Crunching the desert sand in their teeth, MSU alumnus Chris Berggren and his friends look on as a group from the African village of Ende sprawl out, contorting their bodies to follow the Twister spinner’s demands.
Spread between the crumbling mud buildings, the multicolored dots of the Twister mat reflect the hot, midday sunlight. The locals are delighted with the game, and considering it’s Christmas Day, the group decides to leave it with them as a gift.
Half a world away from their snowy Midwestern homes, they’re on the edge of the Sahara desert on their way to the fabled city of Timbuktu, enjoying the adventure of a lifetime.
“Every day, something crazy happened to us,” Berggren said. “It’s a really interesting, unique part of the world.”
Although it has been 14 years since the Christmas in Ende, the trip lives on with Berggren. Last September he published a book about the experience, which he hopes will motivate adventurous students.
Still a travel junkie, he works for Eastern Michigan University’s study abroad program, taking students and professors all over the world to learn.
Despite its eventual impact, the trip had a humble beginning in a small bar in Ann Arbor. Berggren and a few friends he met through an Eastern Michigan study abroad trip were catching up after time apart and decided to go on another trip together.
Berggren had recently spoken to a Peace Corps friend who had been stationed in Mali, an impoverished country in West Africa and home to Timbuktu, an ancient desert outpost of the salt for gold trade. Berggren previously thought Timbuktu was a legend such as that of El Dorado. Nevertheless, he suggested the city.
“We got together in Ann Arbor in the bar … and we moved on to what do we do next?,” said Jeremy Baldwin, another traveler. “And somehow we came up with the idea after a couple pitchers of beer. And we actually did it. It took us a little over a year, but we did it.”
By the time the trip happened, the travel group had swelled to nine. The itinerary included flying into neighboring Senegal, taking a 36-hour train ride to Bamako, the capital of Mali, trekking through the Dogon Country, a cliff escarpment of African villages essentially untouched by time, and finally taking a boat ride up the Niger River in time to celebrate New Year’s 1996 in Timbuktu. It was an ambitious plan, but the group was determined.
Experiences for a book
Along the way, Berggren kept a journal of everything that happened: Bribing officials at the Mali Embassy for visas. Staying the night on the porch of a brothel. Malaria medication-induced hallucinations. A traditional African wedding between two group members in the Dogon Country. Riding on a construction boat down the Niger River. And, finally, reaching Timbuktu in time for New Year’s Eve.
A few years later, Berggren wrote a book about the trip, and last September, he published, “Somewhere in the Sand: In Search of Timbuktu,” through iUniverse, a print-on-demand company. The other members of the travel group said the book was an accurate and entertaining narrative of the trip.
“It’s just a truthful account of nine people who decided to do something kind of crazy,” said Karl Stoklosa, one of the travelers.
In addition to telling the story of the trip, Berggren said he aimed to write about the group’s general travel attitude.
“It’s a travel narrative, but in a way, it kind of deals with the philosophy of travel too,” he said. “We had this philosophy that we were going to go with the flow and embrace whatever came our way.”
Although their ultimate goal was to make it to Timbuktu, Berggren said the city now is faded compared to the glamor of its legends, and the area known as Dogon Country was the best part of the itinerary.
“(The Dogon) is this huge cliff escarpment, but most of (the villages) have moved down to the desert now. The tribes are thought to be the original occupants of the area,” Berggren said. “It was really interesting because they still live pretty much the same way and it’s pretty much untouched by technology.”
Timbuktu once was a port town along the bank of the Niger River, but as the river migrated south, the city has been left behind in the midst of the Sahara Desert.
“Man, it is desolate. And hot,” Baldwin said. “The desert is slowly reclaiming the town, burying it in sand. They’re constantly digging it out. It’s a strange place, but it has a certain feel, that’s for sure, a kind of mystical feel.”
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Life-changing experience
It was only three weeks of their lives, but many of the travelers said the trip permanently affected their outlook on life.
“I appreciate things in a different way,” Stoklosa said. “The thing that was eye-opening was the immense poverty and hunger. I’ve seen it in India, but this was more raw and intense than I’d seen it. Life is cheap, and you have to take that into consideration.”
Burton said the trip taught him to appreciate the people with whom he spent time.
“It doesn’t really matter where you are,” he said. “You can be in Timbuktu or New York City or Kalamazoo, Mich. If you’re with good people and having a good time it really doesn’t matter what building you’re in.”
The group dynamics were a huge aspect of the trip experience, Stoklosa said, and the travel companions still are close friends.
“We all trusted each other implicitly and really felt we could rely on each other and as a group, we could make the right decisions,” he said.
Currently living in Ypsilanti with his wife and infant daughter, Berggren said he hopes his book will encourage other college students to travel the world.
“It was just such a cool trip, I wanted to get it out there,” he said.
“I’d like for the book to do well, but just the fact that it’s out there — I’m pretty happy about that. I hope that it can get people to travel to see strange places as well.”
