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 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."

Wrestling Power

This poster says "A citizen president facing professional politicians." The BBC lowdown on this particular candidate mentions more about traditional Senegalese wrestling than politics... They quote him as wanting "to wrestle power from the hands of traditional politicians."

80 Years and Still Running

Passing through Senegal on my way to Mauritania, late trains (to say the least -- more than 60 hours behind schedule!) and elections kept me longer than planned. The border with Mauritania was closed during election day, so I could not leave, and stayed in St. Louis, a little colonial town in northern Senegal. Saw the ocean, trudged through every street on St Louis' island at least seven times, and observed a sleepy town's reaction to the presidential elections.

As we left Dakar in a tightly packed minivan, election posters lined the road by the hundreds, but very few had been left alone. No less than fourteen candidates compete against the incumbent Abdoulaye Wade (an impressive 80 years old), although few of them could have harbored much realistic hope of winning.

Along one stretch of tree-and-poster-lined road, I counted eight billboards in a row portraying the same candidate, although it was hard to tell -- each one had been carefully covered in black paint, ruthlessly effacing the slogans, the facial features, the name of the candidate.

This is a poster of Wade's:



Below, and about a block away in reality's St. Louis, a wall proclaims "Idy = voleur," meaning "Idy = thief." Obviously, all sides are about as ready to resort to foul tactics.





Idy's real name is Idrissa Seck, and he used to be the teacher's pet, i.e. be close to Wade, as well as the Prime Minister. When it became obvious that Seck also had his eyes on the presidential seat, he was fired, accused of embezzlement, and jailed. The case was later dismissed. Let's just say I remain sceptical.

Wade looks set to take home the game, and listening to the radio as the votes trickled in, the discrepancy between the candidates was striking: so-and-so got four votes, the next candidate -- zero, wade: threehundredandsixtyseven. And so on. Not everyone is pleased, however, and many are sceptical towards the ruling party's supporters, who are already celebrating, and have been doing so ever since the votes began being counted. Over fried fish for dinner, a few Senegalese men clashed with a couple at the table next to mine -- "Wade is the best for our country," one man boldly stated, but the others had hoped for a run-off with the Socialist candidate, and claimed that it would be impossible for Wade to scrape up the full majority needed to avoid a second round.

Luckily, I saw no violence, and I guess that speaks to the stability of Senegal. People talk, and they argue, but they don't fight.

I wonder if the upcoming Mauritaninan elections, marking the last stage in the process back to civilian rule since the military coup in 2005, will be as peaceful?

I will tell you more about the trip here soon: riding the Trans-Siberian of West Africa, and getting family-planning advice from Mauritanian police.

Tear gas and Sustainable Tourism?

I hadn't planned on beginning this post with a rant, but rant, it seems, I must.

The subject of my rant is a bit dated, but I feel all the more justified in ranting about it, as my anger has not subsided in the weeks since the event. Our story begins next to the river Niger, in the town of Segou. The setting is a music festival. According to Mamou Daffe, the director of said spectacle, its "goal is to contribute to the development of sustainable tourism, safeguarding our natural and cultural riches."

The word sustainable remains, in my naive world, a very powerful concept, but in most other areas of life, like Daffe's, it is a qualifier that you can throw in front of just about anything, but preferably "tourism" or "development," and, as it turns out, even in front of "tear gas."

In my opinion, for tourism to warrant as noble a title as sustainable, it has to not only reward the local population and the people whose culture is being showcased through tourism (as opposed to, say, big tour companies based in the capital), but also somehow affect incentives surrounding, e.g., resource management and the upholding of culture. Based on what I saw in Segou, the festival on the Niger does none of the above.

One of the ways in which a festival could affect the local population is through job creation. Sure, the festival created some 1500 jobs this year (to be compared to last year's figure of 958 jobs created by the festival, of which "44 were directly and 914 indirectly created"), but based on my observations working behind the scenes as a volunteer, a large percentage of those directly employed spent their time avoiding work, an even larger percentage of employees spent their time directing anyone who might imply work to someone else, or, even better, to "the office over there." "What office?" "Over there, out there, just walk out the door," "...But where?" "Oh, just leave!" Some might say that this is to be expected in Africa, in Mali, etc, but I prefer to write it off to badly designed job descriptions and a complete lack of incentives.

The employees who took the prize, however, may or may not have been directly employed. The most absurd people on the payroll were... drum rolls... the gendarmes, who, on the second night of the festival, fired several canisters of tear gas over a crowd of young people who were illegally listening and perhaps trying to get into the festival grounds. Apart from the obvious abuse of power that this constituted, a staggering amount of stupidity got added to the record the moment they fired the canisters without taking into account the direction of the wind...

The organizers were spectacularly lucky, though: no one panicked, the crowd did not trample over each other to get out, and the wind dissipated the gas rapidly enough to only disturb the spectators closest to the incident. The fact that panic was avoided could not be attributed to the escape routes provided by the organizers -- they had been blocked by VIPs whose seating had not been secured early enough in the evening -- nor was it thanks to the professional handling of the situation, which included closing the exit closest to the accident, without adequately explaining to the crowds wanting out where they could find an alternative.

Although the first night showed off Mali's musical diversity in a grand way, I did not even stay the second night through, and only heard second-hand accounts of Toumani Diabate's spectacular show, featuring guest stars, among them Amadou et Mariam. I doubt that many tourists, apart from those already very hooked on Malian music, would come back, based on the exorbitant entrance fees and the tepid list of performers on the last night of the festival (turning the entrance into 100 Euros for two nights of music, instead of -- as the organizers claim -- four days of festival)...

I doubt that anyone has the right to complain as much as the Guinean Peace Corps Volunteers, though. They had just been evacuated from Conakry's increasingly violent general strike, and were taken to the festival as a special evacuation-vacation. From dealing quite well with protests and strikes, they were transported to peaceful Mali to hear music and get tear gassed...

Alexander the Great and I

What do Alexander the Great, the Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria, Mary Kingsley and yours truly have in common?



Now don’t go looking at the clue right away – give it some thought…






Ok… here’s a clue…



So probably no elephants for me. But maybe the killer meds I will be taking tonight will make me feel great by the morning?

Will keep you posted.

Settled Nomads, Equalizing Trucks and the Death of the Caravan

The Distrust Is Mutual

This morning I was telling Fa, the brother of the Moussa whose grandmother's house I live in when in Bamako, about my trip north. He interrupted me quickly to say “Me, I am afraid of those Tamashek.” He squinted until his eyes were narrow slots and added, to strengthen his argument, “Their eyes are like this.” On the bus from Gao, three Tamshek siblings took me under their wing, and coached me at every stop to hold on to my bags, watch out for my things, don't let anyone near my belongings, and just about every other variation on the theme. “You can't trust these people,” exclaimed Ibrahim, the oldest of the three, and when we arrived to Bamako, he took Taximan aside to tell him to “take her home correctly!”

Last night the American ambassador to Bamako hosted a reception (long story), and although I think he was genuinely disinterested in my person, he was at one point cornered by someone else into talking to me. He had overheard that I had just returned from the countryside, and the logical follow-up question was where from. So I had to answer. I didn't have to add "...exactly where the US State Department website tells you not to go," but I did anyway. He didn't talk to me any more, apart from the obligatory glad you could make it.

This photo is of the biggest bandit I met up north... Click on it for the story :)


On a more serious note, quite a lot of propaganda gets thrown around. As someone I met in Gao (and who... errm... let's just say he should know) put it: "If you run into the rebels, they'll give you some tagella and water and show you the way if you are lost."

So I have been in Bamako for a few days now, and tomorrow I head back out, to go hunting for elephants. Relax, the only thing I'll be shooting is photos, but it is a hit or miss mission, so I call it hunting. I really feel as though I ought to report to Watson headquarters to tell them I have crossed an international border, that's how different the south is from the north. Like when I first got off the bus in Gao the thought crossed my mind that I really need to locate a bank to change money in. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I was still in the same country. Anyway, even though the differences, and their implications for what president ATT called “the integrity of our nation” on TV the other day, are very interesting, this is the tale of my (continued) adventures in the wild north.


(This photo is actually from Tigerwen, an hour or two out of Gao on the way north, but it's purrty)

The Capital of Nomads

After my last note from Gao, I continued on to Menaka to do interviews with a guide named Vieux, which means old. In Bamako, I had gotten used to calling people by their occupation or some other characteristic, rather than their name -- “Shopkeeper, wake up, I want to buy bread!” or “Old Woman, is Moussa at home?” and “Take-Money, I want to get off here.” (Take-money is the guy who collects fares on the madness they call public transportation)

The school director in Adiel'hoc introduced me to another aspect of name-replacement when he called on a sixth grader by the name of La Vielle, or “the Old One.” I thought, hey, she's not very old, and he explained that the oldest child of a family often goes by the Old One, or Old, instead of their given name. Vieux Guide often complained about the responsibilities that came with being Old. Especially around Tabaski it is hard, because he has to buy a sheep not only for himself, but for his mother and brother too, because everyone needs to sacrifice a sheep, and sheep are expensive. Overall, it seems like people here, like in the West, spend most of their time stressing out about holidays, and essentially only enjoy them once they are over.

Menaka is often referred to by its inhabitants as “the capital of nomads,” an appropriately contradictory term. Its streets are sandy, and many families spend part of the year in town, and a season or two out in la brousse. People cherish their identity as nomads, and as Baka AgOmar, an artisan, put it: “Even us, now, we are nomads, we just stay in place.”

Menaka is growing rapidly, and will soon have electricity to go with its high-speed internet connection. The electricity will light some lamps and attract some insects, but what will draw nomads into town is more likely the prospect of aid than the comfort of running water and street lights.

We Don't See the Aid

Rahmeta Walet M'barak is an old lady who lives within walking distance from Menaka. (Keep in mind that “walking distance” is relative – one day I walked a not-very-far distance of 25 km) Her family used to trade salt from over by Yemen, but ever since the droughts of 1973-74, she has been living around Menaka. They came to the region because “the French were dropping grains from helicopters,” and she has stayed in the vicinity ever since. She lives with her sister, and the two of them depend largely on the husbands of their daughters for food.

She could list every major aid project in the past fifteen years, complete with what the aid consisted of, and what year it took place in. She remembers one in particular that took place right before “the year of the first bullet,” meaning the first bullet of the Tuareg revolution, which was fired in Menaka in 1990. The project gave each family grains and milk and oil and sugar. Since then she has heard rumors of aid, but once they get into town, they don't see the aid.

She is not alone. Many families have to choose between remaining purely pastoral and risk missing out on the aid that might come, and moving into or close to towns to the detriment of their animals' health and eventually to their pastoral livelihood. And government officials – conditioned by a training and prejudices that tell them that pastoralism is hazardous and a practice of the past – take advantage of this.

On my fourth day in Menaka, Vieux hired a motorcycle so we could reach some campements further away from town. As we zigged and swerved along a sandy road, lined with crouching acacias and skinny spurges, we happened upon a group of three men in flipflops, herding their goats. We stopped to greet them, and as we drove away, Vieux told me they were on their way to Niger with their animals. Niger? It boggled my mind that they were walking to another country with only plastic one-dollar-flipflops and a herder's cane as their equipment, but Vieux nonchalantly said “They've got a donkey further ahead with a little food, and they said they really have to find better pasture for their animals.” So much for nomadism being a “pleasant life,” as Mr. Haidara put it.

Part II

Loving Nature

Back in Gao from Menaka, Badi's brother, Al-Houseini Abdel-Moumen Faradji, who is starting up an NGO called Amour de la Nature (Love of Nature), and whose roof I sleep on when in Gao, introduced me to Odile. Odile is a 54-year old French woman who used to live in Cote d'Ivoire, and who was going with Housein to see some of the campements he works with... correction: will be working with.

Odile has traveled quite a bit in west Africa, and isn't big on sleeping comfortably or showering regularly or drinking bottled water, so we got along quite well right from the start. Their plan was to record folk tales and music and my plan was non-existant at that point, so why didn't I come with them? I thought it sounded good, so the next day we headed out.

We began by heading up to Adiel'hoc, which allowed me to greet my family and properly say bye to the place, and for Housein to see his family, most of which he hadn't seen in years. Housein would deserve a whole chapter of his own. Thing is, his NGO hasn't actually received any funding yet, and by consequence, like so many other projects, his is still in the vague, un-realistic, dreamy phase. So Housein doesn't have any money either, not even enough to leave Gao most of the time. He lived for a long time in France, and might have eaten more than his share of philosophical soup, but his ideals and ideas are in the right place, and he is full of stories about mercenaries in Libya and rebels in the mountains.

Around Adiel'hoc, we visited a site with rock carvings of giraffes and ostriches (!) that gave me time-vertigo, and another place where spring water gathers in little pools, surrounded by black rocky desert. That was Odile's vacation, and when that was done she said “Finished, the tourism. Now let's work.” We hitched down to Kidal with a jeep, our eyes widening at the contrasts between the beige sand and the dark contours of the Adrar, a mountain range leading all the way up to Algeria. Once there, we startled everyone in the family where we spent the night by choosing to sleep outside in the courtyard, rather than inside the house. Here in Bamako the mozzies would suck me dry, and there is no place to hang a mosquito net outside, so I make myself sleep inside, but I think I have contracted a serious case of claustrophobia in the past few months.

Equalizing Trucks and Ochre Valleys

From Kidal we continued on the most common “public transportation” in the north: a gigantic red truck, into which we loaded some 60 passengers and their luggage. I was surprised at how comfortably we rode, but when we got off in Anefif and stretched our scrunched limbs, I realized that I did not envy the Nigerians next to us who were continuing all the way to Bamako on the same vehicle.

From Anefif to... the desert, we hitched with white Renault truck, which had been remodeled into some sort of camper, the whole back part covered with wooden boards painted baby blue. I baptized it “the equalizing truck”, since no matter what color the passengers are going in, they all come out the same color. We could see through the back doors that there was air out there, somewhere, the problem was that none of it made it into our lungs for all the dust that floated around in the truck.

We got out in the middle of a desert that looked just like all the other desert all around us, but Housein said “It's here,” so we took his word for it. It was indeed there, the only problem was that the campement that was supposed to be there had moved elsewhere. So we spent the night under an acacia, filled our water bottles in a “well,” which in reality consisted of an oued where you dig twenty centimeters and reach water. The next few days were spent visiting Moor families, drinking tons of milk and eating tons of goat meat.

One of the campements I will never forget. We had walked quite far to get there, with heavy bags and increasingly hot sun. We entered a valley, which in Moor is known as “Oued al-hamera” -- the valley of ochre, because the ground is covered with dark ochre-colored rocks that nomads use to color the hide of their tents. Sheltered by a few bushes and a wild date tree lived a little three-person family – M'neha, Zeina and their son Hamed Salem. When we approached, Zeina covered her face, and ululated to welcome us. M'neha shook our hands and was still shouting welcoming phrases to Housein when he rushed off to kill a goat. Hamed Salem smiled, dug around in his pockets, and handed me a flint arrow head he had found.

Moor campements are very similar to Tamashek ones – they are essentially the same people, just that the Moors have been more heavily influenced by Arab culture and Islam, and the women tend to cover their faces a bit more than Tamashek women. On the other hand, Moor women smoke, which is pretty much unthinkable in most Tamashek families, where women instead shik, i.e. stick tobacco mixed with ashes in their cheeks.

When it was time to head back to Gao, we had moved between campements on foot, with donkeys, and the last two-hour stretch to the road we made on camel. One of my knees was bothering me a bit from the previous day's 25-km walk through sand, so we loaded me onto the camel with the bags. Once we reached the road and rested a bit, the camel's owner handed me something. I took it, and couldn't quite figure out why he had handed me a piece of shit. Literally. It was a piece of camel's dung, and he giggled as he told me it was my camel's license...

We spent the remainder of that day waiting for anything to come by on this supposedly “main road,” but nothing moved but the sun. By the time the sun was casting long shadows, we began preparing to spend the night, gathering twigs for firewood and sweeping away the acacia pins where we would sleep. And then a truck appeared on the horizon. We jumped up and down waving our arms, but it showed no sign of stopping. My theory is they were just so surprised to see these two white women and a Tamashek waving their arms in the middle of the desert that they didn't believe we were really there until they got really close. Then they stepped on the brakes and told us to climb in.

The truck was a German MAN-truck that I quickly named Azalai (this was quite the vehicle-naming trip), the name of the salt-trading caravans that used to transport salt between the infamous salt mines of Taoudenni and Timbuctu. Trucks like our Azalai are exactly what killed the caravan (but didn't kill the deputy) – it was so heavily loaded with fossil salt bricks from Taoudenni that even at 30 km/h, the shocks couldn't cope with even the tiniest bumps. We spent the evening waiting in Al-moustaghat, a tiny town that everyone en route to and from Gao passes through, and where “the matches cost 50 francs” (twice the normal price). What we waited for was a satellite phone call that would inform our driver that the Boss was done negotiating with customs, and in the meanwhile we cooked pasta and sardines, made tea, chatted, made some more tea, and finally drove off into the night. In the middle of the night, we stopped somewhere to sleep, and got to Gao the next morning. Exhausted and with bruises from lying on top of salt bricks an entire night, but we got there!

Folk Tales and Tradition

A group of women in Anefif shared folk tales and fables with us, and I will share a short one with you, as it relates to transportation: The donkey, the goat, and the dog were going to town. It was a hot, dusty day, so they decided to share a bush taxi. Once in town, the donkey paid his fare and got out. The dog only had a big bill, and the goat didn't have enough money on him, so the driver kept the dog's money and drove off. Ever since that day, when bush taxis ply the roads, the donkey stubbornly stands in the road without budging, since he already paid. The goat bolts and runs quickly into the bush, since he owes money, and the dog chases the taxi barking give me my money, give me my money!

We also got to talk to a group of Fraction leaders (the tamashek political system of families and what used to be “tribes” but are now re-organized into fractions is really complex, but suffice to say they are important men in their community) one evening, and I asked them towards the third round of tea what they thought was going to happen to nomadism in the future. One thing that has been discouraging me, both in Mongolia and here, is the fact that young people who go off to school don't want to be herders, and young people who don't go to school don't want to be herders, but are forced to because there is nothing else they can do. Essentially coming generations of nomads might consist largely of those individuals who did not succeed in school, those who were left behind, people who do not want to be where they are. Hardly a recipe for a harmonious community.

Alwata Ag-midi, Chef of the fraction Imakoran I, responded cryptically. I was dressed in a colorful traditional toungou, an all-in-one robe and veil, and he said: “If you come en brousse dressed in toungou like that, a man will see you and pull his turban up over his face before he approaches to greet you,” and he covered the lower half of his face with his turban, a gesture Tamashek men do in front of people they respect. “If you come dressed in pants, he will say 'whatever' and leave it,” he added for clarification. I thought it was a nice way of saying that even if Tamashek values, and nomadic lifestyles seem to be changing, between Tamashek the values remain.

Tawwad Ag-Haballa, Conseiller of the fraction Idnane, answered with a saying: “No matter what the weaving, it will always remain straw and strings.” By this he meant that a thing doesn't change it's nature, and those young folks who seemingly leave for towns and cities will always be nomads. He believes they will come back to help their communities, as veterinaries, teachers, and doctors. They will come back, better equipped and more knowledgeable than they were before, but they will come back nomads.

With this I leave you to go pack my bags for the wild elephant chase.

Second Quarterly Watson Report

Since the last report, I have moved quite a lot. I stopped in Paris en route to Bamako, for vaccinations and visas. In Bamako, I felt confused and disoriented for a while -- this was far from the Mongolian steppes, their pure air and vast spaces. This was crowded and pushy and hot. Right as I was planning to leave, I caught a cold that kept me longer. This annoyed me, but in retrospect, it wasn't all that bad: I learned a lot about how nomads are perceived by the sedentary people they share a country with.

History and Circumstances

Nomads are increasingly defined by the sedentary people that constitute their countries' governments, and in Mali this power structure helped usher in the Tuareg rebellion of the nineties, and still causes discontent in the country's nomadic north. An interview with Aboubacrin Souleymane Haidara, the director of the Bureau for Environmental Conservation in Menaka, confirmed what I had perceived as a common attitude towards nomads -- one that on the one hand romanticizes and on the other reduces nomadic life to a fiction of the past. The interview also revealed that from a government perspective nomads are, simply put, a hassle. If disaster strikes, the government is responsible for bringing aid to its population, and this is obviously much more difficult to do if said population moves in search of pasture, or as Mr. Haidara put it, "follow the grasses and the winds wherever they want." He used the famine in Niger two years ago as an example, essentially saying that nomads gave the government of Niger a bad name -- by being inaccessible, and by dying, these nomads made it seem as though the government did not act fast enough, or enough at all.

I asked Mr. Haidara if really he believed that nomads should be settled, and he decided to explain Mali's strategy of "encouraging semi-sedentarization" to me. He told me that you cannot force a nomad to settle, but that "history and circumstances will show nomads how hazardous their lifestyle is." He believes that nomads are attached to their culture because it is a pleasant life, with its freedom of movement and star-covered skies. In reality, a nomad's life in this part of the world is far from easy, and many families I have visited eat only one meager meal a day. As one head of household put it, "a nomad is the most tired man there is. He always has to follow his animals, and look after them before he looks after himself." Semi-sedentarization means that the government encourages nomads not to move as much with their animals, and to spend at least one or two seasons in or around villages, where they have access to health centers and sometimes a little aid. This way, Mr. Haidara and others like him hope that "the nomads will come to reason." With the help of disappearing vegetation, draught, and poverty, the policy will probably work.

There is No Place Like Dairy

I spent two weeks en brousse with a family outside of Aguelhoc, some 400 km north of the desert town of Gao. I conducted some interviews up there, and then continued at various distances from the town of Menaka, in the south of the north. 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 milked their goats, leaving all the milk for the young animals to fatten up for the always approaching winter. Also, there are no horses here, or yaks, but plenty of camels and donkeys. The resulting milk products are different, too, but watching Mohammed the herder bring container after container of sweet, frothy milk to the evening camp fire, and helping shake a milk-filled goat skin every morning to turn it into butter, I felt strangely, profoundly at home. The many differences remain, in some strange way, only superficial.

One of the reasons I decided to go to Menaka was the Ansongo-Menaka wildlife reserve, which most modern maps show as taking up much of the southern Menaka region. Unfortunately, the reserve turns out to really only exist on paper, dating back to colonial times, which explains why I had such trouble getting information about it. Nonetheless, Menaka is often referred to as the capital of nomads, but based on what I have observed, this name might also be reduced to paper-status before long.

Poverty Trap

It seems to me that the families that are a little better off -- the ones where the kids have plastic toys, the mothers wear sneakers, and the fathers listen to shortwave radios -- are those that remain more purely nomadic, and who move longer distances. What I am struggling with is the direction of causation. Are they better off because they move longer distances, and find better pastures for their animals, or do they move longer distances because they have the means to do so, and because they have more "money in the bank," in terms of more animals.

If a family has 7 goats, a long trek is a large risk, because you might lose 4 of them, more than halving your reserves. This is a risk you cannot afford to take, even though the few you would have left would probably be healthier and more productive as a result. Those goats are your bank account, and if the year turns out to be a bad one, without wild grains and berries, you still have to feed your children. You have to make a withdrawal, and sell some goats to buy rice and flour. So you end up moving short distances, often not very far from a village or town, to the detriment of your animals' health, and the amount of milk they give.

It is a bit like a nomadic parallel to the poverty trap, where, for example, poor families are forced to eat the grains they should be planting, and it is a vicious circle from there on, a hole out of which it is hard to climb. Less productive goats means you have to sell more of them to compensate for the dairy products they aren't producing, binding you more and more to villages and towns. And it certainly doesn't help if the government in fact prefers you to stay put, handing out aid only to people in and around towns, telling nomads that they have to fend for themselves if they choose to remain mobile.

Aid and Education

My biggest difficulty thus far, in terms of interviews and relating to people, is paradoxically enough international aid. I sometimes suspect that families, particularly those close to villages, exaggerate the difficulty of their situation because they think I can give their name to an NGO or an aid organization, increasing their share of the pie. This is not to say that they are not poor, simply that their answers might sometimes be slightly biased by their perception of who I might be, and what I might do for them. I have often left interview sites feeling rather lousy, as though I did not live up to some sort of expectation -- of aid, of promises, of provisions.

Only once has a family refused to answer questions (mainly because they were not Malian, but Libyan, and afraid that I would report them to some sort of authority), but I have repeatedly sensed a hint of disappointment when families realized that I had not come with sacks of rice or powdered milk, or clothes for the children. I can live with that, but what is really difficult is the realization that international aid might be what provides the final blow to nomadism in this part of the world -- families cannot afford to stay away from towns and villages, because that is where aid arrives.

Another positive force with a negative impact is education. Many nomad children are in school, probably a higher percentage than among the children in my neighborhood in Bamako. Many parents proudly fetched the notebooks of their kids, and many children aspire to be school teachers and doctors. This is certainly a positive trend, but not a single child I have spoken to actually wants to remain a herder, and they go to school to get away. The negative impact that this might have is that coming generations of nomads will be those who did not succeed in school, those who were left behind, people who do not want to be where they are. Hardly a recipe for a harmonious community.

Even though this reads like a very negative report, my personal experiences have been very positive. It is the future of nomadism that I am not optimistic about, not in any way my stay here. I am learning a lot, and I have met truly amazing people, and I am not looking forward to leaving. I am looking forward to going other places, but I will be leaving a part of myself in the Malian desert...

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.

Going to the Desert to Take a Shower?

My last note seems to have worried more than it amused, so here's a second one, hopefully not as "scary," before I take off for the great north, early tomorrow morning.

Yesterday afternoon, as running water drizzled down on my head for the first time since my arrival in Mali, I couldn't quite get over the paradox of undertaking a 20 hour journey to arrive in a desert town in order to take a shower!

But indeed I journeyed, I arrived (safely), and I showered too, in one of Mali's largest cities, Gao. One of the many things that the US State Department does not tell you about Gao is that the city used to be one of the western Sudan's most important commercial and cultural centers. It is easy to see why Gao once thrived, as it spreads out from a strategic position on the Niger river into the vast Sahara, with its trade routes and romantic lure.

Today, history has left Gao with little but its size -- very limited importance, wide sandy streets with rectangular architecture, and only half of the population of its glory days.
Coming here was long but surprisingly easy. We set off on time (15:03) in an old, but durable, and crowded, bus. The road stretched, like the view, and pulled together in smooth curves, and stretched again. As the bus rattled through the fallen night, I could feel the desert draw nearer. The trees grew further and further apart, and began hugging the earth, as though they were afraid that one day gravity would abandon them and they would have to hang on for their lives.

In the headlights of the bus, I could see the earth near the road turn from ochre dust to copper rocks to sandy off-white.

During the first part of the drive, we must have stopped every 15 minutes, to allow swarms of girls and women squeeze into the aisles to sell oranges or cookies or slices of papaya. At some stops, men in thick winter jackets sold meat that they sliced with long knives, and afterwards the smell of grease and mutton and lazy contentment lingered.

As we got further north, the powerful soundtrack that the driver had been providing got shut off, and most passengers dozed with full stomachs. At stops now, less and less of the would-be passengers' faces showed, the rest hidden behind colorful turbans, and I don't think I just imagined the increased tension among the security guards or whatever they were. I didn't even know we had security guards until Bamako had drifted far out of sight. Then three of the passengers began getting off in camouflage clothes at every stop, one of them carrying a gun that he carefully displayed.

I don't know if the gun was mainly a show of strength to demonstrate his own importance and manliness, or if it was a response to some perceived security threat. In any event, the people who climbed on board were every bit as kind and friendly and civilized a those already seated, in my eyes very unlikely bandits indeed.

A woman who sat down behind me covered beautiful thick braids and a baby boy under a dark blue veil. By the time the road led us into Gao, her little boy dared to peak out at me, and even smile. I took it as a good sign, just like the welcoming committee on the bridge across the Niger: a herd of camels smilingly blocked our way across, as if to say Be patient, you're almost there; be patient, because this is the desert. It all seemed very appropriate.

Early tomorrow I head north, north. I look forward to telling you all about it.

So Many DON'Ts for Every DO

Friday night, on my way home from a great evening of dancing to the Super Diata band, as we crossed the river Niger and taximan only narrowly avoided a herd of cattle that suddenly scampered over the right lane, to their herder’s loud but ultimately fruitless dismay, I was jolted into thinking-mode.

When I opened my eyes again, the rusty machine had somehow maneuvered past every single unpredictable cowtail, and in the rearview mirror, the turban-wrapped herder and his frenetically swinging stick quickly shrunk as we continued our brakeless journey/

It was probably the closest I had come to disaster since my arrival here (apart from the little malaria-scare-ia that turned out to be a simple cold, but that nonetheless kept me in town for much longer than planned) but, paradoxically, had I plunged off the bridge in a cloud of long-horned cattle, the event would have entitled very few people to “I told you so”s or “If only she’d followed my advice”s. I hadn’t done very many don’ts, nor had I neglected too many dos. That’s something I can’t say about very many other evenings.

As we continued sliding through empty streets, carefully avoiding sharp turns, since they have been known to cause problems even for taximen with functioning breaks, I began a mental list of the advice I received before and since coming here – dos in the left column, don’ts on the right.

What struck me was the speed with which the right side overtook the left, and how, finally, I was left with a half-empty handful of recommendations, and enough to fill a bucket of restrictions.

Out of all the means of transportation that have taken me places, taxis come – by far – the highest recommended, and yet a taxi got me closer to death than any of the others have. Sort of like my English friend’s Canadian friend who had been strongly advised not to have her baby in Africa, and subsequently came within inches of being killed together with her baby in a Canadian hospital by a double dose of anesthetic.

I have been told never to get on the soutramas – hollowed-out minibuses painted bright green that plow and bump their way through crowded quartiers in Bamako, taking you almost anywhere for a quarter. The safety glitches on public means of transportation are too many and too serious, so don’t use it.

Even more condemned, and more rightly so, is riding on motorcycles. The Swedish health advisory pamphlet for sub-Saharan Africa spells it out for you in caps: DON’T DO IT. WE REPEAT, DO NOT DO IT. This is the same pamphlet whose warning regarding alcohol in hot climates ends with “If you are having trouble falling asleep sober, you might have a problem.” I am inclined to agree that motorcycle-rides are among the most dangerous undertakings in this city, since every guy on the road, including the one driving the bike you are on, think they are the only guy on the road, and only a serious accident can dispel that notion. A bus or a bumper knocking your kneecaps all the colors of the rainbow does not qualify as serious.

So having ruled out soutramas and motorcycles, you are basically left with either taxis or teleportation, since walking the streets at night is obviously also out of the question, and I don’t think they’ve published anything on the long-term health effects of teleportation, which would leave it on the DON’T-hand side of the list.

Priscilla or Patricia the Belgian teacher lady who has lived in Bamako for two plus years told me “Never eat salad” and especially not in the street, because she knows toubabs who have ended up in the hospital because of salad. And toubabs whose teeth have shattered against little stones neglectedly left among the beans, and surely there is also something wrong with the 20 cent plates of rice soaked with delicious peanut sauce, it is just so good that there must be something in it that kills you. And the cool water in the curvy clay pots in my courtyard certainly don’t have an unbroken seal, so that’s a don’t drink, I suppose. Then again, Pamela or Portia I think is screwing a Malian, which must receive a higher DON’T ranking than salad, no?

I guess really one shouldn’t go out at night, that way you can avoid committing half of all the transportation DON’Ts, and to avoid doing the second half, you should probably stay at home during the day, too/ And if you do have to venture out of your room, to, say, go to the bathroom, make sure you’re covered in long-sleeved 100% DEET-drenched clothing, and that a mosquito coil is burning in the toilet.

Except I guess I should avoid my room too, because it is not netted, and sewage flows in the streets outside, and with all the chickens running around, I’ll probably complement my malaria with aviary flu just by looking out my window. I guess coming here in the first place is a DON’T.

Going north of Gao, where I am headed tomorrow afternoon to hang out with Tamashek families, is a big no-no as well, according to the US State Department, but I get away with it, because I am not American, and the Watson only enforces country-wide travel warnings. I am not more worried about it than most other things, and in this case I actually think that the public bus will be much safer, mainly because it is a lot less likely subject to banditry than some fancy jeep, even though the jeep might be less likely to break down.

I think my next post will list all the neglected DOs that I think should be included in the standard list with guidance. One, for now, is go to a maki (bar) where you are the only toubab, and dance your heart out.