StephanieDiakite

There are two really big dangers that we are trying to address with this fundraising campaign:

1. The manuscripts are jam-packed in metal footlockers. This means that they are being subjected to risks of damage for lack of padding or protection from one another. Everytime a footlocker is moved, the manuscripts rub against each other causing damage. Individually boxing the manuscripts and inserting humidity traps in the boxes then repacking the boxed manuscripts in footlockers will resolve this issue.

2. The manuscripts have lived for centuries in the dry desert of the Sahara. They are not used to being exposed to humidity and the things that come with it like mold, mildew and fungus. They are in southern Mali which is much more humid, even when it isn't raining. We have begun to see the effects of the humidity change in the footlockers - manifestations pointing to mold, mildew and fungus on paper and also on leather bindings. The rainy season will begin in earnest next month - it literally rains buckets and everything gets kind of wet and steamy. This means that there is a very, very significant risk that one of these manifestations will take hold - that kind of thing would spread like wildfire in the footlockers, destroying the manuscripts as it goes.

Patrimony that leaves it's home has a very hard time getting back - there are numerous collections of African patrimony in that nebulous state already. This patrimony is Malian, we will do everything possible to keep it in Mali until we can return it to its families in Timbuktu.

We feel very strongly that every manuscript in the corpus is important to someone. During the evacuation we did not prioritize, we will not do so during the individual boxing work we are trying to finance now eiither. The corpus is extremely diverse - from cookbooks to holy corans with everything in between.

During the evacuation it became clear to us that the manuscripts are considered national heritage by malians of all ethnic groups and all walks of life - many hundreds of people, trying to survive a war in their country, offered, at their risk, to help us save "our manuscripts". It was truly inspiring.

interestingly enough, the evacuation of the manuscripts has been the first opportunity to do an inventory of the work - this work has been done in collaboration with dutch institutions including the Prince Claus Fund, the DOEN Foundation and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Holland. We cannot tell you how much work is done by women with any certainty, but we can confirm that there is work by women and for women such as material on women's and child health, family law, the rights of women among others there is also literary work by women including poetry that we know of. this inventorying was so exciting for us - it continues to this day and it is just marvelous to see the breadth and the diversity in the corpus first hand!!!