council Against Homosexuality (EICAH) organization, underlined to workshop participants that gayness is not natural and has nothing to do with human rights, but ‘a result of a result of inappropriate upbringing, identity crisis and moral decay.

‘So we have to work hard to teach our children the bible and ethics and also protect our nation from the dirty western imposed culture of homosexuality.’

Sultan Muhe, chair of Bright Children Voluntary Association (BCVA) testified that as a child he was gang-raped, an experience that ‘made him’ gay as well as a sex worker.

Muhe also stated that he was now cured (ex-gay) and now campaigns for others to be ‘healed,’ stating: ‘Homosexuality should be discouraged by whatever means and the government should do whatever it takes to stop it.'

At the conclusion of the workshop, the EICAH representative stated that the council is ‘making progress’ in convincing the government to be stricter on homosexuality and introduce the death penalty to punish ‘such acts.'

The ECIAH representative added that prospects for capital punishment being legislated against gays ‘seems promising.'

...Mercy (name changed), director of Rainbow Ethiopia, a health and support group for LGBT people, told GSN: ‘The trend of homophobia and hate crimes is increasing in Ethiopia because these organizations are creating a moral panic and feeding the public with false information and wild allegations.

‘They scare the public that homosexuals are raping children and then “recruit” them into homosexuality, which is “promoted” and “spreading” throughout the country.

‘These groups even present some of the LGBTI members of the community as a mercenaries, trained and sponsored by the West to “promote homosexuality."

‘Families, police, neighbors the community in large are turning more and more hostile; we are living in fear and LGBT community members are increasingly desperate to flee Ethiopia.

‘They put their lives at risk by using human traffickers through dangerous routes such as crossing the Sahara desert in an attempt to get to Europe through Libya or through Egypt to Israel, often killed in the attempt to do so.’

Mercy called upon human rights organizations and international community to do everything in their power ‘to cut the Western funding to these organizations, and outlaw them. However aid to Ethiopia and other organizations should continue.'

I'll get my fix of wat and injera at Rahel-- without a side order of hatred, bigotry and possible execution.