TIMBUKTU - UNESCO World Heritage Center

 A poetry contest student wrote this short rhyme,

Slowly across the desert sand

Trekked a lonely caravan.

Men on camels, two by two

Destination--Timbuktu.

That's our destination today.  We've all heard jokes about Timbuktu, as being a place far away, Lord knows where.  

• The desert city of Timbuktu dates back to the 11th century when Tuareg nomads settled there and began using the site as a trading post for gold, ivory and salt.  By the 1300s, it had become a hub of trading and the commercial city of the Mali empire.
• The Tuareg founders gave it a Berber (descendants of the pre-Arab inhabitants of North Africa) name, a word composed of two parts:  tin, the feminine form of place of, and bouctou, a small dune.  Timbuktu means place covered by small dunes.
• It is home to three of Western Africa's oldest mud and timber mosques.  The Sankore` mosque, known as the University of Sankore`, was one of the first universities ever built in the world, in the early 14th century.  The University taught much more than Islamic studies including history, language, law, science and most notably, medicine.  By 1450, its population reached about 100,000, and it was home to some 25,000 Islamic scholars.
• Timbuktu was an intellectual and spiritual capital and a center for the spread of Islam throughout Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries.  
• It is known as the City of 333 Saints, because 333 saints were laid to rest in the city.  These saints were celebrated Muslim scholars and teachers, highly revered for their wisdom, generosity and scholarship.
• In 1591, the sultan of Morocco captured the city of Timbuktu, which then began to decline.  The Moroccans, who did not approve of the scholars, had them arrested and sent into exile.  The city was repeatedly attacked by neighboring peoples.  By the end of the 18th century, Timbuktu was reduced to desolation and poverty.  Today it is a shadow of its former self.  
• Timbuktu is in Mali, a land-locked nation in West Africa.  Shaped like Texas, but twice as big, today Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world. 

Condensing a country to a couple of paragraphs is much like the human obituary that condenses the life of someone to a couple of paragraphs.  That has been something that has bugged me for a long time.  Some poor souls who struggle to make it from birth to death aren't important enough to be remembered with an obit.  Some people spend great amounts of time polishing their own obituary to "glaze their donut."  I'm seriously thinking of writing my own, as well.  It will read something like this......"I was born, I lived, I learned, I loved, I lost, and now it's time for me to leave."  I'm completely serious.

Every person, homeless or castle dweller, is a human with feelings, opinions, burdens, and internal fears.  There are narcissists who focus on themselves to the point where one wonders what is missing in their life to cause them to work so hard at braggadocio.  I am unable to figure out if they have an inferiority complex or a superiority complex.

Gotta go and get ready for tonight's dinner guests.  My intent was to prepare food yesterday, but you know me.  Why not put it off until tomorrow.  Come to think of it, that might make a cool sketching on my gravestone!  (giggles)