John Tyman's Cultures in Context Series EGYPT and the SAHARA www.johntyman.com/sahara |
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4.8 Case Study Pt. II : The Tuareg : 326 -348 |
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John Tyman's Cultures in Context Series EGYPT and the SAHARA www.johntyman.com/sahara |
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4.8 Case Study Pt. II : The Tuareg : 326 -348 |
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| .326. Most “upper class” Tuareg men still despise farming but some younger men have swallowed their pride. They grow crops today for their own use, sometimes pumping water from wells. (Djanet) |
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| .327. Others even maintain the aqueducts dug by former slaves, or pump water from their headworks. Many of these actually cultivate gardens alongside former slaves and haratin! (Djanet) |
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| .328. In conservative Muslim families further north women, of course, live in seclusion and are tightly veiled whenever they leave home. Among the Tuareg, in contrast, it is the men who wear a veil! It is common throughout the Sahara for men to cover their faces with a long scarf or shesh wrapped around the head for protection against the sun and the sand when travelling. In the case of the Tuareg, however, it is worn night and day, both when traveling and around camp. (Tassili-n-Ajjer) |
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| .329. Men over the age 16 use scarfs 5 or 6 metres in length (known as litham), to cover everything but their eyes and the bridge of their nose when in the presence of their parents-in-law, women, old people and strangers from their own society. With outsiders they are less strict and may allow the veil to drop slightly. It is commonly dark blue in colour, from indigo dyes; and the skin of the man who wears it may eventually be stained blue. (Tassili-n-Ajjer) |
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| .330. Nowhere else in the world do men go about veiled and the reason is buried in history. One possible explanation is the belief that a dying warrior would lose his soul if his face were left uncovered -- as it was widely believed in ancient times that a person's soul escaped the body by way of the nose and mouth. Alternatively, it may be that without a veil a man was afraid of breathing in evil spirits. It may even have started out as a protective covering, but its use was later imbued with a variety of social and religious beliefs. (Tassili-n-Ajjer) |
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| .331. Though Muslims elsewhere are allowed as many as four wives (if they treat them equally) the Tuareg have only one; and the women, who are never veiled, are treated with respect. (Woman at Hirhafok who had added knitting to the usual round of wifely tasks) |
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| .332. A person's descent was traced traditionally through the female line, not the male. Children belonged to the same caste/class as their mother, not that of their father, and instead of their father being their male next of kin and guardian it would be a brother of their mother's. And, till recently, it was from this uncle that they would inherit, not from their father. (Children near Fort Gardel) |
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| .333. Men marry when they are about 30 years of age; girls when they are 14 or 15. A bride price is paid and divorce is taboo. Though women do not wear veils, they do dress modestly. They play a major role in the social life of the community and are often the only ones who can read and write. (Fort Gardel) |
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| .334. Girls of marriageable age are not kept in seclusion, as they would be in Arab societies; nor are they married off by their father. Instead they are free to choose their own husbands, as long as they are both of the same caste. (Fort Gardel) |
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| .335. The Algerian government has, in some places, provided both schools and teachers: but since children are required from an early age to help care for the their family's animals and its garden their schooling is frequently interrupted. (Lower caste boy at Hirhafok) |
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| .336. The Tuareg raise camels, sheep, goats and some cattle still. These provide them with meat, milk, and skins: but camels were valued also as a means of transport. For hundreds of years the Tuareg crisscrossed the Sahara, following long established routes, leading great lines of camels ("caravans") carrying salt, mined in the mountains south of the Hoggar) or concentrated by evaporation. (Camels north of Tamanrasset) |
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| .337. They sold much of the salt to farmers south of the desert who paid for it with grain and slaves: but they moved it also to oases further north (like In Salah and Ghardaia) and to markets in Libya, where livestock, grain and salt were exchanged for dates, tea, sugar, clothes and household utensils. (Market at Biskra) |
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| .338. Trips like these could take two or three months. While the men were away with the camels, their women looked after the sheep and goats. They had to find them water as well as pasture, but in the mountains of the Hoggar they needed typically to travel no more than 50kms in the course of a single year. (Temporary camp at Arak) |
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| .339. Today Tuareg women spend most if not all of their time in the towns and villages where they have taken up permanent residence ... and may now help care for their family’s garden. (Djanet) |
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| .340. Here they will also fulfill the usual range of responsibilities entrusted to the wives of nomads ... caring for their palm mat tent, cooking, making and/or repairing clothes, washing them, and caring for their children. (Djanet) |
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| .341. Young boys here typically run around naked. They will sleep in their parents’ tent till puberty, after which they must build their own shelter or, if the weather is warm, sleep on a mat beneath a tree, wrapped in a blanket. |
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| .342. Today some of the old caravan routes serve as unmade roads (or "pistes") used by vehicles which can move supplies quickly to those settlements that are accessible by road. (Crossing the Erg D’Admer near Djanet) |
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| .343. Some Tuareg now drive trucks instead of camels -- carrying fuel for cars and pumps, spare parts, and consumer goods. Sometimes trucks are even used these days to move camels quickly to better pasture! (Erg D’Admer) |
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| .344. Where camels are required to walk as they always did in the past, a man is likely now to throw his saddle into the back of a utility vehicle at the start of a trip and race off into the desert to find them. They will have been hobbled so they cannot wander far. (Near Tamanrasset) |
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| .345. Sadly, almost the only caravans you are likely to see here today carry tourists rather than salt. They come here for a “desert adventure”, some of them flying direct from Paris: and trouble is taken to ensure that they have every luxury they might need during their journey. (Near Tamanrasset) |
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| .346. Other men are employed to guard the cave paintings of the Tassili-n-Ajjer and to look after the tourists who visit them ... ensuring that they do not get lost, and policing the regulations instituted by the Algerian government for the care of the paintings. |
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| .347. From the gravestones in the cemetery at Djanet it’s obvious that the region has for generations been part of the Tuareg heartland, but the nomadic way of life is in decline everywhere -- for various reasons. These include the collapse of the caravan trade, massive stock losses in recent dry years, the income available from tourism, and government policies. |
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| .348. Long-distance movements have been restricted by nation states that distrust people whose tribal loyalties cut across political boundaries. And governments have also been keen to settle nomads so they can be counted, monitored, and controlled; and so that power lines, schools and clinics can reach them. (Illizi) |
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