m I k7 A '7m s7'A6 The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, S rumbling Iimbuktu I Angeles Times TIMBUKTU, Mali - In the loose R! nd that is the street outside Tarif's ar,there are more footprints of camels and 4 d donkeys than tire tracks. The rea- n: There are more beasts of burden to st an motor vehicles here. As for the camels, they are avworth ndering. They once brought the great ding caravans across the Sahara Desert m North Africa. Their strong backs conversa tthisonce-prosperouscenterofleam- I was in g and commerce well supplied with Butthe uries from around the world. there are But today the camels are hobbled. .away is a ey lie, idly, on the dunes. the big, t Timbuktu is not well supplied at all. River, or or prosperous. West Afr Inside Tarif's Bar, there are only three yet to lif quor bottles left on the glass shelf-- bottom it o of Johnnie Walker Scotch, one of the three ampari. And they are empty. few hund The reggae music of Bob Marley It has wls on ascratchyloudspeaker; Christ- drive a v as lights blink over the door, although downpou at holiday is months away. rut that 1 Inside this tavern, the faces are long city. "Rig d tired. and ever It is a bad time of year in this distant to start own-on-brown, mud-and-sand outpost Timbukt a mystical place for many, a locale to United N flamechildhoodimaginations,although So, Ti can explain exactly why, especially airport a ose who come here from afar. locally a The principal attraction of modern per weel imbuktu, insofar as anyone seems able hardly t" guess, is the hard-won right to open (down fr roads, businesses turn nto a forgotten outpost eptember 6, 1995 - 15A as re M ,' V Mfr ight now the route is washed out verybody is waiting for the boats art." - Diawuye Guindo Timbuktu director of UNICEF tions henceforth with, "When Timbuktu...." subject was supplies. Ofwhich few in Timbuktu. Only 5 miles a lifeline, the mighty - well, brown and sluggish - Niger ne of the most important in ica. But it has not rained enough ft the river off its oozy mud n this inland delta passage, so supply boats are all tied fast a dred miles upriver. rained, however, too much to ehicle here. It seems the first ur dissolves the dirt-and-sand ets cars and trucks reach the ght now the route is washed out ybody is waiting for the boats ," says Diawuye Guindo, u director of UNICEF, the lations Children's Fund. mbuktu is left with only its nd its two Air Mali (known s Air Maybe) long-haul fights k from Bamako and Mopti, he way for a city of 20,000 om 100,000 about 500 years ago) to keep up its reputation. Ah, 500 years ago, now those were the days, when Timbuktu was a trade center. Salt from the Sahara came south toward West Africa. Gold made the trip backnorth. Ivory went north, cloth came south. Back and forth. Here, the road linked the Arab world and black Africa. For a time, this was the center of learning in all the region with 180 Koranic schools. The still- standing Sankore Mosque was said to be the most important center of Muslim scholarship in the black Islamic world. Guidebooks tell of the first report from Timbuktu to the outside world, two years after Columbus sailed to the New World. Timbuktu then was part of the powerful Songhai Empire and one could admire its civil service, its judi- cial system, the "great store" of doctors and learned men "that are bountifully maintained at the king's expense," ac- cording to the report. It was also the heyday of the famed Tuareg nomads. Feared across the Sa- hara, they preyed on camel caravans. They still are known as the blue war- riors of the desert, for the rich indigo dye of their turbans and robes which stains the skin. Today, the Tuareg are slowing down as nomads. There are no caravans to tax. Some Tuaregs wander from water pump to water pump in the desert with their strings of camels. Others have pitched theirlumpish skin tents more or less permanently on empty, windblown, mud-puddled lots here and in the sur- rounding dunes, where they try to farm carrots in composted sand. Today, UNICEF runs many water stations in the region, 11 gallons for a penny. Solar power nourishes the pumps that nourish the camels. There is the usual lineup of other relief agencies to be found in places where there is little money and great need. The people of Timbuktu have be- come welfare dependent. "One thing that's different here is that people cannot travel the way otherpeople do. Because of changes in the rains and silt in the channels, it's becoming more and more difficult for boats to get up the river. Each year, they come later and later. And Timbuktu suffers for lack of a permanent road," says Moulaye Sidi Haidara, the district representative to the national Parliament. "It needs a lot of assistance," he says, earnestly. "It's quite necessary that your big country gives us some money for a road." Recruiters Angeles Times NONG BUA LAM PHU, Thailand Fifty miles from the Mekong River, man showed up in March, peddling he American dream. His name was Ekapop Kotalee, and e said he was a doctor. He told people e could find them jobs in America, ven with scant prior work experience. A villager in northeastern Thailand ay make only 20,000 baht, or about 840, from his annual rice crop. In the nited States, Kotalee said, factory em- loyees could earn twice that in amonth. In all, nine people amassed at least 0,000 baht, or about $420, so Kotalee ould get them U.S. visas, plane tickets nd jobs. "We sort ofbelieved it was legal," said usaba Polthep, who persuaded her 18- profit from Thai workers' plight year-old son, her stepson and his wife to leave for America. "Well, semi-legal." The scheme came to naught for rea- sons Thai police are investigating. Kotalee, who is not a doctor, is now jailed in Bangkok and claims he was organizing a group tour of France. He may be a simple con artist, bent on bilking gullible country folk. On the other hand, Polthep's rela- tives may be lucky they are still in Thailand, worrying how to reimburse loan sharks. One month ago, state and local authorities raided an underground garment factory in El Monte, Calif., where 72 Thais fraudulently brought into the United States were allegedly compelled to live and work, some re- portedly for seven years. Thailandboasts one ofSoutheast Asia's most dynamic economies. But not all Thais have benefited. Each year, about 70,000 people go through proper legal channels to apply to work overseas. Others, like those freed in the Cali- fornia raid, take a different route: through unlicensed labor recruiters, or criminal gangs. "The labor agent will do everything: get passports, visas, arrange a tour to the United States, fakethephotos," said Pairat Pongcharoen, a spokesman for the Royal Thai Police. "They can't say they're go- ing to work, so they'll claim it's a tour to Disneyland or some other place." U.S. officials in Bangkok estimate at least 2,000 people in Thailand attempt to leave for America monthly. They lie or use fraudulent papers to obtain Thai passports and U.S. visas or buy phony travel documents. One American official acknowledged most of the fraudulent immigrants suc- ceed. This outflow has made Bangkok one of the major transit points for foreign- ers intending to enter the United States illegally. Labor recruitment is a government- licensed activity, and workers are sup- posed to apply to the Labor Ministry before going overseas. But Thai offi- cials said violations occur"all the time." The workers kept captive in El Monte flew to the United States on genuine passports with switched photos, a prac- tice so common in Thailand that U.S. officials there nicknamed the city "the fraudulent-document capital of the world." rrr Apple Computer Loan Application fl. Macintosh Performd 636 w/CD 8MB RAM/500MB hard drive, CD-ROM drive, 15"color monitor keyboard, mouse and all the software you're likely to need. PowerBook' 520 8MB RAM/240MB hard drive. Sure, there' more than one way to get the money you need to buy own a Mac"for a buck or two a day That's right, for the price a Macintoshf computer. But none is as painless as this. Because of a daily latte, you can get a Mac and have money left over for all you have to do is visit the authorized Apple reseller listed below, software and a printer. 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