Tuareg Madonna

Niger. Sahel. Tuareg nomad woman sitting under her tent.

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Niger. Sahel. Femme Touarègue assise sous sa tente.

Motherhood under a Leather Tent

Niger. Sahel. Tuareg nomad mother and baby boy sitting on the sand of their leather tent.

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How the Tuareg Deal with a Recalcitrant Baby Camel

Niger. Sahara Desert. A Kel Rela Tuareg girl is pulling a baby camel away from its mother for not allowing her family to draw out some of the milk for themselves. The girl would then tie the animal to a stake near her tent.

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Backpacking in the Sahel--or Carrying Freedom on a Stick

Niger near Tahoua. Sahel. Fulani nomad walking ahead of his herd of zebus, which follow him like dogs .He carries all his possessions on a stick. They include a straw mat to rest on, a piece of cloth to lie under at night, a bag of millet grain to mix with water for a quick meal, a calabash to prepare the millet and eat in, an ax to cut wood for a fire, a bow to hunt, arrows in a leather  sheath, a herder's stick, rope shackles for some of his animals. 

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A Good Way to Hide Bad Teeth

Kenya. Near Lake Turkana. Turkana nomad elder.

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What You See May Not Be What You Think

While sitting one evening around the fire with a group of Tuareg men, Sahara nomads bound from Niger to Lybia with camels and sheep to sell there, a man walked into the edge of the circle of light. Tuareg men veil their faces, but in our intimacy some had lowered them somewhat. At the sight of the man, they immediately raised them back to their eyes.

Now the man felt confident to move forward. We saw that he was a stranger. Politely he exchanged greetings with us. Finally he said that his water bag was empty and that he had been thirsty for a very long time. A bowlful of water was poured, and he gulped it down after pronouncing the Moslem ritual praise to God.

“Since sunset,” he said. “I have been following sounds of pestles hitting mortars and of children crying, but every time I thought I was reaching an encampment, the sound stopped suddenly—only to start somewhere else.”

“Djinnen,” the men murmured, and the man nodded.

Though I do not believe in evil spirits, I was not in the least skeptical of the dangers our guest faced while he was lost. A Djinn could have got me killed too some weeks earlier.

At that time I was sharing the daily lives of a large Tuareg encampment of the noble Iullimiden tribe and the people of lower castes employed by them. One evening, I brought water in my collapsible canvas bucket to a thicket, away from Tuareg families, to bathe. I put the bucket down in the dark at the foot of a thorn tree, and as I did so, saw the vague shape of a man squat 15 paces away. He watched me intensely as I undressed and hung my clothes on a branch above my head, washed, and dried myself.

As I turned around to grab my clothes, a heavy branch hit my head, nearly knocking me out. There was no big branch that I could have brought down with my clothes, and the man had disappeared. He had obviously thrown the branch at me, though for what reason I could not fathom. I decided to tell Radwane, the Chief’s son, about that voyeur and his aggressive behavior.

“Let’s find him and beat him up,” Radwane said.

“Victor!” we suddenly heard from a terrified voice. “You gave me the fright of my life. I was passing through the scrub when I descried that tall unearthly silhouette (in the darkness the clothes above my head had added to my height) moving under a tree. Fear paralyzed me, and when I heard water running where there had never been any, I knew I was facing a djinn. At last, summoning my courage, I grabbed a thick branch and threw it at what had to be a djinn with all the strength I could muster.”

He concluded that to dare to dwell in dark thickets at night without absolute necessity I either had to be a super amahar (noble warrior) or be protected by powerful gris-gris.

“But do not laugh, Victor,” he scolded “Had I had a spear, you would be dead now.”

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