News

It's been a busy few weeks at Postcards from Timbuktu. Postcrossing graciously wrote a blog post about our project, and the many postcard enthusiasts there quickly snapped up a few hundred postcards. That kept us busy until... actually it's still keeping us busy! The Post Office in Timbuktu even ran out of stamps a few days ago and we had to send more up from Bamako!

Ali and the boys were also featured in a short TV production by 3sat, a German channel that admirably does their fair share of culture documentaries. You can view the documentary online...

Most of our postcards and other items arrive at their destinations in 2-3 weeks from the time that they are ordered. Some of them take much longer, though, and every now and then, they get lost. 

We encourage customers to contact us if an order is taking too long. Often, we send out a replacement.  But sometimes seemingly lost items magically appear after many weeks or even months. Here are a few exchanges with clients who experienced just that. 

In this case, the postcard was a birthday card. It took nearly two months...

This is Mohamed Aguissa. He is writing messages on postcards and stamping them with our "Tombouctou la Ville Mystérieuse" stamp that Ali had custom made in Timbuktu (the official postmark stamp comes from the post office).

Prior to 2012, Mohamed sold jewelry made by his father and served as a tourist guide for visitors to Timbuktu. After the multiple crises of early 2012, he fled with his family to Burkina Faso where he lived in a refugee camp in Djibo for 2 years.

Since returning to Timbuktu, things have not been easy. His family gets by, but...

Some of you have already ordered the new hand drawn postcards available on the site. 

I wrote a bit about the backstory of these postcards over on my blog. You can check it out here. 

We've been fortunate to have a few stories written on the project, resulting in a boatload of postcards being sent to Italy and Spain. The most recent article, a piece in Voice of America, has led to orders from the United States to Uruguay. 

This project will do well with a wide audience, and these articles go a long way to making that happen. If you appreciate the project, you can still get the word out with a simple share on facebook or the like. Thank you to everyone that has already done so. 

Here are some articles that have been...