The road to understanding nomads’ lives, how they are affected by economic development, and their views of conservation, runs through many a tent. Lined by countless cups of tea and stories shared, by challenges and treks on horseback, and by unfamiliar notions it is a road that is unfrequented and untravelled upon. I will wear down the soles of my shoes on that road, I will get tired on that road, but I will find something along it that I cannot find elsewhere.

31 March 2007

Humbling Desert

Desert nights are humbling, with the depth of the sky and the grace of the stars and the spread of the horizon.

On such a night, a few weeks and a continent ago, I sat wrapped in a blanket, talking to Abdullah, a Tamashek fraction leader. We sat by a deep hole in the ground, that volunteers from the surrounding families were trying to turn into a well, on Abdullah's initiative.

Abdullah

Abdullah is a rich man, with fifty or more camels, two hundred or so goats and sheep, and he's decided to use some of his clout to make life easier for the hundred families in his fraction (a fraction is a Tamashek political unit, a patrilinear grouping of families). "Only about ten or fifteen of them are doing reasonably well," he said, upon which Mohammed, who had been sitting quietly in the background, added that only thirty or forty of 'his' 140 families were "living sustainably, without having to depend on the solidarity of others." Mohammed is another fraction leader who welcomed me to his camp for a week of planning meetings surrounding the opening of a community-driven school.

For a few minutes we sat and listened to the crying of Abdullah's baby camels, whose mothers had not returned home from pasture that night. I pondered the fact that these community leaders were taking the time to listen to me, and to answer my questions, and most importantly, taking me seriously. It seemed like a grand thing.

Then Mohammed spoke again. Since I had so much education, he began, and already I almost wanted to apologize, maybe I could see bigger issues more clearly than he could. "You see," he explained, "I can only write my name in Tifinagh, and the letters that make up my brand." So maybe I could give them my perspective on what they, Malian nomads, should do to improve their situation in the future. I looked at his face, covered up to the nose by a purple-indigo turban, for a sign of mockery, but all I could see was genuine interest. A humbling question if I ever heard one, honestly posed by a respected elder to a twenty-four year old.

My answer is of less importance than the question somehow, and in the light of Abdullah's philantropy, it was easy to say, "more of the same."

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