The Timbuktu School for Nomads

by Nicholas Jubber

  Beyond practical training, I had learned other, abstract lessons. How to listen to your environment. How to interact with people when you don’t share a language. Most importantly, I had learned a few lessons about the nature of companionship. There is no closing time around the campfire, no deadline, no pressing engagement. I doubted I would be able to appreciate this for long; I’d soon grow restless. Nevertheless, it was a peek into the social fabric of nomadic society, the fellowship nurtured by this hard, sometimes oppressive life.

  Between Lamina and Abdul-Hakim, as between Boureima and his sons, I had seen father–son relationships that blew a hole through stereotypes of despotic parenthood in Muslim societies. The warmth among Aziza’s family in the Atlas, or Iman and his friends on the Gondo plain, or the girls dancing under Mount Zarga, showed me that love and companionship thrive in places where they aren’t compromised by endless distractions.

  Observing relationships, and forging them, is the pith of travel writing. Like nomadism, the travel book is marginalised, and often misunderstood; maligned as a playpen for romance, inexpertise, egomania. (Hmmm … there may be something in that last one …) But what literary genre bears no scars? The travel book is the hunter-gatherer of literature, picking up whatever it can to sustain itself. And in this divided world of ours, is the attempt to connect, to explore a culture outside of our own, truly redundant?

  Leo Africanus was the great travel writer of his age. It was he who lured me on this journey, although our paths had often diverged. I felt jealous of him sometimes: travelling in a large caravan, crossing the desert in places I didn’t dare (or couldn’t), dining with some of the Sahara’s remotest tribes. No doubt if he knew about my malaria pills and ibuprofen, he’d have felt jealous right back! Still, jealousy was tempered by admiration. Leo really was a ‘wily bird’ who learned to thrive in different cultures. After Africa, he travelled extensively in Asia and lived a long while in Rome, hostage and house guest to the Pope. He wrote, he tells us, ‘that I may promote the endeavours of such as are desirous to know the state of foreign countries’. Can any travel writer hope to achieve more?

  Looking into the wilderness now, I felt a little deflated. I had tried to know the state of Saharan nomads, I had tried to connect. I had learned so much about the nomads of North Africa, but was it ever possible to learn enough? I could feel the grains running out on my journey – a homing call like the instinct that tows so much of the birdlife on the banks of the Niger back to Europe every year.

  Behind me rumbled the steady chatter of the camp. Ahead, I couldn’t see a single person, only the desert, broody and patient, waiting for the next stage of its story. I turned back, adjusting my feet to the slope of the dune, trenching my heels, tightening my turban as I moved towards the sun.

  I knew where I wanted to go next. My friend Mansur had predicted it back in Fez: ‘You will travel a long time perhaps, and see many things, but you will come back.’ Now I knew where he meant. Nomads know it, because they’re circling it all the time. Whenever they set off on a caravan, they know where home will be. Because they know it isn’t bricks and mortar and roof tiles. It isn’t a flat-screen television, a fantastic DVD collection, a first-rate cooker or a washing machine with a 10-year guarantee. It isn’t even a fixed point on a map. It is simply the place where you make your fire.

  I slid back down the dune to Sandy’s camp. I couldn’t wait to get back to town. A call to make … words to say … later, much later, lips to kiss.

  I had worn my indigo-blue turban long enough, my slip-on sandals, my pantaloons. I had drunk tea with nomads, saddled camels and ridden with them, slept beside them, picked out cram-cram with them, drawn water with them, milked goats and camels with them, hobbled, tracked and herded with them, gazed at the stars with them, laughed and sung and shared stories with them. Now it was time to do the one thing I couldn’t do with nomads. It was time to go home and make my fire.

  Postscript

  POSTINDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES ARE STORMS OF DISTORTION: EVERYTHING IS AN image for something else. Clouds are virtual, blue sky is cognitive, camel toes are waxed. As for ‘nomad’, in postmodern terminology this can be anyone who defines themselves by their mobility. Travel websites and tour companies claim it; so do backpackers, jetsetters and tax-evading non-doms. ‘Nomad’ has become a byword for cool, spontaneous, trendy. But there is nothing cool about the nomads of North Africa, nothing spontaneous, nothing trendy.

  This is why the Arabic word ‘bedawi’ is more revealing: ‘the beginning people’. Nomads remind us how so many people used to live, back in the days before the fixed-harness plough scarred the earth and towed our ancestors into the urban rat race. That doesn’t make them unsophisticated rustics, nor Luddites shaking their goads against the prevailing wind. What it does suggest is a more horizontal interpretation of progress. A successful nomad doesn’t need to climb up a greasy corporate pole, drown in bonuses and drive a fancy car. He just needs to grow his herd.

  ‘Don’t romanticise’ goes the warning – which is easy enough. What is really hard is holding the earthy realities in parallel with the romance that drove you here in the first place. Many of the travellers who have engaged most profoundly with nomadic life were drawn by the romance of their setting. Throughout my journey, I tried to juggle this contradiction as best I could. I tried not to perceive the people I met as folkloric museum exhibits, to be studied through a viewfinder, nor as the bloodless statistics of development reports, but as people I could try and make friends with. In some cases I think I succeeded, though not in all. ‘If a log floats in the water for a hundred years,’ as the Songhay proverb goes, ‘it doesn’t become a crocodile.’

  I warmed to many of the nomads I met, and often found them easier to befriend than the government agencies or cultivators with whom they clash; and if my responses were often subjective … well, why not let the wind blow back against its normal path? ‘Administrators regard pastoral populations as sources of trouble,’ points out anthropologist Dawn Chatty, ‘backward entities that stand in the way of rational progress.’ This is precisely why we need them. They are an antidote to homogeny and the increasingly narrow boxes we build around ourselves. Not so much ‘bad boys needing firm hands to straighten them out’, in Dan Aronson’s satirical phrase, but teachers who can help us understand our world a little better. Representing a way of life that has endured at least 150 times as long as any postindustrial society, not only do nomads link us to our own distant ancestors, they offer possible answers to the environmental troubles we have sown. Would a world more practically influenced by nomadism – by flexible land use, less mechanistic handling of livestock, a holistic appreciation of the relationship between human, animal and landscape – really be such a bad place?

  Nomads don’t live in isolation. The names they call themselves are stereotyped as celebrations of freedom, but they are often more complex. Some celebrate freedom, others denote class, colour, language, ancestry. While it is hard to draw precise conclusions, their names tend to express a position of relativism. An Amazigh is ‘free’ or ‘noble’ in contrast to the enslaved; a beidane is ‘white’ in contrast to the ‘black’. These are communities that have developed in complex matrices of inter-relatedness. They are enmeshed among their sedentary neighbours, and they will continue to have to search for ways to live between them.

  ‘Life for nomads has always been hard,’ said Sandy Ag Mostapha, the Tuareg chief I met on my last trip to the desert. ‘There are so many problems: hunger, bad health, animals dying.’ The number of people able to see it through – by some combination of fortitude, discipline, willpower, sheer luck or opportunity – is dwindling steadily (in relative more than absolute terms), just as the number aware of other choices, eager to tread a different path from their ancestors, is growing. Freedom, increasingly, is not the only value nomads covet. I met many nomads who wanted to give up the lifestyle. But I also met nomads like Moishin, the Saharawi camel herder, who couldn’t imagine enjoying ano
ther lifestyle so much, or Sandy, who vowed he would ‘never leave it’.

  These are the people who can benefit from the enduring relevance of their way of life. ‘The best of men’, as the Prophet Mohammed reportedly said, ‘is the one who is most useful to his fellow men.’ Long after the last quant has left the last of the multinational i-hubs, there will still be herders plying the pasture trails – as long as there are still areas of low rainfall, and hungry cities hankering for animal products. Pure nomadism may diminish, but pastoralism will survive and evolve, interacting with other sources of income, powered by the energy that is waiting to be unleashed across the Sahara.

  For this is not a poor region. Its untapped potential is enormous, offering the possibility of future wealth as magnificent as the era of Mansa Musa, when caravans bobbed between the dunes with ostrich plumes and gold (and, of course, slaves – let us hope the future will be very different). Morocco is leading the way, with $9 billion invested in its national Solar Plan, U-shaped mirrors and turbines in place to convert thermal energy to steam. Given the limitless potential of solar technology (the sun bombards the earth with enough energy in a single hour to power all our needs for a year), this represents a thrilling key to future prosperity. What a beautiful irony it would be if that prosperity could be driven by the same mighty inferno that has been afflicting the region’s vegetation, dehydrating the herds, drying up the wells and scalding the people for millennia. If it could empower a new generation of pastoralists, facilitating the spread of transport, climate-related information, new models of export. If the people who live in the desert were to become guardians of the resource that powers us all through the next millennium.

  Although whether the oil and uranium believed to exist under the Sahara’s shifting sands will strengthen the people, or clad the current conflicts in more layers of deadliness, remains to be seen. The recent management history of the region – not to mention the resource curse, which has struck so many African states before – is not exactly encouraging. Yet these myriad possibilities do underline the growing relevance of the Sahara region. What happens here can no longer be dismissed as a sandstorm in the middle of nowhere. Whether through the spread of terrorist networks (all the more alarming with the tightening of links between African and Middle Eastern groups), narco-trafficking, the potential boon of solar power or mass migration, Europe and the wider world are embroiled in the desert’s fate. And nothing will affect that future more than the health of the Sahara’s nomadic communities. For only if they are empowered and supported can jihadism and smuggling be flushed out; only with their cooperation can an effective, fair infrastructure for energy exploitation be installed; and only if they prosper will the crowds diminish in the city slums of West Africa and the ports on the Mediterranean coastline.

  Of all the nomads I met on my travels, none summed up this fragile future more succinctly than Khadija Jai. She was the 86-year-old mother of my Fulani friend Boureima, and she had lived through it all – colonialism, revolutions, coups d’état. She grew up when the bush was still canopied by trees, the baobabs were generous with fruit, and lion hunts were common. Listening to Khadija was listening to an epic saga of devastation and heartache. She had lost plenty during her lifetime – children, cattle, most of her teeth. Even so, she hadn’t lost hope. She sat there, in the doorway of her millet-stalk hut, a wise, wizened woman who used to dance naked in fields of lush grass, wistful for the past but optimistic for a future over which so many analysts have already drawn a funeral shroud.

  ‘Life is better now,’ she told me. ‘We have more varieties of food, transport is faster, and we can receive news more quickly. If we work hard, we will have a good future. But if we don’t, then it will be very difficult for us.’

  For Khadija, it wasn’t about the governments or the multinationals, the aid agencies or the NGOs. It was about the people themselves. Is that a romantic notion? Perhaps it is, but I am going to stick with it all the same. Because the world keeps turning and the sun keeps rising, the stars keep whirling and the wind keeps blowing, the animals keep moving and so do the people. It would be nice to think some of them might have a say in how it all pans out.

  Glossary

  alhamdulillah ‘thanks be to God’ (Arabic).

  Almohads twelfth-century Berber dynasty, which replaced the Almoravids as the dominant force in the Maghrib and placed a strong emphasis on religion.

  Almoravids eleventh-century Arabic-speaking tribe of Berber heritage, which Yusuf Bin Tafshin led to glory in Spain. Their capital was Marrakesh.

  Amazighen the name by which Berbers call themselves, which can be interpreted as ‘nobles’ or ‘free people’.

  amesh-shaghab nomadic baggage carrier, designed to be easily installed on a camel.

  asabiyyah the concept of solidarity or ‘tribal glue’, which the fourteeth-century historian Ibn Khaldun cited as the chief source of tribal/nomadic power.

  azalai the seasonal salt caravan, traditionally conducted between Timbuktu and Taoudenni.

  babouche a goatskin slipper.

  baraka a divine blessing (Arabic).

  barchans a crescent-shaped sand dune, produced by a mono-directional wind.

  bedawi a nomad (Arabic), anglicised as Bedouin.

  bidon a small, usually plastic, portable container.

  boubou a three-piece costume worn by men in Mauritania and Western Sahara, comprising tie-up trousers, a long-sleeved shirt and a sleeveless gown (similar to the Arabic dara’a).

  caid title given to local chiefs and governors in Morocco, traditionally dispensed by the Sultan.

  dara’a see boubou.

  djellaba traditional Arabic men’s robe.

  djinn a spirit in Islamic culture, traditionally nurtured by fire and capable of both good and evil behaviour.

  Eid a collective name for the two major Islamic holy days, Eid al-Adhra and Eid al-Fitr.

  faqih a religious teacher (Arabic).

  fonio a wild grass of the digitaria species, containing small but nutritious grains.

  garabout a student in a Malian Quranic school.

  gigilé Boscia senegalensis, also known as hanza, a perennial bush whose fruit contains a sweet jelly that can be made into syrup. The bitter taste is not for everyone, but it does protect the plant from insects.

  griot a storyteller or entertainer, usually a member of a hereditary caste, charged with maintaining the oral history of a village or tribe.

  gris-gris a religious talisman, usually in the form of a prayer written on paper and bound in animal hide.

  guerba a water container made from a folded-out goatskin, tied with a cord at the neck, which can carry up to 30 litres of water.

  hajj the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca (one who completes the pilgrimage is entitled to the honorific hajji).

  hammada the hard crust where the sun has made the desert surface solid.

  Hassaniya Arabic dialect, widespread in Northwest Africa, which was propagated by the Bani Hassan, one of the Arabian tribes that migrated to the Maghreb in the eleventh century.

  imbar an armature tent, built around a frame.

  inedan Tuareg blacksmith or artisan caste (enad is the singular).

  jamaa a gathering of tribal elders.

  kasbah a high-walled, fortified building or citadel (Arabic).

  kataif Arabic pastry, made with honey and cashew nuts, shaped like pancakes.

  keef marijuana (Moroccan).

  khayma an easily collapsible tent, with a central pole and pegs around the sides.

  kilim a flat carpet with interwoven warp and weft strands.

  kora a 21-stringed Malian instrument, somewhere between a harp and a lute, usually made from a calabash cut in half and covered with cowskin.

  koubba Arabic word originally denoting a tent of hides, now refers to a tomb covered by a dome (and is the origin of the English word alcove).

  marabout a religious teacher or Islamic scholar in West Africa.

  medina Arabic for
‘city’, used for old towns such as Fez and Marrakesh, to distinguish them from their modern conurbations.

  mehari a breed of white camels known for their height and speed.

  melhfa a Saharawi woman’s gown, consisting of a 4-metre-long cloth.

  mithqal a gold coin, or the equivalent of 4.25 grams of gold.

  moussem an Islamic holy day, in honour of a particular holy figure.

  niqab a woman’s face veil, which leaves a horizontal band clear around the eyes.

  ouguiya the currency in Mauritania.

  pinasse a motorised longboat, usually with an open deck.

  pirogue a punt-operated narrow canoe, made from a single tree trunk.

  qasida an Arabic ode.

  riad a traditional Moroccan house with an interior courtyard.

  sadriya a knife used for smoothing animal hides in the tanning process.

  Sahel the transitional zone between the true desert (Sahara) to the north and the more vegetative Savannah and forests to the south.

  sahib dukkan shop master (Arabic).

  shahada Islamic declaration of faith – ‘There is no God but God and Mohammed is his prophet.’

  shariah traditional Islamic law, gleaned from the Quran, the hadith (words and deeds of the Prophet, as established after his death by his followers and Islamic scholars) and centuries of debate.