trading camels for caravans

A regrettably late quarterly report...

I am trying to not think about my time in Africa as a complete failure. It wasn’t a waste of time but things certainly did not really go as planned. I can honestly say that I don’t think I learned much at all about Toureg tents, about their ideas of space, family, land and community.

Of course, I can now speak at great length about economic challenges to herders and Saharan nomads, about wells and water politics, about camels and the salt trade, about the flooding of the Niger River, about political turmoil and Komeni and the Toureg rebellion and an ongoing demand to keep slaves, about food aid and poverty and tourism.

The material that I gathered and the project that emerged, despite my attempts to make things “work” and stay on track, was not so much based on clear data or even clear stories and lives of people, as it was a discovery of emotions and relationships, of things that cannot be measured accurately or explained fully. I will never be sure how much I glimpsed of Malian or Toureg culture and how much I projected on the people I encountered. I left with several charged experiences that I have no way of explaining.

The four countries that I visited in Africa left such completely different impressions that I have a hard time grouping them together into any sort of coherent “African experience”. I still laugh at the irony that the location where my project seemed the most set, where I had by far the best contacts and logistical planning, where my expectations were the highest was the greatest disaster. You can’t plan everything. And no one can make the rains come or make the heat break before it is ready.

I realize that I had been traveling, physically moving to a new location, a new community (or lack thereof), a new bed, on thirty three of my first sixty days in Africa. And this included a fourteen day stint in Essaouira and nearly two weeks in Bamako. This cannot be healthy.

There must be an optimal pace for movement according to the land and social specificity. But this is not it. Nomads move slowly, gently. They tend to move together - in families, in clans. Or if traveling solo - a man or a boy leaving with herds and then returning periodically like a ship gone out to sea and coming back to port. It is important to return, to rejoin.

I never intended to run like that, but it was some fever that took hold of me and kept me moving, that wouldn’t let me settle. My restlessness climaxed and was only exacerbated by a series of difficulties which made each resting place seem particularly undesirable. Things will be better once I leave Bamako. Things will be better once I get out of Mopti. Things will be better once I am in a village and out of Timbuctou. In retrospect, the situation was even more telling because it was unintentional.

A bit of ongoing illness mixed with a smattering of personal violence, a heavy heap of abuses and intimidations, a few bruises, and some witnessed ugliness did little to make me want to stay in with my reluctant hosts. I wanted to make things work, but after washing blood off of my hands and wiping the spit from my face, I realized it was time to leave. There are just too many places in the world far more beautiful and welcoming for me than Mali in the hot season. So, I ran off to Amsterdam and luckily I arrived at the Academic Medical Center Polikliniek Tropische geneeskunde just before my dysentery fully jumped to my liver.

Now I find myself in Ireland flying through the last phase of my project. Things feel remarkably easy. I am in a country where everyone speaks English, the land is fertile and beautiful, where it cools down in the evening and where a long bus ride is only 4 hours. Some of my best “interviews” have taken place over a few pints in the local pub while a band plays at a nearby table. There are local Traveller groups all over the country and wonderful people who have been very patient and open to talking with me about their lives.

The settlement of Travellers, conditions of halting sites, and general accommodation issues are something that everyone in Ireland seems to have an opinion about. Not only does this make my job easier, but it shows that the situation means something to people, people care about the answers to questions I am asking, they want me to understand their side of the story and how the issue is present in their lives. Opinions are strong and filled with personal stories.

This week, I have been meeting with several women over at Traveller Visibility Group in Cork City. Over many hours worth of tea and scones we traded stories of living on the road. The conversation bounced back and forth between Cork, Galway, Mongolia, and Rajasthan with the women asking many questions about the other nomadic groups I have been living with and pouring over some of my photographs that I brought along.

I leave Cork this afternoon to cycle out around Kerry for the next week, visiting halting sites and eventually ending up at the Carimee Horse Fair in Buttivant, a major meeting for Travellers from all over Ireland.

My health has been steadily improving, and I am taking lots of time to write, process, and enjoy Ireland and my remaining time with this project before I return to the states. I am trying to slow my pace a little, but time continues to move quickly.

Holland

I retreat to Holland for rest, readjustment and some medical attention. After a week of every imaginable test, the fine doctors at the polikliniek Tropische geneeskunde in the Academic Medical Center cured me in the end and were very, very thorough. Turns out I did have all sorts of parasites living in my belly, my intestines and blood. I suppose I wasn't travelling solo after all.
But, I'm a terrible host and after two attempts at peaceable eviction, I have finally killed all of my guests.

It takes two weeks for the results to come in and for the doctors to convince me not to return to Africa and to continue my trip in Ireland instead of Ethiopia. It is the right decision in the end. We are all glad that I made it to the clinic before the ameobas jumped to my kidneys. I'm not in such rought shape anymore.

I pass my days cycling, walking all over the city and making new Dutch friends. I am happier when I move out of the hostel and into an appartment with Joris over near Westerpark. I settle in and have a hard time leaving. Unfortunatly, the medicine I am finally put on is strong and makes me ill. But, spirits are high.

By now I am excited to head over to Ireland and to meet some Irish Travellers. I have processed Mali and had a chance to talk to some patient friends. I buy a plane ticket for Dublin and imagine of green pastures, sheep and rain. I am finished with the desert for a while.
I dream of a new bike and fiddle music.

Homes

When you’ve been on the road for a long time you eventually hit a point when home is the memory of all the places you have passed through. When you travel alone you live in a house that your mind has built for you. You are perpetually a guest in the homes and community of others. But you find that you become a host through your words, with story, as your address bears no post code, but falls between streets, towns, borders.

I think of all the houses, apartments, tents and spaces that I have lived in since I left my parent’s home six years ago. It is an odd assortment, filled with curious characters that make up my chosen family. It is thoughts of these people and these special places, some whom I have known for years, and others with whom I shared only a few weeks, that fill my head on the long bus rides and in the night. As my year comes to a gentle end and I think about coming home, I am glad. It will be good to be amongst familiar faces. But I am not sure just where that place is. If anything, it seems I miss the space between the places of my life, the movement between them, the conversations, moments that remain fluid.

leaving afrika

chick on the photo for a short slide show...

I’ve never before left a place because I couldn’t see the beauty in it. It is the most painful and complete defeat I can think of. Now I am running away from Mali because I can’t feel anything that isn’t sharp.

.

Dry season

I’ve been moving continuously since I came to Africa
looking for water in the desert
a spot to relax and feed
a place that would sustain me
where I could build a shelter of branches
set down my load
and let the animals graze.

But I never did find a place
With more than a drop or two
of beauty and sweetness
the dust swallows up any moisture
that touches the earth.
It is the dry season after all.

I wait for the rains to come.

Bella women hiding from the heat in a reed mat shelter

I realize that I have been travelling, physically moving to a new location, a new community (or lack thereof), a new bed, on thirty three of the last sixty days since I arrived in Africa. And this includes a fourteen day stint in Essaouira and nearly two weeks in Bamako. This cannot be healthy.
And indeed it is not.

There must be an optimal pace for movement according to the land and social specificity. But this is not it. Nomads move slowly, gently. They tend to move together - in families, in clans. Or if traveling solo - a man or a boy leaving with herds and then returning periodically like a ship gone out to sea and coming back to port.
It is important to return, to rejoin.

Instead, I feel like I am blowing across the land like some deranged sandstorm. Misunderstood, unseen, cursed and unwelcome. The people are all tightened turbans and closed doors, squinted eyes and pursed lips.

the saddest village in my desert

The sky is white.
The sand is white.
The trees are gray and tiny.
They have lost their shadows.
The sun is the moon,
round and soft.
We are underwater.
In a land stripped of hue,
or contrast
or emotion.
The sun burns quietly.

Even the camels are so sad
we have to sing to keep them going.
Touregs ride with their feet on the neck
and a wooden stick hidden
in the fold of their robes.

In the quietest village in the desert
I catch no sleep.
Even the stars keep their distance.

There was just too much blood
for me to help that tiny girl.
They brought her to me all wrapped up,
like an unwanted parcel,
They ask for medicine,
unable to name what had been done to her.

I think she fell down... on something sharp.
How long has she been like this?
Three days.

Here we are, just 15 km from a doctor.
Such a short walk.

I’d carry her to town
(please let me take her to a doctor...)
I don’t care about the military
They won’t shoot a Toubab with a sick girl

But I can’t play hero.
I can’t tell these people what to do or think.
How dare I?

I am not part of this community.
I don’t belong here. (what am I doing here?)
I can only do what is asked of me.
I can only act with permission.

I can’t cry or scream.
But I also can’t hide my feelings
even though I know my eyes betray my disrespect.
I’m not even sure I can stop the bleeding.

Please, no more tea.
Can’t you just touch her arm or speak to her?
Some warm milk perhaps with sugar.
Maybe she can drink that.

I am not a doctor.
Having white skin doesn’t make me a doctor.
I don’t know how to bandage a wound like this.

Maybe tomorrow she will go with you back to town.
I don’t know if she will be alive tomorrow.
I don’t know.

The chief just says,
We’ll see. Inshallah.

Mousaf is angry.
No one will sleep tonight, he says.
A half hour later I can hear him snoring.

I watch the stars
empty.

We leave early in the morning.

I am running away, back to Bamako. Anywhere.
Away from the dark eyes of that little girl,
from the face of her mother, blank and without emotion.

The open window has left half of me olive green and
painted the other half with the red clay of the road.
The window is broken
and I sit with this hot wind
damp with sweat.
Not sure if the air is cooling
or making me ill.

They say there is a herd of wild elephants left here
But everything else has been killed,
the trees felled.
Only dust remains
and the small huts of men.
Some things are actually very simple
And some sights are unspeakable.

The day makes my eyes sting and my skin peel.
It is enough to stay awake,
to keep moving.
I can't stay here.

Trying to get to Timbuctou

From Mopti, I catch a shared 4x4 jeep to Timbuctou. We are 13 people in a small vehicle, but I manage to pay a bit extra and get a front seat with no head rest. The large Toureg man next to me takes up most of the room and I try to doze in my little place. We are driving at night, so there is no view. No stars, no animals, no moon, just sand.

Every hour or so I am woken by a flat tire, a ditch or a bag of fish that keeps falling into my lap. The bag has broken and the man next to me just keeps stuffing the cooked fish and bones back into the ripped bag and jamming it into the crease of the dashboard and window. As if the bag won't just fall again. As if it doesn't already have a huge rip down the middle. I don't care any more. I couldn't be more sweaty and dirty. But, who is going to eat this fish?

We make it eleven hours in the dark on a rolling sand "road" before the driver finally falls asleep, crashing into a few scrubs, very very narrowly avoiding flipping the car and crashing into yet more sand. The driver gets out, looks at the car, bangs a few things, then somehow gets us back on the dirt road. He jumps under the car, bangs around, shrugs his shoulders and drives on. He is silent. Everyone else is screaming as usual. A lesser driver would have flipped the jeep.
We reach Timbuctou with the first light of morning.

The town is dead.

central mosque, Timbouctou

The Quebecoise girls that I rode up to town with and I all find a room with air conditioning and hide from the heat. Its about 40 degrees in the morning. I want nothing more than a flat place and maybe some water to wash with if possible. I get a tiny bit of water for my bath and enjoy it immensly even if hot water in this heat is not particularly desireable. I gulp down two liters of filtered water and pass out for a good five or six hours. There are no windows in the room and we can't tell if it is day or night.

People here never tire of speaking about the heat.

I never tire of drinking fake fruit juice.

Tonight I look for camels.

Aside from a general helplessness, a constant pain in my stomache and head, a host of daily frustrations and fights -- there is still so much beauty here.

For every five people who snicker or yell or abuse me, there is some little girl who smiles, some baby who wants to grab my hand or dance in my lap. another soft sunset, a baobab tree in an empty field, vegetables planted amongst the garbage on the riverbank, an old man who offers me a glass of steaming tea.

It is laughter, dancing, children and a great feeling of total absurdity that gets me through these days. I am faint and exhausted and feel the heat building behind my eyes, but I can usually find some patch of shade to squat in and a little frozen bag of bissap to suck on for a breath.

But I've never felt so overwhelmingly unwelcome.