There Is No Place Like Dairy

Badi



Badi drove me to Aguelhoc (or, in French) phonetically, in English it should be something like Adjel'hoc -- Aguelhoc is the old colonial spelling) as we had agreed. Badi's jeep impressed me. I usually don't react to vehicles, but really thought this machine spoke to its owner's personality -- it was white and glossy and clean in a country where nothing is white and glossy and clean, with the exception of the seven o' clock Brazilian soap opera that shuts cities down more effectively than the call to prayer.

In addition, the jeep was equipped with a huge antenna for radio transmission, a spare tyre, and GPS. It gleamed of foresight, another rare commodity here, since poverty and corruption rarely leave room for horizons.

I met Badi at a hotel inhabited by a group of French who knew Badi from before, and a couple of loud Americans. Badi wore a deep violet turban and a turquoise complet and didn't talk much. I immediately knew that I wanted his approval. Incidentally, most things I said he disagreed with. I now think this was a way to make me defend things, to see if I would hold my ground. Sometimes I did, other times I got nervous and blabbered. Nonetheless, I decided that his offer to drive me to Adjel'hoc, where I would live with a Tamashek family he knew for just a share of gas costs amounted to some sort of approval. Approval or some sort of scam that would get me into a lot of trouble. I was pretty sure it was the former, and I have not been disappointed. My family is wonderful, and I have learned more than I could have ever asked for in a couple of weeks. More about this in a second, but first:

Fred B. Jones

Unlike Badi, the Americans at the hotel did not impress me. Maybe because they tried very hard to seem jaded and impossible to impress, which they thought would impress people.

One of them was overweight and made noises when he moved. He sighed when he sat down and grunted when he got up. He went to bed early, after suggesting I make his travel companion an object of study. "This is a nomad", he said, and puffed to get out of his chair.

The nomad's name was Fred B. Jones, and he scared me. He sunned himself in his friend's admiration for a moment, then turned to me and pretended to want to play it down: "Well, I just haven't really lived anywhere since nineteeneightysix." He spent most of the evening telling me about how much more of a real traveler he was than his friends. In fact, they were not really his friend, they were just along for the ride, and kept insisting on air conditioning. "Me, I just sleep in the car"

The car was a 4x4 he had bought in Slovenia, and driven down to sell at a profit in west Africa, thereby paying for his trip. He said things like "Last year I was hitchhiking -- like I always do" and "Yeah, I was bummed I didn't have time to do Mongolia and Tibet" and his whole being frightened me. Maybe because so many of the things he said sounded a lot like things I say, but he sounded like someone I never want to sound like.

He belongs to a class of wanderers that I have met too many of, and that I am terrified of ending up as. It's the type that can turn what must have been thrilling experiences into trivial anecdotes that aim only to brag and that no one wants to listen to.

During the course of the evening, he managed to bring up his homelessness and lack of belonging at least three separate times. I quietly promised myself to impose a strict quota on my own declaration about not having lived anywhere for an extended period of time since the age of seven.

Sometimes people corner me though, by asking where I live. I really don't mean to brag or be funny, I honestly don't know what to say. Where I am from is easy, but most of my material possessions of importance are in Mali, while my parents live in Sweden. I do have a bed in their house, but I have never lived there. My bank account is still in Maine, mail has to be sent poste restante, and my friends are scattered. I guess this will all change next year, and I will admit that it terrifies me to think about it -- living in Boston, working in Boston, having a mailing address and probably an apartment and a routine. But I will have an answer to where do you live, that's always something!

My new(est) home is called Tinégérouf, although I would never have guessed it has a name. I have hitched a ride down from the north for a few days, because i could, and because I felt it my duty as an environmentalist to reduce the per-person-CO2-emissions of the drive down, and maybe also a little bit because I wanted to let people know I am not only alive, but very very well...

...En Brousse -- "In the Bush"

Mohammed's jeep -- every story here begins with a vehicle -- is an old Land Cruiser with many layers of paint showing through the numerous scratches along its sides and a circular sticker on the dashboard advertizing a tourist company based in Ségou. Inside the sun visor crude felt pen block letters assert the power of God: "RIEN NE PEUT CONTRE LA VOLONTE DE DIEU." Me, I would place my bet on the desert -- the wind, the sand, and the unforgiving sun --- over Allah any day.

Then again, maybe that's what God is.

The hood and the doors of the Land Cruiser have begun a slow revolt against conformity, encouraged by rust and boredom and dry desert air, and bulge away from the parts of the car they once fit smugly together with.

There was drama in the way Mohammed drove his Land Cruiser, spinning the wheel this way and that even when it wasn't entirely necessary. There was drama in the way he drove, and there was grandeur in the way he pointed out little villages along the way. We drove through sand and dust and over large boulders past Enemzel, a small collection of half-story mud houses with metal doors painted bright blue. Enemzel, I was told, has a school and a little shop and we stopped there for gas. Then comes Intafouk, a yet smaller collection of mud-brick houses that no one had much to say about except "it has few assets". Finally, after a wide stretch of gravel comes Barrage, which was condemned as essentially useless, except for one thing: recently discovered water. Barrage means dam, or construction, which is exactly what it is named after: construction around water. And since water is such a useful thing in the desert, and around Barrage you strike it at only 2.5 meters, I would be very surprised if the hot season won't see rapid growth in Barrage.

During the 35 km drive, Mohammed often took his eyes off the road to shout greetings to what appeared to be bush, but never failed to materialize as a turban with a man inside it. Despite his lack of attention and my misgivings about the beat-up Land Cruiser, it rolled into the campement, hiccuped once, and settled quietly into the lazy shadows of the afternoon.

On each side of the jeep's parking spot crouched a low rectangular tent. I was directed to the eastern-most one, my new(est) home. It is also home to Mohammed, his young wife Taghalass, a few dozen goatlings and the occasional scorpion -- or that's what they would like to think. Consequently, we spend a lot of time chasing away the goats and stomping the scorpions to the scorpion-afterworld.

On the initial drive north to Adjel'hoc, we stopped to watch sand dunes, petrified trees and neolithic tools, and to eat dinner. Around the camp fire, I brushed away a bug with my hand, and Badi calmly told me "Attention, sometimes there are scorpions." His advice for what to do if I do find a scorpion was "Get on with your life." He later added "First move quickly, then get on with your life." I believe the complete list is First move quickly, then kill the beast, then get on with your life. I am not particularly fond of scorpions, but I am pretty sure they kill fewer people than malaria, and there are no mosquitoes at the campement.

There are many goats, though, and a significant number of scorpions. The goats are hairless -- compared to Mongolian ones, that is -- and bouncy and like goats everywhere fart a lot (a close inspection might in fact reveal the gases emitted by their herds to be pastoral societies most significant impact on the environment). The scorpions are the color of the sand, and small, and supposedly harmless. I still shake my clothes out and turn my shoes upside down before pulling them on.

The tents deserve an entire chapter of their own, as they are as versatile as the sand they stand in. They face south during the cold season, since the cold winds blow from the north. During the rainy season they face east, also due to how the winds blow. There are some variations, but I think the most common one is the kind I live in: a rectangular wooden frame with a relatively thin cloth draped over it. All around the tent stand taller poles, to which the canvas is tied. In the back the cloth is roped down all the way to the ground, and in the front it is often strapped up at roof height, which reaches my shoulders or a bit lower. When the wind blows, you pull it down to about thirty centimeters off the ground to keep out the sand, and then crawl in and out. You can even break off the needles of a surrounding acacia and pin other shawls to the canvas, to cover the gap to the ground entirely, and the sand you want to keep out can be piled on top of the shawls to weigh them down. It is ingenious, really.

The sand also serves as refrigerator, storage, oven, and mop. You pile sand on top of the camp fire coals, and it preserves them until morning tea. You move your fire out of its hole, and instantaneously gain an oven in which you can bake your bread -- and it is amazing to me how little sand you end up chewing, for something baked literally in the sand. If you spill on the floor, you simply sweep out the sand -- there is plenty more underneath. Even in the village Adjel'hoc, few house owners have bothered to cement the floors, and simply lay out mats on the sand like you would in la brousse.

So, in the tent next to mine live the rest of the family, including Taghalass's one-year old girl, Bakata. There's Awrekan, Mohammed's father, and clearly the head of the household. When we met in Adjel'hoc, an indigo turban framed his face, and a dark mustard colored kaftan hung from his shoulders down over pinstriped pants and clean sneakers. Then there's Mohammed's youngest brother, Youssouf, age about 12 if or 19 depending on who you ask, and a slightly retarded sister of indeterminate age named Fatma. Two middle brothers live elsewhere, and Aghali, also in the middle, works for Badi.

Awrekan's wife, Semou, has a long, slightly masculine face of burnt umber, lightly tainted indigo. Her wide forehead is framed by greying hair neatly parted down the sides of her face and in one perfect circle on top, ending in chin-length, thick braids. She also has a big heart, aching joints, and Bakata calls her Mom.

Since none of Awrekan's sons are "young enough" to remain herders -- truth be told, none of them want to -- there's also Mohammed the herder. "I pay him every month," Awrekan confided, "and he is a good worker. He doesn't talk too much." Indeed, Mohammed doesn't really talk at all. Instead, he calmly and rhythmically traps the goats' and sheep's' hind legs in the fold of his own leg to milk them. Every now and then he tells me "Faut laisser" when I hold on to a goat that should be let go, and "Faut prendre" when I fail to hold on to one.

There's No Place Like Dairy

Much of my time with Mongolian nomads circulated around the milking of animals, and the subsequent processing of dairy products. Here, the animals are different -- I met no one in Mongolia who bothered to milk their goats, and there are no horses here, or yaks, but plenty of camels and donkeys. The resulting milk products are different, too, but when I watch Mohammed bring container after container of sweet, frothy milk to the evening camp fire, and when I help shake the milk-filled goat skin to turn it into butter in the morning, I feel strangely, profoundly at home.

The first two days, I drank a lot of milk. I have drunk a lot of milk every day in the campement, but the first two days were different, because I got violently ill. I had to drink a lot of milk: I needed to learn the difference between fresh sheep milk and fresh goat milk (the former is sweeter and "richer in vitamins") and I had to taste (read: drink several half-liter portions of) the curdled milk that is left after the evening's cheese and the morning's butter have been separated. I connected the illness and the milk, but it annoyed me -- all the Mongolian dairy I stuffed into an equally unprepared stomach left it unperturbed, so why would a few measly bowls here knock me off my feet?

The answer came when first Mohammed and then Awrekan came down with the same exact thing, and I'll admit to feeling a bit relieved -- it wasn't the milk, after all. Then Bakata got the same symptoms, and I just felt worried and helpless. She's recovering, but it was harder on her little body than on ours.

One thing I can't get over is how similar the life of African desert nomads is to Mongolian nomads'. The details differ, but remain somehow superficial. When a visitor comes, the first reaction is to give him or her milk, or airag, or tea, and no visitor goes hungry. Life circulates around the making of tea, one tea strong and sweet and served in shots, the other milky and salty and drunk by the liter.

And in both places, it seems to me, the nomads that thrive are more often than not the ones that diversify away from a purely pastoral livelihood, and the children of nomads more often than not desire another life altogether... But I will expand upon this later. It is too big an issue for today, and I have already taken up a lot of your time.