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“To Timbuktu for a
Haircut - one heck of a
book.” Rick Antonson's To Timbuktu
for a Haircut garnered yet another good review,
this time in the Globe and Mail on Saturday,
Aug. 9th. Here's part of what they had to
say: "chapters are nicely embroidered with local
tones and textures, a regional history of West
Africa, the Tuareg people and accounts of early
European exploration." This followed the
splendid review that appeared in The National
Post on July 26, who summed up their 1/2 page
coverage thusly: "Anyone interested in
travelling to Africa should put Antonson's book
on the list, right after malaria
tablets." Author
and tourism executive, Rick Antonson, sets out
on an unforgettable journey to Africa, and
chronicles his adventures in TO TIMBUKTU FOR A
HAIRCUT: A Journey Through West Africa,,
published by Dundurn Press on June 7,
2008. "To
Timbuktu for a Haircut is a great read - a
little bit of Bill Bryson, a little bit of
Michael Palin, and quite a lot of Bob Hope on
the road to Timbuktu." - Professor Geoffrey
Lipman, Assistant Secretary-General, United
Nations World Tourism
Organization. Historically
rich, remote, and once unimaginably dangerous
for travellers, Timbuktu still teases with "Find
me if you can." Rick Antonson's encounters
with entertaining train companions Ebou and
Ussegnou, a mysterious cook called Nema, and
intrepid guide Zak will make you want to pack up
and leave for Timbuktu tomorrow. TO
TIMBUKTU FOR A HAIRCUT combines wry
humour with shrewd observation to deliver an
armchair experience that will linger in the mind
long after the last page is read. "I
left Africa personally changed by the gentle
harshness I found and a disquieting splendour
that found me. Mali was the journey I
needed, if not the one I envisioned. And I
learned that there's a little of Timbuktu in
every traveller: the over-anticipated
experience, the clash of dreams with reality."
&endash; Rick Antonson Rick
Antonson is the president and CEO of Tourism
Vancouver and a director of the Pacific Asia
Travel Association. He has had adventures
in Tibet and Nepal, and in Libya and North
Korea, among others. The co-author of
SLUMACH'S GOLD: In Search of a Legend, he lives
in Vancouver. TO
TIMBUKTU FOR A HAIRCUT: A JOURNEY THROUGH WEST
AFRICA BY RICK ANTONSON It
may seem counterintuitive, but the appeal of
travel literature often has less to do with the
destination in question than with the character
of the traveller. Thus, while there may be
significant geographical overlap, there is a
vast difference, for example, between Frances
Mayes's Tuscany (in the best-selling Under the
Tuscan Sun) and Ferenc Máté's
Tuscany (in the equally impressive but less
commercially successful The Hills of Tuscany).
In each book, the milieu serves as a backdrop
for the revelation and development of the
author's persona. The reader responds not to the
locale but to the locale as experienced by the
narrator. This
may seem a minor distinction, but it's crucial,
especially when you consider both the number of
new travel accounts published each year and the
fact that the world is a finite place with,
sadly, few remaining mysteries. The age of
strict geographic exploration is long gone, but
the potential for personal explorations through
geography is practically
limitless. Two
new books from B.C. writers nicely underscore
this point, to varying degrees of effect. In
exploring two of the world's less- travelled
places, Rick Antonson and Martin Mitchinson also
explore themselves. Tourism
Vancouver president and CEO Rick Antonson
travels for a living, "flying a hundred thousand
kilometres each year for two decades," moving
from conference to air-conditioned hotel room
with seasoned thoughtlessness. When
it came time for him to take a month-long solo
expedition, however, he decided almost on a whim
to journey to one of the most fabled -- and
forbidding -- destinations in the world:
Timbuktu. Few
places are quite as evocative and mysterious. A
centre of Islamic scholarship and culture during
the 15th and 16th centuries, Timbuktu has long
been a beacon for travellers. Once thought of as
a source of unimaginable riches, the city today
is impoverished, threatened by the encroaching
Sahara Desert. For
this trip, Antonson decided against his usual
air travel and instead made the journey on the
ground: by train, boat, car, camel and foot. The
result, as recounted in his impressive new book,
To Timbuktu for a Haircut, is a quixotic quest,
alternately funny and
thought-provoking. Readers
follow his journey chronologically as he moves
toward the city and then as it recedes behind
him. His account is threaded through with
historical and cultural
information. Curiously,
his encounter with the city itself is almost
anticlimactic. He clearly relishes the journey,
and his fellow travellers, more than the
destination. From
a ride up the River Niger to an open-air music
festival in the desert, from the sudden close
friendships that bloom during such travel to the
machinations of an unscrupulous tour coordinator
who seems intent on foiling his travel goals at
every juncture, Antonson handles the joys and
occasional frustrations of his trip in vivid,
straightforward prose and with a wry sense of
humour. kk |
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As
Antonson travels in Senegal and Mali by train,
four-wheel drive, river pinasse, camel, and
foot, he tells of fourteenth-century legends,
eighteenth-century explorers, and today's
endangered existence of Timbuktu's 700,000
ancient manuscripts in what scholars have
described as the most important archaeological
discovery since the Dead Sea
Scrolls.
From
Vancouver Sun