When I was a child, my mother would always refer to faraway places as ‘going to Timbuktu’. For her, growing up in a small town in Ireland, that African city was the end of the world.

I don’t think she knew that Timbuktu was for centuries a centre of learning, when Europe was in the Dark Ages. Families treasured manuscripts from centuries earlier, and some years back, South Africa built a centre where the precious manuscripts could be kept in climate-controlled conditions.

For some years, there was an amazing music festival in the desert, that attracted visitors from all over the world.