4/23/2013
THE TUAREGS
GOAFS II: #38
TUAREGS
APRIL 24, 2013
He raises the poor
from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with
princes,
with the princes of his people.
Psalm 113.7-8
There is
conjecture that in their early days among the Arab-Berber people of North
Africa the Tuaregs had been Christianized. But the historians and the Tuaregs
themselves deny this. The cause for the speculation is things like this cross
in their arts.
When the Tuaregs spread southward across the Sahara they
brought a well-established class system with them. It consisted of four levels:
(1. the Nobility—warrior-aristocrats who ruled the Clan. They
organized group defense, livestock raids, and the long distance caravan trade
which was primarily salt and slaves.
(2. the free vassal herdsman and warriors who pastured and
tended most of the animals-- camels, horses, goats and other livestock. They
were said to have descended from the nobility in the distant past and maintained
some distance from the lower classes.
(3. the blacksmiths-artisans, who were essentially metalworkers
but also artists and singers, The occasional Muslim cleric who gained some
influence with the clan was considered part of this class.
(4. The vassals or slaves. The Tuaregs were active in the
slave trade. In wars with their enemies, they usually won and the sold the
captives into slavery. The best of the captives were kept to serve the clan and
were fully integrated into the life of the clan. They were well-treated and
well-cared for. The proportion of slaves to free men among the peoples of
French West Africa at the beginning of the 20th century was anywhere
from 80% to 50%.
About 1900 the French Colonial administration decided the
Tuaregs were going to have to give up their nomadic ways and to prepare them,
the French demanded that they send their children to school. The nobles, deemed
this beneath their high status, the blacksmiths had better things for their
children to do, as did the herdsmen. So the Nobles sent the slave children to
school to satisfy the French. The result was the development of a highly
educated group of people who had learned to work hard, make do, and succeed against
significant odds in an essentially hostile desert environment. The community of
Bella tribesmen at Intedieni, that we looked at briefly last week, were such a
community. Self-sufficient, fully adjusted to the demise of the nomadic
pastoral life and well into a sedentary agricultural existence.
Some of
the most effective community development projects is West Africa have been
simple solutions to local problems using local skills and materials. The adobe
stove is one of these. World Vision brought this idea to Mali, taught the
people to make one, and estimated 20,000 of them had been built after only
three years.
The
stove/oven is made of local sand, a little straw, three stones, and sized to
fit the existing iron cook-pot. Its thick walls retain the heat, require less
than half the wood fuel normal cooking requires, and requires no cash
investment. They are free. One can be built in a day or two. When coated with a
plaster of mud mixed with animal dung, they resist the rain and last for years.
They have adapted this construction to full-sized houses that
look like adobe igloos and make remarkable homes that are cool in the hot
weather and warmer in the cold weather.
Soon after I was there in 1988, Mali became a battleground when radicalized students returned from Paris and tried to take over the country. When they had partially succeeded, al Qaeda joined the fray and pre-empted the Tuaregs. The French eventually got involved. Today is Mali is not a happy place, nor a good place to take a vacation.
JERRY SWEERS
cmudgeon@windstream.net
4/17/2013
INTEDIENI
GOAFS II: #38
INTEDIENI
APRIL 10, 2013
Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.
Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not
perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert. The
wild beasts will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches,
for I give water in
the wilderness,
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people… Isaiah
43.18-20
It is a hundred and thirty kilometers from the airport at
Niamey, Niger, to the border of Mali. In 1988 there were five police
checkpoints in Niger along this road. Before you reach the border, the paved
road gives way to washboard gravel, which is what you find all the way (1200
kilometers) to Bamacho, the Capital at the other end of the Country. From the
village of Anderan Boukane (pop. 2000) near the border it is another
hundred kilometers to the larger village of Menaka (pop. 12,000). World
Vision had a variety of projects in both places, overseen by 4 young expatriate
development workers.
I’m not sure how the government counted the residents—Menaka
consisted of one wide main street with a few stores. Along the southern edge of
the Sahara, there are two brief rainy seasons, one longer than the other. At
these times the populations of these towns swell greatly with the nomadic Tuaregs
who gather for market and other occasional activities. I bought some of those
shot-glasses I talked about last week there for twenty-five cents each to take
home with me.
One day
we set out north from Menaka across a rock-strewn desert that looked like the
face of the moon. The road began with two ruts and soon disappeared entirely.
As we moved farther into the desert, it became clear that we were traveling in
a kind of dry wash and eventually we came to rock dam that had been built to
catch the run-off from the sparse rains. The dam was constructed of large wire
baskets filled with laterite rock. Each year, as the shallow lake began to dry
up after the rain, these folks planted millet that restored the soil and
eventually sorghum in the dry strips along the edges of the water. There was
enough water retained in the soil to produce a good crop.
We finally arrived at the village of Intedieni, a settlement
of about 80 Bella people well along in the process of making the transition to
a more sedentary, agricultural way of life. The whole village gathered to meet
us in the square and the extrovert in our group did an impromptu dance in
response to their warm welcome.
Too little rain and multiple drought years had caused them to
lose almost all of their animals and they were learning to conserve what
moisture there was and grow crops in what looked to me like very dry ground.
This entire village was Christian. The headman’s son had been
sent to Bamako for an education. While he was there, he also found out the
truth about Jesus and became a Christian. Soon after he came home he had taken
over from his father and proceeded to lead the whole village to the Lord. His
name was Ibraiham and he reminded me a little of his OT namesake.
There were many Ibraiham’s (Abraham) in Mali, and also many
Musa’s (Moses) and if you met a new man or boy there, he would usually be one
of these two, or Mohammad, which was probably the most common of the three.
You can see from the group picture above, and more clearly
here, that in these nomadic tribes, the men wore a veil, the women did not.
This was true of the Tuaregs who were constantly on the move, and the Songhai,
who stuck close to the Niger River. Together, these two groups only made up about
15% of the total population but they had suffered the most from the failure of
the rains and the loss of all their animals. The group at Intedieni were Bella,
who were a subclass of Tuaregs and well along in their transition to
agriculture.
The majority of the work World vision did in Mali was with
Muslims, where no proselyting was permitted. If someone asked why we were there,
we were free to tell them—but no meetings, no Bible studies, no official
Christian presence. It was a great joy to be working with this village of
brothers and sisters in Christ.
JERRY SWEERS
cmudgeon@windstream.net
