My 15 day adventure was actually a five day trek in the Ténéré desert with two excellent Tuareg guides: Bilal and Habib.
The adventure began in Paris when fog in Munich and subsequent delay caused me to miss the plane to Niamey. I spent four and a half days trying to catch up with the other four members of the trek. They needed four days to reach the point where Bilal and Habib waited for them in the Aîr mountains. I skipped the day that they had spent in Agadez and caught them up because I was lucky enough to find the man who organised the tour in Agadez. He drove me to the starting point.
A Tuareg Legend
The wandering sand dunes of the Ténéré are a strenuous and dangerous hurdle when struggling with your caravan on its way back from the oasis of Bilma, six hundred kilometers from the home of the Kel Aîr Tuareg, in the Aîr mountains of Niger. However, awe inspired by their beauty, the Kel Aîr are proud that they are able to live amidst such wonder and always strive hard to find their way back.
The dunes shift thirty meters a year, winds lift the upper sands and bounce them up the slopes to either increase the size of a dune, or build the next. Those grains of sand that make it to the top, and form the razor sharp crests and the snake like geometric spines of the dunes are said, by the Tuareg, to be always the same individual grains. They just move from the top, or crest, of one dune to the next, always on top, always forming the crest. This, for the Kel Aîr shows that those grains of sand have character. They are strong, successful, forever on top – always the same grains, together.
To share the same characteristics of this sand, like the very crest of the dune itself, you are sharp, successful, and proud, like the Tuareg aristocracy. Tall white Berbers, standing erect in their long light blue robes with their six meter, dark blue tugulmust turbans wrapped around their head and face, revealing just their eyes. The shiny brass and leather handle of their long sword just showing over their shoulder: elegant and honourable men. Successful wanderers of the desert – just like the sand.
A man of Kel Aîr leaves his beautiful woman at home, in a small hut made of leather or straw. She looks after the children and the goats and tends to the family business. And a business woman she is, selling jewelry, goats cheese and firewood, whilst her man is risking yet another journey across the barren waste.
The legend that recounts the success of the same grains of sand, time and time again, building the crest and summit of the dunes, is used to pacify the loneliness and hardship for both woman and man as they spend much of their lives apart. Every now and again, the nomad will return to his wife and children with two small glass containers, perhaps from the Grande Marché in Agadez. In each container, captured by the man way up on top of one of the highest dunes, are the sand grains from the top of the crest. The most successful of all: those that always find their way back to each other, at the top of the next dune.
The Nomad would have scooped the sand from the crest, a bottle in each hand, with one movement towards each other, ensuring that the grains belong to each other. He will give one to his wife and keep the other container for himself, always on him, under his tunic, tied around his neck with a leather band. His wife will be thrilled. For this means that these grains of sand, in the two containers, will always find their way back to each other. This not only means her husband will be successful in returning from his next caravan but it symbolises his love for her, and that he is coming back to her and no-one else.
Occasionally, whilst her man is away, the woman will take out her container, open it, and very carefully pour it out into the palm of her hand. Tènèrè sand is like velvet, smooth to touch. This gentle feeling in her hand reminds her of the warm touch of her man‘s skin on hers whenever he returns. She then pours it onto a small patch of goatskin, or paper, which she folds, and carefully returns it to its container.
On rare occasions a man will share a container with his best friend, or a brother with his sister. This too is a gift of respect, love, and the guarantee that they will, someday, be back together again.
Copyright © 01.06.1999 – Kevin Mahoney