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As the Land Cruiser chundered out of Timbuktu and into the soft, fine sand of the Sahara, Sylvie Cloutier threw her head back and whooped. "Can I drive?" she asked the driver in French. "I'm used to this!" He arched one an impassive eyebrow.
Turning to her fellow Inuit artists, behind her in the car, she said, "It's just like a snowmobile, right, guys?"
Over the next three hours, the wheezing vehicle plunged and plowed through the sand, and they had a lot of time to talk about how this is
– and isn't – just like their Arctic home.A snowmobile, Jacky Qrunngnut observed, will "drive itself" if you put it in the tracks, whereas the sand takes constant negotiation. Navigating in this, though
– in land that's called "empty", just like home – is similar to home: it's only vast and empty for those who don't know it, aren't from it.For the first couple of hours, the landscape was dotted with small, scrubby thorn trees
– that's a difference, because there are no trees at all back in Igloolik. Then the trees faded away and there started to be more people – well, a few anyway – Tuareg nomads who suddenly appeared on the horizon, herding bony cows or riding camels. There's no word for camel in Inuktitut, you may not be surprised to learn, although there is a word for sand, and one for what it feels like to be very hot.Hot, however, is the subject of some discussion in Mali right now. The country, as any Malian will tell you, is having an unprecedented cold snap. It was just 14 degrees this morning in Timbuktu. When I headed into the street with my toddler son, who was wearing only a light sweater, a group of local women berated me for taking the child outside in such a climate. But the Artcirq members are finding it sufficiently hot that several of the acrobats stripped their shirts off when we stopped in a traditional tented restaurant for lunch. Ms. Cloutier checked her email in Timbuktu (yes, the end of the world has internet cafes). "It's -59 at home today," she said, sweat beading on her forehead. "This is all a little hard to believe."
After hours in the sand, the Land Cruiser slowed down, and a couple of small buildings appeared in the dust. One had an electric light bulb. And that was the sign: we were here. There is a scattering of white, Tuareg tents, a stage on the crest of the dunes, some soldiers guarding the perimeter, a portable mobile-phone tower, and a strange mix of sunburned foreigners and curious, turbaned nomads.
The sun sank not long after six o'clock, and suddenly it was cold indeed
– the temperature will likely fall below zero tonight. The festival doesn't start until tomorrow, but from one row of tents there is the sound of that distinctive Malian steel-guitar blues. And from the other direction, the rumbling complaints of tethered camels.Start the Conversation, Leave a Comment
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