Memories of Mali

Some time back in early 2006, Toast Coetzer’s phone rang. On the line was Bun Booyens, the founding editor of Weg. (The first issue of go! – the English sister title of Weg –would only be published later that year.)

- SHELLEY CHRISTIANS & KYRA TARR

“Toast, do you want to go to Mali?” Bun asked.

The Toyota Fortuner had just been launched in South Africa and an epic expedition had been dreamt up to promote it. The plan? Ship two Fortuners and two Land Cruisers to Dakar in Senegal, and drive them back to Cape Town. Toast joined the crew for the leg from Senegal to Mali.

“My time in Mali was magical,” he says. “It’s a dangerous place now and almost totally off-limits to visitors, so it was a real privilege to go there. Plus, I can forever say that I’ve been to Timbuktu!

“Most of the assignment was shot on film, but I also had a Nikon D70 with me – an entry-level D-SLR camera at the time.”

The film photos accompanied Toast’s feature in go! #2 (August 2006). These are some of the digital shots, which Toast converted to black and white. “Monochrome puts a different spin on the images,” he says. “They seem tethered more to memory now, instead of a particular time and place.” “It was one of the hottest days I’d ever experienced in my life – 54° C according to the vehicle gauge – and the Gandamia Mountains (above) were shrouded in dust, blown in from the nearby Sahara Desert.

“At a place called Douentza, we left the tar road and drove the final 200 km stretch to Timbuktu. But first, we got lost. This couple on a camel (right), pointed us in the right direction.”

HOW?