Tanout on his market day was occupied by a mob of nomads vomited from the interior of the desert. Fulani, Tuareg and camel riding fine, carrying swords and quivers full of arrows, hammering a string of endless greetings. In a clearing near the cattle market occurring between camel racing betting. The stalls are just stunted logs among which scatter the meager products that the desert can offer. The smell of spices and cattle dung is everywhere, contemplate the spectacle amazed dodging inquisitive looks Tuaregs.
Although I only see my eyes gait betrays me. Riskoi me va presenting all product family, take me laughing and we are dedicated to a confusing journey to infinity waving Bororo clan. The faces are pure beauty, overwhelming, made up with gena mostly. They are aware and proud of their physical attributes, more than once I caught sneaking some kohl make-up in front of a mirror. Every second in Tanout gives a unique snapshot to devour. From time to time I touch the camera greedily hidden under the robe, not daring to draw, I have fear of attracting too much attention.
I have ground, people greet me, context with signos, I play the deaf
Fall hours as the rain while sitting in the shade while watching the bustle of the market. Occasionally Riskoi, disappears, makes arrangements to find a motorcycle with which to cross the desert to the camp, the camel ride could take an entire night. I have ground, people greet me, context with signos, I play the deaf. Quickly awake the curiosity of a crowd that identifies me as black and urges me to take off the turban, in doing so I get smiles and nods. I can not help shuddering, rumors of collaboration between Tuaregs and AQIM for the kidnapping of foreigners are constant.
The sun goes down as we leave the city on the back of a falling moped and head to the camp. We are drawing an endless drip families returning back to the depths of the savanna. We greet you at full speed, Motorcycle laughing while threatening to break apart in each dune and sunlight paints a surreal canvas, lavish, of long shadows, Animal, of withered children and old men. From eyes that pierce the heart and laughter to disarm hurtful landscape nudity.
The Sahel at the time reaches a stunning beauty
In many parts of Africa dusk falls on the earth, giving just a few moments of magic light before the sky turn off the switch and download a torrent of stars. The Sahel at the time reaches a stunning beauty, a territory of anyone who disrupts justifies burning hours and days. That afternoon the desert was generous to us and seemed to give us almost an hour neon-lit path that no longer abandon us to reach the first huts Sallaga.
Sallaga, here we were at last. An esplanade dry halfway between Savannah and desert, a handful of shops and lounges scattered among groups of children running around after their mothers. In the distance, bellowing can be heard flying over the dust raised by the returning cattle.. Within minutes barely distinguishable faces huddled by the fires lit while the air is permeated with the smell of boiled millet. Tonight there will be "bouile" (milk and millet soup) Dining.
Hunger, droughts and epidemics are filing his teeth the way of life of a nomadic
The Bororo live by and for their cows, they are their livelihood, his pride and illusion. They provide them with the milk that they feed on and that they can sell and exchange for other provisions in the market., serve as their dowry in their marriages and they get the little meat they indulge in their festivities. His life is hard as usual It would be in this dry and hostile environment, the bones of cattle that sow the road are proof of how the Sahel leaves tusks marked the only people who dare to love and challenge in equal. Hunger, droughts and epidemics are filing his teeth the way of life of a nomadic people who nonetheless still retains her pride intact. Because if I understood something in that first of the many visits that I would make to Sallaga during the following months, it is that the most valuable heritage of the Bororos resides in equal parts in their hospitality and pride.. Among the squalid tents surrounded by dying cows and flocks of ferocious flies, an almost noisy dignity floated in the middle of that African night., the night he slept in the school of Sallaga.
Because the camp was only one building, if it could be called that to a tiny hut of branches and thatched roof riddled with holes that let the stars see, as furniture a blackboard that hung from one of the walls and the floor of parched earth swept with care. There we camped the night I was telling Riskoi between teas hot and the lowing of camels birth of first school project around Tanout. The nomadic school Sallaga.
There we camped the night I was telling Riskoi between teas hot and the lowing of camels birth of first school project
Sallaga extends over a distance spanning about 40 square kilometers of inhospitable desert savannah. The Bororo are divided into clans, sometimes separated by vast distances, each clan usually clustered around the householder, his brothers and his first wife and children, are polygamous and sometimes have several clans scattered across the savannah traveling long distances to reach everyone. This structure is mutable, since it is always subject to the trail of grass that its cattle need to feed.
In just an hour up the camp and tiny asses against dust crushed pumpkins crowded, pots, clothes, swords and trinkets. Everything to travel just a few kilometers the following night like a tangle that moves in a continuous pilgrimage through the confines of the Sahel, from Niger, a Mali, through Burkina Cameroon. Under these conditions the hordes of kids that accompany each camp have no chance of going to school, their fate is pilgrimage by "Brousse" or live in the suburbs of cities as illiterate and wild marginalized by the majority Hausa.
They agreed to let the smaller fixed and release camp out each day to accompany the cows
One day Malam and Gado's father and uncle decided to open the first Riskoi school project nomadic Sallaga, scarce resources between different clans mustered four months' salary of a teacher and built a roof under which students garrison ten days of rain a year that gives Sahel in Niger. They agreed to let the smaller fixed and release camp out each day to accompany the cows. In those moments between drought and livestock deaths was still during school start and looked like an unfinished sketch, exciting relic of better times.
Sallaga remember those days like a whirlwind of sensations and discoveries. Days of confusion, in which smiles and gestures of affection reached where lost in translation words do not reach. I remember the wonderful sunsets and suffocating midday crumbled into the fabric of turbans, the wild days, full of dead hours and unforgettable moments. I remember the fear each time he approached a jeep with heads covered in savanna, I remember the laughter and conversations with unintelligible whispers night fires, clockwise forgotten, the feeling of feeling like the privileged witness of a way of life that disappears.
In my back sticks a huge blackboard, on tubular slate loaded saddlebags, pencils, and chalk and rubbers
The following weeks are just a short ellipsis. I see us again cruising the dunes on the outskirts of Tanout as a pack with Riskoi on a motorcycle that threatens to turn into scrap every moment. But this time we are not alone, we carry valuable loot. In my back sticks a huge blackboard, on tubular slate loaded saddlebags, pencils, and chalk and gums and a giant carpet, in pockets 8 months' salary for a teacher insured. After negotiations with my ong and promise not to do crazy, the first traveling nomadic school in the Sahel, fly at full speed towards Sallaga.
"A, two, three ... "berrean cuarenta voces childhood, Professor Karim said while the numbers on the board and walks under the huge acacia desperate, trying to put order. A carpet, the blackboard hanging on the trunk of the tree and a slate and chalk per student, enough twigs to build a school if there is enthusiasm and desire. At the front under the old school a group of elderly Bororo fun contemplate the spectacle between steaming teas. After decades of touring the Sahel, to trace the footsteps of their animals in the dust, of skirmishes with cattle thieves, to win a thousand battles to thirst and desert, end his days accompanying their grandchildren to school, sure to come and end up waiting patiently to take them back. “
A, two, trois… ”all ages mix, collejas flying and broken pencils, the bright eyes and the nerves of the first day of class ... the first day of class in the middle of the savannah. I look at Riskoi who holds one of her little brothers' hand up to the carpet, I wink an eye. "A, two, trois…. ” the voices rise and get tangled in the knots of the acacia, and continue to rise without limit towards African sun.
