Escape from Nouakchott, Starring Dolph Lundergan

Escape from Nouakchott, a poem

I just realized it’s April Fool’s Day.
I have no one to tell.
I rode back to Nouakchott on the back of a truck. I introduced Malcom, the Canadian, to the fast talking Boston/Mauritanian millionaire Sidi Boya. He’s been hired on to work on the presidential elections.
I’ve taken to wearing gris gris.
The Auberge erupted in madness.
Frusturated marriage proposals. Mohammad was crushed, I was fearing for his health.
Two French Senegalese attacked a Frenchman in the morning, wielding tire irons.
I bought two bottles of whiskey and 24 beers from a slimy Frenchman.
A Gabonese man, two Frenchman, and two prostitutes crash my pad and steal my booze. The Gabonese man is seducing a Swiss homosexual mountain climber, and purportedly organizing a four by four to Mali - but possibly with the intention of murdering them. He offers Nouro two thousand euros to assist. The police arrest him.
I’m being chased around town by a promoter who wants my money, he thinks my name is „Krips“
The Auberge is strangely quiet today.
The city is heating up.
The taxi drivers all talk about the heat, that this is only the beginning.
I’m leaving for Senegal on Sunday.
I won’t be stopped.

-

I leave Nouakchott in a crowded taxi; it’s well into the afternoon. I’ve said hurried goodbyes to my friends, whom I may never see again. The desert capital continues to churn along however. Toward the outskirts of town, where garbage and sand meet, we pass the array of generators - giant, house sized engines, eating fuel in exchange for Nouakchott’s continued existence. It is a pure example of Africa’s unsustainability, flagrant and fatalistic, and completely human. Keep moving.

And it’s not far down the road to Senegal, really. The desert slowly retreats, trees begin to sprout, longhorned cattle lumber along, all in a blur as we rattle and shake over the pitted concrete track. But suddenly, as it would be, time freezes. A vehicle pulls into the oncoming lane, accelerating, headed on a collision course. We are perhaps eight or nine in the crowded taxi, and our eyes are fixed ahead. Our driver, jerks the wheel from side to side, trying to determine which way he should veer, the other driver mimicking in reflection. A strange calm precedes the moment, an unlikely peace.

And at the last second, the other vehicle breaks to our right, careening off the road and into a cloud of dust. Our taxi slams to a halt to breath, and a few prayers are said. I notice the little ten year old boy to my left. I thank the chauffer. The engine turns over, and we continue.

From that moment on, it’s borrowed time. And I don’t forget.

In the following month, I hole up in Saint Louis, nurturing my soul amongst a matriarchly family, and learn lessons of betrayal and inequity in the slums of Dakar. The city is itself, and I leave again for the desert.


Fouta Toro Samurai - Podor and magic - Recycling in Africa - A typical village


The Senegalese river valley is abundant and green - but only when viewed in relative comparision. The desert still lets itself be felt, extending a parched hand over the land, the stunted wiry trees and twisted baobabs trailing tendrils into the air, like trees uprooted and placed on their head. The greenery seems to be precariously clinging to an earth trying to shake it off. The brown is as much on the ground as it is in the sky, and long before the sun is extinguished by the horizon, it navigates a hazy belt of dust.

The small villages along the road are mostly the impermanent nomadic homes, clusters of round houses strung together with long straw pieces. And a few people. I watch two young girls, gathering firewood, standing amongst an infinite backdrop of dust and an impassive mule. One of them is yelling at the other one, in anger or in jest, I can’t quite decide as our battered Peugot blasts by for nothing more than a photographic glimpse.

Fouta Toro ist he name given to the region along the Senegalese River, beginning around Podor and stretching East until Mali. It defies borders, and is in reference to the common culture and language, the shared product of an ancient kingdoms. Society is like something of a Samurai epic of 17th century Japan. In the dress, it’s not so different. The old men sport conical leather hats and billowy robes - and I’m sure some carry swords.

The first kingdom, known as the Tekrur Empire, had it’s base here on the Isle of Morfil, beginning in the 10th Century, and ruling for 600 years (it was the Tekrur empire later that joined forces with the Almoravids, conquering the Iberian Peninsula just until the present day border with France). The empire fell with the arrival of the Deeniyankoobe, warriors from the East who took control of the area. During the 200 year rule, Islam began to slowly penetrate the population, and in 1776, the Muslim Toorodbe caste gained control in revolution. They would rule as such until being ursurped by the French.

Such features and history combine to form a strange mini-region. „Castes“ are all too common throughout West Africa, often defining a societal role, segregated by marriage within the caste, and delineating a power structure. And although the castes are no longer strictly adhered to (change being recent, however, in the past 20 years), everyone knows to which caste they belong. There are a plethora of beliefs, sites and villages that figure prominently into mythology, animals and creatures and half humans that hide in the places in between, and magic potions and protective amulets - that nevertheless are strictly Islamic in nature.

Podor, as the capital of the district, is the first logical stop on our journey. Situated on the extreme west of the Isle de Morfil, it’s the admnistrative center of the district. It is the commercial hub, the market town, it is the school, the hospital. The heart, or more aptly the brain, the burecracy, that keep the machine of the Island running. Yet for all that responsibility, it appears a town struggling to maintain itself as a city. The center is not more than two or three square blocks, and the crowded atmosphere owes more to backups of horse drawn carriages then population density - a hurried scramble of villagers back and forth to the market, silenced by the afternoon. By then, the stifling heat has settled over the town in a haze, like some experimental military weapontry. Even the most industrious inhabitants are snoring on floor mats, outside in their sandy yards. The only upright and mobile, the town „crazies“ or the young boys, grumbling with a shiny piece in hand, sent on errand to buy cigarettes for their older brothers.

The riverfront, is a facade or crumbling tall French houses, fading yellow paint and sagging roofs. Lined up facing the river, Mauritania. Confused and anachronistic, like most of the reclaimed colonial architecture, these are family homes now - and it’s not unusual to see laundry hanging from an elegant French balcony. The river is quiet too, aside from the bathers, fisherman, the launders, congragating at the collapsed concrete dock - large old women bathing in the river, their giant breasts like pairs of whales flopping around, and stone men with poles trailing the water, waiting with forever patience. There are no boats on the river however, only the constant traffic of canoe ferretting people back and forth from the from the village opposite, and the grand tourist vessel that plows the river bi-weekly from Saint Louis to Podor.

But Podor is only the edge of a vast island. The Isle of Morfil is named such fort he ivory that once covered the Island. That is to say, at one time the island had a population of elephants. It is said that do not exist anymore. And it would potentially be easy to determine - the Island is merely 10 by 120 km - and is covered in a bare scrub forest of spindly acacia - and an inumerable settled and semi settled population.


But there is a plethora of interest here. The true mysticism, the bizarre and the beauty, the serene simplicity and cultural inversion is always to be found in the places in between. Past the end of the road, the villages off the track. The places that go unnamed on the maps, for oversight or preservation. I like, sometimes, to imagine that travelling in these roads is like travelling 50, 100, 500 years ago. After all, America’s interstates weren’t the massive concrete arteries until the second world war, and even New York was once a booming city of 100,000. For everything that can be said about nostalgia fort he past, at one time the world was a lot bigger in space, a lot smaller in people.

In Ndioum, I’m sitting along the riverbank on a raised patch of grass (the „mountain“ as a friend referred to it, in all seriousness, should give an idea of how planar the region is). Mango trees are lined across the opposite shore, their ripening yellow fruits lit up like decorations. A damp breeze floats off the river.

I ask Becaye, about the river, about the mystique, because I have a fascination fort he bizarre. He begins to talk about the river people. „At one time, there are people, living in the river. And they say that when someone drowns, they are with the people. There was an old man here, he died just six months ago. When someone was lost and drowned, he would come to the shore and make a ceremony - kill a goat, write a verse of the koran - and toss a rock. Where it landed, that’s where they’d recover the body.“

There’s two girls splashing in the surf. One is wandered out a bit too far and can’t swim well. She’s dog paddling back to the shore, as her head keeps dipping below the water line. But he shore is full of people, washing, bathing. Watching.

„Before, things we’re different. People didn’t wash clothes and dishes in the river. And there wasn’t that sound“ - he points into the air, a motorized pump can be heard churning along. „That was before the electricity. With the electricity came more light, more noise. And these things, they...they hid.“

Ndioum, I am introduced to a massive house, a refugee from the greater Africa. Replete with a library and DVDs, refridgerator with pesto and Trader Joe’s pumpkin butter. Recycling bins. I watch Nacho Libre and read English translations of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Haruki Murakami. And then the Americans arrive.

Southern Army officers. Idealistic college vegetarians. One night, perhaps the only night at my life the Department of Defense will pick up the tab, we’re eating a catered dinner at a nearby Auberge.

„So, is it hard to be a vegetarian?“ I ask, gnawing on a rib. I haven’t had real meat in ages.

„What’s hard is how they treat animals. I just can’t stand how they hit the animals here!“

I’m talking to a new Peace Corp recruit, recent graduate of a University in Oregon known for it’s liberalism.

I remember and reflect on a case study of a Bolivian Amazonian village where the dog was regularly kicked. The author supposed that perhaps the dog served as a refugee for anger that could not otherwise be expressed in such a small village, lest it have disatrous results fort he unity of the people. She stares at me blankly.

„I mean, back home I ALWAYS buy free range chicken. It’s important that the animals have a good life, at least!“ She pauses. „Back in Oregon, they developed a new way to kill cows. The killing block is a like a maze. The cow just walks along through the maze and suddenly something comes out from behind shooting it in the brain.“ She’s brimming. I’m trying to pick a piece of rib meat out between my molars.

„They can never see what’s coming.“

The military officers are not all from the South, but all have Southern accents. They are four in number, and are here on a pseudohumanitarian mission fort he Department of Defense. They will spend 8 months in contry, travelling around, solving problems. With essentially a blank checkbook, they finance various projects - the repair of a well pump, the construction of a school. In one particular project, they are distributing medical supplies; a friend is translating. As they are busy and strapped for time, she asks if they would rather get complete translations or a quick, perhaps inaccurate approximation. „Quickly,“ the officer explains, „we’re not really here to help people anyways, this is more about public relations.“


In Fouta, the most difficult thing is the heat. It’s cool when I wake in the morning and the day begins slowly. Hushed voices, punctuated words spoken in the silence of the morning star hanging onto the lightening backdrop. The animals, a veritable zoo of them, begin to move in shifts. The chickens rustling their feathers and rising from slumber to squabble and scavenge, the tromping goats and mutton braying to one another in that tortured cry, the lumbering cow and it’s low moan, a big beast, white as the moon on the horizon. And the heat. It comes on the cool wind that begins to blow in the morning. The sky, is clear, and it’s not hot yet. But he wind licks at you with it’s cat tongue.

By 11 o clock, it’s too hot. We sit under the shade of a tree. Souleyman and I are smoking a joint, in broad view. I feel like a lizard, clinging to a rock. But unlike the lizard, I’m too hot to move. At midday, we return to Souleyman’s house. And there we lay under the concrete patio, sleeping. We wake for lunch, and occasionally rise to drink water. And for good reason. The amount of water expelled by the body is frightening. I sleep and my sweat soaks the matress. My lips are parched. Even my eyes are parched. And the wind is a hot wind from an open oven door. I sometimes open my eyes to move my body out of the sun, as I feel I am burning, but to my surprise I am in the shade. I sleep the entire day.

The village is characteristic of any village, although the largest village in the area, a title it bears proudly. Despite the size, everyone seems to know one another and everyone is asleep most of the time. Undoubtedly there are legends, there are stories here. The mere anthroplogical layout of the villages is enough in itself to occupy a lifetime. For example, Kas Kas - the youth are „fighteres“ and practice the lutte. However, there are two villages (Dongi, Walwade) that are known for their musicians, hoddu players and guitarists, drummers, etc.

A man comes trotting down the street, in his hand dangles a set of prayer beads. „He is blind, he was born that way,“ Samba explains. „But Tawooda knows things. Like if he comes over here he knows who all is sitting here, he knows that there is a Toubab. He knows more, like how much money you have in your pocket. He was born that way.“ Samba shrugs.


Sickness in the Sahara - Closed door policy - Travelers in Africa

My little metal shell of spaceship in the desert. Isolation. Complete.

I’m back in Mauritania, a desert outpost. In half hallucinatiton, my body wreaked by throes of illness and the insurmountable heat bearing down with suffocating intensity. The long car ride north, backwards really, toward Nouakchott. As the scattered shrub trees, punctuated with mathematic precision slowly gave way to a plain featureless horizon - I couldn’t help but imagine I was losing. Defeat. Like hooked onto a line, slowly dragging me back towards the darkness of Nouakchott. So I exited at Aleg.

I half staggered into a hotel room, and collapsed on the bed.

I must have slept for hours. Whether the light was on or not, dressed or not, talking or dreaming or reflecting or writhing in pain - it was me, holed up in this tiny little room. The air conditioner, rattling in a furiuos attempt against all the force of the Sahara.

This little room, windows shut. There are no hours here. There is a departure, and an arrival. It is anonymous and dirty. But I own it. This is mine.

I think about what lies outside these doors. A hostile world. A desert such to imagine the size would require infinitude of contemplation. I dream of mountains and ocean breezes. Remember the sight of the ocean through the trees? The nourisihing blue? The blue in the desert comes from the billowy robes of the hostile natives. There is no salvation in the desert. Even the natives cling to the little shadow and in their prayers silently thank the wind before allah.

This sufferable desert! And this little satellite doesn’t move. When I open the hatch and Stepp out of the airlock it’s back into the oven. And there’s no end in sight. Just flat featureless sand and harsh words that grate like the desert.

What you need to understand - is that some things will not make sense. That there are places in the world that are not of this world. That leaving the planet is easier than you think. Me, I’ve already left it.

The sun hangs like a glistening desert rock, a hacked off chunk of quartz maybe, hot and rugged. It’s barely risen, but the air is already simmering, an ode for the day that it is to come. I walk down the main street, a sandy strip of tire ruts and flattened garbage strewn about. A hot wind blows in from the East lifting the street up and into my eyes. Locals gaze and lock on to my movement, tracking this stranger in a stranger land. The woman clutch mellafas over their faces, the men, bearded and sunken eyed.

It’s suffocatingly hot during the day. And around one in the afternoon, I always make a bold promise to pack my bags and get as far away from the heat as possible. Then I forget, and think „it wasn’t really that bad.“

No, it was.

The heat is like a fever delerium. Headaches, sweats, burning irritated skin, like you want to climb out of it. Inescapable - this is not the United States, there are no A/C malls, theaters, or even supermarkets. If you’re in the heat, you cling to the shadows and wait fort he sun to make it’s rounds.


Nema - Rotund mud buildings that look as though they were layed, like eggs, by some mythical desert bird. The curiousity and the grating sound of Hassaniya Arabic can turn everyone a potential enemy; the way they hiss „Nazarani!“ when I pass. The sun is an exageratted feature, baking everything into a squinted haze, red and brown hues. Even with Islam the people can’t help but worship it, if not subconsciously, the woman’s veiled head to toe in melaffa’s with a vibrant starbust of color, a supernova, a gazing eye of a sun god.

I spend the night in a house known as „Vage“ or „Cow“ - the headquarters of an organization of Agricultural Veterinarians, evidenced by unwashed plates, forgotten toothbrushes, and sample packets of camel dietary suplements - that has been all but taken over a group of teenagers. As a „guest“ I’m forced to play a number of songs for their entertainment, including Akon, Enrique Iglesias, and Celine Dion. The next day I search for transport to Oualata.

And what a truck! A pickup, the back creaking under the load, wraped up in netting like it was pulled out of the sea, a bulging package of supplies for the end of the world. And then, we mount. All twelve of us, scaling the sides of the truck, stepping onto the tires, handing up bags, babies, bottles of water. Just settled into an uncomfortable position, the engine rumbles into life. The two girls next to me, eyes hidden fake designer sunglasses start to mutter a prayer. I’m clinging to the net with a similar conviction - finger’s tentatively grasping netting, as this will keep me from being flung off. Perhaps I should have converted to Islam.

We cruise upwards and and outwards from Oualata, stopping only at a police checkpoint: „Bon jour,“ I tell the policeman. „It’s Bon Soir, Monsieur’“ he corrects me.

The truck rumbles upward into a mountain pass, high up over Oualata. I haven’t seen mountains in awhile, and can’t help but to imagine, as we climb upwards, that we are preparing for some instantaneous and awesome high speed descent. A trail of camels meanders along in perfect postcard sillhoutte, and a horned brown monster of a cow stands in the shade of a spindly acacia, tracking us with bored indifference. The collapse never comes. Instead, the road is a tortuous trail of sand, the desert alternating between sandy grass flatland and sand drifts. The horizon on both sides stretches out into a flat sea of misery.


Places need functional myths to inspire and tease out the poetry that exists within. Such as it is with Oualata. The old city clings to a side of a mountain. It is a labryinth of snaking passageways, tall mud walls of baked crimson and red ochre, ornamental motifs and heavy wooden doors, ornate and armored.

„Many of the houses have two doors, two chambers, in case of intrusion....“ Mamadou So, a teacher, explains. Explaining also, the curious nature of the inhabitants.

One aspect lauded by people, everywhere, is their hospitality. But the stranger is not welcomed in Oualata with open arms, rather, he is shut out. There is no free lunch here. There is no lunch, period. I spend many days eating food scavenged from the botiques - tins of sardines and sandy bread, before I finally find someone willing to sell me food.

Oualata is not a new point on a tourist circuit. It has always been a crossing point, a distinct point along the caravan trails hreading across the Sahara from Algeria or Morocco, loaded with Salt, Slaves, or whatever else they could carry. In the danger of oversimplification, Oualata’s inhabitants could said to retain some of this hostility, guarded hostility, against foreigners, who often passed through, bringing with them whoever they could grab on to or run away with.


While engaged in an epic and unending journey, it is often in those tales of travelers that we find camraderie. Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan who traveled the world before it was known, Rene Caillie who snuck into Timbouctou disguised as a beggar. Than the others, like the accidental traveler Otokichi, a Japanese fisherman whose boat was lost at sea and shipwrecked on the Pacific Coast of the United States, was captured by tribes, crossed the country, the Atlantic, Europe, and almost returned to Japan, having circled the globe, when all he wanted to do was catch some fish. If my travels fall into the first category, many of the Africans I’ve met fall into the latter.

I meet Mamadou „Legceiba“ while waiting for a taxi in Kiffa. We’re sitting in the shade under a tent, all of us travelers, passing the day waiting. The woman shout to one another in Peul while waving away goats peeking their heads into the pans of rice. An infant, clad only in a type of thong and a necklace of fish teeth chases another infant, a giant knife in hand. Mamadou is in a dress shirt and slacks, and a thin weather beaten briefcase sits at his side.

„I’ve traveled all over Africa,“ he tells me, pointing at the map I’ve spread out across the floor. A commerciant, Mamadou did what many do, buying in one place, selling in another, capitalizing on the difficulty of the voyage. Travelling with a small group, „we crossed the borders, but every so often the police would demand a bribe, maybe half of what weh ad. So by the time we arrived in Nigeria, weh ad no money.“ The band hopped on a train, but when the police discovered they had no tickets, they were hauled to jail. Thus begins a one month imprisonment, replete with torture, of which Mamadou shows me his scars. „And we would have died in there, but for one day, another prisoner, a real murderer, told us they were planning a riot, an escape. And asked us to either join them or be against them. We joined in the subsequent riot, escaping through the fire and the smoke.“ They crossed into Congo on a pirogue. Two weeks later, war broke out. „So we left the city, and went into the forest. Two weeks there, with the pygmies.“ He motions to demonstrate their petit height, shaking his head. „They could make a movie out of my story.“

For Africans to travel in Africa, it is not simple. Although technically free within the countries bound by an agreement of West African countries, it is impossible to travel without dispensing bribery. „You’re not obligated to pay, but the police will hold you at the station, then send the bus away. After it leaves, they’ll return your passport, and tell you to leave. Now you’re stranded in the middle of nowhere, and you’ve lost your ticket.“

So while in route to Bassikinou, I am travelling with two African travelers - Isahia, a young man from Niger, who claims his business is „business“ and a Bouca, a Mauritanian who sells „gris-gris“ amulets that protect against knife wounds and can even stop bullets.

We arrive in Bassikinou at night. Isahia, with a flat face and wide eyes is headed to Timbouctou. He is reluctant to explain his business, and I am reluctant to pry, although I later learn it is drugs (which explain the nonchalant police response to his foreign presence; he has already paid heafty bribes). We sleep under a tent in what seems like a deserted town. Widely disperesed houses across a flat featureless horizon and plain of sand and dust. At dawn, music beings to blare out from not to distant megaphones, on an unending loop. I can’t understand what their singing or saying, but I’m certain they’re promising something. The presidential election is just days away.

In the morning I part from Isahia, and wish him the best of luck. Bouco brings me to a house where I can rest for a few days. He knows the road as well. We talk as we walk through town. The houses are made of mud, the same color as earth. There is no horizon, no trees even to get bearings. In the wide plazas between houses the ground is cratered, the holes where the earth i staken for construction. But in the rains, they fill with water. And children drown.

„My father is a marabout,“ Bouca explains. The marabouts are spirtual leaders in West African Islam, and often possess a special relationship with Allah, allowing them to alter the course of reality through their demands, or fabricate potions or protective amulets. „I contact people for requests for gris gris, then my father makes them on demand.“

„Africa is difficult,“ he continues. „Business not so good. Coite d’Ivoire, Burkina, Sierra Leone - things were better there before. Lots of war. People buy these during war.“

„But you...they can’t work everytime, otherwise, everyone would where them...no one would die!?“

He shrugs. „It’s not my war.“

„Eat good,“ he tells me that night, as we’re huddled over a plate of strange millet cake. It’s featureless and bland, but solid and filling. Like eating dirt, or wood. „When you travel, you never know what will happen, you never know when you will eat again.

„Once, I arrived in Cote D’Ivoire, I had no money. I passed four days without eating. I asked people for food, they wouldn’t give me anything, just tell me to go away. Finally I went into a business and I told the man - I’ll work for you, I’ll do anything, I need to eat. He gave me work, and I stayed there at his business for 5 years.

„Travel is not easy,“ he says.



Smuggler Road to Mali and Meeting with Tuaregs - Squatting in Timbouctou - Going where the Dust Storms Never Blow - Salvation and the Action Hero

I leave Bassikinou, bound for Mali on a strange backroad. There is no border crossing per say, and at some point around sunset I suppose we cross into Mali. The path seems to possess some aspect of a smugglers road, known only to locals and the American Military, who are conducting widespread operation in the area.

I watch the landscape pass by from the passenger window of our truck like a reel from a surreal silent film. Outside of the village, we pass into a flat plain of technicolor dreamstuff - the near fluoresence of the grass, the plum sky of oncoming storm. A zoo of animals, goats bounding aside from a blast of the horn, donkeys bumbling about, and undoubtedly most strikingly, cattle herds being guided by turbaned Tuaregs on tall white camels. Throughout Morocco and in Mauritanian, guides offer mounted camel tours in the desert, but rarely do the inhabitants mount the lanky beast. The Tamashek however, not only ride them, but drive the animals into quick and awkward gallops.

We ride the piste until darkness, the path snaking between the trees, and the narrow piste of twin sand tracks, navigating the scrub forest like a canoe through a post climatic castosophre mangrove swamp, or the world turned on its head, branches twisted like roots, reaching for the sky, for the water hidden amongst suggesting clouds.

We arrive at the village of Lerneb at nighttime, an empty place. There is no electricity, and I’m subject to the flashlight interrogation and the surprised revelation that I am an American national. A police officer finds me a place to stay. He is Bambara, from Bamako, a stranger here as well. „Be careful of the Tamashek,“ he whispers to me, just before I’m led off into the dark.

Over the desert ville, I can hear the far off drums and women singing with tremolo. In the dawn, brown clouds gather and drops begin to fall. I haul myself inside, it’s 5 in the morning, the family behind in the tent is already awake.

At some point, they wake me. „Monsieur...monsieur!“ I roll over in my sleep, force me eyes open. A group is standing in the doorway, undeterminate size, but clearly everyone that can fit in a doorframe, a man, a woman, children, children holding babies - all gazing down at me with wide eyed speculation. I force myself to sit upwards. They trickle in the door, and spread out onto the tapis. The man points to the guitar, „Can you play us a song?“ I shake my hand and try my best, a rendition of some Malian song learned in Nouakchott. The man sitting now to my left. Takes the guitar. Begins to alter the tuning pegs. I hold my breath, waiting. Certaintly, he has no idea what he’s doing. Then he begins to play - that distinct Tuaereg music.

As we take our breakfeast of milk and tea, a man in fatigues enters. He’s carrying a battered Kashmlikov over his shoulder, which he flings haphazardly in the corner. He then tells me the police are looking for me.

We walk out into the town proper - the village is constructed in typical desert fashion, the house placed at far distant from one another, utilizing the one thing they have an abundance of: space. Animals cling to the spindly acacias for shade, giant bulls standing motionless waiting fort he sun. It’s flat, and the houses and buildings are one story, miniscule. I enter a concrete bunker of a building; there are lots of soldiers in fatigues lounging about outside, drinking tea. I’m led to the main office. Behind a desk littered with documents and books, sits the Malian chief, a Bambara. He is dressed in his fatigues, and is wearing a green cowboy hat. He asks me a few questions and stamps my passport. He is friendly. But he is certaintly not happy to be here posted in this desert.

I meet Ag Said, a young Gendarmie who is friendly enough. In fact, all the Gendarmie are very friendly with me, and I am on high alert. He carries his rifle, but in a careless fashion. I sometimes find it pointing at my face. „Is that thing loaded?“ I ask, knowing already the answer.

„Always ready for action,“ he tells me, grasping the rifle and offering a salut, a mischevious grin on his face.

We walk through the market - a weekly event in most small villages - a clammering and busy carnaval. Arabs in their flowing booboos, Tuaregs in long turbans, Songhai with glittering shawls and sparkling jewelry. Camels are roaring over the din, and young boys slap their donkeys and jangle by on ramshackle cherrettes. A deep loud report issues from the desert and I swear I see something tumble out of the air. „Was that a...rifle shot?“ I ask, pausing.

„No, just an explosive,“ Ag shrugs.

„What?“

My colleague sometimes drifts aside to talk to people, but he speaks in hushed voice. Secretive.

Later, we’re sitting on a tapi by a truck, waiting to leave for another village. Ag’s playing me music from his cellular - Tinariwen, Tartit - and I notice one of the clips with a banner fort he MNJ, movement for liberation of Niger, „These are the rebels,“ he proudly explains, as we watch a choppy video of heavily armed trucks caravan over sand pistes.

„But, excuse-moi, but aren’t you are Gendarmie? You are with the army, with Mali, not with the rebels?“ I ask.

„Right now,“ he explains in a low voice, glancing around „we are in peace. We don’t want war. Right now, ca va...but we will see.“

A Bambara police officer comes by fort he second or third time. „Where ist he driver of the vehicle?“ He glances at me.

„He’s not here,“ Ag says, dismissively, „come back later.“

The police officer pauses. „You can’t leave until I talk to the driver.“ He walks off, and Ag and the other gendarmie mutter something in Tamashek.

And perhaps it’s all the guns. Ort he fact that I’m a stranger here. Or all the stories I’ve heard about the Tuareg. Or all the security precautions that are being taken with me. But I can’t help but feel a little unnerved, waiting at any moment for...something. As Ag explains, „Some of the rebels kidnap foreigners, but it’s not to hurt them. Just for money. It’s nothing personal.“ Am I to be kidnapped? There is a certain sense one nurtues when on the road. Always amongst strangers. An ability to read situations, extract clues in nonverbal language. And though I do not feel in danger - I recognize clearly, that deception is heavy in the air. The town, the market, all is simply a backdrop, behind which lurks a volatile and unstable reality.

I travel with my guitar at my side, Ag with his Kashmiklov. We arrive at Gargando at sundown. Outside with the family on the white sand, cooler here because it doesn’t absorb the heat. Abdulahi ist he patriarch of the house, an old beard and deep theatrical voice, under the stars he explains the ancient caravan.

„Caillie arrived in Mauritania, in Brakna. It was there that he studied Arab and the ways of the Moors. That’s how most of the Europeans arrived. Their first contact, along the coast, was with the Moors. They called the people in the desert ‚Targu,i’ or ‚those who would not be defeated.’

I’m drifting off to sleep on a mat. „In America,“ his voice bellows, „you sleep in five star hotels. Here, we have a million and one stars.“ His deep laugh seems to echo.


One of the more troubling aspects is the slavery in Gargando. In physical appearance, the „Tuareg“ can vary from dark Arabic features to auburn hair and green eyes. But there are also distinctly „black“ Africans in the village. When I inquire Mustafa about their ethnicity he casually explains: „They are our slaves.“

I urge him to continue, on what I imagine to be a sensitive topic, but he extolls the system with no reservation. „Those are the Eclan or the Bilal. They are the ancient slaves of the Tuareg - we’ve had slaves for a long time, way before you had them in America.“

„But you pay them?“

„Of course, today, it would be wrong not to pay someone.“

„What language do they speak?“

„They speak Tamashek. But they aren’t Tamashek. Some say to call them „Black Tamashek“. Jamais! They will never be equal with us! The true Tuareg is „claire’,“ he points to his skin.

„But aren’t all people equal?“

„No.“

„But who knows,“ I press on, in a fatigued last attempt. „America had slaves too, and today a black man is the President.“

He laughs. „That’s your mistake.“

The eclan live in a seperate district in Gargando, shacks on the other side of „town,“ in a situation that is dire. In a village that is all but devoid of commerce, where people eek out a living by the most basic and bare lifestlye, where even the environment conspires against life, the poor of the poor are commited to all the „work“ in the village. Young boys are conscripted to work in hauling water from the well, a manual labor now that the pump has broken, using leverage of rope affixed to donkeys, and hauling bins of the cloudy brackish water that sustains the village. The woman work in the house, fighting against the wind and the sand that grows on everything like a living thing, scrubbing pans and bowls. Their payment is, as to be expected - that merely which sustains them and permits them to live. Some food, a tiny bit of milk.

In the larger towns, in the cities, time has marched on somewhat further. The eclan know themselves to be independent, at least in theory, and there is a movement to strike the word from the language. „The eclan in the villages,“ a friend explains, „are the ones that stayed in the system after democracy. They prefer to rest at the side of their ‚master’, because it’s what they know.“

Ragged and tired, I arrive in Timbouctou. The piste to arrival is a chaotic rough and tumbling journey across the sand. The driver, a long bearded stout man with Arabic features drives with aggressive fortitude, jerking the wheel for tracking and preferring high speeds to the possibility of getting stuck. Our twin headlights cast a frentic light like a lantern in a storm. I doze an uneasy half sleep - awakening when we grind to a halt in a somewhat featureless flat plain. It’s then I notice the driver has a rifle sitting at his side, which he aims out in the darkness and fires a lone shot. A white papery shadow flutters upward and away. Gunsmoke fills the cabin. „I already got one on the way. Birds. Good white meat,“ he explains.

I am left somewhere in the dark sleepy city somewhere after midnight. Occasional small fires burn in the street with crouching figures hovering about. In the haze of the streetlight, alongside the dusty barred stores, the market stalls, bodies are sprawled about on mats, deep into slumber. I pursue a similar goal.

After wandering for an eternity into the old city, I find a market stall, a tent, that appears to be empty. There is a hard stone shelf with a mat inside. As I’m gathering my possesions to lie down I suddenly hear a sound just outside the fabric. Someone is sleeping outside. Probably the owner. But I’m too tired. I wrap my head in a turban to cover my face and curl up into sleep.

In the morning I’m awakened by a large woman, the priopretess. She’s Songhai, and doesn’t speak French (and in my fatigued state, neither do I), but in a manner of gestures I apologize form y intrusion, but she doesn’t mind, and rather gently lies a tapi on the floor and hands me a pillow. I doze until the clammer of the street sounds, the bleating mutton and the foot traffic singing their praises to the dawn. Wandering out of my hovel, into Timbouctou.

The old city ist he color of mud, the buildings tall and sturdy, heavy wooden doors with aluminum ornamentation. I must be in a sorry state of repair, coming from the desert. My clothes are in shambles and when I look into the mirror I hardly recognize my face. In one word, gaunt. It as if the desert has sucked up all of the water out of me.

While at one time, ancient, Timbouctou was in the hands of the Tuareg, it has more often through history been a source of revenue and center of commerce fort he pastoral ethnicity. While in town, suprsingly the majority of the inhabitants are of black complexion, and identify not with their Tamashek speaking cousins, but as Songhai (or Sori speaking). Therefore, it should come as now suprise that many of the Tuareg, especially those that find you, are in the business.

„Hello my friend,“ a young man in flowing robes and billowy turban approaches.

„Bonjour,“ I sigh, through a grimacing smile.

„Welcome to Timbouctou. What is your name? Me, my friend - I am a Tuareg!“ It is as if the fact alone of the ethnicity should cause me to halt in my tracks and gaze in astonishment. A Tuareg? One of the famed and mythical „blue-men“ of the desert? Well, I’ll be...!

Perhaps this technique though, is not without sucess, and certaintly not without reason. The Tuareg ethnicity does deserve a spezial hallowed place amongst the unnumerable identities of the African continent. The place in history as viscious rulers of the transaharan caravan routes, the force by which they repelled invaders (and admitted a worthy defeat to the French), and the more recent continued struggle of rebellion against their nation state, all present an image that makes them, if not likeable, than respected.

Foremost, this is ignoring a brutal reality, that is, reality. The Tuareg, as an ethnicity, is composed of people, some good and some bad. And as people are prone to bad acts, multiplied into a group, an idenitity, they are capable of brutalities. For the Tuareg, this could consitute another story - the history of banditry and robbing camel caravans, the practice of slavery and concept of racial superiority that thrives, especially in the rural countryside, and the atrocities commited in the war for a somewhat misguided independence.

But Africa, with it’s myriad of ethnicities, is like that. When you arrive, as a foreigner, it’s somewhat similar to choosing a character for a role playing game. You can choose your own ethnicity - insomuch as the language you will learn, the people with whom will surround you, the culture you will adapt. There are alliances and conflicts inherent, and with this identification, you can’t help but not incorporate these into your character.

Six Thirty in the morning, and it’s already stifling. The sun is dusty and solitary, like an unblinking eye, the yolk of a angry god - you can almost hear the symphonic shrieks it emits, watch the villagers clutch their ears and collapse to the ground in futile attempts as their heads explode. But no, it’s just me. They’re quite used to it.

My last night in Niafounke, a malevont dust storm arrives on the eve. I had finished playing and recording with the brother of Afel Boucoum, I had recorded myself being accosted by a group of young Sori children who fantastically decided to serade me with songs. The storm arrived, dust blindness and thunder, ball lightning that didn’t crackle as much as bulge in the clouds of earth. I camp down in the market, in a stall. I wake in the nighttime to clacking. Donkeys. I turn over and throw stones at them. Something crawls over me. When the daylight arrives, I sit up on my tapi, amongst the sand and the garbage. A tallibay enterst he market with his can swinging. He sees me, and like a scared animal jolts. What a sight.

My transport onwards is a truck, my compatriot makes tea throughout the journey as we bounce along. It’s a long trek of nothing. We pass a few villages that are interesting in their remoteness. The villages are defined by their ethnicities „Tuareg, Soninke,“ etc.

By midday, we reach Lere. I Stopp off and talk with Aba, a young boy guitarist. He leads me to the house of Mohammad Issa, the grand Tuareg guitarist of Tartit. I stay with the family, in their tiny little banco house. There are many children. Issa’s wife, Saysi, is kind, but not kind hearted, or sweet, but undeniabely racist. They do, after all, practice slavery, at least in name, and most Tuaregs preach racial superiority. But, so do most ethnicities.

My last night, a dust storm arrives. The children see the clouds and say „the rain is coming“ - and we prepare for a tornado. Suddenly, sand and wind are slamming against the house. Our eyes are filled with sand, but it’s just as well. There is nothing to see. We manage to shut the door and brace it against the wind with a rope and a piece of wood. There is no electricity, all is dark inside, and the air inside the house is filled with sand. Confusion and chaos, battening down the hatches. We wait. In the dark. Rain comes, wind slows down, and for once it is cold.

Inside, we sleep. I awake in the night to something crawling on my hand. Then one of the children, Oma, is crying, I turn on my flashlight. „Hey,“ I say, in a calming voice. She sees me, her terror increases, she screams louder and runs away.


I have a vehicle, a truck, and we pile onto the back. Seven adults and two children. Rumbling off into the rain. It’s exciting, and doesn’t even begin to hint at the torture that is to follow. After a diversion in the piste due to the mud, we traverse towards another route. I’m teetering on the edge of the truck. The sun breaks free. At some point, the ride becomes unbearable. I’m clinging for life on with one hand to the net, the other to the guitar, so it seems I will fall and die at any moment; in fact, a few times, I’m almost flung off the vehicle. At other times, the jarring sends us into the air and crashing back down on the metal. My legs, behing my knee, are bruised and every jolt is a misery of pain. Then, my feet dangling off the edge - caked in mud - are slamming against any number of acacia, spines, shrubs. Bleeding and cut, bruised. My head is aching, and my forearms are burning to a blackened braise. I take inventory, of which hurts more. Alternating between the various pains in conscious observation. The worst part, is that it seems to never end. And I don’t know when it will end. When we Stopp to rest, I realize I can hardly walk now. My stomach hurts, I feel naseous.

There’s a beautiful bird in the sahel. It is a vibrant technicolor blue, with night black streaks on it’s wing. It iss tout fellow, but it’s head is raised high and it’s yellow beak is like an arrow. I sometimes see him on a branch suddenly take flight when I pass, and in doing so burst into color. And when I see him, I watch and try to forget where I am.

We pass through remote villages, mud pools, narrow sand tracks amongst shrubs, villages of round huts surrounding castle like mosques of mud, villagers with facial tatoos and gold nose rings, half naked or strangely clothed, stretches of empty desert at high speed and herds of cattles and goats. Sometime after Nampala, we reach the water, the irrigation of the Niger, and the scenery becomes green. Everything is green, rice paddies and mango trees. The piste becomes tolerable. Eight to Ten hours later, we arrive in Niono. I search for a place to sleep as the sun is down.

As the bus rambles along, and the greenery seems to sprout as we ride southward, thick Jurassic air replaces the sand of a thousand years. I’m en route to Bamako, the sprawling but unassuming capital along the Niger river, than onto Paris. It’s been some seven months now in Africa. The television on the bus plays two films, and I’m split between the passing scenery and the loose plot. The first is called „The Russian Specialist,“ and is written and starring Dolph Lundergan, a classic revenge tale, gratuitously violent, but hollow enough that the corpses are merely paper mache, the blood splatter, red confetti, and in the end, our character learns nothing - a noble act, but in his revenge, he seems lost, his salvation. The second film is called „Assassin Warrior,“ also starring Dolph Lundergan (in fact, I’m fairly certain the DVD contained multiple Dolph Lundergan films; or perhaps an infinite number - because in some fashion all are the films are the same) which began with a failed assasin, and ended when the bus arrived in Bamako.

The benefit of being privileged is the knowledge, or the belief, that you are privileged. With this firmly established, you can do anything. More so, you believe you can do anything. Priviliged, you will find no one to disagree with you - accusers being more common than otherwise. Unlike one who considers himself oppressed, the privileged is a victim of nothing, except for guilt. Like a spawn of original sin, the crime committed to be borne with too much, abundance in a land of scarcity. In a world of tyrants and slaves, you are suffering or sufferable. The guilt, like the sin, leads one to look for salvation, or alleviance of guilt - meaningful careers, church missions, deworming dogs in Darfur.

Privileged, without guilt you can do anything.

However, the life of the wind not without its dangers.

Dolph Lundergan speaks five languages and holds a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering. He was offered the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship. But look at his films.

An image alights of the wild eyed German midget who haunted the upper terraces of the Auberge Menata, clad only in spandex shorts, beard waving in the harmattan, muttering as he gazed down on the French campers with the disdain of an angry god.

But no, I have my people, my unquestionable familial love and my unconquerable friendships, I have my contempareries, my friends, my lovers, my comrades in arms, my melancholic siblings, my blood brothers of misery, my hypereducated analytics, my labryintine self referentials of unending progressions (who read DFW, and are conscious of the fact that they read DFW, unto infinity), my shivering figures of identiphobes, my dry fingered librarians who eat bookdust, my forever children who howl at the moon on cloudy nights, my vampires in Brooklyn and Berlin, my stream dwellers who pray to pagan gods, my forest friends who talk to animals, my societal refugees who hide in deserts and mountains, who demand nothing but the impossible.

And impossible is a worthy challenge.

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Meanwhile, I continue. Recordings are up on http://www.sahelsounds.com

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