2. The scourge of Timbuktu

I cannot understand why there are so many organizations from all over the world with centers in Timbuktu for helping people in need.
Notwithstanding these centres, listening to people talking about the situation and seeing at the state of things this small city, apparently one most assisted cities in the world, it seemed to me to be in extreme poverty.
It wasn’t always like that, 35 years ago, a sandy wind and a drought of biblical dimensions changed the face of the region and the lives of the inhabitants. The red sand wind rose so strongly then, that it uprooted trees and even lifted cars. You could not see more than two meters away. It blew for a week, stopped for two days, then started to blow again for another week, then it stopped again for two days and everyone thought it was fianally over. But it started to blow again a third time, for another week.

All the animals died and in the desert, many people died of hunger and thirst.
When the wind finally calmed down, people heard the roar of thunder and then came a deluge of rain with hail that lasted an hour. The inhabitants thought that Judgment Day had come.
When it ended, the hail formed a layer on the streets and the astonished people collected it, as it was something entirely new for them.
The rain collapsed many houses because they had not been not built to withstand such heavy rain.

It was a real scourge, people ate the cooked skin of dead animals so as not to starve.
Before the catastrophe, the river reached the city through a large natural canal, vegetables and fruit were grown in abundance, peach trees flourished and domestic animals grazed among the trees and tall grasses.

Timbuktu before the catastrophe

From that time Timbuktu is no longer the city of green gardens, it is a city of wind and sand planted in the middle of the desert. Finding the money and food to survive is a daily concern.