Timbuktu is far for a reason

This doesn't feel like Manhattan

Everyone knows the saying that goes something like: “Dude, where is this guy? Timbuktu?” when describing the lateness of someone’s arrival or the general confusion to someone’s actual location. Frankly, I don’t know where the statement came from and I would bet that most of you thought it was a ficitonal distant place right nexst to Tatooine. Well it’s not. It’s a real place, but it is aptly named for a place far, far away because of things like this.

Twenty-six people, at least half of them children, were killed in a stampede near the ancient Djinguereber mud mosque in Timbuktu, Mali.

Did the mud mosque collapse, oh fearless Commodore? No, that’s the thing. The “mud” mosque was actually a safe haven.

Moulaye Sayah said about 4,000 people, traveling to and from the mosque to celebrate the festival, had to squeeze through a narrow road. The main road that leads to the mosque is closed because of construction, Sayah told CNN. Because the smaller road was so crowded, Sayah said, people began falling and some panicked, sparking the stampede.

Fuck, that’s sad. I don’t know what makes a land sound like more of a distant place. The fact that they have mud mosques or that there is only one trench-like narrow passage that 4,000 people have to squeeze through in order to get to the mud mosque.