Expérience Nomade finally reached M ’ Hamid , and the desert blew hard its joy .
M ’ Hamid El Ghizlane is a pit of a town in the sand of Sahara . Its crumbling buildings told of a glorious past , when it was a station on the caravan trail . Last century ’ s conflicts and substantial changes zeroed the legendary route to Timbuktu , forcing many desert Berbers to settle as tour operators ; some own a restaurant or a hotel , others bring tourists in jeeps or camel excursions in the desert .
In these festival days , the village was crowded with European tourists , young Berber artists and Arabs coming from the big cities , all wrapped in their tagelmust like Tuareg wannabes . We were all here to listen to the sounds and voices of the last generation of those who were the undisputed rulers of this land with no geography .
Fragmented by straight borders artificially created by European domination , Tuareg people bring on their lonely struggle against nation states , by politics and weapons . Although they sit on the biggest deposit of oil and uranium in the world , they only knew famine and warfare during the last century , trying to have their own state , so desperately to get a short alliance with ISIS , of which they immediately had to repent . It ’ s not for us to determine rights and wrongs , if there were any , and this gives the festival an immense value ; this is the place where the electric and hypnotic sounds of Desert Blues , created by the Tuareg of diaspora , meet percussions and dance from Black Africa giving life to a peaceful audio-guerrilla for an international audience . Since the world began , guitars have always been better than rifles . And that was why it was important to be here .
While we play with bikes in the dunes of Erg Chegaga , I strayed from the group to snoop around a tent . The man invited me to enter , and we started chatting in front of a hot mint tea . He worked bringing tourists on camel rides and selling fossils and jewels . His wife and sons live thirty kilometres away , somewhere in the Erg he knew how to get there . He didn ’ t know how old he was . Forty , maybe fifty years , there is no birth register in the desert . But he has Facebook , so I ’ d be able to send him the photo that he agreed for me to take , but not before he put his teal dress on . The Tuareg say that God created deserts for Man to find his soul . I don ’ t know if Ali found his own , but he certainly looked kind and peaceful . AF
Antonio is a motorycle riding photojournalist , having given up a career in architecture to explore the world . His works can be found at totolemoto . it
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