There was always plenty to do, and with other herds turning up, there was pressure to water the animals as fast as possible. But the atmosphere of bustle went hand in hand with the chatter and gossip for which wells have always been famous. Iman, spotting a friend on the other side of the troughs, would share a clip on his mobile phone, or rock on his heels at some tall tale, while Boureima pointed out the various herders and villagers, where their camps or huts were situated, and to whom they were related.
‘That boy with the scruffy hair, he’s one of Abdullah’s. You know, the herder I pointed out to you, with the camp behind us … And over there, that’s Guindo’s lad. You know Guindo, he’s the one who sold us the cola nuts you gave to the chief …’
Back at the camp, a fire had been lit. The women were sitting around it, pouring millet chaff onto the embers, swatting flies with palm-reed pot covers. On the horizon you could track the nomads heading home by the amber beams of their motorbikes. A button of moon clasped the sky, silvering the stalks of millet at the tips of the tents.
I hunched down beside Iman, rubbing my hands over the flames. He was playing a clip on his phone: a horse-riding contest at a party for a famous marabout. A couple of his friends from a neighbouring camp had come to hang out. One of them wore a sword, slung over his shoulder in a goatskin baldric. They swapped pictures (goggling their eyes at the beautiful girls from Burkina Faso, as well as the really big humps of the fat-looking herds) as well as stories and gossip. One old favourite, a cautionary tale for ‘picky’ girls, told of a young woman who refuses a string of respectable suitors, insisting ‘the perfect man’ is just around the corner. When Mr Perfect finally arrives, he turns out to be a hyena in human guise, which the unwitting bride only discovers after the marriage ceremony. She steps inside her husband’s tent to find it crammed with human bones, and he transforms himself back into animal form, a zoomorphic Bluebeard, adding to his blood-stained ossuary.
‘We told Aisha this story many times,’ said Iman, laughing, ‘until she finally accepted a husband last year.’
She turned a wrinkled nose at him and tossed more chaff on the fire. ‘So if you hear no greeting from me, then you know you gave me to a hyena!’
At this, Buhaisah and Ayyub’s wives burst into cackles, blowing so hard across the fire that for several moments the flames disappeared.
It was rare to see Ayyub’s wives sitting together. There wasn’t open hostility between them, but they rarely took part in the same chore. Often I saw Tameen, the second wife, nursing her baby at the back of the camp, or sitting on her own with a bundle of millet stalks. She had left her first husband to be with Ayyub, who was something of a player back in Djoungiani. Haala, the first wife, was not best pleased when she learned she would be sharing Ayyub with another woman; although according to her mother (whom I met when we returned to Djoungiani), ‘she is happy to be part of a bigger family’.
Under the circumstances, it is as well the tents belong to the women. Husbands are allowed inside as their invited guests, but construction and maintenance are in the hands of the wives.fn1 I was curious to see inside a tent, so I asked Buhaisah if she might grant me admission, and after much laughter about this double entendre, she pushed me through the opening. Five horizontal rings, from bundled stalks of Sodom’s apple, formed the horizontal frame, lashed to vertical stems of millet with threads of dried grass. So intricate was the construction, there was no need for a pole in the middle: the hooped stalks supported each other’s arcs, as well as shelves rigged out of more stalks, on which pots and cloths were piled. Combs of millet poked between the interstices, hanging there like decorative beads.
The politics of tent ownership presented something of a dilemma when it came to turning in. Having no Fulani wife of my own, I had no tent to sleep in.
‘Hmmm … so you will have to marry someone,’ said Boureima, his smile half-hidden in the mist of the fireplace.
‘But everyone’s taken!’
‘Well … we could go and talk to the neighbours.’
‘Isn’t it a bit late? And I don’t own any cows. So I don’t think I’d be much of a catch.’
‘That is true.’
After a little joshing, I was introduced to my accommodation: a storage hut, where the water bidons and millet wands were kept. It was spacious enough, and I had a couple of blankets to keep me warm. Iman was still playing tunes on his mobile. The hooting of reed flutes washed over me like a lullaby, along with the rustle of stalk stripping and the chatter around the fire. I picked out Orion – Babaradji to the Fulani, ‘the knife holder’ – part of a vivid starscape in the gaps between the stalks (among the others were al-Hanah, the brand, and Sadalachlia, the ‘lucky star of the tents’). They were another component to the magic of the camp, flashing around us like the gold coins woven into the women’s braids and the rings in their nostrils.
Lie-ins aren’t an option in the bush, not with so many alarm clocks around you. There is the pounding of the millet pestles (around 5.30), the foghorn of lowing cattle (5.45), the panicky bleating of hungry young – both animal and human (6.00 if you’re lucky). As soon as Iman and Suleiman returned from the well, Ayyub would squat down with his calabash, gently massaging the cows’ underbellies. Sometimes he brought a calf to draw the milk, letting it suck the first foamy drops before pushing it into the hands of one of the children. Every so often, he dipped his fingers in the calabash, moistening his fingers to reduce friction on the teats.
‘Milking is the eldest son’s job,’ Boureima explained. ‘He is in charge of the camp, so he must provide the milk. And the cows are used to him. If anyone else tries to milk them, it is much harder to get anything out of them.’
The accommodation may not have been en suite, but I only had to walk a few yards to reach the shower facility. Hanging a towel from the branch of a jujube tree and draping my clothes on the pegs of various boughs, I rinsed myself in a pan of fire-warmed water and rubbed off yesterday’s dirt with a lump of cow’s-milk soap. A couple of the children had come out to watch me, but Boureima reeled them back, so I was able to shower in relative privacy, freshening up for the day.
Breakfast – which was the same indigestible toh and baobab sauce as all the other meals – was a hurried affair for Iman. Soon after the watering, the animals were impatient to set off. Iman had to be brisk: if he didn’t accompany them, they would stroll away on their own. He made sure his flask was full, slung it over his shoulder, picked up his staff and set off. I went along with him a couple of times, turbanned against the sun, chanting the phrases Boureima had taught me, trying to pick up the individual names of the cattle.
‘Ti Tig! Ti Siga! Ti Wagey!’
‘Nicholas the herder!’ Iman bellowed from the other side of the herd, lips parted in a broad grin. He was a super guide to the bush, pointing out the different trees and plants, handing me the staff from time to time, laughing me along the day’s slog as blades of sunlight pronged a merciful buffer of cloud.
Little Suleiman was in charge of the sheep. We could see him a couple of fields away, running in a blur of woolly specks. Iman and I hung back with the goats, while the cattle plodded ahead, slowing down whenever their names were called. Watching Iman at work, I thought of Mungo Park’s comment: ‘They display great skill in the management of their cattle, making them gentle by kindness and familiarity.’ For the Fulani, the cow is a peer, individualised by name, treated affectionately, if firmly. They move in a fleet, with only one stud to a herd. He was easily identified by his spiralling horns and slabbish hump, and the withering snorts he directed at the geldings; although the miserly pasturage didn’t give him much strength to run amok.
The slosh and sigh of Iman’s water flask, the crackle of millet stalks underhoof, the rustle of the breeze between the logs of the millet ricks: these were the sounds of a day in the bush. A knife gleamed on Iman’s staff, slotted into the tip, and when we reached a wild acacia he speared a branch, hacking it down with a double-handed twist.
There was no grass, but it is hardly great news for the long term when the little shade that is left is being pulled down.fn2 At least the goats were content. Assembling like animals at a trough, they mashed their jaws and stripped the branches, beards swinging against the barbs as they nibbled.
The land behind Boureima’s camp was millet and sesame fields – sun-crusted ridges, stubbly with the stems left over from the harvest. Traversable now, they would be an invitation for skirmishes in a few months’ time: the paths between them were too narrow for a 50-strong herd. With no live crops to worry about, our passage was at least unfraught. On the other hand, in the heart of the dry season there was little pasturage other than the stalks.
At the edge of the fields, a pair of baobabs fingered the air with contorting branches, a few furred fruits hanging out of reach on the higher boughs. We stepped between them as if we were passing through some monumental gateway, leaving farmland for the freedom of the bush. Acacias divided our journey like wells on a caravan trail, their snapped-off branches providing the only food the goats would accept. They hung close to Iman, aware of their dependence on his staff. The cows were less needy. Strolling at their own pace, they munched on spikes and panicles of fonio grass, wandering en masse until Iman reined them in.
It was an achromatic world – tan and ochre, brindled earthy tones, the pea-green of the acacias. There was no gloss anywhere. The sun hurled its light down, but there was nothing – no pool, no waxed leaves or fruit skins – to rally it back. By our third tree stop, our party had grown. Two teenage herders, rubber sandaled and pointy hatted, strode over from their own quest for pasturage, their goats following at a distance. One of them was an impish 14-year-old called Hami. He wore a whistle round his neck, which he blew with all his might whenever his herd was on the brink of wandering out of sight. We sat together, taking a rest in the shade of an acacia, nibbling the peanuts we found on the ground. In front of me, Hami and his companion were statues with hanging jaws. As soon as I wandered off, they collapsed into hoots of laughter and giggling chatter. They reminded me that however well I thought I was doing, however much I told myself I was getting on with Iman and his family, I was still an alien here. I would need to stay a lot longer among the Fulani to become anything more.
I had stepped away to watch a couple of billy goats. They were digging up the dust with their hooves, circling each other with tilted heads. At last, their horns locked. They ran and passed each other, like medieval knights at a jousting.
‘Iye! Iye!’
Iman sucked his teeth and waded in with his stick, sending off the warring goats in different directions. Fights in the flock were rare, but they could get vicious pretty fast. Normally, the animals jostled together without too much trouble, lining up around the fallen boughs like customers sidling into a diner. Each goat ripped her own section, waiting for Iman to turn the bough so they could access the leaves on the other side. When the bough had been picked as clean as a chicken bone, he called out ‘Iye! Iye!’ and the goats scrambled behind him, jogging towards their next snack.
While we crouched in the narrow shade of a balanite, taking a breather and swigging our water, a moment of magic took place. It was a glimpse, a thrilling glimpse, into the inner workings of nature’s oily machine. A pregnant goat called Torda had edged away from the herd. Digging her black hooves into the soil, she scratched the air with labour cries. Strings of viscid white slipped between her legs, followed by a red haematic sac. The air rang with bleats, and a hoof breached the blood-slicked lips of her vagina. Another followed, then a head, slicked down with fluid. When the baby tumbled onto the sand, Torda bent to lick him clean, rolling him around with her tongue, cawling him in saliva and sand. Cheeping and squeaks were met with gentle blurps, a sound so sweet, so elemental, it scrubbed out the difference in species. They were simply a mother and her baby.
I was aware that my response was wildly sentimental. I couldn’t help it. It was the first time I had seen a calving. Iman gave Torda a few moments – he was more absorbed by my response than the birth itself – before seizing the baby by the neck. It was time to move on. Torda was allowed to canter beside him, and occasionally he lowered the calf for her to lick. Her placenta fell out like an afterthought, landing among sand-crusted gobbets of blood. By our next tree stop the calf was standing up and reaching for her teats; but the nursing process was going to hold us up, so Iman called out to Suleiman and sent him back to the camp with the newborn. Poor Torda spent most of the day crying in motherly anguish, and it was a lovely moment to see her reunited with her calf later in the afternoon.
Sitting on a mat of coppery leaves, picking out the spines of cram-cram sticking to our ankles, we swigged our water and watched the cows munching away at the fonio grass. They didn’t demand much of Iman’s attention, which was focused mostly on the goats.
‘When the pasturage is better I can go with the other animals,’ he explained. ‘But there’s nothing for the goats to eat here. They can’t eat the fonio so I have to get the branches down for them.’
Talk like this was translated for me afterwards, back at the camp with Boureima. During the walk itself, Iman and I communicated in phrases – Fulfulde sayings gleaned from Boureima, along with some new ones, passed between us like a ball, which every so often I would clumsily drop: ‘wa wa enadoga ananyanyo’ (you can’t go two ways at once), ‘eniali ney bey bali erine qorte’ (we’re bringing the cows, sheep and goats back to the camp). We weren’t going to be discussing the intricacies of pan-African pastoral politics, but for a few days in the bush it was okay.
The slim pickings of the fonio were as much as the cows could hope for. Stripped of its fur and shorn to its rootstocks, the plain is no longer a place for large herds. But small herds are no good for the Fulani: ambition and self-esteem are entwined with herd size. To ask them to cut down is like asking someone in the West to close their investments. Back in Djoungiani, I had bumped into the local representative for the Ministry for Water and Forests, Amadou Dicko. ‘The people increase,’ he told me, ‘the animals increase, and the forest shrinks.’ He shook his head, cradling it in his palm. ‘If we don’t resolve this situation in the next 15–20 years, there is no hope.’fn3
Now the sun was starting to dip, muffled by a kindly froth of cloud, and the animals were towing long shadows. It was time to head back to camp. We took a different route, shortcutting across a millet field, where a Dogon farmboy was piling stalks onto a donkey cart, to be used for roofing in the nearby village.
‘Y a un blanc à la brousse! There’s a white man in the bush!’
He raced over, swinging my hand like a newly installed water pump. Between him and Iman, there was no greeting; only a perfunctory grunt.
‘You came to see our agricultural life?’ he asked. ‘You should stay in the village, then we can show you. It’s safer there. You shouldn’t be out in the bush on your own.’
‘I’m not, I’m with my friend.’
I nodded to Iman, but the farmboy didn’t look at him, and Iman made no step forward. Wearing an expression of serene detachment, he loped down the furrow. I thought he was just going to relax, or maybe do a spot of tooth picking, but after a while he smoothed down the earth and knelt with his back to the sun, a hum of Arabic prayer floating over our shoulders.
‘It’s very hard round here, you know,’ said Alysson, the farmboy. ‘Especially at harvest time. We have to work all day when the crops are ready. But now we’ve got nothing to do, we’re just waiting to grow the crops again.’
I asked what kind of relations he had with the herders. He slid his eyes toward Iman, just for a moment, before turning back to me.
‘We’re friends with them, especially at this time of year. We like the animals because they fertilise our fields.’
‘What about later in the year?’
‘Well, we don’t see them so much. They go further into the bush because they can’t be here when we’re planting our crops. Only the lazy ones stay, and we h
ave a few problems with them.’
All the time we were talking, Alysson was looking over his shoulder, his eyes tight in a face pinched with worry lines. Iman was very different. When he strode back over, he was picking his teeth, like a cool kid chewing gum. He seemed to express the freedom of the nomad: the one who doesn’t have much to lose.
In the light of the elders’ tales of past fertility, the plain felt terribly empty. Its fur had been fleeced, exposing every muscle and knob of bone. But I was slowly learning to read what was left. Ants and termites were hard at battle on hills of laterite soil, bearing corpses and chaff out of ribbed orifices in the ruddy earth. Millet stalks crunched under the animals’ hooves, and the odd starling glided down from the lopsided trees. The sun had been gentle on us, a pewter gleam through the clouds rather than the usual hammerbeam, but still I was tired, ready for refreshment. It came, in the magical way of the bush, with a slop of plastic slip-ons and the appearance of Hami, our whistleblowing companion from earlier in the day.
‘The toubob drinks goat milk!’ yelled Iman.
I took a slurp from Hami’s calabash and handed it back: ‘Hmmmmm .... anavelli, delicious!’
Launching himself on a farewell smile, Hami disappeared into the brake, his whistle tapping against the gourd. I turned to Iman and we both shook our heads, merry with laughter. The walk had been wonderful. Sure, my legs were a little stiff, but I was already looking forward to the next one.
There were more greetings, more invitations to hospitality. We stopped frequently, sipping milk and exchanging laughter, congratulating a family Iman knew who were wainscoting their new tent with bundles of millet stalks. The bush is a village, and I felt the joy of a straggler who has been admitted inside its walls. By the time we reached Boureima’s camp, I was hungry and tired and eager for a sit-down. Yet I was still buzzing, high on the camaraderie of the bush.
The Timbuktu School for Nomads Page 25
