stories & things from around the world
Through my Notes on Wool series, I explore various types of wool available in Morocco. As a new spinner, I am also using this opportunity to learn about the process of turning raw wool into yarn suitable for knitting (my preferred craft medium). What follows are the steps I took, their results, and my observations so that I don’t forget what I’ve learned.
“You see those tiny rocks there? Those used to be plants,” said Dr. Paul Adderley, a soil scientist who was giving me a tour of Gobero, a 10,000 year old world in the middle of Niger’s Sahara desert.
We were standing on a low ridge looking across the barren earth stretching far beyond the horizon. As the wind kicked up, a sheet of sand moved across our feet.
“When this was a lake, there were reed-like plants living in the shallow areas along the banks. These plants left mineral deposits forming the little black rocks you see today.”
Plant remains are not the only things that have been revealed by the shifting Saharan sands. As we walked down into the depression that had been a lakebed during the early Holocene period (approximately 11,700 years ago), we scanned the ground covered with rock-like debris. Fragments of fossilized turtle shells, the scattered skeleton of a hippopotamus, and the needle-like bones of fish lay on the desert floor in much the same position they had taken after falling to the muddy depths of their ancient home millennia ago.
Amongst the petrified bones were stone arrowheads in a multitude of colors and broken pieces of harpoon made of bone. The animals of the Green Sahara were not alone.
On the other side of the lakebed at the top of a gentle rise, hundreds of people lay buried just below the ephemeral surface. Two paleontologists were lying on their sides gently brushing the sand away to reveal the knee of a tightly wrapped skeleton.
“Gobero is extremely apropos,” Paul Sereno, the University of Chicago paleontologist leading the expedition, told me later under twinkling stars after dinner. “It witnessed the passage of two peoples who flourished and were vanquished by climate change.”
About 12,000 years ago, Africa’s seasonal rain patterns shifted slightly to the north creating a wetter environment in the Sahara. From 10,000 to 8,000 years ago, tall hunters known as the Kiffians exploited Gobero’s verdant lake and buried their dead along its shores. As the climate became arid and the lake disappeared, all life abandoned the area for the next 1,000 years.
When humidity returned to the region and the lake once again teemed with plants and animals, a shorter, more gracile group of cattle-herders known as the Tenerians took up residence at Gobero where they lived from about 6,500 to 4,500 years ago.
Like their Kiffian predecessors, the Tenerians left behind a legacy of arrow heads, harpoons, potsherds, stone metates, and unique burials at the top of the gentle rise along the shores of the lake. Mysteriously, they buried their dead beside the Kiffians without disturbing the earlier sites.
But once again, the lake dried up and its residents disappeared. Gobero has remained part of the dry, inhospitable Sahara ever since.
“Gobero’s story is important to today’s world in which we see climate change,” continued Dr. Sereno. “How do people react to climate change? Will we be able to adapt?”
As industries around the world pump toxins into our waterways and spew pollutants into the air, the story of Gobero is a reminder of how fragile our existence is on this Green Planet. Without water, we cannot survive.
With the muted light of the full moon behind him, Dr. Sereno concluded, “Both (the Kiffians and the Tenerians) lived off the fat of the land – fish in the lake, animals who came to drink – as long as they could, and when it ended… they moved somewhere else… and the story here ended.”
Driving back to modern civilization across the trackless Sahara, I thought about the fact that unlike these early Saharan peoples, we do not have anywhere else to go.
Pagne has been one of my favorite things about living in Niger. Not a day goes by when you don’t see this colorful, whimsical cloth. Almost every market in Niamey has a pagne section where people go to buy their favorite motifs.They take the cloth to tailors who fashion shirts, dresses, pants, and skirts to their customers’ specifications. According to my friend, some pagne patterns have been around for a very long time, while others are new designs for modern tastes. Much of the pagne you see men and women wearing comes from Benin and Togo. However, Niamey has its own textile factory that produces custom pagne for baptisms, weddings, funerals, and festivals. Anyone can bring a design or a photo to turn into commemorative pagne.
(Photo Credit: Dad)
Traditionally, Nigeriens use a large, ceramic jar called a “Kanari” for storing water. These hand-painted jars keep well water cool. A round, woven mat balanced across the jar’s opening keeps out bugs and lizards. In some homes, you will see a kanari or two half-buried in the ground for insulation. The owners place a small calabash on the lid so thirsty visitors can get a refreshing sip. Usually, it is women who make the jars and pass on their craft to their daughters. In Boubon, a village famous for pottery making, women use clay from the nearby Niger River as well as broken bits of old kanari that have been crushed into a powder and incorporated into the clay. Although it is still possible to see these jars around Niamey, plastic coolers are quickly replacing them.
(Photo Credit: Dad)
Boubon, a small village on the banks of the Niger River, comes to life every Wednesday as peddlers and customers come together under the shade of woven mat canopies. People arrive in shallow wooden boats, called pirogues, which are piled with sacks of grain, plastic buckets, pumpkins, and cages full of guinea hens. Cows swim next to the boats – their owners holding onto their horns so they won’t get lost. In the market, you can find a variety of products – large, yellow calabash bowls; woven straw mats; chunks of translucent Gum Arabic for thickening sauces; cows, goats, and sheep; second-hand bicycles and radios; and the beautiful, painted ceramic jars for which Boubon is famous. To learn more about these jars, see my Photo Highlight: Nigerien Coolers.
Even though we did not speak the same language, the village women made it clear that they wanted me to experience hauling the water bucket from the bottom of the 118 meter well. I stepped up to the edge of the gaping hole surrounded by four hefty wooden logs. Each one was deeply grooved in parallel lines by the daily passage of ropes. I was terrified that I would fall in. I took hold of the thick rope with both hands and pulled, digging my feet into the dirt, trying not to look down. The great resistance of the water-filled bucket deep down at the bottom of the well traveled up the rope. I could feel the women behind me as they grabbed the rope just behind my hands. There were three of us in a line, bending forward and leaning back in unison as we inched the heavy bucket closer to the surface. It seemed it would take forever. Finally, with sweat seeping through my shirt, we pulled the large pouch made of tire rubber to the surface. Cloudy water sloshed onto our dusty feet and instantaneously disappeared into the hard packed earth.
Niger is full of grasshoppers. My friend’s son enjoys catching them just to show he can. Some villagers outside of Niamey gather the insects in the early morning when the grasshoppers can’t move too quickly. At home, they boil them, dry them in the sun, and then bring them to Niamey’s Katako market. Sautéed grasshopper with West African spices is a popular snack. Read more about it at amoveablekitchen.blogspot.com.
While driving east out of Agadez one November day, we came across some Tuareg traders setting out on their annual trek across the Sahara to the small town of Fachi. A small handful of men undertake the arduous 29 day journey with camel herds reaching into the hundreds. Loaded on the backs of the camels are provisions for the men and their animals as well as fresh produce and firewood to trade for the large cylinders of salt they bring back to Agadez (pictured below). You can find these same salt cylinders in Niamey’s markets as well. According to Issouf Ag Maha in his book, Touraeg du XXIeme Siecle, the journey is considered a right of passage for young Tuareg men. Navigating through a bleak environment with few landmarks and no sources of food and water for nearly two months is not taken lightly.
I will never forget sleeping under a desert sky full of crystalline stars. As I lay on my blanket arranged on the sand, the only sound I heard was an occasional breath of wind. The vastness of the empty space made me feel incredibly small. The silence amplified the size of the Earth and the universe to which we belong. Getting there, I thought we would lose our SUVs to the satiny sand, but they made it thanks to some expert driving. There are no roads once you get out there – even the dirt tracks carved by previous vehicles do not exist. You feel really and truly alone.
At the annual Cure Salée in July, the Tuareg and Wodaabe gather at In-Gall near Agadez for a month of camel racing and speed dating before the nomadic groups splinter off again into the dusty expanses of the Sahara and Sahel. One evening, the Tuareg gathered for the “dating wheel” in an empty expanse near their pitched tents. Women, decked out in their finest, sat atop donkeys loaded down with decorative leather household items in maroon, teal, and midnight blue. Turbaned men wheeled their towering camels this way and that to show off the elegant swish of long leather tassels hanging from the animals’ humps. When it was time, the women steered their donkeys into a circle and began parading them in a counter clockwise direction. The men on camels quickly formed a ring around the women and maneuvered their camels in a clockwise direction. They continued in this way for a while, giving both men and women a chance to check each other out before approaching their love interests after the event.
106 Meters from the Road