February 1999

Blue Men of the Desert Mali's Tuareg Give Up the Nomadic Life By Anton Foek In Mali, drought and modernization have forced Tuareg nomads to search for a new identity.

Almost 80 years old now, Aboubacarine Ag Mohammed sits on a covered stoop on the outskirts of Tombouctou (Timbuktu).  He points inside his dark house to the walls, barriers around the empty milk crates and table that are his furnishings.  When he was young, he says, his people rode out of the heart of the Sahara, invincible as the forces of nature.

Once the Tuareg controlled the caravan routes across the Sahara.  Of North African Berber origin, they were proud of their Caucasian heritage and their freedom to wander.  Fierce nomads, they commanded their horses and camels across the desert and were called "blue men of the desert" for their indigo robes and turbans.

But the days of glory are no more.  Today, the Tuareg seek a new raison d'être.  "The whole world has changed, and we don't know what to do about it.  We can't cope with it," says Aboubacarine.

His fingers draw in the sand.  He makes a circle, places a dot in the middle, and then adds five more dots around the edge.

Aboubacarine Ag Mohammed wipes out his drawings.  He takes some sand between his fingers, stares at me, and says, his mouth covered by his turban: "Life is like sand, changing all the time." He throws the sand carelessly away.

Bitter words, unkind fate

Even in the shade, the temperature is oppressive.  Aboubacarine's blue boubou, wrapped widely around him, protects him from the heat of the day, the cold of the night, and the omnipresent sand.

Another man joins us, silently looking on.  A goat knocks over a bucket of milk, lapping the spill hastily before his master can throw a brick or kick it.  Aboubacarine barely notices.  He just spits on the floor.

"They want to rivet us in concrete.  They never ask what we want, what our desires are.  First they chase us away from our lands, and then they plunder our houses.  I lost everything.  I once had fifty cows, 150 sheep, fourteen camels, and now they want our peace because the war is supposed to be over? It is as if we talk to brick walls.  It is as if the wind blows away our words." He spits again.  Maybe out of habit.  Maybe from anger.

Shifts in climate and in African politics have conspired to reduce Tuareg status to that of rebels and refugees.  Mali won independence from France in 1960.  In 1973, the first of two drought waves wiped out vast herds of cattle, the only Tuareg source of wealth.  The shock drove older Tuareg to the margins of the cities and many of the younger ones to the armies of neighboring countries.  Because the Tuareg suffered from the droughts more than most, some of them called for an independent state.  A small group of separatists attacked a few isolated army posts in the east.  Retaliation led to further fighting, and hundreds of people were killed on both sides.  Clashes with government forces continue.

Modernization has also taken its toll.  Tuareg camel caravans numbered around thirty thousand in the thirties and forties.  Today, they cannot compete with trucks and other modern means of transportation that bring salt and other products from northern Africa.

Forced to travel south in search of water and vegetation for their herds, many have set aside the traditional nomadic ways, becoming farmers or moving to cities.  Others, unable to make the transition, have been disoriented by the rapid changes.  They would rather look at the sun and the stars to tell the time than rely on a watch.  Even the use of money and its constant changing value disorient them.  These Tuareg mostly live in refugee camps on the outskirts of Tombouctou, where food is distributed by relief organizations.

I hear a muezzin a few blocks away calling for prayer.  Aboubacarine doesn't pay attention.  Another man joins us, sitting in a far corner.  I can barely hear him as he starts to read from the Qur'an.  My host criticizes the Mali government in the capital, Bamako.  He says that its greatest asset is its big mouth.

"After five or six years of Tuareg uprising and rebellion," he says, "they manufactured something they call a peace accord.  We signed and try to live after it.  We burned our weapons and guns.  Right here in Tombouctou.  I saw it with my own eyes.  Europe sent a great amount of money to ensure peace, and they had the people in Bamako promise us heaven on earth."

"But that is not what we want.  We don't want promises.  We want the desert back.  Since then nothing has happened ... except that we hear that we are racists and troublemakers, and that we fight all the time, that we want to have the best of both worlds."

He clicks his tongue.  No habit this time, it is disgust or maybe disdain.

A boy enters with green tea and some goat meat.  A blue plastic bowl serves as a basin to wash our hands.  The first tea I have with my new Tuareg friends tastes as bitter as the words he just spoke.

Gorom Gorom

It is a few days before my meeting with Aboubacarine.  I take the 6:30 a.m. bus for Mali from Ouagadougou, in Burkina Faso to the north.  The bus is full but not overcrowded.  There is no leaking rooftop, no crowds blocking the aisle.  We hit a few roadblocks, where local police check for the right papers.  We drive through endless desert, full of low, yellowish grass and thornbushes.  This is the Sahel.

Our driver, who wears a dust mask, stops frequently to let passengers stretch their legs.  Immediately, swarms of food sellers surround the bus, offering mangoes, oranges, and plastic bags of water with a straw.  It is as if one-half of Africa is traveling, and the other half is selling to the travelers.

The stops last fifteen minutes, enough to buy some fruit.  After some time we pass Bani, a little town with beautiful, big castles of sand and clay.  Further along, as the driver's radio plays Malinese blues that blues musician Ry Cooder could appreciate, we reach Dori, our first destination.  The sun is blistering.  Changing to a bush taxi, a French-made, open car, a few Tuareg and I seat ourselves in back.  Their boubous fly in the wind like flags.  I sit across from them and try to look beyond the turbans artfully woven around their eyes.  I realize they are an extraordinary people indeed.

They don't seem to look or see when our eyes cross.  Another Tuareg speaks imperturbably with his neighbor.  And the veiled face remains a burning question mark.  Do I look at what I can't see? Do I hear what I cannot comprehend? How do they hold on to what cannot be kept?

When the evening falls, Ezab Ag Alhour takes me into his living quarters in the sleepy village of Gorom Gorom.  "You know what Gorom Gorom means in my language?" he asks.  "It means, `do sit down, let us sit down, meet, and eat.'"

He used to be in the military and is a descendant of a royal family.  When I met him earlier, he invited me over with a princely, "You are my guest," in fluent French.

After a shower in the open air, we sit down for small talk, tea, and supper.  Other men arrive and give long, elaborate greetings, as the Qur'an requires.  "When you are greeted," it says, "greet back in a more gentle way than you were greeted." We eat with our hands from one big bowl, served by a girl not older than twelve.  We sit cross-legged around the bowl while Ezab lies on a couch.

After dessert, we stretch out on matresses along the wall.  Then the storytelling begins.  Ezab tells of how he came to be district chief, one who mediates between the government and the local Tuareg.  Mainly, he settles questions over land between the authorities and those who live in the area.

He says that in the beginning he sympathized with his fellow Tuareg, who had become virtual refugees in their own countries.

"I felt sorry for them, for us.  Here were innocent victims.  Nobody knew what they wanted.  More freedom?  Independence?  Self-determination?  More justice?"

"That's all possible.  But there were too many bandits calling themselves rebels.  There is no legitimate reason to stay in the camps after last year's peace accords."

"But they are Tuareg just like yourself," I challenge him.  Ezab replies, "They should arrange their own affairs, like anywhere else.  We want peace and security.  And true, I am one of them.  But that doesn't place us above the laws of our country.  Our country is Mali.  Thefts and fights or war should be stopped.  War doesn't resolve a conflict.  Peace does."

He grabs a cane and draws in the sand, his turban covering his face.  "We have our families; our children play and grow up here.  We have our culture.  The youngsters go out and travel to see the world.  They are not stupid when they come back from studying in Saudi Arabia or Abidjan.  And when they come back, they understand the transition we and the world are going through."

"We have to hold back for now.  We have no choice.  We cannot stop the world from revolving.  The older ones don't understand that.  We have to hold back now to gain in the future and make war not with bullets but with arguments.  With words.  Times are difficult for everybody, for all of us."

Peace without compensation

The next day is hot.  In the marketplace, there is a heavy smell of urine, sweat, and cooking oil.  A handicapped man crawls on hands and knees.  Children sell peanuts.  The village fool tries to catch his shadow on the wall, and the only silversmith in town is trying to sell his art to tourists.  Sweeping sounds come from a nearby mosque, momentarily throwing me into a trance.

The penetrating smells along the stalls wake me up again, as does the monotonous sound of countless sewing machines at work.  Splendidly harnesssed camels pass by.  Apologizing for the piles of dirt in his town, a man named Anadou sells me his guiding services, whether I want them or not.  He drags me into a clay hut where an old man is praying on his knees at the entrance.  In the inner court, another man sits majestically, wearing the biggest boubou I have seen yet.  Again, a long and lasting greeting.  Allassane Ould Mohammed softly greets me with a political speech.  His eyes penetrate my soul.

"We are all from Tombouctou," he says, "all our belongings have been destroyed, stolen, or forfeited.  The black people chase us away from the ground where our forefathers were buried.  And the High Commissioner of the United Nations let us die.  Look at my son.  He was not born in Tombouctou.  Every time I go there he asks and begs me if he can join me and stay there.  He is only 8 years old.  I was a trader in Tombouctou, but my car was set afire, my store plundered.  People and animals were slaughtered.  Peace is all right, but compensation would be better."

I think of an African photo exhibition I've seen.  The European and American photographers saw famine, poverty, war, and female mutilation.  The Africans saw health care, family structure, and culture.

He urges me to go to Tombouctou to judge for myself.  Even if he could tell me a thousand stories, he says, they would not be worth one look by myself.

That Sunday morning I arrive in Tombouctou.  By the early sixteenth century, Tombouctou was a wealthy commericial center with close to two hundred thousand inhabitants.  A guide tells me that for centuries European explorers attempted to reach this most fabled of African cities.  Most of them died.  Some died of thirst.  Others perished at the hands of what chroniclers would later call "the Blue People."

Today Tombouctou is inhabited by only thirteen thousand.  Its decline began in 1591, when Tuareg armies from Algeria and Morocco invaded.  At that time European maritime nations began circumventing the Saharan trade routes by sending their ships down the coast of West Africa.  Europe broke the Muslim monopoly of the Tuareg, destroyed the base of their wealth, and along the way toppled the magnificent city.

Lords of the desert

On the outskirts of Tombouctou, Aboubacarine is telling me of the peace accords.  "I witnessed the burning of weapons with my own eyes," he says.  Outside fall the annual rains of the Niger delta.  Most of Mali welcomes the rain.  For Aboubacarine, they are the scariest thing in the world.

First there is a rumbling, he says.  Then, tropical raindrops scratch loudly on the roof.  When the wind picks up, the house shakes, making a distressing, grating noise.

It rains, and the raindrops are scaring him, he says.  It is the unexpected, the unknown.

He explains the struggle and the pain of his people again.  The struggle to roam the desert in freedom and the pain of not being able to.  The winds shake his house, and he says it is no wonder that nobody listens to the Tuareg.  Clicking his tongue, he says that it is as if the wind blows away their words.